Know Your Heritage. Know Your Story.

Culture, Health, Education, and Wealth

Founder Greetings

The African American Heritage Association of Virginia (AAHA VA), founded in 2002, enlightens and builds enduring alliances critical to untangle topical issues and foster solutions impacting African Americans. We work to build sustainable generational wealth and community equity. AAHA VA welcomes you as a partner in social justice that spurs wealth creation within African American and indigenous communities globally. Personally, join our mailing list or register for Anthony Johnson- Community Building Initiative-Virginia Community Economic Network (VCEN).

Change does not occur in the absence of sacrifice. So, ask yourself, "Why should I change?" Now, look at your children, grandchildren, or even someone else's child, and you will find your answer because the future belongs to them.

Let us hear from you.

W. Kent Ruffin, Founder, AAHA VA

AAHA VA

The American Heritage Association of Virginia [AAHA VA] is a 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit organization. We commit to chronicling African American heritage equitably, truthfully, and accurately. AAHA provides a pathway for scholars to address the topics, subjects, and disciplines affecting African American culture and heritage.

The African American experience is rooted in an oral tradition of griots who chronicled struggles and achievements from servitude to freedom and prosperity in Virginia and America. To know African American history is to acknowledge its rich cultural traditions. Though historical records have not always credited the sacrifices of time, lives, and human capital, there is no denying that African American history is American history.

The AAHA website now affords scholars, researchers, and intellectuals an accessible audience and forum for their expressions. Plus, a quarterly event series - Arrival, First Harvest-Home Coming, Remembrance, and Surrender-Jubilation. It furthers the community's intergenerational conversation about the many facets of the African Diaspora and the numerous aspects of its people, culture, and heritage. The series allows for significant outreach and community access during social gatherings. AAHA provides scholarships and grants for scholarly research on the effects of culture, health, education, and wealth on African American life.

AAHA programs, essays, destination travel, and other cultural experiences explain African Americans in a historical roadmap through time. Yet blends personal narratives that return us to who they were and reveal their triumphant journey to the present. We strive to engender and anchor descendants of the African Diaspora with a permanent sense of sustainable cultural belonging.

 

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Executive Committee