As part of our NEH for All initiative, NHA worked with Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO) to document the impact of a program they implemented in 2021. Titled Pontchartrain Park Pioneers: An Oral History of New Orleans’s Civil Rights Era Segregated Black “Suburb in the City,” this program integrated local oral histories collected by the project director, Dr. Clyde Robertson, into six existing courses. Southern University at New Orleans is a Historically Black College located in the northwest corner of Pontchartrain Park—the first neighborhood in the city that was developed, financed, designed, and constructed by African Americans for African American residents. The oral histories integrated into the humanities courses at SUNO are those of some of the initial residents of Pontchartrain Park and reflect the social and cultural changes that they went through as this area was developed.

On January 11, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced 208 grants for humanities projects totaling $24.7 million. Notably, the grant release included grants from two recently-developed grant programs.

On November 9, the National Humanities Alliance produced a virtual briefing on how NEH funding for public humanities discussions enriches our communities. The briefing focused specifically on the International Storytelling Center (ISC) in Jonesborough, Tennessee, with whom NHA had partnered to document the impact of their program, “Freedom Stories: Unearthing the Black Heritage of Appalachia.” Cecily Hill, director of community initiatives, was joined in discussion by Kiran Singh Sirah, the president of the International Storytelling Center; Alicestyne Turley, the Freedom Stories project director; and Adam Dickson, the Supervisor of the Langston Centre in Johnson City, Tennessee, and current Town Alderman of Jonesborough. The event was an opportunity for congressional staff and others to hear about the data we’ve collected on this program attesting to its tremendous value. Those involved in the project spoke about how it built space for dialogue and learning, and about how the discussions offered participants the chance to explore our rich histories and come together across differences.

On September 15, the National Humanities Alliance produced a virtual briefing that discussed NEH funding for diverse histories and civics in K–12 education. Since 2018, NHA has worked with over 20 NEH-funded professional development programs for K-12 educators to survey their impacts. Cecily Hill, director of community initiatives, was joined in discussion by four of the project directors we’ve worked with: Alice Nash, Rolando Herts, Stacey Greer, and Ray Locker. The event was a fruitful opportunity for congressional staff and others to hear about the data we’ve collected on these programs over the past 3 years that attest to their tremendous value, and to hear directly from project directors about how these programs offer crucial professional development to our nation’s educators, illuminate diverse histories, and support civic education in our nation’s classrooms.

NEHforAll.org showcases high-impact projects funded by the full range of NEH grant lines. In addition to serving as a resource for advocates, the website acts as a resource for those interested in applying for NEH grants. It’s a place to learn about successful NEH-funded projects—how they were structured and what their impacts were. With a few NEH grant deadlines approaching, we’ve curated a list of NEH for All profiles that might help you in applying for two of these grant lines.

The Native Northeast Research Collaborative (NNRC) is a vast digital humanities project that engages tribes, scholars, educators, students, and the public to preserve, curate, and study Indigenous peoples and communities in the Atlantic Northeast. Over the last eleven years of their operation, NNRC’s digitization efforts have helped to publish materials spanning three centuries, addressing an urgent need for reliable primary source material on the Northeast region’s Indigenous peoples. With an NEH CARES grant, NNRC and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center created On Our Own Ground: Pequot Community Papers, 1813-1849. Grant funding allowed the project to hire editors, editorial assistants, and community scholars from the Eastern Pequot and Mashantucket Pequot communities, who then transcribed, edited, annotated, and published a series of 19th century documents that shed light on the everyday lives of Eastern and Mashantucket Pequot people in Early Republic Connecticut.

Since 2017, the NEH for All team has documented and communicated the impact of National Endowment for the Humanities funding, which has included working with project directors to survey ongoing NEH-funded projects. NHA’s Humanities Impact Survey Toolkit was developed from these efforts.

The Walter Anderson Museum of Art (WAMA) in Ocean Springs, Mississippi preserves the legacy of Walter Anderson—a prolific artist who spent the majority of his career on the Mississippi Gulf Coast documenting the local culture and landscape through his artwork. WAMA uses Anderson’s artwork as a catalyst for public programming and education to explore human connections with the natural world. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, WAMA leveraged an NEH CARES grant to develop Southern Art/Wider World, which included live digital lectures that brought together scholars, community leaders, and the public to explore Mississippi’s diverse cultural and natural landscapes. Through our NEH for All initiative, we partnered with WAMA to document the impact of these lectures. Survey results from the lecture series demonstrate how WAMA provided space for cultural exploration amidst physical distancing measures.

This year’s sweeping challenges have made the need to make sense of our histories even more clear, and cultural organizations are undertaking this crucial work in a variety of creative ways. The International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s new Freedom Stories project offers virtual discussions about African American heritage and Appalachian history with Black scholars, storytellers, thought leaders, and community experts. Each event features a live storytelling performance followed by a panel discussion on African American and Appalachian history, as well as life in the region in the present day.