The National Parks Service (NPS) announced more than $ 700,000 in grants to historic sites in under-represented communities to preserve and honor their history.

“Through these grants to our certified state, tribal and local partners, the national registry will continue to grow to help tell our country’s diverse story,” NPS Deputy Director Shawn Benge said in a statement.

The money comes from the Historic Preservation Fund, which uses revenues from federal oil leases on the outer continental shelf to provide $ 150 million per year in historic preservation grants to state, local and tribal governments. Of this amount, $ 4 million is intended for grants to under-represented communities in order to diversify the applications.

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A total of $ 743,531 has been awarded so far this year to projects in more than a dozen states, including studies on the Latino community in Detroit, the LGBTQ + community in Portland, Oregon, and the women’s suffrage sites in Colorado. Here are some of the historical monuments benefiting from the grant program:

Edwards High School in Gonzales, Texas, which was open late 1800s to 1965, when it closed to avoid desegregation after the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

Joliet Correctional Center, a prison in Joliet, Illinois, which operated from 1858 to 2002 and was featured in several major films, including “The Blues Brothers”.

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Dunbar School, named after famous African-American author Paul Laurence Dunbar, was a school for black children before desegregation; the Ulysse Céphas house, located in a neighborhood known as the “Cradle of jazz and swing”, which housed the blacksmith and community leader Ulysses S. Cephas; and the African-American Museum of Calaboose all in San Marcos, Texas.

Vaughn Bookstore in Detroit was one of the nation’s leading publishers of black poets in 1965.

Saint-Paul College, a historically black university in Virginia, was founded by a formerly enslaved episcopal priest in 1888.

Chemehuevi cemetery, a tribal cemetery in California, sits on land from which the Twenty-Nine Palms Mission Indian Band was withdrawn in the early 1900s. It has recently been returned to the tribe.

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