Courtesy of Benedict College
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.
