'This is our history:' African American churches, museums and landmarks work to preserve Black history

WASHINGTON – Termites had destroyed beams at the historic Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama, where decades earlier civil rights activists gathered before marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Water had damaged the walls. Balconies were sagging.

Armed with a newly awarded $150,000 grant, officials at the 114-year-old chapel plan to use the money to help repair parts of the church, which is closed to the public. Earlier this year, it was put on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of 11 most endangered historic places.

“Brown Chapel is the citadel of the civil rights movement,’’ said Juanda Maxwell, project director and fundraising chair of the Historic Brown Chapel AME Church Preservation Society. “People come every day from all over the world to make that pilgrimage from Brown to the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. That's our history. If we don't tell the history, who will tell it?’’

The chapel is one of 33 sites across the country slated to receive assistance this year from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which aims to preserve African American history and landmarks. In all, $3 million in grants will be distributed to recipients in 2022.

“In many ways, the goal is to help our nation understand that African American history is American history,’’ said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and senior vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a non-profit in Washington, D.C., that created the action fund in 2017. “And that through unimaginable sacrifice Black Americans have contributed to the building and shaping of American democracy.”

Other sites receiving grants include landmarks such as the home of civil rights icons Medgar and Myrlie Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, and the Chicago home of Emmett Till, whose brutal murder in Mississippi in 1955 helped spark the civil rights movement.

The effort is one of several in recent years, including by the National Park Service, to step up the preservation of important sites in African American history. The projects come at a critical time as the nation wrestles with social justice issues and how, or if, to teach the nation's history.

“A nation forged from diversity needs to recognize and value the contribution and achievement of African Americans,” said Leggs.

Selma church celebrates John Lewis' contributions

It was at Brown Chapel in 1965 that John Lewis, then an activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and other foot soldiers in the civil rights movement met before they walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in a march for voting rights. They were beaten by state police in what has become known as ''Bloody Sunday."

Until his death, Lewis led an annual pilgrimage to Selma.

Over the years, other civil rights icons have spoken at the church, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King and Malcom X.

The chapel, like many institutions, closed in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Officials learned in February 2021 that the church was so severely damaged by termites and water that it was unsafe for churchgoers to return. It has remained closed to the public.

“That's a tragedy because when people come to Selma for a pilgrimage they always want to see Brown Chapel and cross the bridge and see the other sites that were made famous because of Bloody Sunday,’’ Maxwell said. “We're heartbroken…We’re frantically trying to get it restored.’’

Officials broke ground on the $4 million renovation project in June 2021. The project has raised about half of its goal, with $1.8 million coming from the National Park Service. The $150,000 from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is earmarked to restore and repair the beams underneath the rebuilt cupolas.

“We've been really blessed in that we have been able to garner resources in order to do this, but we also need the public’’ to help, said Maxwell of Brown Chapel’s efforts. “It's not just us. It's all of the sites. We're not the only site that needs to be restored.’’

More: Ceremony held to kick off renovations on Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma

African American landmarks need help

Other projects receiving grants include the Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles, which has a rich civil rights history, the home of artist Faith Ringgold in New Jersey and the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York.

Other projects aren’t as well-known, such as the National Coal Heritage Area Authority, which will expand research about Black coal miners in West Virginia, or the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum in Houston.

‘’Our list tells an expansive and meaningful story about Black history and these stories are imbued in Black American resilience, activism and achievement,’’ said Leggs.

One of the group’s priorities is to fund projects that restore Black cemeteries. In Pennsylvania, a group will get funds to set up a statewide program to provide grants to help protect African American cemeteries and burial grounds.

“We want to make sure that many of the Black cemeteries that are lost and forgotten, that are abandoned because of the out migration of African Americans from the South and rural communities - that these places aren't erased from the American landscape,’’ Leggs said.

More: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/02/03/smithsonian-national-museum-afri

Over the years, the National Park Service has also supported similar preservation projects, including at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, where enslaved Africans were first brought to the English colony in 1619.

Earlier this year, the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program, in collaboration with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, announced a program to award $150,000 in grants for efforts to preserve and restore buildings associated with the Underground Railroad.

Several congressional lawmakers from the South, including Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, James Clyburn of South Carolina and Terri Sewell of Alabama, have pushed for significant, but sometimes lesser-known sites — including courthouses, homes, jails, Gullah communities and even bus stops  — to be included in the national park system. Many of those sites are in the Deep South, which was at the heart of the civil rights movement.

Maxwell credits the Obama administration and others, including Sewell, whose district includes the chapel, for pushing for more money to restore historic civil rights sites. Still, she said, it’s not enough: much more money is needed to get the work done.

More: Lawmakers push to make civil rights landmarks national monuments

'This is an American story'

In Jackson, Mississippi, the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute will use its $50,000 grant to create a virtual reality experience at the old home of the Evers family.

Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the Mississippi NAACP, was shot and killed in his driveway June 11, 1963. The institute is planning events in Jackson next year marking the 60th anniversary of his death.

Officials plan for the interactive experience to include information about Medgar and his wife, Myrlie, who is also a civil rights legend, and feature components on dealing with trauma.

“We’re really trying to take the past and bring it to the future so that young people and old people can understand what happened back then, it's still relevant to what's going on right now,’’ said Joseph Jones, a political scientist at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia and a consultant to the institute.

Medgar Evers worked to register Black voters in Mississippi during the 1950s and 1960s. Many veterans of the civil rights movement say it was Evers who encouraged them to protest against segregation, including students at Tougaloo College, a historically Black college that served as a safe haven for civil rights activists. Many demonstrations in Mississippi sparked actions in other places in the Deep South that led to landmark civil rights legislation.

“It’s not just a story about Mississippi. This is an American story,’’ said Jones. “We want to make sure that everybody who descends on Jackson next year…fully understands who Medgar was, who Myrlie was."

More: Americans stood up to racism in 1961 and changed history. This is their fight, in their words.

'How will young people know the story?'

With efforts to restrict or ban the teaching of the nation’s history, some organization leaders argue preserving those sites is even more critical now.

“If Brown Chapel is not there to represent the history, who will represent it, because it's not really taught in school the way that it should,’’ said Maxwell. “Things are changing so where you won't even know. How will young people know the story?”

Jones said it's important to preserve and teach about the nation's history.

“If some people would have their way, within maybe 10 years Medgar Evers wouldn't be a name that people would even see in the history books,’’ said Jones. “This is almost a response to that to make sure that these stories are housed in a place so that people can find them and learn about them.’’

The institute also hopes the experience of visiting the Evers' home encourages visitors to become more engaged in civic activities, including pushing to protect voting rights.

Leggs said the efforts could help provide a place for more dialogue about race.

“I think more Americans are beginning to understand that historic places are safe havens for having difficult conversations about race or being able to bring communities together to celebrate their shared history and civic identity,’’ he said.

Follow Deborah Berry on Twitter at dberrygannett

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Saving Black history: Churches, landmarks get help under project