Travel Professionals of Color Association

09/08/2026

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/these-black-history-walking-tours-are-worth-your-time/ar-AA273usS?ocid=socialshare

From Atlanta’s Civil Rights corridors to Oakland’s West Coast freedom routes, these Black history tours turn city streets into living archives.

09/07/2026

08/30/2026

National Park Week! Native American Heritage.

Many national parks have intricate ties to Native American culture, but Mesa Verde National Park was the first national park created specifically to protect cultural heritage. By the beginning of the 20th century, increasing concerns over looting of archaeological sites in the Southwest including Mesa Verde prompted Congress to act. The Antiquities Act, which gave Theodore Roosevelt and subsequent presidents the authority to establish national monuments and help protect invaluable cultural resources, was signed on June 8, 1906, and Mesa Verde National Park was established three weeks later. Today, Mesa Verde protects some 600 Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings and thousands of other archaeological sites, including petroglyphs, and 26 tribes have ties to the park.

08/26/2026

National Park Week.

The Boston Black Heritage Trail begins at the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial.

People come from all over the world to visit Boston and walk the Freedom Trail. Here they walk in the footsteps of Paul Revere, John Adams, and Joseph Warren as they made history during the American Revolution. Yet another trail also weaves its way through Boston’s streets: the Black Heritage Trail.

The Black Heritage Trail begins at the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial and explores the lives and actions of abolitionists like Lewis and Harriet Hayden, Octavia and Leonard Grimes, and Sarah and Charles Remond as they resisted slavery and fought for racial equality in Boston and throughout the US.

Image credit: Photo by Arlan Fonseca. Courtesy of National Parks of Boston.

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08/22/2026

Highlighting our partner Louisville Tourism!

Bourbon City Black Heritage Tours

- Evan Williams Bourbon Experience: Guests meet an actor portraying Louisville native and renowned bartender, Tom Bullock – the First Black American to write and publish a cocktail book. 45- minute tour available Thursdays and Fridays for $20 per person.

- Kentucky Derby Museum Black Heritage in Racing: From the jockey only known as Simon to two-time Derby winner Jimmy Winkfield, discover some of the most important African American figures in horse racing on the Black Heritage in Racing Tour.

- Frazier History Museum: A narrated tour exploring the unheard stories about the significant contributions of African Americans to the history of bourbon making in Louisville.

- Kentucky Center for African American Heritage: The story of Kentucky-born Mary Ann Fisher as one of the first African American women to have a career as a national Rhythm and Blues singer.

- Locust Grove: Learn first-hand what life was like on the 19th century farm as told by the enslaved who served the Croghan family.

- Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory: Focuses on the best Black baseball team you’ve never heard of and how they dominated in the face of racism –defeating their opponents, including white teams.

- Roots 101 African American Museum: Black history, culture, and art comes to life in this narrated tour of the Black journey from an African King through the social justice movement of today.

08/20/2026

On August 20, 1619, an English privateer ship named the White Lion arrived at Point Comfort (modern-day Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia) carrying "20 and odd" captive Angolans. These individuals had been kidnapped from a Portuguese slave ship and were traded to colonial leaders for food and supplies, marking the documented beginning of African presence and the slave trade in English North America.

They were originally kidnapped by Portuguese colonial forces, who sent captured members of the native Kongo and Ndongo kingdoms on a forced march to the port of Luanda, the capital of modern-day Angola. From there, they were ordered on the ship San Juan Bautista, which set sail for Veracruz in the colony of New Spain. As was quite common, about 150 of the 350 captives aboard the ship died during the crossing. Then, as it approached its destination, the ship was attacked by two privateer ships, the White Lion and the Treasurer. Crews from the two ships kidnapped up to 60 of the Bautista’s enslaved people. It was the White Lion which docked at Virginia Colony's Point Comfort and traded some of the prisoners for food on August 20, 1619.

Scholars note that the arrivals were technically sold as indentured servants. Indentured servants agreed, or in many cases were forced, to work with no pay for a set amount of time, often to pay off a debt and could legally expect to become free at the end of the contract. Many Europeans who arrived in the Americas came as indentured servants. Despite this classification—and records which indicate that some of them did eventually obtain their freedom—it is clear that the Africans arriving at Point Comfort in 1619 were forced into servitude and that they fit the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ definition of enslaved peoples.

Two of the Africans who arrived aboard the White Lion, Antonio and Isabella, became “servants” of Captain William Tucker, commander of Point Comfort. Their son William is the first known African child to have been born in America, and under the law of the time he was born a freeman. In the coming decades, however, slavery became codified.

Servants of African origin were oftentimes forced to continue working after the end of their contract, and in 1640 a Virginia court sentenced rebellious servant John Punch to a lifetime of slavery. With fewer white indentured servants arriving from England, a racial caste system developed and African servants were increasingly held for life. In 1662, a Virginia court ruled that children born to enslaved mothers were the property of the mother’s owner.

Barack Obama is the 11th great-grandson of John Punch, an African indentured servant who was sentenced to life-long enslavement in colonial Virginia in 1640. The genetic and historical link to John Punch does not run through Obama's Kenyan father, but rather through his white mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. John Punch's Descendants: Historical and DNA evidence evaluated by Ancestry indicates that Punch fathered children with a white woman. Their children inherited free status and transitioned into successful landowners in Virginia, with the family name eventually evolving to Bunch.

08/17/2026

🎉 Travel Professionals of Color Celebrates 25 Years! 🎉
The Travel Professionals of Color (TPOC) is proud to announce its 25th Anniversary Celebration, taking place June 23–27, 2027, in Chicago, Illinois!

Each year, the Annual TPOC Conference brings together top travel executives, travel agency owners, managers, sales professionals, industry suppliers, hospitality leaders, and students preparing for careers in travel. This premier gathering provides an educational and networking environment designed specifically to support the advancement, visibility, and success of minority travel professionals.

Join us in Chicago as we celebrate 25 years of connection, education, leadership, and excellence in the travel industry!

Save the date: June 23–27, 2027, Chicago, Illinois
Stay tuned for additional information!

08/10/2026

Big Percy is the world’s largest documented sweetgrass basket. Created by master Gullah Geechee artisan Corey Alston, the monumental sculpture measures 11 feet 3 inches around, stands 5 feet tall, and weighs roughly 80 pounds. It is on permanent display at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, South Carolina.

Sweetgrass baskets are hand-sewn, coiled works of art rooted in the Gullah culture of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Brought over from West Africa rice-growing regions more than 300 years ago, these historic baskets use sweetgrass, bulrush, longleaf pine needles, and palmetto fronds. They range from $30 to over $350 depending on size and detail.

08/09/2026

https://www.travelweekly.com/Middle-East-Africa-Travel/Ancestry-travel-Africa-diaspora?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP7Ox1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeJKrxplvwG05g2nT86E3p-KrwZajZEfVaKibuu2rDWe5oZOGP2ekzDB9FZzs_aem_LdFpMfeldJO2Omn2gd-_Iw

West African nations have used the leap in DNA technology as inspiration to build up their tourism infrastructure and attract African Americans to visit and explore their roots.

08/06/2026

Buffalo Soldiers were some of America's first park rangers.

Some of America's first park rangers wore Army uniforms.

In the early 1900s, Buffalo Soldiers, African American soldiers serving in the U.S. Army, spent summers protecting places like Sequoia and Yosemite before the National Park Service was established.

They patrolled the backcountry, fought wildfires, built trails and roads, and welcomed visitors. They helped protect some of America's most treasured landscapes and they laid the foundation for the National Park Service ranger we know today.

Their legacy lives on at parks and historic sites across the country, where their story continues to inspire new generations of visitors and rangers alike.