The National Trust for Historic Preservation recently announced the award of $2.5 million in grants to 80 organizations across 39 U.S. states to help them restore, interpret and activate historic places.
The grants are awarded through the National Trust’s Telling the Full History Preservation Fund, made possible through a one-time National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant program funded through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021.
The grants will help to preserve, interpret, and activate historic places to tell the stories of historically underrepresented groups in our nation, including women, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ individuals, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, Black Americans, and Latinx Americans.
“The National Trust for Historic Preservation is committed to telling the full American story, one of our key strategic priorities. This one-time nationwide grant program from NEH and the American Rescue Plan serves as a catalyst for this work, creating impact in communities across the country and highlighting stories that have been underrepresented in the places that we collectively preserve and interpret,” said Paul Edmondson, President and CEO, National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Grants were awarded in four categories:
- Research, planning, and implementation of interpretation programs;
- Research and documentation for local, state, and federal designations;
- Architectural design and planning to preserve and activate historic places; and
- Training workshops to support interpretation and preservation of historic places.
“The National Endowment for the Humanities commends the National Trust for Historic Preservation for its work in administering American Rescue Plan funds to assist historic sites, museums, and preservation organizations around the country in recovering from the financial impact of the pandemic,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo). “These awards will reach deeply into communities large and small, lift up often overlooked voices, and tell important, untold stories of our country’s rich and diverse history.”
“The Telling the Full History Preservation Fund represents the largest number of grants given through a single program at the National Trust,” said Katherine Malone-France, Chief Preservation Officer.
“These 80 projects are driven by many dedicated volunteers, staff, and experts, all seeking to expand how we understand our shared history. We are grateful for the work that they do in communities across the country to reveal, remember, celebrate and illuminate these stories through these extraordinary places,” she continued.
In order to secure a broad range of applications, the National Trust conducted outreach to an expansive movement of people who care about diversifying the places that are preserved and interpreted for the public benefit. The National Trust received 396 applications.
The applicants included submissions from humanities-based nonprofit organizations, such as state and local preservation organizations, historic sites, museums, historical societies, and genealogical associations. It also included accredited academic programs in historic preservation, public history, as well as cultural studies of underrepresented groups.
Additionally, it included local and state governmental agencies, such as state historic preservation offices, tribal historic preservation offices, city and county preservation offices and planning departments, state and local commissions focused on different aspects of heritage, and publicly owned historic sites and museums.
All 396 applications were reviewed and scored by an external Selection Committee of 31 subject matter experts. Many Selection Committee members noted that the applications submitted for the Telling the Full History Preservation Fund were some of the strongest they have seen in many years of reviewing federal humanities grants.
The 80 projects that received funding demonstrate the remarkable resilience and dedication of humanities organizations and institutions during an incredibly challenging time in our nation’s history.
The National Trust, a 501(c)(3) organization, is a privately funded nonprofit chartered by Congress in 1949 to protect the nation’s historic places. Today, the organization is deeply committed to utilizing preservation as a tool to advance justice and equity for all Americans. We are guided by four strategic priorities: Saving America’s Historic Sites, Telling the Full American Story, Building Stronger Communities, and Investing in Preservation’s Future. The National Trust for Historic Preservation was recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities with the National Humanities Medal in 2001.
The Telling the Full History Preservation Fund restores and supports the core activities of humanities-based organizations as they recover from the pandemic and utilize historic places as catalysts for a more just and equitable society. Due to their power as primary sources, historic places advance our quest for a more perfect union by combining individual experience inside the American story with relevant, innovative humanities scholarship. It emphasizes telling the full, true story of historic places to gain components critical to the historic record, to help complete the humanities infrastructure of the nation, and to reimagine history in ways that reflect a comprehensive view of American identity.
Image of historic Lyndhurst, New Jersey is by Clifford Pickett via NTHP.