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Black American History - Landmark and Cultural Institutions

 Some additional African American landmarks include Brown Chapel AME Church, Camden Expedition Site, and Fort Lyon. Malcom X is an example of a movie that features landmarks significant to African American history, such as Harlem’s art deco Thirties, Charleston State Prison, and the Audobon Ballroom. The complete information regarding landmarks significant to African American history and movies that feature such sites is provided below.

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American Landmarks Significant to Black American History

Bethel Baptist Church, Parsonage, and Guard House

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • This place is considered an African American historical landmark by the Black Past. It was built in 1926 in Collegeville, an African American community in Birmingham, Alabama.
  • Collegeville shares a border to the east of North Birmingham and lies just north of Norwood. "In the 1960s, it was a hub for Civil Rights activism."
African American History Month: BLS Spotlight on Statistics
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • The church served as headquarters for the Alabama Christian Movement for human rights (ACMHR) chaired by Reverend Shuttlesworth.
  • The site was also where Shuttlesworth coordinated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Kennedy administration to continue the ride on to Montgomery.
  • There was a speech given during the Fourth Annual Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change at this site.

Foster Auditorium, University of Alabama

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • The Foster Auditorium is also considered an African American landmark by the Black Past. At this site, Governor George Wallace tried to prevent two black students from entering in 1963. To let them in, Kennedy called on the National Guard. The event was known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door Incident."
  • It is located at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. It was built in 1939 and named after the University of Alabama president from 1937 to 1941, Richard Clarke Foster. "It was designed by the renowned Birmingham architectural firm of Miller, Martin, and Lewis in the Neoclassical Revival style."
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • The Foster Auditorium was one of the venues for the recent Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. The message passed by the protesters geared toward the end of racism and police brutality in the US.

Brown Chapel AME Church

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • The Brown Chapel AME is located in Selma, Dallas County, and was made a National Historic Landmark in 1997. It is the site where the Selma to Montgomery Marches, which led to the adoption of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It also served as a refuge for injured marchers.
  • The chapel is named for "AME bishop John Mifflin Brown, an African American born in Delaware who established the AME church at the Selma chapel."
  • Black slaves attended Brown Chapel with their masters. After the ensuing emancipation and Union victory in the Civil War, the black congregation moved to the basement of the Broad Street (later Albert) Hotel in 1866.
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
How Much Do You Know About African American History? | BrainFall
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches

Camden Expedition Site

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • The Camden Expedition Site, also known as the Poison Spring Battlefield site, hosted different Civil War battles, in which Black Union troops suffered heavy casualties. The battles occurred as "Confederate cavalry units led by Joseph Shelby harassed the rear of Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele's Union Army. This was the Camden Expedition of 1864, and the battles in Clark County marked what Mark Christ calls 'the first serious resistance to Steele's advance,' which became known as the Red River Campaign.
  • The site is located in the Ouachita County, Arkansas. The county was created in 1842 after taking land from Union County, and named after the Ouachita River.
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • No significant marches, protests, or speeches were found in the public domain.

Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial Park

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • On July 17, 1944, at 10:18 p.m., at Port Chicago, “320 men, mostly African American sailors (more than 200), were instantly killed when two ships being loaded with ammunition for the Pacific theater troops blew up." The occurrence was dubbed as the worst disaster on the homefront during the Second World War. Today, the site is known as Concord and has become home to Concord Naval Weapons Station, as well as Military Ocean Terminal Concord, or MOTCO.
  • The explosion caused the shattering of windows on homes and businesses as far away as the San Francisco Bay Area, 30 miles away. The explosion also led to the largest Naval mutiny in U.S. history with over 250 anxiety-ridden soldiers, refusing to continue loading ammunition since no modifications or improvements were made to operating procedures. Also, the black soldiers were not allowed equal post-incident “survivors’ leave” as their white counterparts.
  • The memorial park is located in Martinez, California. This region encompasses "12.47 square miles and a rich history dating back before California achieved statehood."
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • There was a speech that took place on Port Chicago Virtual Commemoration - 76th Anniversary.

Fort Lyon

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • Fort Lyon, located in Bent County, Colorado, was founded in 1867 as a US Army Post. In 2000, the site was transferred to the State of Colorado’s Department of Corrections. Several companies of African American soldiers were based at the location in anticipation of the winter campaign against the southern Cheyenne in 1868 by General Philip Sheridan.
  • Active troops of the western Indian Wars of the 19th century consists of companies of African American soldiers known as Buffalo Soldiers, who served despite “extreme racial prejudice, and in some cases, violence at the hands of civilians and white soldiers.” An example is an incident in March 1869, where white soldiers provoked a fight with some Buffalo Soldiers in a theater, leading to the removal of the 10th Cavalry from the region.
  • Bent County was named after William Bent, a famous "nineteenth-century trader who established Bent’s Fort, a trading post on the Arkansas River."
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • No significant marches, protests, or speeches were found in the public domain.

Howard High School

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • Howard High School, located in Wilmington, Delaware, is directly associated with the landmark US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that classified racial segregation in public schools as unconstitutional.
  • In Belton, "parents of black students living in Claymont, Delaware, sued to enroll their children in the local all-white high school. Prior to Brown, black students were bused to Howard High School, which was nine miles away in an undesirable part of Wilmington." The school was "the first in Delaware to grant a complete high school education to black students and was one of the earliest black secondary schools in the Nation. "
  • Wilmington's first settlement began in 1638 when the Kalmar Nyckel, a Swedish warship, landed at "The Rocks" in the Christina River. It was founded as New Sweden and is "the largest downtown in the state of Delaware."
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
  •  This video contains an interview with several students from Howard High School (class of 1960).
  •  NPS, AA Registry, and Black Past have published press releases regarding the site.
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • No significant marches, protests, or speeches were found in the public domain.

The Audobon Ballroom

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
President Trump's Proclamation for African American History Month ...
  • The Audubon Ballroom and Theater is located in Broadway between 165th and 166th Streets. It was opened in 1912 and was one of the first theaters in Washington Heights and Inwood. It was "the site of early efforts to organize the municipal transit workers of New York City and the original meeting hall for the IRT Brotherhood."
  • On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated while giving a speech as part of the Organization of Afro-American Unity's rally. The event forced the Audubon to close its doors and was later taken over by the City of New York in 1967 and was eventually bought by Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. Today, it is home to The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.
  • The Washington Heights neighborhood, where the site is located, was the site of a Revolutionary War battle in 1776. New York City professional baseball had its beginnings in this neighborhood.
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • Malcom X gave his last speech at this venue and can be accessed here.

Quindaro Ruins

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • "This town became an important station on the Underground Railroad, with slave escaping from Platte County and hiding with local farmers before traveling to Nebraska for freedom." As a result of the Civil War, the place was abandoned by most of its inhabitants.
  • In 2019, Quindaro Ruins was recognized as a "national commemorative site."
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
  •  Wyandotte Daily, the Black Past, and KCUR have published press releases about the site.
  • No interviews were found in the public domain regarding this landmark. However, this source contains different statements from Kansas City authorities regarding the site.
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • No significant marches, protests, or speeches were found in the public domain.

Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site (Tuskegee University)

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site is located in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was created in 1881 by the Alabama State Legislature as the Normal School for Colored Teachers at Tuskegee, which started on the grounds of a church and became one of the first Historically Black Colleges in the US. The school is now Tuskegee University.
  • This university was part of the expansion of education for blacks in the South following the Civil War. It started with a student body of 30 and one teacher, Booker T. Washington. "It features the laboratory of early 20th Century’s most famous African American scientist, George Washington Carver."
  • Tuskegee was founded in 1833 by General Thomas Simpson Woodward. It is the home of the first law school in Alabama, the Baptist College for Women, the Tuskegee Female College, the Tuskegee Military Institute for Boys, and the Park High School for Boys were among the early.
  • African American History Month 2018 – Cleveland Public Library
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
  •  NPS and National Park Planner have published press releases about the site.
  • An interview with a park ranger of the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site can be accessed here.
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • In 2016, Tyler Perry gave a commencement speech at this site.

Daisy Bates House

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • The Daisy Bates House, located in Little Rock, Arkansas, was the home of Mrs. Daisy Lee Gaston Bates and her husband Lucius Christopher (L.C.) Bates during the Central High School desegregation crisis in 1957-1958. Their house gave shelter to nine African-American students (the Little Rock Nine) who desegregated the school.
  • Bates also arranged a multiracial group of ministers "to escort the nine students into the school on the morning of September 4, 1957." Her house also served as a meeting place and organizational site for the students and their parents on the day of the school’s integration.
  • The home was vandalized "in several acts of anti-integration violence." The windows were fired and crosses were burned in the yard. After the schools were closed to avoid integration, the house "was the target of an incendiary bomb. " Today, the Bates home is in the National Register of Historic Places.
  • Little Rock was established in 1820. In the same year, territorial Governor James Miller designated Little Rock as the new capital for Arkansas. From the 1960s to the 1990s the town expanded its cultural life "with the opening of the Arkansas Arts Center, Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Arkansas Repertory Theater, Ballet Arkansas, Wildwood Park for the Arts, the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, and the relocation of the Museum of Discovery to the River Market."
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • No significant marches, protests, or speeches were found in the public domain.

Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • In August 1908 Colonel Allen Allensworth along four other settlers "established a town founded, financed, and governed by African Americans." Their dream was to develop "an abundant and thriving community" with programs that allowed blacks to help themselves get better lives. By 1910 Allensworth’s success was the focus of many national newspaper articles praising the town and its inhabitants.
  • This site is located in the rural southern San Joaquin Valley. This region is one of the original 27 California counties, established in 1850 when California became a state. Agriculture is the main activity in the area.
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • No significant marches, protests, or speeches were found in the public domain.

The Bridget “Biddy” Mason Memorial Park

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • This monument honors "one of the first prominent citizens and landowners in Los Angeles during the 1850s and 1860s." Mason was a formerly enslaved woman who, in 1872, founded the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. Throughout the years, she purchased more property, and eventually became a wealthy woman and a philanthropist.
  • It is located in South Spring Street in Los Angeles, California. This area is part of the historic core of the city.
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • No significant marches, protests, or speeches were found in the public domain.

John Philip Sousa Junior High School

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • Located in Washington, DC, the John Philip Sousa Junior High School is part of the struggle to desegregate schools in this city. "In September 1950, black children were denied admission to the then all-white Sousa School in an orchestrated move to legally challenge federally segregated schools in the District of Columbia." These events led to the court case Bolling v. Sharpe, which was the foundation of the "separate but equal" doctrine. The school is "a symbol of the lengthy conflict" that resulted in the racial desegregation of public schools.
  • Washington DC "served as the center stage for the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
  •  NPS and the Black Past have published press releases regarding this site.
  • This article contains a testimonial of Adrienne Jennings Bennett when she tried to enter the then-segregated John Philip Sousa Junior High School.
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • No significant marches, protests, or speeches were found in the public domain.

Frederick Douglass House

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • This colonial mansion called "Cedar Hill" was the house of Frederick Douglass "for the last 13 years of his life." It is now a monument to the 19th-century abolitionist. Douglas lived in this house from age 60 until he died seventeen years later in 1895. He and his wife were the only Black people in the neighborhood.
  • At the urging of Frederick's second wife, Helen, Congress created the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association (FDMHA) in 1900, and when she died in 1903, the house became the property of the Association, which partnered with the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs in 1916 to restore it in 1922. The house was later purchased by the National Park Service in 1962.
  • Anacostia, the neighborhood in which the house is located, is one of Washington D.C.'s earliest neighborhoods.
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • No significant marches, protests, or speeches were found in the public domain.

Lincoln Park (The Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial)

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • The Mary McLeod Bethune memorial is located in this park. It was unveiled in 1974 and is the first monument to be made in honor of a black person. Bethune was a "major figure in the New Deal and one of the highest placed African Americans in American government up to that time." She was the director of the National Youth Administration’s Division of Negro Affairs and belonged to President Roosevelt’s informal advisory group, the "Black Cabinet." She was the founder of the National Council of Negro Women.
  • Lincoln Park is located in Washington, D.C. It has been recognized as a neighborhood park and a memorial landscape. Its main attractions are the Emancipation Monument and the memorial to Mary McLeod Bethune.
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • In the 1974 unveiling event, "actor Roscoe Lee Brown read extracts from the speech Frederick Douglass made at the Freedmen’s Memorial over a hundred years earlier."

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • This memorial features a granite sculpture of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is located at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It opened in August 2011 to commemorate "the King’s fight for civil rights and the year that the 1964 Civil Rights Act became law."
  • The National Mall is a 2-mile-long open space that extends "from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, and from the White House to the Jefferson Memorial." It symbolizes American democracy and it is used for national gatherings as well as civic celebrations and demonstrations.
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
  • The Black Past, NPS, and TripHacks have published press releases about the site.
  •  This link contains an interview with Lei Yixin, the sculptor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • In 2011, President Barack Obama conducted a speech at this site.

Metropolitan AME Church

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • This landmark is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. Builtin 1838, it has had important African American prisoners, including Frederick Douglass and Altheia Turner. Also, the funeral services for Douglass and former US Senator Blanche K. Bruce were held at this church.
  • Downtown DC, where the church is located, is close to popular attractions, cultural experiences, national retail chains, and popular dining options.
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
  • The Washington Informer, the Black Past, and NPS have published press releases about the site.
  • No interviews were found in the public domain regarding this landmark.
  • Honoring Black History Month and the... - New York Daily News ...
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches

Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall, and Founders Library, Howard University

Description, Location, and Notes About the Region
  • The three buildings (Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall, and Founders Library) were key for the university’s legal establishment of integrated public education. "Howard University is nationally significant as the setting for the legal establishment of racially desegregated public education."
  • Howard University, one of the US's top historically black colleges, opened officially in 1867 and has lately seen hundreds of new nonblack residents move into the neighborhood each month.
Links to Relevant Interviews and Press Releases
  • The Black Past, Civil Rights Trail, and NPS have published press releases about the site.
  • This source contains small excerpts of interviews with pastors and scholars of Howard University.
Significant Marches/Protests/Speeches
  • Vernon Eulion Jordan Jr., an American business executive and civil rights activist in the US, recently gave a speech at Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel.

Movies/Shows/Series Featuring Black American History Landmarks

Malcom X
  •  Malcom X is a biographical movie about an influential Black Nationalist leader. It was directed by Spike Lee.
  • The movie features the childhood home of Malcolm Little on Nebraska, Harlem’s art deco Thirties, Charleston State Prison, and the Audobon Ballroom.
Selma
  •  Selma is a movie about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to fight for equal voting rights. It was directed by Ava DuVernay.
  • The movie features the Brown Chapel AME Church, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the Alabama State Capitol.
Hidden Figures
Tremé
  •  Tremé is a TV series about the lives of New Orleans's residents after the events of Hurricane Katrina. It was created by Eric Ellis Overmyer and David Simon.
  • The series features Tremé, the oldest African-American neighborhood in the US.
The Other America

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