Five historic civil rights sites in Alabama will receive more than $3.1 million in federal funds for preservation, planning and enhancements, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell has announced.

The money comes from the National Park Service (NPS) African American Civil Rights Grant Program. Sewell has long been an advocate for the program.

“As the representative of Alabama’s civil rights district, I take seriously my responsibility to ensure that we preserve the living legacy of the civil rights movement,” Sewell said in a news release.

“Each year, I’m proud to lead the effort in Congress to increase funding for the National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights Grant Program to ensure that America’s civil rights history lives on,” Sewell added. She described the latest grants as a “big win for the state of Alabama” that will “help ensure that faces and places of the movement are never forgotten.”

According to the news release, the nearly $3.15 million in grants will be divided as follows:

• $750,000 to the Historic Bethel Baptist Church Community Restoration Fund – supporting the church in Birmingham where civil rights leader, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, served as pastor. The church and the adjacent site of the former parsonage, which was bombed by white supremacists, is part of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument.
• $750,000 to St. Paul United Methodist Church – which is also part of the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument and where mass civil rights meetings took place. One of the oldest African-American congregations in the city, the funds will support church preservation and restoration work.
• $750,000 to Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church – for repair and rehabilitation work at the Montgomery church where Rev Martin Luther King Jr. first rose to national prominence as one of the leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
• $750,000 to the Alabama Historical Commission – to rehabilitate the second floor of the Moore Building, located across the street from the Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery. Plans call for the renovated floor, which looks out on the old Greyhound station that houses the museum, to be used as an interpretive and programming space. The station was the site, in 1961, where an integrated group of Freedom Riders, arriving on a Greyhound bus, were savagely beaten by a pro-segregation mob.
• $75,000 to the Alabama Historical Commission – to support the historic Greyhound bus virtual reality experience, operated by the Freedom Rides Museum.
• $74,800 to the city of Anniston – to support “story mapping and formalization of operations and maintenance” for the Anniston Civil Rights Trail.

Federal funds will support restoration work at historic Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham’s Collegeville neighborhood. (National Park Service)

The African American Civil Rights Grant Program helps document, interpret, and preserve sites and stories related to the African American struggle to gain equal rights as citizens, Sewell’s news release said. The grants come from the Historic Preservation Fund administered by NPS. They can be used to support a range of projects for historic sites, including planning and historic surveys, documentation, interpretation and education, architectural services, restoration and repair.

“The National Park Service is proud to award this grant funding to our state and local government, and nonprofit partners to help them recognize places and stories related to the African American experience,” NPS Director Chuck Sams said in the news release. “Since 2016, the African American Civil Rights program has provided over $100 million to document, protect, and celebrate the places, people and stories of one of the greatest struggles in American history.”

For more information about NPS historic preservation programs and grants, go to nps.gov/stlpg/.