Little Rock Central High School is among a group of 11 Civil Rights Movement locales under consideration for nomination to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage List, which includes “cultural and natural sites of universal importance” like Grand Canyon National Park, the Taj Mahal and the Galápagos Islands.
Deb Haaland, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, announced last week that she had authorized the National Park Service to draft a potential nomination for the sites. That said, Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles, the park service’s chief spokesperson, clarified in an email that “this is a very early step in the process” and that “regulations require a press release at this procedural step.”
To that end, even if the finalized nomination gets submitted (which isn’t a guarantee), the decision for inclusion on UNESCO’s list will ultimately be left up to the World Heritage Committee, a group of elected representatives from 21 nations that meets once a year. Currently, the World Heritage List comprises 1,199 locations across 168 countries, and 25 of the sites are in the United States.
Here are all the Civil Rights Movement sites under consideration to be nominated. Most of them already have designations of national historic significance, but a listing to UNESCO would mean international recognition:
- Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama
- Bethel Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama
- 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama
- Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama
- Greyhound Bus Terminal, Anniston, Alabama
- Little Rock Central High School
- Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta (part of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park)
- Monroe Elementary School, Topeka, Kansas (part of Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park)
- Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home, Jackson, Mississippi
- Robert Russa Moton High School/Museum, Farmville, Virginia
- Lincoln Memorial and Grounds, Washington, D.C.