The Federal Process for Designating New Civil Rights Historic Sites

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The death of Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson on February 17, 2026, at age 84 set off an immediate scramble among preservationists. Not the usual scramble—the kind where historians debate legacy and politicians issue statements. A different kind: the race to protect physical buildings before they disappear.

The Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters on Chicago’s South Side. The churches where Jackson organized voter registration drives in the 1970s. The offices where he negotiated corporate accountability agreements. All of it now vulnerable in ways it wasn’t when Jackson was alive and active.

Without formal federal designation, these places can be sold, demolished, or renovated beyond recognition. The process to secure that designation typically takes two to five years, requires extensive documentation, and can be derailed by a single property owner’s objection.

What “National Significance” Means

The National Park Service distinguishes between properties important to local communities and those deemed important to the entire nation.

To become officially recognized by the federal government as historically important, a property must occupy a nearly unique position in telling a nationally important story. Not just “this church mattered to its community.” More like “this specific building was where a pivotal moment in civil rights history unfolded, and no other building can tell that story as powerfully.”

The Six Criteria (And Why They Matter for Civil Rights Sites)

The first criterion covers properties associated with events that made significant contributions to broad national patterns in U.S. history. For a Jackson-related property, nominations must explain why this building matters more than other related sites—identifying a specific, nationally significant event, not just “Jackson worked here.”

Criterion 2 addresses properties associated with persons nationally significant in history. The person’s most important work must have actually happened there. Birthplaces, childhood homes, vacation homes, retirement homes—typically not eligible.

If the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters can be demonstrated as the command center from which Jackson coordinated his most significant campaigns during his period of greatest influence, it could qualify. But you’d need documentation showing the specific building was integral to his most important work. “He had an office here” won’t suffice.

Criterion 3 covers properties that represent a fundamental value like freedom or equality. The government uses this category sparingly. The Stonewall Inn in New York, designated as the nation’s first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights, represents this category—a space where the struggle for fundamental rights was forged.

Criterion 4 concerns architectural significance—properties that show distinctive features of their time period or building style. Historically, this favored grandeur and formal design, excluding slave cabins and tenement houses.

The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home in Jackson, Mississippi was designed without a front door—a security feature to protect against white supremacist violence. That makes it architecturally distinctive in ways that document the daily reality of civil rights activists. Architecture as evidence of threat.

Criterion 5 covers districts—collections of properties that together tell a nationally significant story even if individual buildings couldn’t stand alone. Criterion 6 addresses archeological sites. Most civil rights nominations use Criteria 1 or 2.

The Nomination Process: Two to Five Years

The process of moving from community recognition to federal designation typically requires two to five years, though cases can stretch longer.

It starts with a letter of inquiry. Anyone can submit one: the state official responsible for protecting historic sites, a scholar, a property owner, an interested citizen. This letter explains why you believe the property might meet the criteria and briefly outlines its historical significance.

National Historic Landmarks Program staff at the Park Service review the submission to determine if the property appears to have potential. If they think it doesn’t clearly demonstrate potential for national significance, they may decline to encourage further development of the nomination. No appeal. No second opinion.

If you clear that hurdle, you develop a full nomination document. This is substantial work—often dozens of pages requiring extensive historical research, architectural documentation, and comparative analysis to similar properties. Working with Park Service staff, you revise the nomination through multiple drafts.

Once substantially complete, historians and scholars who specialize in that topic review it. For a civil rights site, that might mean academics specializing in African American history, the civil rights movement, labor history. Their assessments significantly influence ultimate success or failure.

Then a special committee of the National Park Service reviews it and provides a recommendation to the full Advisory Board. During this stage, there’s a public comment period. The Park Service notifies property owners, local officials, the state official responsible for protecting historic sites, and members of Congress representing the area.

The Private Property Problem

For many civil rights sites still functioning as community organizations, this creates a straightforward path. The Rainbow PUSH Coalition would almost certainly support designation of its headquarters—such recognition enhances prestige, potentially attracts visitors and supporters, provides eligibility for grants.

But for sites where ownership has changed, where current owners have different interests, or where designation might impose restrictions on use or development, advocates have documented cases where otherwise nationally significant properties were not designated because owners objected, preferring the freedom to alter, develop, or dispose of property without constraints.

After the public comment period, the full National Park System Advisory Board reviews the Landmarks Committee’s recommendation and provides its own recommendation to the Secretary of the Interior.

Only then does the nomination reach the final decision-maker: the Secretary of the Interior. The Secretary considers the Advisory Board’s recommendation, reviews nomination materials and all comments, and decides whether to designate the property as a National Historic Landmark. No public appeal process exists. The decision is final.

What Designation Does (And Doesn’t Do)

National Historic Landmark designation doesn’t require opening the property to the public. The overwhelming majority of National Historic Landmarks are privately owned and remain under full owner control.

The designation may make property owners eligible for certain funds and federal tax credits that help offset rehabilitation costs. These can be valuable—allowing owners to recover a percentage of costs incurred in rehabilitating properties according to federal guidelines for historic restoration.

Landmark owners can apply for grants from the Historic Preservation Fund, though the grants are usually small. State and local governments often have their own grant and loan programs, and National Historic Landmark status strengthens the case for receiving such support. The designation also confers prestige and national recognition, which can be valuable for properties wanting to attract visitors, develop heritage tourism, or receive philanthropic support.

But if you’re imagining federal protection that prevents demolition or guarantees funding, that’s not what this is.

The Civil Rights Framework: Systematic Recognition of Overlooked Sites

In 2000, Congress directed the National Park Service to prepare a nationwide study of civil rights history. The resulting document, “Civil Rights in America: A Framework for Identifying Significant Sites,” was completed in January 2002 and revised in 2008.

Rather than focusing narrowly on events of the 1960s, the framework covers the long history of struggles for equal access to public accommodations, education, housing, employment, and voting rights.

Four volumes have been completed: racial desegregation of public accommodations (2004, revised 2009), racial desegregation in public education (2000, with a 2004 supplement), racial voting rights (2007, revised 2009), and racial discrimination in housing (2021). A fifth volume on racial employment discrimination is in development.

The framework provides systematic methodology for identifying civil rights sites that might otherwise be overlooked by traditional criteria that often valued architectural grandeur or association with elite figures. As historian Casey Cep has documented, preservation in the United States has been shaped by racial inequality from the start—the federal government first invested in preservation to protect Confederate battlefields and burial sites after the Civil War.

The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 established federal commitment to preservation, but the criteria were designed in ways that favored certain types of sites. Architectural significance historically excluded buildings like slave cabins and tenement houses, leaving them to decay beyond saving.

The Civil Rights Framework was designed to correct this bias by systematically examining which civil rights-related properties meet criteria for national significance. Framework scholars identified themes—the struggle for voting rights, the fight for equal access to public accommodations, the battle for equitable education, efforts to secure fair housing and employment opportunities. For each theme, the framework identifies important events, people, and places that represent that theme.

This method of organizing civil rights sites by theme has worked well. Many National Historic Landmarks designated or updated in recent years have been civil rights properties explicitly identified through the framework process.

Recent Designations: Progress and Persistent Gaps

On December 16, 2024, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced that 19 new sites were officially recognized and approved updated documentation for 14 existing landmarks.

Among them: the F.W. Woolworth Company Building in Greensboro, North Carolina. On February 1, 1960, four African American college students sat at the segregated lunch counter there and refused to leave, initiating the Greensboro sit-in movement that spread to other Woolworth stores and ultimately challenged segregation in public accommodations across the nation.

The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, designated in 2006, served as an organizational headquarters and rallying point for African Americans during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The church, constructed in 1911 with a distinctive architectural style designed by prominent Black architect Wallace Rayfield, was bombed by Ku Klux Klan members on Sunday, September 15, 1963, killing four young girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley.

The bombing shocked the nation and helped galvanize support for the civil rights movement. More than 8,000 mourners attended the funeral service. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about the tragedy. The bombing and national response contributed to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the following year. Today, the church receives more than 200,000 visitors annually and has undergone extensive restoration, including a $3 million rehabilitation project.

The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home in Jackson, Mississippi became an official National Park Service site in November 2020. Built in 1956, the house is located in the city’s Elraine subdivision, the first neighborhood built after World War II specifically for middle-class African American families in Mississippi.

The home was designed with added security features, including removal of a front door to provide protection against white supremacist violence. Medgar Evers, named the first field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi in 1954, helped Black Americans register to vote, promoted school desegregation, and investigated racially motivated murders and abuses. His assassination on June 12, 1963, at his home shocked the nation and catalyzed passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Representation Problem

Only 2 percent of the approximately 93,000 entries on the National Register of Historic Places focus on the experiences of African Americans, despite the fact that African American history is foundational to understanding the broader narrative.

This disparity reflects biases written into criteria from the beginning, as well as unequal access to the money, knowledge, and connections needed to guide properties through the nomination process.

The workforce composition matters. Less than 6 percent of the National Park Service’s 20,000 employees are Black. Less than 4 percent of academic archaeologists are African American, 5 percent of licensed architects and engineers, and less than 1 percent of professional preservationists.

The people designing the surveys, writing the nominations, and pushing for recognition bring their own perspectives and priorities to the work. Without adequate representation of people from communities of color among preservationists and historians, many important sites may be missed because the people who know about them don’t have access to the right connections and expertise.

Many civil rights sites lack the architectural grandeur or formal design significance that historically qualified properties. Slave cabins, tenement houses, modest community centers, ordinary homes where extraordinary activism was organized have been deemed architecturally insignificant and left to deteriorate.

Without federal or state designation, some historically Black neighborhoods have been deliberately destroyed—burned in the years after Reconstruction when white violence against Black communities was widespread or displaced by highway projects, gentrification, and urban renewal in more recent decades.

Without government support, generations of African Americans have had to preserve sites on their own, in some cases raising money and fighting off developers over decades to secure protection that Confederate and Colonial sites often received in a few years.

The Community Advocacy Factor

Local and community organizations play a critical role in identifying, nominating, and advocating for sites that might otherwise escape federal notice. While the National Park Service can self-initiate nominations through its theme study process, most nominations come from state officials, historians, property owners, or concerned citizens.

Community organizations, neighborhood associations, and advocates who recognize the significance of a property and understand its history often serve as the nominating parties, even if they must work with professional historians and specialists to develop the full nomination document.

Pullman, Illinois is a good example. Pullman is nationally significant not only for its distinctive industrial architecture and urban planning but also for its central role in African American and early civil rights history through the legacy of the Pullman Porters and development of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black union.

In testimony before Congress regarding potential National Park designation for Pullman, Congressman Jesse L. Jackson Jr., son of Reverend Jesse Jackson, testified that “the Pullman community also played an important role in African American and early Civil Rights history through the legacy of the Pullman Porters as well as the development of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first black union.”

Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C., shows how local and federal recognition can work together. Opened on August 22, 1958, by Ben Ali and his wife Virginia Ali, Ben’s Chili Bowl became far more than a restaurant—it became a place where civil rights activists, performers, and community members met and organized.

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. set up a satellite office of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference a few doors away, he and his staff became regular customers. During the urban riots following Dr. King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, activist Stokely Carmichael asked D.C. Mayor Walter Washington to let Ben’s Chili Bowl stay open during the curfew so people could have a comfortable place to gather and eat. The mayor granted the request, allowing the restaurant to serve activists, protesters, first responders, and the National Guard side by side.

Today, Ben’s Chili Bowl remains a beloved Washington landmark, recognized for its cultural and historical significance while continuing to operate as an active business. The restaurant has been officially recognized as historically important at the local, state, and national levels while remaining in family ownership and operation, demonstrating that civil rights sites need not cease their original functions to receive recognition and support.

What Happens Next for Sites Related to Jackson

The sites most likely to be nominated would include the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters in Chicago, sites where major campaigns were organized, locations where significant negotiations occurred, and properties integral to major civil rights events with which Jackson was involved.

For sites in Chicago, a nomination based on Jackson’s national importance could work by documenting that the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters served as the command center for his most important civil rights and economic justice initiatives during the period of his greatest national influence.

The nomination would need to show that Jackson did his most important work there during the years when he was making his major national contributions—his Operation PUSH campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, his presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988, his ongoing advocacy for voting rights and economic justice throughout his lifetime, and his international diplomatic initiatives. The nomination would need to explain why this Chicago building is more important than other places Jackson worked.

Alternatively, specific sites where major events happened could potentially be recognized if they can be shown to be connected to major events that changed history. If a particular location was where Jackson organized a pivotal voter registration drive, negotiated a major corporate agreement to hire African American executives and suppliers, or coordinated a national campaign for voting rights or economic justice, that property might qualify as the strongest or most iconic representation of that event.

If someone decides to nominate these sites, the process would probably take two to five years from initial letter of inquiry to final designation decision. During that time, whoever nominates the site would need to do extensive historical research, gather documentation, get expert reviews, and respond to public comments, and ultimately present the case to the Secretary of the Interior.

The process would require working with state officials responsible for historic preservation in Illinois (or other relevant states), community input, property owner consent, and working with the National Park Service’s National Historic Landmarks Program.

The Larger Question

The federal process for designating new civil rights sites exists and is thoughtfully designed, particularly with the Civil Rights Framework. But it has built-in problems that make it hard to recognize all the different civil rights struggles that matter.

The nomination process is demanding, takes years, and requires a lot of knowledge and money—these requirements make it harder for community groups in poor neighborhoods to nominate sites. African American history is still badly underrepresented among preservationists and historians, which means that sites are being destroyed faster than the government and nonprofits can protect them, particularly in communities of color that have received fewer resources and official attention historically.

Whether Jackson-related sites get recognized will depend on how important they are historically, but also on whether people have the time, knowledge, and money to push them through the federal process.

The system works—but only sometimes, for some sites, when enough people with enough money care enough to spend years pushing through a process that can be blocked by government officials or a single property owner.

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