On April 1, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had demanded deep cuts to staff and programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities [NEH] in what reporter Jennifer Schuessler called “the latest move against federal agencies that support scholarship and culture.”
While those actions targeted “an annual appropriation that barely amounts to a rounding error in the U.S. budget,” as the National Humanities Alliance described NEH funding, those dollars historically have had an outsized impact on the state of Tennessee, and on Memphis in particular. While it’s unclear what percentage of specific local grants had been paid out before the April terminations, a quick scan of NEH grants in Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District reveals that they supported meaningful attempts to enrich our local and regional identity. With current funding revoked, and no new awards to be offered this year, these programs may be going dormant — or extinct.
For example, the Blues City Cultural Center’s project to celebrate Orange Mound by gathering “untold stories of residents and other stakeholders through oral histories, genealogical research, and material cultural (artifacts),” that would culminate in a public Readers’ Theater, was set to begin on the very day of the NEH cuts. The total award would have amounted to a year’s wages at $12 an hour. Will it ever happen now?
Another grant would have provided an annual salary to University of Memphis historian Aram Goudsouzian to complete his book, The Sports Page: Writers, Athletes, and the Challenge of the Sixties, concerning “how American sports writers and sports culture were affected by the Civil Rights Movement and the rise of televised sports” in that recent era of upheaval and reform. Goudsouzian confirms that his funding was revoked after the first two payouts.
Other writings of his will be impacted as well, as he’s a regular contributor to Chapter 16, the online journal that Humanities Tennessee, our state humanities council, created “in response to the loss of book coverage in newspapers around the state.” Both on the council’s website and through partnerships with print media like the Commercial Appeal, Chapter 16 has helped keep awareness of new books and authors alive since its founding in 2009. Goudsouzian alone has celebrated dozens of books on the site over the years, on topics ranging from civil rights history to the Memphis Red Sox to Elvis. But now Chapter 16, only one of Humanities Tennessee’s many programs, may soon disappear.
The council’s executive director, Tim Henderson, writes that the new cuts will likely lead to the “elimination of approximately $1.2 million annually for Humanities Tennessee.” Indeed, the drastic spending cuts may well be the death knell for state humanities councils. The free reading and book programs, young writers’ programs and writing workshops, and history programs for K-12 students — supported statewide by Humanities Tennessee — likely will be terminated. These are not controversial or extravagant initiatives. They strengthen our democracy by empowering youth to become intelligent, responsible citizens.
So too do our bastions of local culture. But what will be the fate of the Metal Museum’s NEH-funded plan for the “renovation and adaptive reuse of Rust Hall,” the architectural masterpiece that once housed the Memphis College of Art, to serve as the museum’s new headquarters? What of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art’s NEH grant facilitating “the care and display of artwork in MBMA’s new museum on the downtown Memphis riverfront”? Will the $500,000 awarded to each pillar of learning and art also be sacrificed, requiring private and corporate donors to fill the gap?
These cuts, made in the name of efficiency, risk derailing the shared cultural history that binds us together.
