“The staff of the Journey recognized that was lacking when they heard from people who knew about the history,” Lee says.  “(The staff members) weren’t historians and knew they couldn’t just pull it out of the air.”

 Recommended to the partnership’s effort to document African-American history based on having worked on an African-American public history in Virginia’s Loudoun County, Lee became the project’s writer and collaborated with individuals from more than 20 organizations. She says the book took longer to write than it would have had she worked on it alone, but she considers the process valuable.  

 “(The process) actually turned out to be quite beneficial in gaining support for the Journey and for people in localities to get to know the people involved in the Journey and what the goals, objectives and strategies were,” Lee says.  

 Erickson agrees that the idea to develop Honoring Their Paths as a collaborative venture gave the project credibility among African-Americans and others who supported the project. The project attracted funding support from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission.

 “We had over 34 national and regional advisers on the project. Deborah Lee did a phenomenal job of constantly checking in and to say ‘these are the people we’re profiling, what stories, what are the connections, can you help share with me primary source documents,’ because everything we needed to put in that book all needed to be rooted in primary source documents,” Erickson says.

 Civil War Sesquicentennial

Over the next several years, it’s expected that Civil War sites will see unusually high numbers of visitors as the nation celebrates the 150th anniversary of the war. With the Gettysburg National Military Park and the Antietam National Battlefield included in the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area, partnership officials anticipate high numbers of visitors flocking to the region. National Heritage Area status enables organizations to qualify for federal assistance in promoting tourism and in aiding historic preservation efforts in the designated region.