Cassandra Carmichael, the partnership’s executive director, said the report was a “natural result” of the earlier petition.
“NRPE has been working with Black church leaders on land protection for quite some time and it was important to better understand and articulate their perspectives and priorities as it relates to public lands,” she told Religion News Service in an email. “The next steps are to look at places that tell the stories that the Black church leaders identified as important and to lend our voice to their protection and conservation.”
In 2017, in one of his last official acts, Obama designated Alabama’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where a bombing killed four girls in 1963, and other civil rights landmarks as the Birmingham Civil Rights Monument.
Cassandra Carmichael. Photo © Natalie Michelle Photography
In 2018, then-President Donald Trump designated a Kentucky training center for African American soldiers in the Civil War as the Camp Nelson National Monument. The next year, he designated the Jackson, Mississippi, home of civil rights leader Medgar Evers as the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument.
Carmichael said her organization, which is funded by individual donors and foundations, sent its report to members of Congress and the Biden administration and is seeking a meeting with administration officials.
Though Biden has not designated any national monuments, McClain said he hopes the partnership’s report will give suggestions for what places could be designated.
“These are sites that we’re proposing that are very important to American history in general, but yes, African American history in particular,” he said. “And they need to be preserved for future generations to know about and to visit and to have the understanding of what took place.”
This article originally appeared here.
