Washington, D.C. – U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced today that three civil rights sites in Montgomery and Birmingham together are one of 14 U.S. sites to be included on a new United States World Heritage Tentative List.
The three Alabama sites are the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery and the Bethel Baptist and 16th Street Baptist churches in Birmingham. Kempthorne's office said in a statement that the three churches were the sites of ``iconic events'' of the civil rights movement.
Along with 13 other sites, the three Alabama churches will now be eligible to be considered for nomination by the United States to the UNESCO World Heritage List. The list recognizes the most significant cultural and national treasures in the world.
The new sites on the tentative list can be considered over the next 10 years for formal nomination by the U.S. as World Heritage Sites. Currently, there are 851 World Heritage Sites in the world, 20 of them in the United States.
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