August 22, 2005

The African American cultural heritage tourism market has emerged!

Chicago Sun-Times * Sunday, August 21, 2005

Travel Section

Culturally historical sites 'get in touch' with past
August 21, 2005

BY DIONNE WALKER

FARMVILLE, Va. -- For years, students crammed shoulder to shoulder into Robert R. Moton High School, holding overflow classes in tar paper shanties and even school buses -- all in the name of segregated education.

Finally on April 23, 1951, the black students organized a walkout. They would later join a handful of schools included in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education, outlawing school segregation.

That bit of civil rights history draws about 1,000 visitors a year to a modest museum at the school. Travel industry experts say it's an example of the kind of historical sites Southern states are promoting as they ride a wave of black tourism.

It's called heritage tourism, the trend of transforming the annual family vacation into a cultural history lesson.

"It's the second-fastest-growing market segment of tourism," said Rich Harrill, director of the University of South Carolina's Institute for Tourism Research. He listed nature-based tourism as No. 1.

It's particularly popular among increasingly middle-class black Americans. Roughly 1.3 million black-headed households earned at least $50,000 a year in 1989, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That number increased to more than 3 million by 1999, the most recent numbers compiled.

The result is about $30.5 billion in black tourist spending annually, according to the Travel Industry Association of America. It estimates black travel volume increased about 4 percent from 2000 to 2002, compared to 2 percent overall.

Consciousness, not just cash, plays a role, said Angela da Silva, owner of the National Black Tourism Network in St. Louis. "For so long, our heritage was stripped from us," she said. "There's so many more different angles of the truth coming to light."

Da Silva said black tourists are willing to wade through the pain of visiting some of the centers of bigotry to reconnect with their ancestry.

"We go there because this was the seat of our history," da Silva said. "It's the same reason why Jews go to Holocaust sites -- it's to get in touch."

Travel industry officials say Southern states need to pay attention to preserving important black landmarks and cultural areas such as the parts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida that were settled by slave descendants.

They'll also have to redefine themselves for a savvy class of tourists, repackaging their offerings and going beyond the same old slave tales.

Tennessee has focused on upping its black appeal and proving it's more than just the capital of country music. The state vacation guide mentions everything from galleries at historically black Fisk University in Nashville to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.

Tourism officials are also a year into an advertising campaign with two spokespeople: country music icon Dolly Parton and soul singer Isaac Hayes.

"By having him as part of that campaign, we think that makes a bold statement for inclusiveness for the entire state," said Phyllis Qualls-Brooks, assistant commissioner of marketing with the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development.

Other attractions are getting creative as they vie for black tourist attention.

A mainstay in Virginia, Colonial Williamsburg recently added a new tool in its attempts to freshen history. Great Hopes Plantation replicates an 18th century, middle-income plantation complete with black field slaves and a tiny slave dwelling.

It's touted as a more hands-on approach than older slavery representations at Williamsburg. And black tourists are intrigued, said Jason Gordon, a black interpreter at Williamsburg.

"They want to know the realities," he said, as he watched site supervisor Robert Watson Jr. direct a tourist group planting gourd seeds in a mock slave garden. "They don't want it sugarcoated."

Virginia officials, meanwhile, are revamping their black heritage guide to places such as the Richmond home of pioneering businesswoman Maggie L. Walker and the Booker T. Washington National Monument in Franklin County.

Since May 2004, the Virginia Tourism Corporation has spent more than $300,000 trying to reach the black market, according to public relations manager Anedra Bourne.

For some states, da Silva said, winning over black travelers also will mean changing the negative image that keeps some would-be tourists away.

With the most stinging visions of the segregationist South centered in its cities, Alabama knows that challenge well. Lee Sentell, director of the state Bureau of Tourism and Travel, said officials in that state were the first to distribute a black heritage guide in 1983.

AP

Chicago Tribune * Sunday August 21, 2005

Section 1

Black history tourism opens eyes, minds
It's not always pretty, but crowds do come

By Sandhya Somashekhar
The Washington Post
Published August 21, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Some clutch their stomachs or weep when they step into one of the galleries at a Baltimore museum of African-American history. The so-called lynching room is a stomach-turning display of newspaper photos and body parts and cruel scenes captured in wax.

Yet despite the horrors they face at the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, visitors keep streaming in. Attendance has grown from 100,000 in 1995 to more than 200,000, and its owner plans to expand it from one building to an entire city block by 2008.

"Black people are beginning to find out the truth about black history, not just from a white perspective," said Howard Stinnette, who helped design the lynching exhibit. "They want to learn."

Increasingly, the tourism industry is awakening to the interest and profitability of African-American history, from the concrete steps in Fredericksburg, Va., where slaves were bought and sold, to the black pioneer towns in the West, to the scenes of the civil rights struggle in the South.

In Maryland, a slate of new attractions connected with black history has opened recently. One is the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture in Baltimore, which opened in June. A museum and cultural center dedicated to Harriet Tubman is planned for the slave-era hero's birthplace in Cambridge, Md.

The District of Columbia and Virginia also have started courting black visitors. The city has begun running ads in African-American publications inviting readers to "discover D.C. from your perspective." A new Smithsonian museum centered on African-American history is scheduled to open in 2013.

Since May 2004, Virginia has spent more than $300,000 to lure African-American tourists to the state, which last year was the sixth-most-visited state in the country among that group, tourism officials said. A national slavery museum scheduled to open in Fredericksburg is expected to draw even more.

And tour operators who focus on black heritage say the new offerings have translated into more business for them.

"It's really in vogue right now," said Virgie Washington, a tour guide in Hampton, Va., who said her business has more than doubled in the past few years. "We're hungry for it. We're tired of listening to everybody else's history but our own."

Blacks spent $30.5 billion on travel in 2002, said Allen Kay, spokesman for the Travel Industry Association of America, citing the firm's most recent statistics. Leisure travel among African-Americans rose 4 percent from 2000 to 2002, twice the rate of Americans as a whole.

Blacks on vacation also are more likely than other travelers to visit a historical or cultural site, he said.

Although African-Americans applaud more realistic portrayals of slavery, many also want to see uplifting aspects of their history, said James Horton, a professor of history and American studies at George Washington University.

"People focus so much on the way in which slaves were victimized," Horton said. "However, no human being is simply a victim, and when you start to see the way in which slaves resisted, it's a different situation."

Washington, the tour guide in Hampton, said her most popular offering follows the eastern route of the Underground Railroad, winds up the East Coast into Canada and ends at Harriet Tubman's grave in upstate New York. A civil rights tour takes travelers through Alabama and Georgia. Other journeys explore the culture of the black Seminoles of Florida, the black cowboys of the Old West and the historic churches and theaters of Harlem in New York City.

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Destinations in the D.C. area

African-American heritage sites abound in the Washington area. Here are some popular ones:

The Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture, Washington

www.anacostia.si.edu

The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Washington

www.nps.gov/frdo

The National Museum of African Art, Washington

www.nmafa.si.edu

Howard University and Gallery of Art, Washington

www.howard.edu/CollegeFineArts/gallery_final/galleryofart.html

Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, Baltimore

www.africanamericanculture.org

The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, Baltimore

www.greatblacksinwax.org

-- The Washington Post