[5][6] He has also helped preserve Nina Simone's birthplace in Tryon, North Carolina, and John and Alice Coltrane's home in Huntington, New York.
[7] The restoration of Simone's birthplace illustrates the sort of cooperation with locals Leggs advocates to find ongoing uses once an historical site has been preserved.
[8] As part of his work with the National Trust Leggs has played a large role in getting numerous African American sites recognized as historically significant.
[10][2] Pointing out that the National Trust for Historic Preservation was "chartered by Congress in 1949 to help tell the full American story," Leggs concluded that "when the past is blanched and distorted through lack of diversity and representation, it affects both our understanding of today's issues and our capacity to grow in the future.
[11] "The largest-ever campaign to preserve African-American historic sites," in its first year it "received more than eight hundred applications requesting nearly ninety-one million dollars in grants.
[2] "Along with elevating forgotten places," Leggs has written, the Fund aims "to reveal the hidden, and sometimes willfully obscured, layers of history at all historic sites.
[2] The foundation for this retroactive move might be seen nearly two decades earlier, when Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., added language to an appropriations bill "encouraging" the National Park Service, as part of its US heritage tourism activities, to "acknowledge" the role of institutionalized slavery "in all of their public displays and multimedia educational presentations.
"[2] While he may be "typically contacted to help preserve something" that may have deteriorated badly, in 2013 Leggs got involved with ongoing attempts to save Shockoe Bottom in Richmond, VA, a place where much of the archaeological remains had been destroyed.
Sites listed there are part of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund's future plans and its current call for financial support.
In 2019 new sites receiving support included Langston Hughes' house in Harlem, NYC; The Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, NY; Satchel Paige's home in Kansas City, Missouri; the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument; The Forum in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood; the African Meeting House in Boston, MA; and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.