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

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 FacebookInstagramTwitter, and YouTube

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