Justin G. Reid is a public historian and co-founder of Griffin Blvd Archives, a rural sustainable development and cultural heritage advocacy and support network in South Central Virginia. He was raised in Farmville, Virginia, where his family were litigants in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1964 Griffin decision outlawing local “massive resistance” to school desegregation. A half-century later, he directed the opening of the Moton Museum’s national award-winning permanent exhibition on his community’s revolutionary, student-led, Civil Rights–era activism.

As a longtime cultural organizer, Reid partners with communities, policymakers, and media to advance place-based democratic learning and power building—previously with the General Assembly to create Virginia's Black, Indigenous & People of Color Historic Preservation Fund and as a co-founder of William & Mary’s Lemon Project. Most recently, Reid worked at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, where he collaborated regionally with local community organizers, activists, and other civic leaders to co-design and successfully launch one of Virginia’s first philanthropic programs dedicated to community organizing and social change movement building.