#TellTheFullStory: 2025 Preserving Black Churches Grantees
Preserving Black Churches
A Project of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund
As the oldest institutions created and controlled by African Americans, historically Black Churches are a living testament to the achievements and resiliency of generations of American families and communities.
To preserve and uplift these historic places and the neighborhoods they serve, the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund established the Preserving Black Churches program, a $60 million initiative backed by generous philanthropic support from Lilly Endowment Inc. Since its first cohort in 2023, this program has assisted historically Black churches and congregations reimagine, redesign, and redeploy historic preservation to address their stewardship needs and the Black history stories they preserve.
Preserving Black Churches grants ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 are intended to preserve historic houses of worship (those with active congregations or that are being repurposed for new uses within the community) and advance preservation activities including capital projects, programming and interpretation, capacity building, project planning, and endowment and financial sustainability.
This funding has had a transformative impact on grantees and project partners, strengthening the capacity of historic congregations, preservation organizations, and community groups to better steward, manage, and use their historic structures.
Preserving Black Churches’ Legacy
From the African Meeting House in Boston in Boston where William Lloyd Garrison founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832; to the St. Luke C.M.E. Church in Tryon, North Carolina, where Nina Simone began her musical career as a young girl in the 1930s; to Memphis’ Clayborn Temple where Civil Rights activists organized and created the iconic “I AM A MAN” signs during the Sanitation Workers’ Strike of 1968, historically Black Churches have stood at the center of the African American experience. They serve as houses of worship, safe havens, social centers, and cultural laboratories, and provide vital social services that uplift their communities.
Yet despite their central role, these historic sites face myriad challenges—from insufficient funding and deferred maintenance, to aging congregations and threats of demolition. Since its founding, the Preserving Black Churches program has:
- Provided direct investment to historically Black Churches for capital projects, planning, programming and interpretation, operations, and financial sustainability.
- Provided Rapid Response-Emergency Grants to address urgent needs and mitigate insufficient funding and closures from unforeseen fire damage, arson, water infiltration, natural disasters, and other issues.
- Co-developed preservation campaigns, innovative stewardship models, and built capacity in partnership with seven historically Black Churches serving as sites of faith, education, arts, and culture in Alabama and nationally.
- Amplified and promoted historically Black churches through digital documentation, storytelling, and media relations.
Rescuing Two Iconic Black Churches in Kentucky
Learn more about our work to support two churches in Kentucky—Burk's Chapel AME Church, Paducah, and St. James AME Church, Mayfield—which are fighting to protect their sacred houses of worship.
In these ways, the Preserving Black Churches program continues to uplift these often-overlooked places and ensure that the historically Black Church’s legacy of spirituality, history, and community service endures.
“No pillar of the African American community has been more central to its history, identity, and social justice vision than the ‘Black Church.’”
Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Professor, Historian, Filmmaker, and Advisor for the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund
Independent of the Action Fund’s Preserving Black Churches, the National Fund for Sacred Places was launched in 2016 and also made possible by $40 million from the Indiana-based Lilly Endowment Inc. The National Fund for Sacred Places is a program of Partners for Sacred Places in collaboration with the National Trust. It provides financial and technical support for community-serving historic houses of worship across America, including capital grants up to $500,000.