Brent Leggs

Demond "Brent" Leggs (born 22 November 1972) is an African-American architectural historian and preservationist from Paducah, Kentucky. Among his roles at the National Trust for Historic Preservation he has been the founding executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which has raised over $150 million since 2017 for the preservation of historic Black places across the country.

He has played a role in reframing the idea of historic preservation, expanding its scope and its approach, including ways of using preservation activities to encourage and develop community resilience and sustainability.

Using his business school training Leggs has developed the Northeast African American Historic Places Outreach Program, guided by "its theme, the Business of Preservation," with the goal of setting up "a regional movement of preservation leaders" to preserve African American landmarks. at local and national levels on how to leverage business as well as cultural advantages from the preservation of historical sites as cultural assets. He has also helped preserve Nina Simone's birthplace in Tryon, North Carolina, and John and Alice Coltrane's home in Huntington, New York. The restoration of Simone's birthplace illustrates the sort of cooperation with locals Leggs advocates to find ongoing uses once an historical site has been preserved.

As part of his work with the National Trust Leggs has played a large role in getting numerous African American sites recognized as historically significant.

Following this event, in 2018 Leggs wrote in Essence about the history of saving sites significant to African American history and the multifaceted importance of doing so. He credited the National Association of Colored Women, led by Mary B. Talbert, for "inaugurating the Black preservation movement" by preserving Frederick Douglass' home in Washington a century earlier. Leggs sees the Fund's activities as playing a role in "reconstructing" America's national identity. Awards are announced annually. In 2019 new sites receiving support included Langston Hughes' house in Harlem, NYC; The Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, NY; Satchel Paige's home in Kansas City, Missouri; the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument; The Forum in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood; the African Meeting House in Boston, MA; and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Academic accomplishments and honors Leggs' faculty positions have included "Clinical Assistant Professor" at the University of Maryland's School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and adjunct status at the Boston Architectural College. which the Smithsonian Institution called the "seminal publication on preserving African American historic sites." It "provides tools for protecting ... important landmarks in African American history." He has made numerous public appearances, including on C-Span,

In 2018 he received the Robert G. Stanton National Preservation Award.