11 Most Endangered Historic Locations’ record contains Eatonville, Fla. : NPR

There is a lonely previous church within the mountains of West Virginia that holds a hidden historical past. Black coal miners in a segregated camp worshipped there beginning within the Twenties. Now, the New Salem Baptist Church is listed as one among America’s 11 most endangered historic websites.

The Nationwide Belief for Historic Preservation has launched a listing highlighting such locations yearly since 1988. Carol Quillen is the group’s new president and CEO. Skilled as a historian, she was the primary feminine president of Davidson Faculty in North Carolina.

“I studied the previous largely by means of texts, not locations,” Quillen advised NPR. “And the distinction between imagining one’s relationship to the previous by means of experiencing a spot and studying a ebook in a library is actually profound. So I really like the way in which these locations, which themselves maintain layers and layers of tales, and invite us within the current to attach our tales to those these locations maintain.”

Quillen stated the push to protect the New Salem Baptist Church got here from a white Catholic girl whose father was the city’s milkman. She enlisted not simply the descendants of the church’s authentic parishioners but in addition native ATV riders who may see and admire the church from a mountain path.

“I really like tales like that the place a preservation challenge can mobilize people who usually would not encounter each other to work collectively on one thing vital to all of them,” Quillen stated. “And in that work, rework what the place can imply.”

Black residents of Eatonville, Fla., have been making an attempt to protect their hometown for many years. One of many first self-governing all-Black cities in the USA, Eatonville was immortalized within the traditional 1937 novel Their Eyes Have been Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The legendary Harlem Renaissance author and anthropologist as soon as described her hometown as “town of 5 lakes, three croquet courts, 300 brown skins, 300 good swimmers, loads guavas, two colleges and no jailhouse.”

In a 2015 NPR story reported by Renata Sago, residents dreamed of an Eatonville reborn as a year-round heritage vacation spot and remembered it as a refuge through the days of Jim Crow.

“We did not lock our doorways and children may exit and play,” recalled an aged resident, Maye Saint Julian. “And everyone knew everyone. And all of those folks that we honor so — James Brown, B.B. King, Lionel Hampton — these folks got here to Eatonville regularly.”

Ideally, Eatonville and lots of different websites on the record, akin to the Cindy Walker Home, may ultimately turn out to be better-known cultural locations. Positioned in Mexia, Texas, the ramshackle white body construction was the place a outstanding, unsung determine in nation music lived for a few years. Walker was one of many few feminine songwriters of her period. She wrote nation requirements and primary hits for Roy Orbison, Merle Haggard, Elvis Presley and extra.

After she died in 2006, Walker’s home was left deserted. A handful of followers and heirs fashioned a basis in her honor and bought it in 2022.

“They discovered all types of issues there,” Quillen stated. “They discovered her typewriter. They discovered her nation music awards. They discovered songs that nobody had ever heard earlier than.” A kind of songs was a misplaced demo, known as “Tennessee Rain,” that may be heard within the audio model of this story.

Over the previous three a long time, the Nationwide Belief has seen some triumphs with its annual record of endangered locations. Dozens of them have been saved, together with the Antietam Nationwide Battlefield in Maryland, which narrowly missed changing into the location of a shopping center, and Little Rock Central Excessive Faculty, the place younger Arkansas college students helped overturn a legacy of authorized segregation in 1957.

Now established by Congress as a Nationwide Historic Web site, it is nonetheless a working public highschool and a middle for schooling concerning the nation’s civil rights.

“We do not need to spray these websites with ScotchgarEd, you realize, and roll them off,” Quillen stated. “We actually need to reinvigorate them so that they are energetic, thrilling locations for folks to go in order that they will proceed to deliver folks collectively now and lengthy into the longer term.”

Listed below are the remainder of the endangered historic locations on the record this yr:

Property Whim Museum, Frederiksted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands: “Established through the colonization of St. Croix by Denmark, Property Whim was a plantation producing cotton and sugar for export. The lives and legacies of these enslaved by plantation homeowners and those that continued to labor there for meager wages for a century after emancipation are inextricably tied to the location, which now hosts a museum, library and archives, and public programming. Repeated hurricanes have broken lots of Property Whim Museum’s historic buildings and buildings.”

Hudson-Athens Lighthouse, Athens, N.Y.: “Opened in 1874, the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse was one among a number of ‘middle-of-the-river’ lighthouses on the Hudson River. Now, it is one among solely two left standing. Nonetheless, resulting from erosion and different preservation challenges, engineering reviews point out the constructing is vulnerable to collapse inside three years if no motion is taken.”

Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, Calif.: “Little Tokyo is one among solely 4 remaining Japantowns in the USA and one of many oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, however its distinctive character is endangered by large-scale improvement and transit initiatives and displacement of legacy companies and eating places.”

Minute Man Nationwide Historic Park, Walden, and close by landmarks, Massachusetts: “Minute Man Nationwide Historic Park and the close by areas of Harmony, Lexington, Lincoln, and Bedford are dwelling to locations of nice significance in American historical past, together with Walden Pond and Woods and the preserved homesteads of authors and environmentalists: Little Girls’s Louisa Might Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. A proposed main growth of close by Hanscom Area airport may considerably improve personal jet visitors, resulting in elevated noise, vehicular visitors, and adverse environmental and local weather impacts.”

Roosevelt Excessive Faculty, Gary, Ind.: “Theodore Roosevelt Excessive Faculty in Gary was in-built 1930 particularly to serve the academic wants of Black Individuals and has graduated notable alumni together with skilled athletes, well-known actors, and members of The Jackson 5. The varsity has been unoccupied and deteriorating since 2019.”

Sitka Tlingit Clan Homes, Sitka, Alaska: “The Sitka Tlingit Clan Homes in southeast Alaska are critically essential to each the historical past and the way forward for the Lingít (generally spelled in English as “Tlingit”). For a few years, the matrilineal clan construction of multigenerational prolonged households residing collectively in clan homes was discouraged in favor of the Western observe of residing with nuclear households. Right now, solely eight of the unique 43 clan homes stay and even fewer nonetheless operate as clan homes within the conventional method.”

Tangier American Legation, Tangier, Morocco: “In 1821, the Tangier American Legation in Morocco was gifted to the USA by the Moroccan Sultan as a token of friendship, changing into the primary American public property positioned overseas, and subsequently served as a U.S. diplomatic mission for a file 140 years. Now a cultural middle, museum, and analysis library, the Legation is in pressing want of structural stabilization and repairs following the latest collapse of an adjoining constructing.”

Wilderness Battlefield Space, Orange County, Va.: “The Battle of the Wilderness marked a pivotal turning level within the Civil Battle, however at the moment, not all of the traditionally vital panorama is protected. Proposed massive new developments, together with hundreds of thousands of sq. ft of commercial information facilities and hundreds of properties, could negatively impression essential historic websites and landscapes and degrade the customer expertise.”