Knoxville Cultural Heritage Tourism Initiative

The Knoxville Cultural Heritage Tourism Initiative identifies, preserves and showcases African American cultural heritage through sustainable cultural tourism in the Knoxville and East Tennessee region. African Americans are an integral part of the history of East Tennessee and in Knoxville in particular. The city has a wealth of African American history that is integrally entwined with the history of all people of this important mid-South city.

Lord Cultural Resources has been commissioned to create a Business Plan for the Initiative, and is working with the Partnership for Neighborhood Improvement, the lead organization for the Knoxville Empowerment Zone, in developing the plan to link African American places, events and people. It is this plan that will lead to new businesses and improved community pride in this Empowerment Zone community. As part of this plan, our team actualized recommendations for sustainability strategies to fuse sites with resources as well as cross-pollination with respect to marketing opportunities, and advanced the development and recommendations of an overall theme for the African American resources and sites as well as sub-themes that would link sites, activities and programs to one another.