Exclusive: Selma Church That Helped Spark the 1965 Voting Rights Act Is Endangered

ArchitectureExclusive: Selma Church That Helped Spark the 1965 Voting Rights Act Is EndangeredAlabama’s Brown Chapel AME Church, which hosted the Selma to Montgomery marchers in 1965, is quickly falling into ruin

By David Sokol

May 4, 2022

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A bust of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. outsidee of the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Selma, Alabama. Photo: Getty Images

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A beautiful blend of Romanesque, Colonial Revival, and Flemish Revival styles, Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church has projected tradition and stability in downtown Selma, Alabama, since its completion in 1908. Yet the building’s brick arcade and quoin-framed towers, conceived by Black architect A.J. Farley, have belied the fiercely progressive thinking of the members within. Defying a 1964 induction against any Selma gathering dedicated to civil rights or voter registration, Pastor P.H. Lewis opened Brown Chapel to precisely those activists. The sanctuary hosted the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the first three months of 1965 and the Selma to Montgomery marches that propelled passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Though Brown Chapel is a long-recognized symbol of the struggle for equality in the United States—it was awarded National Historic Landmark status in 1998—its reputation has not protected the site from the unforgiving march of time. The independent Historic Brown Chapel AME Church Preservation Society has been fundraising for restoration since parishioners observed leaking from the building’s pair of cupolas in 2008. When that project began last year, architect Richard Hudgens identified extensive termite damage that forced immediate closure of the chapel’s north balcony. The building remains shuttered to congregation members and public visitors, and the preservation society is actively searching for additional support for the historically accurate upgrade.

Today, that effort is getting a big push from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which named Brown Chapel one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2022. The NTHP has publicized more than 300 sites since launching the annual list in 1988. Of those, less than 5% have been lost.

Civil rights demonstrators, led by Dr. Martin Luther King (not pictured), arrive in front of the Brown Chapel AME Church in Montgomery from Selma on March 26, 1965 in Alabama.

Photo: AFP via Getty Images

Brown Chapel is emblematic of the 2022 list. Many selections spotlight underrepresented communities and the fight for enfranchisement. Black history is particularly visible this year, thanks to the inclusion of Arizona’s Camp Naco—the only remaining Buffalo Soldiers housing along the Mexican border—as well as three vacant dormitories at the Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina, and the 7.5-acre Olivewood Cemetery in Houston. Political empowerment is further represented by the NTHP list’s inclusion of Chicano community murals located throughout Colorado, which were created at the height of the 1960s and ’70s movement.

The sites chosen for America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places trace American diversity to the ancient past. Picture Cave—a Missouri cave system located approximately 60 miles west of St. Louis and filled with Osage pictographs from the Late Woodland and Mississippian periods—was added to this year’s list in response to the site’s $2.2-million sale to an anonymous auction buyer last September. It also includes a 19th-century Jewish funerary structure in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Minidoka National Historic Site in Jerome, Idaho, where 13,000 Japanese Americans were forced into the Minidoka War Relocation Camp in 1942.

“This year’s list illuminates elemental themes that have framed the story of our nation—the quest for individual freedom, the demand for fairness and equal justice, the insistence to have a voice in society, and the ongoing struggles to make these dreams a reality,” NTHP president Paul Edmondson said in a statement. “These places give us a better understanding of the complex history of our nation and allow us to explore the ideas that continue to challenge us today.”

The remaining sites named in the 2022 11 Most Endangered Historical Places list include under-appreciated works of modernism, namely the Richard Neutra–designed Francisco Q. Sanchez Elementary School in Humåtak, Guam. Yet there are also some surprises: In the Long Island resort community of East Hampton—where preservation awareness runs high—the home and studios of Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park are empty and deteriorating. And in Virginia, the remains of the nationally important Jamestown settlement are threatened by climate change. More information about all 11 inclusions, NTHP’s selection process, and paths forward is available at savingplaces.org/.

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