Historic Black Churches Receive $13.5 Million in Preservation Grants

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a division of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has awarded $13.5 million in grants to 38 historically Black churches across the United States in 2026. The funding represents the largest single-year investment in the preservation of Black sacred spaces in the organization's history.

The grants, ranging from $50,000 to $500,000, support a wide range of projects including capital improvements, structural preservation, endowment and financial sustainability, organizational capacity building, programming and interpretation, and project planning. The initiative recognizes that historic Black churches serve not only as houses of worship but as vital centers of community life, education, arts, and culture.

Among the notable recipients are the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, a Civil Rights icon where four young girls were killed in a 1963 bombing, which received funding for a Director of Development position and preservation endowment. Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, the childhood church of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., received a grant to develop an oral history tour.

Other significant recipients include Shorter AME Church in Denver, Colorado, which is restoring its sanctuary following a 1925 KKK arson attack; Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ in New Haven, Connecticut, the world's oldest African American Congregational Church, which is preserving its historic stained-glass windows; and New Jerusalem Baptist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, established by survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which is building a preservation endowment.

The National Trust emphasized that these churches face unique challenges including insufficient funding, deferred maintenance, aging congregations, and threats of demolition, making targeted preservation investment critical to their long-term survival and continued community impact.