MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire philanthropist, on Wednesday donated $40 million to a program dedicated to the preservation of African American history, culture and activism.
The gift is her second contribution to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a division of the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation. In 2021, Ms. Scott, who has pledged to divest her Amazon fortune, valued at $41.2 billion, according to Bloomberg, donated $20 million to the fund, which was used to support a range of projects and operations. The fund will use this latest donation to grow its endowment and invest in new and existing programs.
“The gift will not only support hundreds of critical preservation projects across the nation, but will also help financially secure the action fund’s future and our ability to continue protecting and expanding the American story,” said Brent Leggs, the executive director of the fund.
The action fund, started in 2017, is the largest privately funded resource in the United States dedicated to preserving historically significant African American heritage sites, including churches, museums, homes, and architecture. To date, the fund has raised nearly $200 million, supporting more than 378 preservation projects.
Places of historical significance to African American culture have often been overlooked among preservationists. Only 2 percent of the 95,000 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places focus on the Black experience, according to the fund.
The fund aims to correct that, infusing money into significant markers of Black culture and history. In recent years, the fund has invested in historic Black churches, like the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, commissioned in 1961 by Aretha Franklin’s father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, which received $500,000 in 2025 to install a new roof and repair water damage. It has also supported the restoration of the first Black cemetery in Houston, which dates back to 1875.
The jazz saxophonist Ravi Coltrane credits the fund’s support for the preservation and restoration of his family’s homes: a Philadelphia row home where his father John Coltrane lived in the 1950s, and the Dix Hills house in Long Island, N.Y., where the jazz musician later lived with his second wife, the musician Alice Coltrane, and their children.
Ms. Coltrane recorded her music in the basement of the Dix Hills home, which also doubled as the children’s playroom. “She was doing serious work in there, and we were running around playing tag and getting into trouble,” Ravi Coltrane said.
With repeated support from the action fund, Ravi Coltrane, who, with his siblings oversees his parents’ estate, has been better able to apply for other grants and has begun converting the homes into immersive, community spaces for the public.
Ms. Scott’s donation “is going to help preserve a lot of incredible African African homes,” Ravi Coltrane said. “The African American story is an American story, and it definitely needs to be preserved and supported.”
This new infusion of cash comes at a critical time for historic preservation, as the Trump administration has taken aim at cultural institutions trying to “rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” President Trump wrote in a March executive order.
In recent months, the action fund has seen a marked rise in grant applications, particularly for its Black churches program, Mr. Leggs said. This year, 833 organizations applied — “a significant increase from last year’s numbers,” he said.
“It’s just an affirmation that there’s really an overwhelming need of resources to sustain preservation and communities across the country.”
Ronda Kaysen, a real estate reporter for The Times, writes about the intersection of housing and society.
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