The Metropolitan AME Zion Church was founded in 1866 in Chester, South Carolina. It was one of the first AME churches founded in the state after the Civil War. The Romanesque Revival church was built in 1913. It is a contributing property to the Chester Historic District.
In downtown Birmingham, a recently restored Greyhound Bus Station serves as a reminder of Greyhound’s heyday. Built in 1952 by William Strudwick Arrasmith, noted for his designs of Greyhound Bus Stations, the Streamline Moderne building was one of the many bus stations that the Freedom Riders passed through to force bus desegregation.
The station was a key location for the civil rights movement. On May 14, 1961, two buses left Atlanta, Georgia, bound for New Orleans. White supremacists attacked the civil rights activists and slashed one bus’s tires. The driver was able to leave, but the mob stopped the bus and threw a firebomb into it. When the second bus arrived in Birmingham, they were greeted by Ku Klux Klansmen who had been tipped off by Police Commissioner Bull Conner, who told them they had fifteen minutes where they could freely attack the Freedom Riders.
After Greyhound moved operations in 2017, the building sat vacant until it was recently restored. The restoration uncovered many hidden mid-century details that can be seen today, like the bus marquee and the iconic silver greyhound.
African Cemetery No. 2 is the earliest recorded cemetery organized, owned, and managed by the Black citizens of Lexington, Kentucky. Purchased in 1869 by the Union Benevolent Society No. 2 and chartered in 1870, it served as a burial ground until 1976.
The cemetery’s notable residents include Oliver Lewis, the first Kentucky Derby winner, and Isaac Burns Murphy, a three-time Derby-winning jockey. It also contains graves of over 150 U.S. Colored Troops, including soldiers from the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments.
After decades of neglect, the site was declared abandoned in 1973. Plans for development ended when surveys revealed over 5,000 burials. In 1979, Rev. Horace Henry Greene lead the restoration efforts of the cemetery and founded the non-profit to manage the cemetery. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
Built in 1926 and located on West Madison Street, the Allen Hotel was once Louisville’s largest hotel for Black guests during segregation. Featured in the Negro Motorist Green Book, it offered safe lodging when few places would. Notable figures, such as boxer Joe Louis, stayed in the fifty-room building.
The building is still in use today as part of an apartment complex.
The Caney Fork Baptist Church is located east of Scottsville, Kentucky. While the church is no longer in use, the congregation is still hosting reunions.
It is associated with the historic Caney Fork Rosenwald School.
The Buck Creek School is a one-teacher schoolhouse near Finchville, Kentucky, in Shelby County. It was built for $1800. Completed in 1920, it was used until 1957. It was converted to a residence in 1959. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
