The tragic and inspirational story of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama is a historic chapter in the civil rights movement. In 1963, four Black girls were killed in a terroristic bombing that horrified most of America.
Folk singer Joan Baez created a chilling ballad called “Birmingham Sunday,” that touched the nation.
16th Street Baptist church will receive repairs through a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to rehabilitate African American churches across the country.
A privately funded nonprofit organization, the D.C.-based National Trust for Historic Preservation works to save historic sites in the U.S., tell full stories regarding American history and build stronger communities.
During the federal holiday honoring the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the organization’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund announced $4 million in grants to 35 historic Black churches across the United States.
“Leaving an indelible imprint on our society, historic Black churches hold an enduring legacy of community, spirituality and freedom that continues to span generations,” said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and senior vice president for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “The Action Fund created the Preserving Black Churches program to recognize and celebrate the Black church for its contributions on American life, culture and history, while also investing in their physical permanence and financial sustainment into the future.”
The Action Fund’s Preserving Black Churches program is a $20 million initiative funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. to “ help historic Black churches and congregations to protect their physical and cultural assets.
The first round of grantees include the following churches: Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th Street Baptist Church, known as the site of the bombing that killed four little girls in 1963, tragically and famously advancing Black history; First Bryan Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia, one of the oldest African American Baptist churches in the U.S.; Ohio’s Cory United Methodist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X spoke in 1963 and 1964; St. Paul Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, located on the HBCU campus of Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee; and Manzanola United Methodist Church in Colorado, built by 50 Black homesteaders in 1915, among others.
Preservation grant categories include Endowment and Financial Sustainability, Organizational Capacity Building, Capital Projects, Project Planning, and Programming and Interpretation.
Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., professor, historian, filmmaker, and national advisory council member for the African American Cultural Heritage Fund, said the grant initiative is inspiring.
After all, these are our sacred sites, which our ancestors built from the ground up, and we must do everything we can to ensure their survival,” Gates said. “Preserving these structures is a visible way of preserving a crucial chapter of Black History.”