MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Black history tours have been around for a while. Those are tours that dig into the specific history of a city or town's Black residents. Now tourism industry watchers and historians say those tours are increasing, fueled by a new generation of tour guides who worry that gentrification will erase some of this history. Buffy Gorrilla has this report.
BUFFY GORRILLA: Seven people are in a white passenger van, bumping through Los Angeles' infamous traffic, listening to Janae Green.
JANAE GREEN: OK, so we're at our next stop right here. So does anybody recognize this home from a movie?
GORRILLA: Hetal Naik from West Sacramento calls out...
HETAL NAIK: The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
GREEN -- TOUR GUIDE: (Laughter) Close, but no. This is Ray Charles' mansion. So in the movie "Ray," they actually - this was the exterior.
GORRILLA: Green, 34, launched A Great Day in South LA - a Black history tour of Los Angeles - in March of 2024 with a mission.
GREEN -- TOUR GUIDE: There are wonderful people, places and things here that deserve to be elevated and celebrated.
GORRILLA: But Green worries that as the city changes, some of these places will be lost.
GREEN -- TOUR GUIDE: Right here, this Starbucks coffee - this used to be the Holiday Bowl.
GORRILLA: The Holiday Bowl, Green says, was a historic bowling alley, coffee shop and sushi restaurant located on Crenshaw Boulevard. It opened in 1958 and served as an ethnically diverse community resource for Black and Japanese residents. In 2003, the building was demolished, leaving only the coffee shop and the alley's neon signage.
GREEN -- TOUR GUIDE: I get scared about information being lost to time.
GORRILLA: Those who work in the Black tourism industry say that tours like this have increased around the country in the past five years or so. According to Google Trends, the search term, Black history tour, has consistently been on the rise since 2016. Timothy Welbeck is the director of the Center for Anti-Racism at Temple University, where he also teaches African American studies. He's researched this trend, and he says he thinks gentrification is one of the drivers in many cities.
TIMOTHY WELBECK: People who are indigenous to the city are trying to stake claim to their place within the city, particularly as they're rapidly changing.
GORRILLA: He also says that an increased awareness about racial injustice in the U.S. has sparked more enthusiasm to learn Black history and acknowledge that history's impact on the present.
WELBECK: To the extent to which there has been a spike in these types of tours, I would say that the period of time that we refer to as the racial reckoning had some influence on that.
GORRILLA: Stephanie M. Jones is the founder and CEO of Cultural Heritage Economic Alliance. It's a nonprofit that supports Black and brown tourism businesses in the U.S. and abroad.
STEPHANIE M JONES: I can say to you that there is an increase in number of tour operators, especially young people.
GORRILLA: Jones says that tour operators are not just younger, but they have been approaching their storytelling in new ways, posting on TikTok and Instagram.
JONES: So you do see a trend in content creators and influencers now becoming tour operators, and curating multi-day trips for their following.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIKTOK VIDEO)
SHERMANN THOMAS: It's your favorite neighborhood historian, Dilla.
GORRILLA: Shermann "Dilla" Thomas in Chicago is one of those content creators. He's 42 and started posting videos on TikTok in 2020 - each one a snapshot of Chicago history. His original idea was to show his daughter that history is cool.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIKTOK VIDEO)
THOMAS: After Dr. King's assassination, Chicago was the first major city to name a major thoroughfare after him. I guess that's something, right?
GORRILLA: Dilla's videos became wildly popular. His TikTok profile has 1.4 million likes. A year later, he launched Chicago Mahogany Tours. He focuses on the West and South Sides of Chicago and the way that Black history has shaped those neighborhoods. He wanted to show a more positive side of history than he was seeing.
THOMAS: I would say the catalyst was watching a Chicago video that highlighted a gang killing. And at the end of the video, the young man said, now this is that real Chicago history. And that sentence incensed me to the core, and I wanted to make sure that accurate Chicago histsory made its way to the social media spaces.
GORRILLA: Both Dilla and Green say they're glad to be a part of the movement keeping these stories alive in their cities.
For NPR News, I'm Buffy Gorrilla.
(SOUNDBITE OF 101 STRINGS ORCHESTRA'S "GEORGIA ON MY MIND - INSTRUMENTAL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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