AACR Grant Awarded to City of Rock Island, Pearson Consulting and QC PastPort

The 20th Century African American Civil Rights (AACR) Grant has been awarded to the City of Rock Island. The City in their application to the National Park Service, named the sub-recipients of this award to Pearson Consulting and QC PastPort. With this award, Pearson Consulting with the help of QC PastPort will develop a series of ten historical markers within the City of Rock Island focused on the Civil Rights movement from 1900-1970.

“Our focus is to communicate and educate anyone interested in learning the Quad Cities African-American story. This is a terrific opportunity for the younger generation to connect to unique and impactful landmarks through outdoor recreational resources. This includes being a part of the Mississippi River Trail, the American Discovery Trail and The Great River Rails Trail,” expressed Charles
Pearson, President at Pearson Consulting.

The objective of the AACR Grant is to provide historic preservation resources to underserved communities through public education and volunteers who help document, interpret and preserve historic sites and stories associated with the full history of the Quad Cities African Americans.

Charles Pearson

One of the many reasons this group in particular was awarded this competitive National grant is due to the qualifications of the members of the team.

Charles Pearson, President/CEO of Pearson Consulting LLC, is uniquely qualified as an expert in culturally based tourism development, spending the past ten years contributing to neighborhood housing development, statewide historic research, statewide resource identification, and statewide educational curriculum for African American Iowans.

This month, Pearson Consulting has been awarded a sub-contract to develop the Dubuque Black Heritage Survey Project in coordination with the City of Dubuque and Wapsi Valley Archeology, Inc. Pearson has also conducted summits, workshops, presentations and training on cultural heritage tourism and education.

Pearson provides invaluable service by imparting his knowledge of ethnic historic properties and sites. In 2018/2019 during the identification stage of the proposed statewide survey implemented by the State Historical Society of Iowa and the National Park Service, Pearson helped guide the historic context development of the project. In 2018, Pearson received the Historic Preservation Award from the City of Waterloo for creating the inventory for the City’s African American historic resources.

Pearson in 2019 was integrally involved in the final training and education stage of the Cedar Valley African American Cultural Corridor Project in Waterloo, Iowa and the Iowa Civil Rights Trail Project in partnership with the Friends of Iowa Civil Rights and Hawkeye Community College students, faculty, and staff. Charles Pearson’s training and educational services target Certified Local Government Programs (CLG) in Iowa where significant ethnic and civil rights cultural resources have been identified. The goal of this training and education is to provide the CLG with the framework they need to move forward in creating a statewide inventory of sites. Pearson Consulting’s framework includes continuing research and compiling interpretive programs for ethnic historic and cultural resources in the communities we service.

Charles Pearson

Pearson Consulting’s first project was in the fall of 2013 to consult with St. Ambrose University (SAU) in Davenport, Iowa. SAU wanted to develop a plan to research and document the College’s African American and civil rights resources. In the spring of 2014, Pearson Consulting created a series of five presentations showcasing vast ethnic and cultural history latent in Davenport, Iowa. SAU students, faculty and alumni masterfully covered Davenport’s early settlement through the modern civil rights era; all through the lens of prominent (Irish Americans, German Americans, Mexican Americans and Native Americans) citizens.

QC PastPort is a Rock Island Certified Woman Owned Small Business with a focus on bringing the rich history of the Quad Cities to life. It provides a platform which allows organizations to take advantage of a system which creates a coherent net of sites to be linked to each other digitally and physically. QC PastPort does this by offering self-guided, interactive, physical and digital tours throughout the Quad Cities. Stops along this tour bring our area’s rich history to life by highlighting the architecture, businesses, institutions and fascinating sites through the stories of the people who were there at the time.

The logo for the QC PastPort.

The QC PastPort Team includes:

Linda Anderson is a local historian, as well as a researcher and writer for QC PastPort. Linda is a Rock Islander with an active interest in historic preservation and local history. She has researched and written local landmark nominations, architectural and historic tours, contributed to newsletters and digital postings, serves as a tour guide, and is active in a variety of organizations: City of Rock Island Preservation Commission Chair, Illinois Sites Advisory Council (the body that recommends places in Illinois to the National Register of Historic Places) Past Member, Illinois Association of Historic Preservation Commission Past President, The Consortium (a Quad City-wide group of preservationists, community and economic development professionals and historic site managers who come together to promote historic architecture, neighborhoods, and sites as contributors to the Quad Cities’ community and economic strength) Member, Rock Island County Historical Society Secretary, Rock Island Preservation Society President, Friends of Hauberg Civic Center Foundation Secretary, Highland Park Local Historic District Neighborhood Organization Board Member, Author of Local Landmark Nominations: Audubon School, K.T. & Netta Anderson House, Illinois Company, Long View Apartments, and Co-author of Rock Island Neighborhood Tour Guides: Chicago Addition, Highland Park and 1918 Government Housing.

Josh Boelter, Content Specialist, is a writer, researcher and producer with experience in a variety of industries. Josh’s career has taken him from marketing communications at a Silicon Valley startup, to writing a weekly newspaper column, to writing and producing PBS documentaries. Josh moved to the Quad Cities when his partner accepted a position at Augustana College in Rock Island. “When Natalie told me about the projects we’d be working on, I got really excited,” he says. “These projects are a combination of many of the things I love, from writing to researching to learning about history and presenting it in a meaningful way to the public. It takes advantage of my skills and experience in a similar way to producing documentaries.” Josh is thrilled to be learning about the history of the Quad Cities from local historian Linda Anderson and Media Link President Natalie Linville-Mass, as well as the many wonderful people he’s met since starting this job.

Lauren Wood, Marketing Coordinator, is a graduate of the University of Iowa and Southern New Hampshire University. She comes to QC PastPort with an eclectic background spanning multiple industries. Having worked in healthcare, education and media sales, she brings a diverse mix of skills and experience to the team. Lauren is also an avid writer and has over a dozen children’s books and works of fiction published, many through her own small press, Paradisiac Publishing.

Natalie Linville-Mass, President of QC PastPort, has been in the media field for more than 30 years and is the founder of Media Link and the inventor behind Media Link Software®. Natalie’s second passion is history. In Junior High, she compiled a 500-page family tree with her Dad, and part of what compelled her to move to the Quad Cities is the historic landscape of this area. Natalie graduated from Drake University with a degree in Broadcast Sales and Management. Before opening her business, she worked throughout the Midwest in radio and television, holding positions including commercial producer, DJ, reporter, editor, producer, and account executive. Nationally, Natalie worked with The Water Foundation and helped to launch a PR campaign for Earth 911 out of Phoenix, AZ. She has the unique ability to envision the overall picture of a project and pull together each element to make each project flow seamlessly. “With my experience in marketing and the need I recognize for a better understanding of who we are as a community and how we got here, I recognized a path on how to share this incredible history in a fun and relatable way,” expressed Linville-Mass.

The city of Rock Island logo.

Both groups work in concert with several advisors, historians and community leaders with each new project they develop. The focus with both businesses has been an effort to bring to light what really happened from the perspective of the people who experienced it first-hand. This starts with a collaborative approach with destination marketing, as well as outdoor recreation. Both Pearson Consulting and QC PastPort have an infrastructure in place to bring visitors to many previously overlooked areas.

Pearson Consulting and QC PastPort reaches out to the people who are connected to each destination, gain their insight through interviews and information they are able to share, then create a rough draft and then hand this draft back to everyone involved for their edits and rewrites. Once everyone involved has given their input and approval, then the project goes into production. To sum up, this grant creates a platform to do so much more for the African American Community. This project can spearhead the efforts to develop a future African  American historical district which could include a future African American Museum.

Sean Leary is an author, director, artist, musician, producer and entrepreneur who has been writing professionally since debuting at age 11 in the pages of the Comics Buyers Guide. An honors graduate of the University of Southern California masters program, he has written over 50 books including the best-sellers The Arimathean, Every Number is Lucky to Someone and We Are All Characters.