I define Black architectural modernity as the spatial and formal [built] embodiment of the black cultural projects that emerged for African Americans throughout U.S. history. This goes all the way back to the time when they were enslaved peoples [...] through the Civil Rights Movement, through Jim Crow, disinvestment, and carceral projects. Through all of those things, Black people have been forced to think of themselves as human in a world that doesn't accept their humanity.For Black History Month, the National Trust for Historic Preservation asked Dr. Charles L. Davis II about his preservation work on the Watts Happening Cultural Center and Robert T. Coles Home and Studio in Buffalo, New York, the latter having received one of the Trusts Conserving Black Modernism grants in 2024. The two-part interview led to questions about his decision to focus on Black architecture specifically through in research, expanding to a new definition for Black modernism that he says should be based on social history rather than traditional academic constraints.In his words: "These [Black] architects are not just borrowing stuff from white practitioners, they're interpreting it in completely different ways. So [designs] that look the same have different meanings. To me, Black architectural modernity is a mode of living. [...] It's now become a way of being. Its a process of both aspiring to and attaining racial uplift, and the ways that our built environments embody t...