It’s that time of year again when we take our summer Interns to the coast to experience the Gullah Geechee community and visit our elders who are the keepers of the praise houses. Learn about our story and support our efforts to support the next generation of cultural leaders by sponsoring our summer interns on the Praise House Project’s Gullah Geechee Heritage Tour. Help us take our amazing Summer interns to some of the most significant sites of African American history and Gullah Geechee culture, including the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, the historic Mary Jenkins Praise House, Bluffton’s Heritage Center, Mitchellville Freedom Park, First African Baptist Church in Savannah, and other important landmarks of Black resilience and freedom. Your support helps cover transportation, lodging, meals, and educational programming, ensuring this transformational experience is accessible to emerging artists, scholars, and nonprofit leaders. Give what you can!

Campaign Update from the Beloved Community of South-Atlanta

Over the past several years, the Praise House Project has grown into a powerful community-centered initiative dedicated to preserving Black narratives through art, remembrance, and collective gathering. Founded by artist Charmaine Minniefield, the project has placed site-specific public art installations within historic locations across Atlanta, inviting communities to reflect on the histories that shaped them and the ancestors who came before. (Praise House Project Inc)

Since its first installation, the Praise House honored the African American Burial Grounds at Oakland Cemetery, acknowledged the history of slavery and dispossession at Emory University, remembered the erased Freedman’s town of Beacon Hill, and by now stands on the sacred ground at South-View Cemetery in South Atlanta, the final resting place of Atlanta's first freefolk. (Praise House Project Inc)

Today we invite our community to help us complete the next chapter of this journey.

Your support will help to reach out immediate goal of $50,000, will sustain our remaining Beloved Community programming in South Atlanta, cover the final installation and fabrication costs of the Praise House as we finally rest it onto the land, and support upcoming Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Tour for our young scholars and our conitnued presence at South-View Cemetery —our beloved historic burial ground founded in 1886, serves as the final esting place of more than 80,000 ancestors, including the victims of the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre alongside many of country's most important civil rights leaders since. (South-View Cemetery)

Throughout our time at South-View, the Praise House has welcomed audiences through cultural gatherings, oral histories, workshops, and community activations that uplift the stories of those whose contributions helped shape our city and our nation. These programs—rooted in remembrance, healing, and freedom —are part of our ongoing commitment to building what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described as the Beloved Community.

As we prepare for these and other programming, including acknowledgement of the 120th annivesary of the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, we are asking our supporters to help carry this work forward. Donations of any size help sustain artists, efforts of historic preservation, and our partnerships within our local South-Atlanta community.

If the Praise House Project has inspired you, moved you, or helped you see history in a new way, we invite you to join us in this moment.

Please consider making a contribution today to support the next phase of this important work at South-View.

Together, we can ensure that the stories, traditions, and ancestors honored through the Praise House continue to be remembered—and that the work of remembrance becomes a living practice for generations to come.

Dear Donors!

For Giving Tuesday, the Praise House Project stands with the stewards of South-View Cemetery to invite you to remember the first burial grounds and faith spaces of all freefolk everywhere.

We invite you to find and know within your heart, that the true currency in any Liberated society is Love, and that Love, embodied in Action, is Service.

We invite you to shower Love into South-Atlanta, by joining us in Service to this cause of historic preservation of one of our most sacred sites of memory, South-View Cemetery. Your support will make possible our community programming and the final construction costs of our installation.

Praise House Project Inc is a 501c3, EIN Number: 87-2678144

Image of Dr. Jonathan C Augustine, Senior Pastor of Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta, visual artist and founder of the Praise House Project Charmaine Minniefield, and Winnie Hemphill the current Executive Director of South-View Cemetery and descendent of Albert Watts, its founder.

PREVIOUS POSTS

We did it! We saved and moved the Praise House to South-View Cemetery! After resting there for the last many months awaiting zoning, we are ready to unviel the installation to the community as the preview event in acknowledgement of the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre victems who rest there. The installation will remain until March 2025.

We need your help to reconstruct the roof. Please give today in order to meet this August 25th deadline for the September 21st unvieling and remembrance procession.

Thank you all for your love and support to date! We are working to save our memories in community!

See here our announcement and move footage. Please consider how you can give today to meet your goal!

Love and light in honor of our ancestors!

Charmaine

PREVIOUS POSTS:

Dear Donors:

Recalling freedom, The Praise House Project invites communities to examine history while encouraging historic and cultural preservation as both resistance and as acts of repair within the context of race and placemaking and place-keeping.

With community support The Praise House Project installation will next move along the path of the 1906 Race Massacre to rest at South-View Cemetery to acknowledge the victims who now rest there along with some of our most renowned Civil and Human Rights leaders in our history.

While at South-View Cemetery over the next year, we are inviting the metro community to join in a full Year of Remembrance leading up to the 120th anniversary by acknowledging the African-American history of our city. This work is a true community effort, and as an artist activist, it is truly an honor to serve our community in this way. Be a part of this monumental project of remembrance by donating today.

Your’s in the arts and in honor of the ancestors,

Charmaine Minniefield,

Founder of Praise House Project Inc.

UPCOMING FUNDRAISER EVENT

JOIN THE PRAISE HOUSE PROJECT FOR ITS INAUGURAL FUNDRAISER!
SUNDAY DINNER WITH CHEF OȘUNKOYA CHAVON

📅 February 23, 2025

⏰ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Experience a special culinary journey as Chef Oșunkoya Chavon curates a Sankofa Dinner (looking back to see forward) — a heartfelt tribute to ancestral foodways and traditions. This gathering honors our legacy of community, connection, and breaking bread together.

All proceeds will support the relocation of the Praise House to South-View Cemetery, preserving an essential part of our history. Join us in this meaningful act of remembrance and celebration.

👉 RSVP: LINK HERE

To learn more about and support the Praise House Project, visit PraiseHouseProject.org

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Headquarters for the Praise House Project, 404-549-7014, Nonprofit EIN Number: 87-2678144

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ABOUT BEACON HILL

https://www.decaturga.com/community/page/beacon-community

ABOUT THE ARTIST: CHARMAINE MINNIEFIELD

PRAISE HOUSE PROJECT AT BEACON HILL FLYER

WE DID IT! - Thank you for giving! Let's keep that enegery going!

Before the holidays, we met with Emory University and asked if we could save our Praise House from the scheduled demolition and repurpose it by moving it to the next location on a crane and a flatbed. Because, this $150K savings to the project became possible when the Praise House at Emory was built first, we were brave and asked the builders, architects and engineers if it was possible. When they all said yes, we went to Emory with the proposal.

We worked feverishly over the holidays to raise the funds needed, but it finally came down to the last week before the demolition, and though things were in the works, we couldn’t confirm before Emory had to make the call to tear it down. That Thursday night, we received the call. We were all heavy with worry, but couldn't give up! We spent the entire day on the phone with individual donors, local foundations and municipal partners - from the open to the close of business.

The entire community that day came together and met our goal around 6:30 on that Friday night!

Emails were flying until late into the evening to cancel the demolition scheduled for Monday! It was a bona fide miracle!

On March 13th, after many layers of permitting and zoning procedures, we literally channeled ancestral memories of freedom as we moved our little Praise House to freed land at Beacon Hill in Downtown Decatur, like praise houses before!

We have to thank everyone who supported this historic effort. Thank you to Emory University and our Praise House Planning Team. Thank you the National Endowment for the Arts and to DeKalb County for your support and matching funds. Thank you to the City Schools of Decatur who offered the land. Thank you to the City of Decatur who has worked closely with our beloved builders, Synergy Development Partners to make it all possible, and thank you to all of our Praise House Project Inc 501c3 partners and sponsors. WE DID IT!

While the Praise House rests at Beacon Hill, we are remembering the histories of erased Black freedmen's towns. Learn about Beacon Hill here.

JOIN US ON MAY 4TH FOR THE OPENING EVENT AT 3PM DURING THE DECATUR ARTS FESTIVAL. WE ARE EXCITED TO BE IN BEACON HILL!

Support our efforts by giving today. Your support makes possible the continued community-based programming around each Praise House location and our efforts to move the Praise House to the next location, South-View Cemetary where it will acknowledge the 1906 Race Massace and the Civil Rights history of our city since. Your support will help make this move possible.

OVERVIEW AND PREVIOUS STORY.

The Praise House Project is a soul-stirring, heart filled project of remembrance which centers Black Narratives to acknowledge, with honesty, the full histories within communities. Originally conceived by internationally renowned artist, Charmaine Minniefield, Founder/Artistic Director of the Praise House Project Inc. 501c3, the project is now supported by Emory University, the Imlay Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, and the Center for Cultural Power, to present a series of site-specific installations in the metro Atlanta area.

The Praise House Project will rest at Emory University on the lawn of Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church until December 15th. Our next target sites are Beacon Hill in downtown Decatur, to acknowlege the history of erased Black freedman's towns across the South, and South-View Cemetery in South Atlanta to acknowlege the 1906 Race Massacre and the civil rights history of the city.

Our local, state, national and international partners have helped us make it all possible thus far, and we are so grateful! As we prepare to have the Praise House moved, we invite you to be a part of this movement by supporting our Capital Fund Campaign!

The work encourages audiences to recall community history, to access local and national archives, to archive their own family stories by recording oral histories, and to explore their own origin stories by returning to spaces of ancestral memory - a homecoming, Sankofa - to return or go back in order to move forward.

The project launched with a curated series of community-based programs, including the opening event for the unveiling of the fully emersive site-specific installation. The event was a homecoming celebration in honor of the ancestor of Oxford, the birthplace of Emory University. Watch the full recording here.

From artist residencies and international cultural exchanges, to youth and family programing at the Praise House, and workshops and lectures in the classrooms, the Praise House Project continues to provide cutlural programming which invites conversations on place and belonging, while uplifing cuiltural and historic preservation as placemaking and place-keeping.

Visit us at www.praisehouseproject.org, to see and witness the continued Community Development Projects emerging from this orginal work and learn how your donations will contribute to the next installations and the community impact. See our sponsorship deck for your review and sharing:

PRAISE HOUSE PROJECT SPONSORSHIP DECK

Support the Praise House Project Gullah Geechee Heritage Tour for Young Scholars

"REMEMBRANCE AS RESISTANCE: PRESERVING BLACK NARRATIVES"