BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — The National Park Service awarded $21 million to 16 states Thursday as part of a civil rights preservation project, including six locations in Alabama.

The NPS’s Historic Preservation Fund’s African American Civil Rights grant program funds preservation projects and efforts of sites to help document, interpret, and preserve sites and stories related to the African American struggle to gain equal rights as citizens.

Rep. Terri Sewell announced Friday that Alabama will receive a total of over $3.1 million from the funding.

“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 stated in a press release. “This $3.1 million is a big win for the State of Alabama and will help ensure that faces and places of the Movement are never forgotten!”

NPS has awarded the following grants, which total $3,149,900, for historic sites in Alabama:

  • $74,800 to the City of Anniston for story mapping and formalization of operations and maintenance for the Anniston Civil Rights Trail 
  • $750,000 to the Historic Bethel Baptist Church Community Restoration Fund in Birmingham for historic preservation
  • $750,000 to the St. Paul United Methodist Church in Birmingham for preservation and restoration
  • $750,000 to the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery for repair and rehabilitation
  • $75,000 to the Alabama Historical Commission in Montgomery for the Freedom Rides Museum’s vintage Greyhound bus virtual reality experience  
  • $750,000 to the Alabama Historical Commission in Montgomery for rehabilitation of the second floor of the Moore Building

Grants fund a broad range of projects for historic sites including survey, inventory, documentation, interpretation, education, architectural services, historic structure reports, preservation plans and “bricks and mortar” repair.

Other locations across the U.S. that received funding include Atlanta’s Ashby Theatre, 23 sites in Illinois and Mississippi preserved as Emmett Till landmarks and the 1848 Eliza Freeman House in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

For more information, visit NPS’s official website.