A Historic Alabama Hotel Linked to the Civil Rights Movement Is Falling Apart. Can the Conservationists Fighting to Save It Turn the Tide?
Selma’s Edistone Hotel has witnessed pivotal chapters in American history, from Reconstruction to “Bloody Sunday.” Now, after years of neglect and a recent wall collapse, the Conservation Fund is working to secure its future
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Efforts to save the historic Edistone Hotel have taken on new urgency after part of the building’s exterior collapsed, likely because the landmark in downtown Selma, Alabama, has gone years without a secure roof, Todd Prater reports for Black Belt News Network.
The damage underscores the need for swift action to stabilize the structure and prevent further deterioration.
“We’re really in a race against time to save these spaces,” Phillip Howard, director of the Legacy Places Initiative at the nonprofit Conservation Fund, which owns the property, told the Art Newspaper’s Allison C. Meier on August 20, just three days before the collapse. “Not only are we losing the places, we’re losing the people who were there, who can tell the stories.”
The three-story brick building was constructed in 1855 on a site that had previously housed Dallas County’s largest market for enslaved people. After the Civil War, it housed a local office of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the federal agency established to assist formerly enslaved people and others affected by the conflict.
During the civil rights movement, the structure provided lodging for demonstrators and became a gathering point for activists. The hotel is just a few blocks away from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where approximately 600 marchers were attacked by law enforcement on March 7, 1965, in what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
Did you know? Bloody Sunday
- Bloody Sunday became a turning point in the civil rights movement. Television news crews captured the violence on film, and footage of the attack was broadcast to millions of Americans, galvanizing public support for voting rights legislation.
- Five months later, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.
But by the late 20th century, as Selma struggled with population loss and economic decline, the building had fallen into disrepair. Its last occupant, a barbershop, left when the roof began to leak, and in 2022, the hotel was included on the Places in Peril list, an annual roundup of endangered properties compiled by the Alabama Historical Commission and the Alabama Trust for Historic Preservation. Years of neglect had left the structure in precarious condition, and the hotel appeared destined for demolition until the Conservation Fund stepped in and purchased it last year.
“It’s unfathomable that the Edistone Hotel, a place so rich in American history, came so close to being lost forever,” Howard said in a statement after the deal was completed.
The news was welcome to Rex Jones, who owns a business across the street from the hotel and had watched its condition worsen for years.
“It appears like it’s so far gone,” Jones told the Selma Times-Journal’s Brent Maze in 2025. “I didn’t think it was possible for them to salvage it, but anything is possible with the right investors.”
Built in 1855, the Edistone Hotel became home to the Freedmen’s Bureau & one of the South’s first integrated hotels. Now it joins a larger effort to protect America’s full story — from Civil War battlefields to Harriet Tubman’s monument. See what’s next: https://t.co/X1QCACwjG8 pic.twitter.com/ThPdPVa1CF
— The Conservation Fund (@ConservationFnd) September 10, 2025
The Conservation Fund is working with the City of Selma, Boston-based MASS Design Group and other partners to give the hotel a second life. Possible future uses include a museum, a co-working space and a grocery store.
“You have this beautiful historical connection,” Howard told Courthouse News Service’s Gabriel Tynes in 2025, adding that the building “can really tell the story from Civil War to civil rights in a powerful way.”
The Conservation Fund does not plan to be the building’s long-term owner. It wants to help stabilize the structure, then let someone else take over and “make a lot of those decisions about the next steps, the design and what the space will ultimately become,” Howard tells the Art Newspaper. “It’s almost like a triage, where we’re trying to assess the patient—in this case, the historical building—and see what can be done to immediately stop deterioration and the negative impacts on the space.”
According to Black Belt News Network, the Conservation Fund is still looking for a development partner to support the restoration. A structural engineer’s assessment will guide the work, but Sarah Aghedo, executive director of the Selma Redevelopment Authority, remains hopeful that the building’s most significant historic features can be preserved.
“I’d love to see those things saved, at least the main frame and the main façade, even if you do change the interior a little bit,” she tells Black Belt News Network.
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