NEW! LAUNCH PARTNER: Friends of the Tanner House x Africana Studies Network & Lecture Series

Friends of the Tanner House is proud to be a launch partner with the free, virtual, open-to-the-public Africana Studies Network & Lecture Series. This project is a community-driven initiative. While many educators and students may participate, this program is not affiliated with nor officially sponsored by the School District of Philadelphia.

The formidable historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson once described Bishop Tanner’s home [2908 W. Diamond St.] as “the center of the African American intellectual community of Philadelphia and the Northeast United States.”

In 2024, Tanner family descendant Dr. Rae Alexander-Minter awakened us to this incredible cultural inheritance associated with the Henry Ossawa Tanner House. We as an organization seek to re-activate this legacy at this crucial time in our country’s history, where opportunities for truthful learning about the Black historical struggle are being challenged, compromised, and dismantled within the public sphere. We will continue to fight against these attempted erasures, building on our recent sign-on to the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia-led advocacy letter. We believe, as the life-work of Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner showed us, we must craft spaces to come together, study, reflect, write, make, and further organize toward freedom. We are grateful to be welcomed as a supporting launch partner for the Africana Studies Network & Lecture Series.