The Alexandria Oral History Center was founded as a central hub for facilitating stakeholder/community-driven and reparative public history initiatives in the City of Alexandria, and to provide local, community historians with the resources and training to complete their own projects. 

Francesco De Salvatore (Director and Curator of the Alexandria Oral History Center–Office of Historic Alexandria/City of Alexandria) and Michael Johnson (Community Outreach Specialist for the City of Alexandria and a descendent of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Cemetery), will discuss how to apply oral history methods, political advocacy, community participatory processes, and trauma-informed approaches to municipal interpretation and preservation planning. 

They will also highlight one project from the Center as a model template for this work, The Frederick Douglass Memorial Cemetery Community History Initiative, which sets out to interpret and preserve the largest African American burial ground in Alexandria.