About BHA
Built from one family's experience.
Created for a much larger need.
Brunson Heritage Association is a Black cultural institution focused on continuity across generations.
We help families and communities protect property, preserve significant places, strengthen intergenerational ties, and build the institutions that help legacy endure.
Read where it startedOur beginning
It started with our own family.
BHA grew from the Brunson family's effort to care for what had been passed down: family gatherings, places, property, traditions, and the responsibilities that come with them.
That work raised questions that reach far beyond one family. What happens when the story survives but the property does not? What happens when a tradition survives but no structure exists to carry it forward? What happens when a place matters deeply but the next generation is not prepared to steward it?
BHA was created to work on those questions.
Our point of view
Six principles guide the work.
People before mythology
We begin with the people, families, and communities whose lives give history meaning.
Stewardship over possession
Protecting legacy does not require an institution to own every story, property, collection, or project it helps support.
Preservation includes ownership
Memory matters. So do the homes, land, businesses, institutions, and other assets that allow continuity to remain tangible.
Build for permanence
We think beyond one program, grant, reunion, exhibition, or generation.
Access with responsibility
Stewardship requires attention to rights, privacy, consent, provenance, ownership, and care.
History belongs in the future
Technology, design, new institutions, and new forms of collaboration are part of preservation too.
Our focus
Family. Place. Property. Institutions.
BHA works across four connected dimensions of continuity.
- 01
Family
Relationships, traditions, responsibilities, and intergenerational ties.
- 02
Place
Homes, land, neighborhoods, and culturally significant sites.
- 03
Property
What is owned, inherited, stewarded, protected, and passed forward.
- 04
Institutions
The organizations, partnerships, resources, and structures that help important work outlast individuals.
Continuity is what connects them.
How BHA works
How BHA works
BHA creates projects of its own, helps emerging work grow, and builds alongside families, communities, funders, cultural institutions, and professional partners.
See our approachLeadership
Jourdan Brunson
Founder and Board Member
BHA is currently in an early stage of institutional growth and is expanding its governance over time.
Charitable status
Charitable status
- Organization
- Brunson Heritage Association
- Status
- IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) public charity
- EIN
- 41-4152044
Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Why now
Too much depends on whether one person knows what to do next.
Families change. Property changes hands. Elders pass. Neighborhoods develop. Leadership turns over.
BHA exists to help important places, responsibilities, and institutions become less dependent on a single person and more capable of surviving change.
A next step
What do you want to make sure outlasts you?
A place.
A property.
A tradition.
A community institution.
A responsibility that should not disappear when one generation is gone.