NPS - National Park Service

05/11/2022 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 05/11/2022 14:26

National Park Service awards $16.2M to help preserve African American civil rights history

News Release Date: May 11, 2022

Contact: [email protected]

WASHINGTON - Following a tour of Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey, National Park Service (NPS) Director Chuck Sams announced the award of $16,247,500 in African American Civil Rights grants. Listed as a National Historic Landmark, Hinchcliffe Stadium is one of a few surviving Negro League baseball stadiums and previously received an African American Civil Rights Grant in 2018. This years' awards will benefit 44 projects in 15 states and support the continued preservation of sites and history related to the African American struggle for equality.

"The African American Civil Rights grants are critical to helping preserve and interpret a more comprehensive narrative of the people, places, and events associated with African American Civil Rights movement. Sites like Hinchliffe Stadium are rare, and they provide a tangible reminder of this complex history. It was exciting to see the ongoing preservation work at a site that bore witness to more than 20 baseball Hall of Famers in its time and has inspired generations to follow in the footsteps of their heroes," said NPS Director Chuck Sams.

The African American Civil Rights grants fund a variety of projects from rehabilitation to oral history documentation, in coordination with state, Tribal, local government, and nonprofit partners. The rehabilitation project at Hinchliffe Stadium, was funded in part by this grant program and is expected to reopen to the public later this year.

This years' grants will support the preservation of the Masjid al-Ansar in Miami, the first mosque in Florida, which records the story of how Black Muslims were instrumental in the civil rights campaigns in the Deep South; the Schooner Clotilda in Mobile, Alabama, the last known ship to import enslaved Africans to the United States; and in Tulsa, Oklahoma, funds will help tell the rich stories of the African American struggle for equality through oral histories of Selma's foot soldiers and those with personal and family connections to Greenwood Avenue or "Black Wall Street".

Applications for $21.7 million in FY2022 funding will be available in late summer 2022. Learn more about the African American Civil Rights grant program, and how to apply for future grants on NPS.gov.

African American Civil Rights Grant Awards

State

City

Project

Grantee

Award

Alabama

Birmingham

Preservation, Restoration, and Repair of St Paul United Methodist Church

St Paul United Methodist Church

$500,000

Alabama

Birmingham

The BBRM Permanent Exhibit at the Carver Theatre

Birmingham Black Radio Museum

$50,000

Alabama

Hope Hull

Tankersley Rosenwald School: Stabilization and Exterior Rehabilitation

Auburn University

$499,799

Alabama

Mobile

Stabilization and Preservation of the Schooner Clotilda (1Ba704), the Last-known Slave Ship to Import Enslaved Africans to the United States.

Alabama Historical Commission

$469,500

Alabama

Montgomery

The Rehabilitation of Mount Zion A.M.E. Zion Church Memorial Annex

Mount Zion Center Foundation, Inc.

$500,000

Alabama

Montgomery

Freedom Rides Museum Interior Exhibit Plan - Phase 3

Alabama Historical Commission

$50,000

Alabama

Montgomery

The Civil Engineering of the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery, Alabama: The Planned Destruction of a Prosperous African American Community

City of Montgomery

$50,000

Alabama

Selma

Memory and the March: Oral Histories with Selma's Foot Soldiers

Auburn University

$46,588

Alabama

Selma

Preservation of Endangered Historic Brown Chapel AME Church

Historic Brown Chapel AME Church Preservation Society Inc

$500,000

Alabama

Selma

Critical Systems and Accessibility Upgrades to Historic Tabernacle Baptist Church

Historic Tabernacle Baptist Church Selma AL Legacy Foundation, Inc.

$500,000

Alabama

Selma

Rehabilitation of the Historic Sullivan Building for use as a Community and Culture Center

Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth & Reconciliation

$499,521

District of Columbia

Black Women Suffrage in Washington, DC: A Context Study

DC Preservation League

$50,000

Florida

Miami

Rehabilitating, Nominating, and Establishing the Black Muslim Contribution to American Civil Rights through Masjid al-Ansar in Miami, the First Mosque in Florida

The East West Foundation

$444,165

Florida

Miami

Phase 2 Rehabilitation of Ace Theater, a "Jim Crow" Theater

Ace Theater Foundation, Inc.

$500,000

Florida

Saint Augustine

Exhibition on the St. Augustine Civil Rights Movement and Wade-ins

St. Johns Cultural Council, Inc

$50,000

Georgia

Americus

Rehabilitation of the Historic Campbell AME Chapel

Historic Campbell Chapel Restoration Project Inc

$499,128

Georgia

Americus

Rehabilitation of the Historic Americus Colored Hospital Phase 3

Americus Sumter County Movement Remembered Committee, Inc

$499,488

Georgia

Atlanta

Rehabilitation and Preservation of the Historic West Hunter Street Baptist Church Phase 5, Home Church of Dr. Ralph David Abernathy

Ralph David Abernathy III Foundation, Inc.

$499,232

Georgia

Atlanta

English Avenue School Emergency Stabilization

Atlanta Preservation Center Inc. 401

$500,000

Georgia

Atlanta

Rehabilitation of Residence of Grace Towns Hamilton

Preserve Black Atlanta, Inc.

$500,000

Georgia

Atlanta

Rehabilitation of Residence of George Alexander Towns

Preserve Black Atlanta

$500,000

Georgia

Marietta

Rehabilitation of the Historic Girard Elementary School

WGS 3.0 Inc

$499,488

Georgia

Woodville

Rehabilitation of the Georgia B. Williams Nursing Home

Georgia B. Williams Nursing Home Inc.

$469,014

Illinois

Chicago

Rehabilitation of the Bronzeville Historic Wabash YMCA

The Renaissance Collaborative, Inc.

$436,375

Kansas

Topeka

St. Mark's Church Rehabilitation - Phase 2

St. Mark's AME Church

$489,800

Kentucky

Louisville

Quinn Chapel AME Church Stabilization - Phase 3

Louisville Jefferson County Metropolitan Government

$500,000

Kentucky

Russellville

Documenting the Places and Civil Rights Contributions of Alice Allison Dunnigan, the First Woman of African American Heritage to Cover White House, Congressional and Supreme Court Press Briefings

Historic Russellville Inc. DBA Seek Museum

$23,669

Maryland

St. Leonard

Witnesses of Wallville: Documenting a Rural Southern Maryland Community through Oral Histories

Maryland Historical Trust/JPPM

$49,742

Mississippi

Holly Springs

Rehabilitation of Carnegie Auditorium on Mississippi Industrial College Campus

Rust College

$500,000

Mississippi

Jackson

The Riverside Hotel Rehabilitation Project

Mississippi Heritage Trust

$499,500

North Carolina

Oxford

Rehabilitation of Mary Potter School Shop Building

National Mary Potter Club, Inc.

$500,000

North Carolina

Raleigh

Rehabilitation of Leonard Hall

Shaw University

$500,000

New Jersey

Atlantic City

Rehabilitation of the Indiana Avenue Firehouse

City of Atlantic City

$500,000

Oklahoma

Tulsa

Masonry Repair for the Historic Greenwood "Black Wall Street" Buildings

Greenwood Community Development Corporation

$412,465

Oklahoma

Tulsa

Oral Histories from Greenwood, Tulsa, and the 13 Oklahoma Black Townships

Greenwood Community Development Corporation

$43,365

South Carolina

Charleston

Mapping Charleston's Black Burial Grounds

Preservation Society of Charleston

$50,000

South Carolina

Columbia

The Alston House Rehabilitation Project

Magnolia Blossom SC

$318,645

South Carolina

Columbia

Rehabilitation of the Booker T. Washington High School Auditorium Building

University of South Carolina

$500,000

South Carolina

Columbia

Morgan Hall Rehabilitation Project Phase 2

Benedict College

$500,000

South Carolina

Georgetown

Historic Sandy Island School House Rehabilitation

Georgetown County Government

$408,440

South Carolina

West Columbia

Interior Rehabilitation and Adaptive Reuse of the Former Lakeview School

Brookland Center for Community Economic Change

$499,576

Tennessee

Memphis

Collins Chapel Rehabilitation

Collins Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church

$500,000

Tennessee

Memphis

Memphis Heritage Trail: Youth and Civil Rights Summer Camp

City of Memphis-Division of Housing and Community Development

$50,000

Virginia

Richmond

Stabilization of the Cumberland County Pine Grove Rosenwald School

AMMD Pine Grove Project

$290,000


Congress appropriated funding for the African American Civil Rights Grant Program in FY2021 through the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF). The HPF uses revenue from federal oil and gas leases on the Outer Continental Shelf, assisting with a broad range of preservation projects without expending tax dollars, with the intent to mitigate the loss of a nonrenewable resource to benefit the preservation of other irreplaceable resources.

Established in 1977, the HPF is authorized at $150 million per year through 2023 and has provided more than $2.7 billion in historic preservation grants to states, Tribes, local governments, and nonprofit organizations. Administered by the NPS, HPF funds may be appropriated by Congress to support a variety of historic preservation projects to help preserve the nation's cultural resources.

Learn more about NPS historic preservation programs and grants.

www.nps.gov

About the National Park Service. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America's 423 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Learn more at www.nps.gov, and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.