United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture Marks Two Years with National Convening
This month marks the two-year anniversary of the National Endowment for the Humanities’s United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture initiative, which leverages the humanities to combat hate-motivated violence and nurture stronger, more resilient communities.
Developed in response to the White House 2022 United We Stand Summit on the destructive effects of hate-fueled violence on our democracy and public safety, NEH’s United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture initiative provides funding opportunities to support programs across the country that promote civic engagement, social cohesion, and cross-cultural understanding.
“After moments of tragedy, people instinctively turn to the humanities to heal their spirits,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo). “We look to literature to put words to our pain. We use history to give us context or to learn how others have overcome their hurt. And we come together in community to find a way forward, to remind one another what it means to be human. NEH’s United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture initiative uses the power of the humanities to help us understand ourselves and our neighbors and support communities in distress in building connection and resilience.”
In September 2023, the agency awarded $2.8 million to its national network of state and jurisdictional humanities councils to support local programming that fosters community resilience, educates the public on the history of domestic extremism and hate-based violence, promotes civic engagement and social cohesion, and deepens public understanding of community, state, and national history.
The initiative also encompasses emergency assistance provided to communities in the wake of hate-motivated violence. One of the first NEH United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture funding awards went to Humanities Texas to partner with El Progresso Memorial Library and Baylor University to establish an archive in Uvalde, Texas, to preserve community and national responses to the Robb Elementary School massacre that occurred on May 24, 2022. The agency also provided funding to Florida Humanities for an interactive exhibition and digital resources examining the history of racial bias, cultural division, and extremism in response to the August 2023 shooting of three Black Floridians in Jacksonville in a racially motivated attack.
Earlier this month, leaders from the 55 NEH affiliate humanities councils from almost every state, the District of Columbia, and all U.S. jurisdictions gathered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for a United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture convening to share updates about their local NEH-supported United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture programs through facilitated conversations and presentations. (Read more about the September 2024 United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture convening here.)
“As we come together from all across the country, our shared mission of connecting the state and jurisdictional humanities councils takes center stage,” said Caroline Lowery, Executive Director of Oklahoma Humanities. “This convening represents a unique opportunity to forge invaluable connections, exchange innovative ideas, and collaboratively explore how the humanities can be a powerful force in combating hate-based violence.”
Participants at the convening shared details of a wide range of humanities council-led United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture projects with their peers. These included Taking What They Can Carry: Forced Migration in Arkansas, a multifaceted program exploring the history of displacement and forced migration of African American, Japanese American, and Indigenous communities in Arkansas that included a digital exhibition, K-12 lesson plans, and lectures from humanities scholars. Virginia Humanities used NEH funding to complete a three-part series for the weekly radio program With Good Reason that used stories written and recorded by immigrants centered around using language, identity, place, and the humanities to combat the fear of newcomers, express themselves, build lives, and find comfort despite discrimination and oppression. Wisconsin Humanities used funding to draft and pilot a curriculum, "Stand Up to Hate: A Mission for Wisconsin," to teach high schoolers about hate crimes. And Oregon Humanities encouraged audiences to explore the concepts of fear and belonging through a variety of public programs and formats, including on-stage conversations, podcasts, public readings, magazine articles, and discussion groups.
NEH also issued a special encouragement across all of the agency’s 40+ grant programs for project proposals that respond to the goals of the United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture initiative.
As part of the May 2023 U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, NEH outlined plans to expand the agency’s investment in K-12 education on Jewish history as well as research, teaching, and convening opportunities for humanities scholars and institutions to study the origins, history, and effects of antisemitism in the United States. And the agency is supporting the White House on the development of the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia.
Through these numerous avenues, NEH has to date awarded more than $13 million in funding for humanities projects in all 56 states and jurisdictions under United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture. Recent NEH grant-supported projects have included production of Wilmington 1898: An American Coup, a 90-minute documentary about the violent overthrow of a multiracial government by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898; an inventory of the intangible cultural resources of San Francisco’s Chinatown, whose residents experienced the negative impacts of widespread anti-Asian discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic; and a collaboration between National History Day and the U.S. National Holocaust Memorial Museum to develop a K-12 curriculum that promotes a better understanding of antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Jewish history.
National Endowment for the Humanities:Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at www.neh.gov.