The years 2023 and 2024 have been transformative. The Foundation emerged from the pandemic a stronger organization, with innovative methods, and renewed alliances. The Mellon Foundation supported an entire rebuilding and doubling of our office space, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities will add an ADA-lift and safety measures in 2025 for landscaped backyard and alley pathways. This rear access and expanded reception and activity space anticipate an “activated alley” to match the City’s continuous revitalization efforts in response to the sports arena’s reforms. The half closing of I Street at Chinatown Park, a Chinatown mural, neighborhood clean-up activities and anti-crime programs along with our “Chinatown Off H Street” initiative and convening of informal meetings among property owners and developers… they all relate to joint preservation proposals and building neighbor trust.
The two years saw us produce four “activations” with the Kennedy Center’s Social Impact Cultural Caucus at the REACH and two Lunar New Year events at their Millennium Stage. With the Georgetown Law School, American Society of Landscape Architects, and the National Building Museum, we organized three in-person seminars with virtual components on Urban Chinatowns. With the National Portrait Gallery and the Charles Sumner School we hosted a bi-annual national conference on Chinese American Women in History. We commemorated the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Supreme Court decision on Wong Kim Ark on birthright citizenship with a public reception-lecture at the Congressional Library. In mid-2024, we organized a national conference in Salt Lake City on Rural Chinatowns with the Utah State Historical Preservation Office supported by National Trust for Historic Preservation. We contributed to “Sightlines” by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific Center and have included this visual exhibit as an integral part of our expanded Chinatown walking tours. And, in California, we carried out our annual Heritage Tour to the Summit Tunnel with the U.S. Forest Service.
The range and scope of these activities were possible because our core organizing principle is to build collaborations and harness diverse capabilities and expertise.
The new year will be more of the same and better.
A second national Rural Chinatown Conference is being planned for Memphis in October 2025. Our DC Chinatown tours are receiving attention by educational and community organizations, including from other countries. We have expanded our paid and summer intern programs through new associations with University of California Washington Center and the Chinese American Citizens Alliance. The National Parks Conservation Association is linked to this program as well, which we believe contributes strategically to building career and scholarship pipelines for younger storytellers and historical preservationists. We are preparing for the opening of a long-term APIA exhibit “Generations: Stories of Asian Americans in Richmond” with Valentine Museum and laying ground for a regional conference on teaching APIA topics in middle schools. We want to organize at least one colloquium this year on the Supreme Court and historical APIA cases (such as related to birthright citizenship and access to public education) and prepare for a fourth bi-annual Chinese American Women in History Conference for early 2026.
More exciting for the coming year, the Mellon Foundation awarded us a 3-year grant to strengthen Heritage Tours and evaluate feasibility of an Interpretive Center.
The grant allows us to open an operational office in Sacramento to strengthen programs focused on the Sierra Summit and the transcontinental railroad. We want to launch this office by July 2025. The grant also allows us to expand our historical preservation efforts to places throughout the California Central Valley. Consistent with Mellon’s and our own long-term perspectives on humanities and places, the grant helps us search for a suitable Archiving Facility in Sacramento or Fresno for railroad, mining, and agricultural artifacts.
Most exciting, the Sierra Summit Tunnel Camp became a National Historic Landmark on December 16, 2024.
Culminating a 10-year effort, this national milestone marks continuing efforts to stablish public-private partnerships for building an interpretive program or center in Sacramento and at the summit site. Our goal as always is to strengthen public understanding of our shared American story.
Become part of the excitement.
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The 1882 Foundation is a 501(3)1 IRS-approved organization, EIN 46-1144885.
