Five Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in Alabama are getting funding from the National Parks Service to preserve historic campus locations, News19 reported. The schools are Alabama State University (ASU), Miles College, Alabama A&M University, Stillman College, and Selma University – each will get approximately $500,000 from the National Parks Service Grant Program.
Alabama received $2.5 million out of the $9.7 million available nationally.
With the grant, for example, Alabama State plans to renovate G.W. Trenholm Hall in the fall. The university is where The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. completed his dissertation and the alma mater of civil rights leaders like Fred Gray.
“We can’t talk about Black history and Black culture without talking about Historically Black Colleges and Universities," said Dr. Derryn Moten, acting chair of the history and political science departments at ASU. "They trained and educated the students that went out and made that history."
Others will undertake similar preservation efforts.
Dr. Derrick Gilmore, executive vice president of Stillman College, said the money will transform the institution’s Sheppard Library into a civil rights museum. Dr. Jarralynne Agee, provost of Miles College, said the money will go to preserve the college's oldest on-campus building, Williams Hall, where a center for economic and social justice, artwork and artifacts from the civil rights movement, and class spaces will be added.
