Making
You are already making it.
The work you took, the border you crossed, the child you raised, the church you built, the recipe you refuse to write down. Legacy is not something you leave at the end. It is something you are making today.
Welcome to the Legacy Project
Record your family's history
before it's lost.
Legacy | noun
Something handed down from one generation to the next. Not only what a family owns — what a family knows.
What is the Legacy Project?
A movement to help Black, Brown and immigrant families record their own stories — in their own voices, on their own terms.
Our histories have survived in kitchens, churches, barbershops and backyards, carried by people who were rarely asked to write them down. The Legacy Project exists to change that: one question, one recording, one family at a time.
This is not a product you buy. It is a decision you make — that your family's history is worth keeping, and that you are the one who will keep it.
Questions worth sitting with
- What is a Legacy?
- A legacy is not a will. It is the record of who your people were and what they believed — the recipes, the songs, the sayings, the sacrifices, the reasons behind the choices that shaped your life. It is the part of a family that outlives every object in the house.
- Why control the legacy you're leaving?
- Because if your family does not keep its own record, someone else's version becomes the official one. Our communities have been described in other people's paperwork for generations. Telling it yourself is how that ends.
- What is the impact?
- Children who know their family's story carry more confidence, more resilience and a clearer sense of where they belong. A recorded story does not stop with one child — it reaches grandchildren you will never meet.
- How does leaving a Legacy also leave wealth?
- Wealth is transferred through knowledge as much as through money. Knowing how the first house was bought, which business survived, who to call, what was learned the hard way — that is inherited advantage. Families lose fortunes when the story behind them goes unrecorded.
Legacy defines you & them
Legacy is not measured in dollars. It is measured in what your children can still recognize as theirs.
The recipe cooked the same way for eighty years. The song sung at every funeral. The reason the family left, and the reason it stayed. Money is spent. These are inherited.
Making · Telling · Sharing
Three things every family can do, starting this week.
Telling
Say it out loud, to someone.
A story nobody hears is already half gone. Ask the question at the table. Turn the recorder on. Let the elder talk longer than feels comfortable — the good part always comes after the polite part.
Sharing
Put it somewhere it can survive you.
Scattered voice notes are not an archive. Gather them in one place, name the people in the photographs, and hand it forward on purpose.
Quick. Simple. Where you already gather.
One question. One recording. One safe place to keep it.
Bring a recording table to your reunion. Run a story hour at your library. Give one Sunday to the elders in your congregation. The tool is simple — the commitment is what matters.
- Schools
- Libraries
- Churches
- Museums
- Community centers
- Historical societies
- Family reunions
- Juneteenth
- Haitian Flag Day
- Hispanic Heritage Month
- Black History Month
- Sunday dinners
Get started
Be the person in your family who decided to start.
One hundred years from now, what will your family know about you?