Sewell gives $750K check to historic Tabernacle Baptist Church for renovations

Rep. Terri Sewell gave a $750,000 check to historic Tabernacle Baptist Church on Broad Street for repairs to the 101-year-old church that has served as a civil rights gathering spot.

The funding came from the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund to preserve Civil Rights sites and will be used to cover the cost to rewire the sanctuary that was built in 1922. The Tabernacle Legacy Foundation will oversee the grant and Chairwoman Dr. Verdell Lett Dawson said there are other projects planned to improve the building’s foundation.

“We in Selma are mere custodians of Americas history,” Sewell said in a press conference in the middle of Tabernacle’s sanctuary. “The world descends on Selma in commemoration of Bloody Sunday every year, and they often don’t leave anything behind. But the National Park Service has been lifeline for so many of the most amazing churches that are so pivotal in civil rights movement.”

Sewell said preserving the church ensures foot soldiers will have a way to share their story with future generations to learn about how Tabernacle served as the location for the first mass meeting of organizers to protest for equal civil rights in the mid 1960s.

Historic Tabernacle Baptist is serving as host of exhibits from the Selma Interpretive Center that is closed for expansion. 

Pastor Otis Dion Culliver said preserving civil rights history also is preservation of the truth.

“Bring us these funds makes us able to preserve the site and preserve the truth,” he said. “We live in day and age where the truth is in trouble. Oftentimes the truth is seen as subjective rather than objective. But we see this as an important way to preserve the truth.”

Tabernacle got $500,000 from National Park Services in 2020 and 2021 for other reconstruction work on the building.