Civil Rights Grants

National Park Service Announces Over $7.5 Million in Grants to Preserve African American Civil Rights Movement Sites

The National Park Service today announced funding for 39 projects in over 20 states that will preserve and highlight the sites and stories associated with the Civil Rights Movement and the African American experience.

Through the African American Civil Rights Grant Program, we’re helping our public and private partners tell unique and powerful stories of the African American struggle for equality in the 20th Century. National Park Service Acting Director Michael T. Renyolds

Men and women wait outside for news from the trial of two men accused of murdering Emmett Till (Tallahatchie County, MS). The courthouse will receive $500,000 worth of restoration through the African American Civil Rights Grants program.

Courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Congress appropriated funding for the projects new NPS African American Civil Rights Grant Program in FY 2016 through the Historic Preservation Fund. The HPF uses revenue from federal oil leases on the Outer Continental Shelf to provide assistance for a broad range of preservation projects without expending tax dollars.

States, Tribes, local governments, and non-profit organizations, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, applied for a broad range of planning, preservation, and research projects for historic sites associated with the Civil Rights Movement and the African-American experience. The competitive grant program is funding 39 projects worth $7,750,000, including surveys, documentation, interpretation, education, oral histories, planning, and bricks and mortar preservation.

Projects receiving grants include those that will educate about and preserve resources like Rosenwald Schools across the nation, Civil Rights struggles at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Alabama and Central High School in Arkansas, women that fought for civil rights like Modeska Simpkins in South Carolina, and figures like Oscar DePriest, Emmett Till, Ralph Abernathy III, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Statewide surveys to find the stories and the sites that are not well known will be funded in Michigan, Rhode Island, Ohio, Maryland, Idaho, District of Columbia, California, and New York.

A 2008 National Park Service study, Civil Rights in America, A Framework for Identifying Significant Sites, served as the principal reference for determining the eligibility of proposed projects for the grant program.

For the full press release, please visit the News section of the NPS homepage.

Funded Projects in 2016
For additional details on grant-assisted work at funded projects and general information on the type of project supported through this grant program, please visit the civil rights grant homepage.

Preservation Projects:	Grantee	State	Award
Preservation, Repair and Restoration of the Historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church	Sixteenth Street Baptist Church	AL: Alabama	$500,000.00
Preserving Brown Chapel AME from electrical, roofing and structural needs	Historic Brown Chapel AME Preservation Society Inc	AL: Alabama	$500,000.00
Anniston Freedom Riders Monument	City of Anniston	AL: Alabama	$496,375.00
Preserving Central High - A Civil Rights Monument	City of Little Rock	AR: Arkansas	$499,372.56
Restoration of the historic West Hunter Street Baptist Church	Ralph David Abernathy III Foundation Inc.	GA: Georgia	$451,571.15
Preservation of the Oscar Stanton De Priest House National Historic Landmark (NHL)	Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois	IL: Illinois	$250,000.00
St. Mark's A.M.E. Church Rehabilitation	Saint Marks AME Church of Topeka Kansas Inc.	KS: Kansas	$231,804.00
Holy Rosary Institute Main Building Stabilization	Holy Rosary Redevelopment	LA: Louisiana	$450,000.00
Civil Rights Museum for the McDonogh 19 building	Leona Tate Foundation For Change Inc	LA: Louisiana	$500,000.00
Hamtramck Stadium pre-development plan	City of Hamtramck	MI: Michigan	$50,000.00
Mitchell Hall Preservation and Rehabiliation	Lincoln University of Missouri	MO: Missouri	$500,000.00
Restoration of Tallahatchie Co. Courthouse first floor, to the period of significance	Emmett Till Memorial Commission of Tallahatchie County Inc.	MS: Mississippi	$500,000.00
Pauli Murray Family Home Interior Restoration -	Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice	NC: North Carolina	$237,575.00
Rehabilitation of the Modjeska Monteith Simkins House	Historic Columbia Foundation	SC: South Carolina	$293,000.00
Sandy Island Cultural Initiative	Coastal Carolina University	SC: South Carolina	$104,798.06
City of Memphis - Clayborn Temple Preservation Project	City Of Memphis, Div., Housing And Community Development	TN: Tennessee	$400,000.00
Third Street Bethel AME Church Rehabilitation and NR Nomination Update	Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR)	VA :Virginia	$404,821.04
Williams Community Resource Center	City of Danville, Virginia	VA: Virginia	$413,269.05

History Projects:	Grantee	State	Amount
Preserving History, Building Community: Preservation Leadership Training at the Gaston Motel in Birmingham, Alabama	Birmingham Civil Rights Institute	AL: Alabama	$47,003.00
City of Riverside African American Civil Rights History	The City of Riverside	CA: California	$50,000.00
The Rosenwald Schools Mapping Project: Enhancing Understanding of Rosenwald Schools through Web GIS and Story Maps	National Trust for Historic Preservation in the U.S.	DC: District of Columbia	$50,000.00
Civil Rights and Neighborhood Change in Washington DC	Smithsonian Institution	DC: District of Columbia	$49,616.00
African American 20th Century Civil Rights Heritage Trail	District of Columbia Office of Planning	DC: District of Columbia	$37,000.00
Mapping Segregation in Washington DC: The Legal Campaign to End Racially Restrictive Covenants	Historical Society of Washington, D.C.	DC: District of Columbia	$50,000.00
National Register Nomination and Interpretive/Educational Materials for Federation Home and Tate Arms African American Student Dormitories	City of Iowa City	IA: Iowa	$16,052.38
Untold Stories: The African American Civil Rights Movement in Idaho	Idaho State Historical Society	ID: Idaho	$50,000.00
The Kentucky Civil Rights Movement Exhibition	Kentucky Center for African American Heritage	KY: Kentucky	$50,000.00
The New Orleans Civil Rights Movement Oral History Project to preserve first person testimony of the New Orleans civil rights movement.	Kemper and Lelia Williams Foundation Inc	LA: Louisiana	$23,360.00
1320 Eutaw Place: Lillie Carroll Jackson's Home for Freedom	Morgan State University	MD: Maryland	$49,828.00
Beaches and Ballfields: Contested Recreational Spaces and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Anne Arundel County, MD.	Lost Towns Project, Inc	MD: Maryland	$48,000.00
Detroit's African American Civil Rights History 1900-1970 Survey and Multiple Resource Nomination	Michigan Stae Housing Development Authority (MSHDA)	MI: Michigan	$49,500.00
Research, Interpret, and Preserve the Civil Rights History of Natchez and Adams County, Mississippi	Historic Natchez Foundation	MS: Mississippi	$50,000.00
Project for the International Civil Rights Center & Museum (Sit-In Movement, Inc.)	Sit-In Movement Inc.	NC: North Carolina	$50,000.00
Long Island Luminaries: Untold Stories of the Civil Rights Era	Town of North Hempstead, NY	NY: New York	$50,000.00
Expanding and Enlivening the Archive Through Community Curators: an Oral History Project to archive witnesses to social & economic justice issues of Weeksville	Society for the Preservation of Weeksville	NY: New York	$50,000.00
20th Century African American Civil Rights Movement in Ohio: Evaluating and Nominating Historic Properties	Ohio Historical Society	OH: Ohio	$50,000.00
African-American Struggle for Civil Rights in Rhode Island: The 20th Century	Rhode Island Historical Society	RI: Rhode Island	$49,557.76
South Carolina Civil Rights Teacher Institute	University of South Carolina	SC: South Carolina	$49,997.00
Give A Damn: Stax Records and Social Justice	Soulsville Foundation	TN: Tennessee	$47,500.00