National Trust Awards $13.5 Million to Preserve Historic Black Churches Across the U.S.

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, awarded $13.5 million in 2026 to support preservation work at more than 30 historically Black churches across the United States.

The funding was distributed in two rounds. An initial $5 million went to five churches on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A second round of $8.5 million followed in February through the fourth annual Preserving Black Churches program, reaching 33 congregations.

Notable recipients include the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which received $300,000 for capacity building and fundraising. The church was the site of a 1963 bombing that killed four young girls and became a defining moment in the civil rights movement. Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, received $100,000 to develop an oral history program.

Other recipients include the Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ in New Haven, Connecticut, which received $400,000 for stained-glass restoration. The University AME Zion Church in Palo Alto, California, and the New Jerusalem Baptist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, also received grants.

Churches are using the funds for structural renovations, preservation endowments, organizational capacity building, and educational programming.

The National Trust said many of these buildings face serious structural threats and that without intervention, some could be lost within a decade. The organization called Black churches "irreplaceable anchors of community life" that hold both spiritual and historical significance.