NEWS
Grant Program Provides Vital Aid to Black Heritage Sites
Now in its sixth year of grant making, the the Standiford H. Cox Fund has awarded over $1 million to help preserve African American landmarks.
A Gift that Keeps Giving
In 2024, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Gary’s Roosevelt High School to its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, bringing national attention and elevating efforts to save the endangered building, which served as one of three Indiana high schools explicitly built for African American students during the Jim Crow era. Roosevelt High School’s plight, currently vacant and in need of a new use, underscores the imperative to preserve endangered African American historic sites across the state— whether in the form of new ADA accessibility accommodations or a complete rehabilitation effort.
Since 2020, the Standiford H. Cox Fund has helped support these needs for more than 74 projects across Indiana, awarding over $1 million to preserve significant African American historic sites. The fund’s namesake— an ardent preservation advocate and the first Black chemist at Eli Lilly and Co.— dedicated money to the program before his passing in 2019. Since then, Indiana Landmarks and the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) have jointly managed the grant program, ensuring that Mr. Cox’s commitment to preserving and celebrating African American history lives on. Now entering its sixth year of grant making, the Cox Fund has already significantly impacted preservation of African American built heritage in Indiana, ensuring Black landmarks remain in use.
Allen Chapel AME Church in Indianapolis, a two-time Cox Fund grant recipient, received funding for needed masonry repairs and to replace its heating and cooling system. The 160-year-old congregation started in a modest frame structure on Broadway and Pomeroy streets before erecting its current church building in 1927 on the city’s near northside. The necessary funding allows Allen Chapel AME to restore its impressive brick structure while also sustaining the activities inside it.
Bloomington’s Banneker Community Center received funding for a historic structures report to assess the building’s condition and make recommendations for maintenance, an important step in aiding long-term planning. The building originally opened as a segregated educational institution for African American children in 1915, serving as a fixture in the local African American community in the face of systemic discrimination. The school is named after Benjamin Banneker, a prominent free Black mathematician, astronomer, and surveyor who lived in colonial America during the eighteenth century. Today the site maintains its community focus as the Banneker Community Center, offering recreational activities and providing a gathering place for locals. With a historic structures report, Banneker Community Center can identify the most pressing needs to maintain its historic building and ensure its community significance is preserved.
Raising Awareness
Beyond addressing repairs and capital projects, the Cox Fund also supports efforts to interpret and celebrate Black heritage sites. In 2021, a Cox Fund grant helped install 15 new signs in Indianapolis’s Flanner House Homes Historic District to highlight the area’s cultural significance. Designated as a National Register-listed historic district in 2003, the neighborhood’s 180 homes were built by and for African Americans during the 1950s at a time when discriminatory practices made it difficult for the Black community to receive loans.
Today, the original builders and their descendants still own more than half of the homes in the district, and the proud community has worked to draw attention to the neighborhood’s significance, successfully defeating development pressures that threatened area houses and Phillips Temple CME Church, both prior entries on Indiana Landmarks’ 10 Most Endangered list. The added signage underscores Flanner House Homes’ important role in Indianapolis history.
More recently in 2024, a Cox Fund grant helped the Community Foundation of Boone County begin restoration of the former Lebanon AME Church. Constructed in 1880, the building serves as one of the oldest surviving African American landmarks in Boone County. After the site ceased operating as the local AME church in the 1960s, subsequent owners made alterations that obscured its historic significance, incorporating vinyl siding and a mobile home addition. With the help of the Cox Fund, the Community Foundation of Boone County and neighborhood residents Kevin and Missy Krulik have begun rehabilitation and interpretation of the former AME church, including restoration of its wooden siding. With more work planned, the project will help ensure the former church remains to tell the story of Boone County’s African American history.
How to Apply
If any groups are interested in applying to for a grant from the Cox Fund to preserve Black landmarks in their communities, please contact Mark Dollase, vice president of preservation services at Indiana Landmarks at coxfunds@indianalandmarks.org. Applications for capital projects are due April 1, 2025 and planning grants are awarded on a rolling basis. Learn more.
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