Historic Black churches get $4 million boost to help with preservation

Administrators of a trust fund set up to preserve historic Black churches in the United States on Friday unveiled a list of houses of worship that have received $4 million in financial grants.

the list of 35 grantees including 16th Street Baptist Church Inc. in Birmingham, Alabama, where important civil rights meetings were held during Jim Crow segregation in the 1960s and where four Black women were killed after a bombing by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1963.

Black churches in almost every region of the US were among the first round of fund recipients to receive grants ranging from $50,000 to $200,000.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund launched it “Preserving Black Churches” program in 2021 to help support the ongoing or planned restoration work of historic congregations that care for cultural artifacts and carry great legacies. Some church renovations are in jeopardy or have been severely postponed three years after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, which has reduced the capacity of many houses of worship to serve the public as never before. time of need.

“Leaving an indelible impression on our society, historic Black churches hold a fascinating legacy of community, spirituality and freedom that continues for generations,” said Brent Leggs, executive director of the fund, who is also senior vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Rev. Monica Marshall disagrees with that sentiment. He was a teenager in the 1970s when he became a member of the Varick Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. It is the oldest continuous Black congregation in the borough and has served the community for over 200 years.

Marshall, 66, has fond memories of joining the church’s youth choir, playing the keyboard and leading its music ministry, before accepting the call to preach many years ago. In 2010, he became a pastor. There are about 75 active members.

The current Varick Memorial building dates back to 1951, but is deteriorating and has roof issues. The church is mostly uninhabitable as of 2020, the reverend said.

“The pandemic has made it difficult to maintain the building,” Marshall said. “I just heard God say to me, ‘Don’t go back to the same building you came from.’ The people were very faithful, they waited for my vision and it came true.

The congregation received a grant of $200,000 to support critical restoration of the building’s structural integrity. Marshall said the efforts of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund have brought back hope that the Varick Memorial can continue to serve a wider range of community services.

“If you don’t know where you came from, it’s difficult to continue and go to greater heights, to the deeper depths of your life and your heritage,” said the reverend.

Many Black churches, historic and modern, experience challenges related to delayed repairs, insufficient funding for regular maintenance and threats of demolition due to public hazards.

Since before the abolition of slavery, the Black church has been the center of cultural, social and educational pursuits of its members. The church also plays a role in brokering the congregants’ relationship with political power. It is common for politicians, mostly Democrats, to campaign from the pulpits of Black churches.

The church is a domain for the prophetic tradition where preachers weave the Scriptures with criticisms of racism, corruption and poverty. “Souls of the polls” was a get-out-the-vote campaign common in the Black church, urging congregants to take advantage of early voting times to combat voter suppression and intimidation.

“In fact, these are our sacred places, built by our ancestors from the beginning, and we must do everything to ensure their survival,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., the professor and historian who sits in the national action fund. advisory council.

In 2021, Gates executive produced and hosted four-hour docuseries for PBS called “The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song,” based on his New York Times bestselling book of the same title.

“Preserving these structures is a tangible way to preserve an important chapter in Black history,” Gates said.

Other grantees of the action fund include First Bryan Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia, which is considered one of the oldest Black Baptist churches in the US; Cory United Methodist Church in Cleveland, where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X spoke in 1963 and 1964; and St. Paul Christian Methodist Episcopal, a church located on the historically Black campus of Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee.

Administrators of the action fund said they received proposals for 1,266 Black churches across the US, with $189 million in total funding requested. The effort is supported by a $20 million seed donation received last year from the Lilly Endowment Inc., which supports religious, educational and charitable causes.

The St. Rita Catholic Church in Indianapolis, another action fund grantee, will receive $100,000 to repair its bell tower and repair the masonry of the main structure, which dates to 1958.

“The bricks of the bell tower started falling about 19 years ago,” said Rev. Jean Bosco Ntawugashira, who was appointed pastor of the congregation last July. “It became a danger to the community and, unfortunately because of COVID, the (restoration) project somehow stopped.”

St. Rita has served the black residents of Indianapolis since 1919 and is considered the city’s mother church for Black Catholics from around the world.

“The Black community, in the past, considered the Catholic Church to be the church for white people,” Ntawugashira said. “They will understand that the Catholic Church is universal and it does not close its doors to anyone. They belong to a global community.”

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