Great Falls’ Union Bethel AME Receives African American Civil Rights Grant

• July 31 2024

The Montana Historical Society (MTHS) recently was awarded a $497,712 grant to stabilize and provide safe access to the historic Union Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Great Falls.

The funding comes through the Department of Interior’s National Park Service, which is home to the Historic Preservation Fund’s African American Civil Rights grant program. The program focuses on preserving sites and stories directly associated with African Americans’ struggles to gain equal rights.

Union Bethel AME church stands as one of the most significant properties associated with Montana’s African American Civil Rights history. Organized in 1890, congregants dedicated Union Bethel’s current church in 1917. By the 1910s, discriminatory “Jim Crow” laws infiltrated Montana’s codes and local ordinances, placing restrictions on Black residents’ ability to marry, work, and patronize businesses.  Unofficial but pervasive policies placed many constraints on African Americans. In response, Union Bethel AME became the center of Great Falls African American citizens’ civil rights work for social uplift, education, and equality at the local, state, and national levels.

Pastor Betsy Williams describes the Gothic Revival-style church as a jewel in the neighborhood.

“I see life that comes from here,” Williams said. “It's a shining brightness … in the middle of this neighborhood; [it] is somewhere where you can gather, where there can be resources, where there can be help, where there can be spiritual uplifting.”

This grant, together with Church’s additional $200,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Saving Black Churches program, will fund repairs to the failing exterior brick; the installation a new lift to provide access; create ADA-compliant bathrooms; and update the electrical system. The MTHS will provide technical guidance, as church leadership, community members, local government officials, preservation professionals, and craftspeople make the building safe and useable for another century of service.

“Since 2016, the National Park Service has provided over $126 million through this program to document, preserve, and recognize the places and stories associated with the struggle for civil rights of African Americans,” said National Park Service Director Chuck Sams.

Learn more about additional African American Civil Rights grant recipients here: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/historicpreservationfund/aacr-funded-projects.htm

Through the Historic Preservation Fund, Congress appropriated funding for the African American Civil Rights Grant Program in fiscal year 2023. The HPF uses revenue from federal oil and gas leases on the Outer Continental Shelf to assist with a broad range of preservation projects, lessening the loss of nonrenewable resources and benefiting the preservation of other irreplaceable resources, without using tax dollars.

For more information about NPS historic preservation programs and grants, please visit go.nps.gov/grants. For more information about the Union Bethel AME Stabilization and Access Project, contact Kate Hampton at the Montana State Historic Preservation Office, 406-444-7742, khampton@mt.gov.