News Release

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

Ongoing restoration of Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, NJ, former recipient of an African American Civil Rights Grant; Hinchliffe Stadium is the only historic stadium within a national park

NPS / Stephanie Roulett

News Release Date: May 11, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

 

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.