Q&A With Christopher Rogers

For Black History Month, we are evoking the principal of Sankofa and Chatting with historic preservationist Christopher Rogers who has worked with both the Paul Robeson House Museum and the Henry O. Tanner House. Rogers entered this space from the perspective of a community organizer, but this work has only cemented his dedication to not only multidisciplinary but, multigenerational perspectives in community building.

In this interview, we dig into the legacy of world-renowned painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, who came of age in a house on West Diamond Street. We also chat a bit about the multi-talented Paul Robeson. If you take nothing away from this interview, allow Rogers to remind you that the histories of Black folks are significant and worth preserving even if their stories don’t appear to be exceptional - the mundane deserves to be preserved as well and that there is more to historical preservation than just saving a building, but unearthing the stories that emerge from the site.

If you would like to learn more about Henry Ossawa Tanner, the broader family legacy, or to support the effort of Rogers, The Friends of the Tanner House and the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS) at the University of Pennsylvania, please visit their websites. Currently, the organizations are capacity to renovate the property so community-focused programming can be implemented in the space. This is a years-long, expensive process, therefore any support is deeply appreciated.

Melissa Simpson: How did you get into the historic preservation space?

Christopher Rogers: I think from there I've always been interested in how we make learning real. There's so much history and heritage around this city and this community – we can touch these spaces. The first project of me doing that was with the Paul Robeson House Museum in West Philadelphia. It was the confluence of The Movement of Black Lives and being tapped in with a community-based organization. I got involved in what multi-generational arts and culture could look like and how you steward someone's legacy – in that case, it was Paul Robeson.

Melissa Simpson: Did you find an answer to that question?

Christopher Rogers: The beautiful thing about Paul Robeson House Museum is that you have people from all different types of experiences. We all had a certain investment in the house. There’s Robeson the black radical which is kind of more of where I came from – Robeson and thinking of his connection to radical organizing both locally and abroad. You have folks who just know Paul Robeson through his amazing voice and as a singer. Right. Then there are his inner connections across the community. So it was seeing all these different perspectives of what pulls people together in the house and then allowing it to be an anchor. We asked how do we follow up on these conversations, talk about the past, and see who is doing that work today. Those sorts of connections moved into cultural organizing for me. 

Melissa Simpson: Why should people care about historical preservation? 

Christopher Rogers: There's a top-down narrative of who people think are the most important people to be saved, preserved, or have their status remembered within the community. I'm more so interested in that everyday work, who are the folks that we choose to lift up and why? What does focusing on their stories, their histories, their experiences, what can we learn from that to be able to apply to the world today? So thinking about it in more of an organizing sense –  going back into the past to see the different accomplishments, lessons and possibility models that have come from our communities so that we can remember them as we continue to move about our communities

Melissa Simpson: Sankofa.

Christopher Rogers: Yeah – like that Sankofa model. It's also like interconnected with anti-gentrification and housing movements. The importance of what it means to sustain our neighborhoods and our communities. I think in some ways history allows a sense of leverage that has some mechanisms that go along with city and state policies that allow these spaces to be protected. Which is to say they stay in the hands of the communities that have been stewarding them forever. It's also a mix of community and what sustains the neighborhood while considering how the heritage may be unique to that place and how the essence of a community needs to stay alive for the next generation. 

Melissa Simpson: The decision on what spaces and legacies get to be venerated can be different based on the people doing the work, but generally speaking, how do folks go into making a call on what gets preserved?

Christopher Rogers: So the traditional model has been very building architecture and physical infrastructure focused. The measure of the historical character of this house. Does it represent a time in which this person accomplished something significant? Then certainly those accomplishments are always sort of like aligned with like a sense of historical progress. How do this person's contributions and accomplishments lead to a better, more perfect union, significance, or inclusion? Whereas now we are thinking about the social narratives that are connected to these histories. For me, it’s not about the historical character of a door, but more so about what this house represents in terms of symbolism for a community. How do we get out of the exceptional and back into the everyday? The conversation could be about how he discovered his purpose through painting. There are a couple of different things you can focus on there. 

We could Talk about Henry O. Tanner. There's one around just like naming his accomplishments within the art world – which could be a traditional model. Then you take a step back and look through the lens of painting. Then you have a whole community and folks in this neighborhood who are continuing to paint today. But then you could take a step back and look at how he discovered his purpose. Then you could have activities about how young people are discovering their purpose through rights of passage programs. All those sorts of strategies are open. I try to get out of it just preserving the time, but preserving the pursuit. What were they in pursuit of through the work that they did? 

Melissa Simpson: So the Tanner House is on Diamond Street. Was that historically a Black district?

Christopher Rogers: There were successful Black people who lived up and down the street during different periods. There were a couple of artists, doctors, and preachers. We are still recovering a lot of that history now. There were the prominent, rich, wealthy, and accomplished in regard to the white gaze. But there’s also the story to be told of Uncle Jojo who turned his national historical landmark house into a speakeasy – you begin to think about employment opportunities and informal economies amongst Black people, and ways of getting over. 

There’s also something there too, around the types of stories we preserve. How do we preserve working-class histories as critically important and not just the stories of those who traveled the world? 

Melissa Simpson: When did the Tanner House get its historical marker? Was it already there or did your organization have a role in securing that status?

Christopher Rogers: The state marker?

Melissa Simpson: Yeah

Christopher Rogers: ‘91. It was interesting that the Robeson House also got it’s state marker in ‘91. I don’t know who was on the historical commission that year, but they made sure that some Black spots got looked at. 

Melissa Simpson: That’s so interesting. 

Christopher Rogers: So yeah, the Tanner House got it’s state maker in ‘91. The National Historic Landmark designation came in ‘76. It was added to the Philadelphia register in 1970, but the National Register in 1976. 

Melissa Simpson: So Philly first, then national, then Pennsylvania?

Christopher Rogers: Yep

Melissa Simpson: I never heard of Tanner until I heard you talk about him. 

Christopher Rogers: That’s the part people don’t give him credit for. He was born in Pittsburgh, then moved to Philly when he was a teenager, and eventually moved to Paris. 

The story is that he was treated as this novelty Black artist when he really just wanted to be treated as an artist. Then he goes to Paris to pursue art, falls in love, and stays out there for the rest of his life, though he's still in a community with a lot of his family. A lot of people say he forgot about America, but he didn't, he was still an NAACP due paying member. Some of his family say that racism played a role in him not coming back. He got out to Paris, fell in love with a white woman and they had a son. He said he couldn’t go back to the U.S. with a white woman in the 1910’s and ‘20s.

Melissa Simpson: What are some challenges that come along with the process of preserving a site?

Christopher Rogers: One is building community. With these sorts of projects, it's not one person with a dream. You’re building a coalition, the community around the preservationist house. So that's one of the big challenges – how are you activating and bringing people in? Whether it's just your neighbors or community institutions and elected officials – how do you also get to get them to see the worthiness of this house?

Theaster Gates once said, “It's not always about being able to see a house, but being able to see the solution of what the house could serve.” That's probably one of the first hurdles to get over: what does this house serve and how can we get people to buy into this shared vision? 

That’s the basis, but the next step is how do you raise money. That could be crowdfunding, grassroots donor campaigns, and writing grants Then planning and strategy – knowing how to work in phases to get to an eventual goal and knowing what the research reports and homework you have to do to be ready for those conversations. It's a huge timeline. – the experts have said we're looking at three or four years from where we currently are into a revitalized public entry Tanner house. 

Melissa Simpson: How has the community responded to the work that the organization is doing with the Tanner House?

Christopher Rogers: When we're outside the house, people stop and mention that they saw us in the paper. “I walk by this all the time and I didn't know.” Most people don't know the legacies of the people that were there. 

Some elder generations may know the house more as a speakeasy because of Uncle Jojo. But now they’re like “oh wow, I didn’t know all this other history attached to the house. We've been doing work around communicating the legacy of the people who were connected to the house. Like, it means something to me that Rae Alexander Minter said that Carter G. Woodson called the House, “the black intellectual hub of Philadelphia”, during its heyday. 

Melissa Simpson: Who is Rae?

Christopher Rogers: Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander which makes her Henry Ossawa Tanner’s grand-niece.

Melissa Simpson: Ok, understood. Are there any other sites in Philadelphia that other historic preservationists are looking to save?

Christopher Rogers: The Coltrane House has been on its way for a while. There’s the Marian Anderson House in South Philadelphia. 

Melissa Simpson: And that site already has a state marker right?

Christopher Rogers: They have a state marker, but they just went through a whole crisis with flooding. They were able to get the funds to get things going – they're in the midst of recovering that right now. 

Hakim’s Bookstore just got its state marker. Johnson House of course. – it's a site from the Underground Railroad. We have a couple of those: the Belmont Mansion, Mother Bethel AME Church of course. They have a history museum that folks should definitely visit in the basement. Henry Ossawa's father worked there as a bishop. You have the Seventh Ward Project that’s going on. 

I would say we’re in a time of resurgence around these black history spaces. Which for me is a conversation about what we can do for space period. I come out of community organizing where there are always questions of “Where are you hosting the meeting? Does it have heat? Does it have wifi? Like those sorts of community third spaces are important to be able to meet and learn and be with one another, but also to start and incubate new projects. 

Melissa Simpson: For you, what is the most rewarding part about doing this work?

Christopher Rogers: Realizing the connections that these houses have and how they can pull together so many different people in the community. I have taken a specific interest in doing more multi-generational work and convenings where we have elders and young folks in the room together. We need more intentional efforts around that and having more opportunities where we have shared responsibility within a project together. I think it means a lot for the communities that we are inheriting. Mm-Hmm. 

We’re inheriting these houses and spaces but how are we learning to take control of them and steward them across different ages and perspectives? The big question I have is whether this is about preservation or neighborhoods, but also what keeps us in the room together. What is the thing about these histories and these projects that keeps us connected with one another? Because in terms of the fights that are ahead of us, like policy changes, building the type of culture that we want to see in the neighborhoods, we got to be able to stay in a room with one another.

Melissa Simpson: Do you think the city could do a better job of supporting preservation efforts?

Christopher Rogers: We're going through this whole thing right now around land in this city, particularly when we're looking at threatened neighborhoods, neighborhoods at the risk of gentrification, and culturally responsive development. To me, it’s a question of how can we create a people-led agenda around the anchors of a neighborhood that need to be preserved and saved. And how does that bring more people into the fold of understanding zoning and how communities work? I’d like to see the city do more work around education and awareness. 

I’d like to see more mechanisms for support for historic houses that could be utilized to create safe and welcoming learning and mentorship spaces within neighborhoods. Because they can be anchors to help neighborhoods sustain themselves.

Melissa Simpson: How do you balance the need for modernization with preserving the historical integrity of a space? 

Christopher Rogers: This is something I'm continuing to learn about. I'm someone who's drawn to the story. I don't always need the material basis. I feel like a lot of black folks’ lives have been about having a story but not having the material basis. We might not have the material artifact, but we have the story. So I think about what's possible with the story and not the artifact. 

For example, if you go into the Robeson House, mostly everything you see on the walls is reprinted from a computer But that doesn't make the Robeson House any less sacred of a space. There's a part around preserving the historical character, but also remembering that the story itself is incredibly important – and what you can make possible and recreate with these stories. Like having local artists be a part of creating these sacred artifacts again – it’s a beautiful thing.