A new effort to preserve historic Black churches in the United States has received a $20 million donation that will go to help congregations, including one that was slammed during the tornado in Mayfield last month.
St. James AME Church will receive $100,000 as the first recipient of the project's special emergency funding. The church was founded just three years after the Civil War in 1868.
With its sanctuary virtually destroyed and only 15 or so active members, all of whom are older, St. James AME needs all the help it can get, said the Rev. Ralph Johnson, presiding elder of the church district.
In all, the project plans to assist more than 50 Black churches nationwide over the next three years, including some that are vacant or set for demolition or are struggling with inadequate funding, aging members and dwindling membership.
The announcement about the donation was timed to coincide with the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday.
Lilly Endowment Inc. contributed the money to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund as seed funding for the Preserving Black Churches Project, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which launched the fund.
Rather than simply replacing broken windows or straightening rafters, the project will provide assistance with things including asset management and helping historic churches tell their own stories, said Brent Leggs, executive director of the fund.Black churches served a vital role after the war ended and Black people no longer were considered the property of white people.
Black churches have been a key element of the African American community through generations of faith and struggle, and preserving them isn't just a brick-and-mortar issue but one of civil rights and racial justice, Leggs said in an interview.
“Historically Black churches deserve the same admiration and stewardship as the National Cathedral in Washington or New York’s Trinity Church,” he said. Trinity, where Alexander Hamilton and other historic figures are buried, was near Ground Zero and became a national touchstone after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
While active congregations are the main priority, funding can also go to old church buildings that now house projects like community centers or treatment programs, Leggs said.
The fund previously has assisted congregations including Mother Emmanuel AME Church, where white supremacist killed nine parishioners during a Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, and Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, a stalwart of the civil rights movement which was bombed in the 1950s.
The Action Fund, which has raised more than $70 million, has assisted with more than 200 preservation projects nationally.
The fund calls itself the largest-ever attempt to preserve sites linked to African American history.
(Photo from Google Street View, taken before the December 10th tornado)
