Freedom Center Receives Prestigious “We the People” Challenge Grant

Posted on September 9th, 2008 by Paul Bernish

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center has been awarded a first-time “We the People” Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in the amount of $650,000 for the creation of an endowment to enhance its ongoing humanities activities.

In its award notification letter to Freedom Center CEO Donald Murphy, the NEH’s Chairman, Bruce Cole, wrote that grant evaluators were “impressed by the Freedom Center’s programs, which, while focusing chiefly on the history of the abolitionist movement, also address more recent concerns related to freedom and slavery.”

Murphy said the NEH grant represents a strong affirmation of the Freedom Center’s mission of education and enlightenment. “We are all about relating the lessons of history, and doing that in a way that opens people’s minds to understanding the relevance of past events to current issues of freedom, human rights and social justice,” Murphy said.

The NEH’s grant must be matched on a 3:1 basis with non-federal funding of $1.95 million. Matching funds have to be raised during the next 4 ½ to 5 years. The total challenge grant amount of $2.6 million (assuming full match) will enable the Freedom Center to:

Expand its self-guided and docent led tour program by developing new tours complementing the Freedom Center’s exhibits;
Broaden its educational programs by offering lectures and engaging in collaborative humanities projects;
Enhance its Distance Learning initiative by connecting the Freedom Center’s education and program activities to museum visitors and audiences beyond the museum’s walls;
Augment exhibits by creating changing exhibits and attracting traveling exhibits, which demonstrate historical contexts by interrogating freedom issues, for example genocide, racism, and contemporary slavery.

NEH’s We the People Challenge Grant program is designed to help institutions and organizations secure long-term improvements in and support for humanities activities that explore significant themes and events in American history, thereby advancing knowledge of how the founding principles of the United States have shaped American history and culture for more than two hundred years.

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