Several organizations have committed a total of $1.5 million to rebuild the Historic Clayborn Temple.
Today, the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, Mellon Foundation, and Ford Foundation announced their efforts to preserve the legacy of the temple through restoration.
Brent Leggs, executive director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Culture Heritage Action Fund, said this funding is a part of a collective grant from all the organizations.
Officials said this is a part of a larger campaign that will launch in “the coming months” and will garner support from other national foundations.
Yesterday, a press conference was held at the temple on the one month anniversary of the fire. Speakers such as Congressman Steve Cohen, Mayor Paul Young, and Martin Luther King III stressed the historical significance of the temple, especially in the Civil Rights Movement.
“Clayborn Temple is more than just brick and mortar. It’s a sanctuary of purpose, where civil rights and labor leaders came together in the fight for dignity and where community was born,” Martin Luther King III said. “For my father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike was more than a campaign; it was a calling. Clayborn Temple and its story is a national legacy, and rebuilding is about reclaiming a sacred space that holds the soul of a movement.”
Last week the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) announced that the fire was a result of arson.
