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A project nearly 10 years in the making moved forward this week, as the Robert Russa Moton Museum got one step closer to being named a World Heritage site. Federal officials with the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that they plan to nominate a multi-state application, including the museum, for inclusion on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) list. 

Typically, individual sites are nominated on their own. But in 2016, Georgia State University officials had an idea. Why not put together one application, featuring multiple sites across the South that played a role in the American Civil Rights Movement? The Moton Museum is one of several locations making up that group. 

“We’re thrilled by the nomination,” said Cainan Townsend, executive director of the Moton Museum. “For years international visitors have stopped by to tour our historic site, so gaining the World Heritage designation would increase our international visibility and help spread our story around the globe. We are grateful to so many local, regional, and statewide partners who have helped to support this effort. World Heritage designation is the highest form of historic designation a site can receive internationally.”

What is a World Heritage list? 

So before we detail the application process, let’s explain a bit about the end goal here. In 1972, UNESCO created the World Heritage List. This list consists of locations around the world that meet the criteria to be preserved due to their natural or cultural contribution. The Taj Mahal, for example, is on this list. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Great Wall of China are also included. Once a site makes the list, UNESCO and the overall UN then agrees to help safeguard it for future generations. 

It’s hard to make the list. Only 1,199 sites in the world are on it. Across the entire United States, only 25 sites are currently there. That includes places like Independence Hall, Yellowstone National Park, Monticello here in Virginia and the Statue of Liberty. But once on it, UNESCO gives the sites the opportunity to access a couple things. 

• The first is conservation funding. Sites can apply for money from the World Heritage Fund, which gives out dollars for upkeep and renovations.   
• The second is protection, but how much is up for discussion. Once a site makes the list, it falls under the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. That’s the 1972 treaty which lays out the duties of each government that signs on. The governments promise to protect and preserve these historic sites. However, there’s no no punishment if that doesn’t happen and governments can drop out at any point. The U.S., for example, quit in 2017 and then rejoined in 2023.
• The third is international recognition. A site on the list gets attention across the world, which may bring more visitors.  
• The fourth is expert advice. Countries with listed sites can get financial assistance and advice from the World Heritage Committee on the best ways to support preservation efforts.
  

Moton Museum one of several sites

So what sites make up this application? There are several, connected into one overall story. 

There are three places where protest marches, mass demonstrations and violent suppression of nonviolent activists happened. 

“Three historic Black churches in Alabama are on the U.S. Tentative List for World Heritage already awaiting this formal nomination,” according to Dr. Glenn T. Eskew, the director of the Georgia State University World Heritage Initiative tasked with preparing the application. Eskew explained that “joining them will be additional sites that collectively express the African-American agency that used nonviolent protest to end the racial segregation of legal white supremacy, thereby gaining freedom and equality for all people.”

The Moton Museum falls into the second section, three sites concerning the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark ruling on school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education. The Moton Museum used to be Moton High School, a segregated school for black children. It was there Black students walked out over their inferior school conditions, later filing a lawsuit that was merged with similar cases to form what would become the Brown case. Also included in this group is Monroe Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas, which was another one of those cases. Also, Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, where federal officials escorted nine Black students to class, to enforce the Brown decision.  

Another section highlights the role the African American church played in the Civil Rights movement. Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church is identified with the Montgomery Bus Boycott where the federal courts applied the Brown decision to public transportation; and both Bethel Baptist and Sixteenth Street Baptist Churches reflect the struggle for equal access in public accommodations in Birmingham; so too Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, reveals the theology preached by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The fourth section includes sites of nonviolent demonstrations such as the 1961 Freedom Ride that upon reaching the Anniston, Alabama, Greyhound Bus Terminal met white resistance but continued on. Also proposed are sites identified with sit-ins and freedom rides such as the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson, Mississippi, where a white supremacist murdered the civil rights activist in 1963.

And finally, part of the application includes places of mass gatherings in protest against white supremacy such as the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall where the March on Washington occurred in 1963 and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where the state brutally beat nonviolent voting rights advocates in 1965. 

What happens now? 

First, groups submit an application to their respective governments. In this case, that happened in 2023. According to UNESCO officials, only countries can nominate sites for inclusion in the World Heritage list. This past week, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Halland authorized the National Park Service to move forward with a joint nomination for the Civil Rights groups, including the Moton Museum. 

To do this requires a more detailed plan, explaining everything from daily operations to how the sites will be preserved, as well as why they should be included on the list. Then this will be reviewed and approved by the National Park Service and the Assistant Secretary of the Interior. After that, it gets sent to the International Council on Monuments and Sites, which makes a thumbs up or thumbs down recommendation to UNESCO. Think of them much like a planning commission in this case. They recommend and then the World Heritage Committee, much like a county board of supervisors, will make a final decision. 

Just don’t expect any of this to happen quickly. It will likely be several years before the request goes to the Heritage Committee for a vote.