Programs
Gateway Youth Leadership Collaborative Interns
GATEWAY YOUTH LEADERSHIP COLLABORATIVE
The Gateway Youth Leadership Collaborative is a foundational Consortium program that engages Alabama’s young people on their journey to blend tangible work experience with civil rights history exploration. The early years of the program sought rising high school juniors and seniors to participate in six-week internships at our historic sites in Birmingham, Montgomery, and the Selma/Black Belt regions. In these six weeks, students learned civil rights history and its role in Alabama’s blossoming tourism industries.
Beginning in 2024, the six-week program was redesigned to reach the robust market of college-bound and enrolled university students from the robust networks of universities. Now, students engage with field experts to receive training in storytelling, graphic design, copyright, and public history to develop travelling exhibitions that tell the grassroots history of Alabama’s civil rights movement. Much like the movement itself, the program continues to grow, adapt, and embrace the changes and needs of the students that do the work, so each cohort receives a unique experience to keep their portfolio and skillsets growing!
SUSTAINING THE LEGACY PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT GRANT PROGRAM
In March 2025, the Consortium was awarded $1 million by the Mellon Foundation to develop an initiative that would enable Consortium sites to continue their work of preserving historic buildings, protecting authentic stories, and empowering communities. This opportunity gave birth to the Sustaining the Legacy (STL) Partnership Development grant program which offers our sites a chance to work together to identify areas of potential growth in their operations both in tourism and community outreach. Member sites craft joint applications that involve peer evaluations of each other’s work to request a minimum of $50,000 per project. Rooted in the understanding that collective action was foundational to the Civil Rights Movement, the program champions fortifying partnerships among member sites and the communities they serve, reinforcing collaboration as a strategy for long-term sustainability and preservation.
Click on the titles below to learn more about the projects awarded in cycle one of the STL program.
Member Sites: Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Historic Bethel Baptist Church, Old Sardis Baptist Church
This project connects agricultural producers in West Alabama with urban consumers in the Fairfield–Greater Birmingham area. Through community gardens, farmers’ markets, CSA programs, agricultural workshops, and cooking classes, the project promotes food access, education, and improved nutritional outcomes.
Member Sites: First Missionary Baptist Church, Southern Hill Cemetery
Partnering with Gadsden’s Central Carver Museum, the sites will strengthen collections management and preservation practices, improve facilities, streamline operations, and develop new exhibits highlighting the contributions of Black residents in North Alabama to state and national history.
Selma University 2025 – History Harvest
HISTORY HARVESTS & ORAL HISTORIES
The Consortium has special expertise in supporting our community needs for preservation. The family collections of photographs, scrapbooks, recipe cards, awards, and mementos can all be preserved on a budget and kept safe at home! Our history harvests, not so different from civil rights movement mass meetings, are held at trusted local institutions, like churches, schools, and lodges. The Consortium brings all the needed equipment—boxes, folders, scanners, and how-to guides—to digitize personal collections. We keep a copy of the scans safe in our digital archive and participants keep all the originals. This process creates a safekeeping measure for these precious items just in case anything happens and helps us share the dynamic history of the movement.
But unlike other digitization programs, ours comes with something special—the feeling of a family gathering. We provide participants with ample programming while they have their items digitized, from presentations from field experts to foot soldiers and community leaders, to food and music, our program blends learning and community.
Our team is also equipped for the professional collection of oral histories at a cost-effective rate. Our process ensures informed consent, the opportunity to share biographical data, and filming at a location of your choosing. Our team will walk each participant through the process so they feel confident and prepared with a small team to share their experiences coming of age and beyond in Alabama.