NARA to Award $1.9 Million for Historical Records Projects
Press Release · Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Washington, DC

Acting Archivist of the United States Debra Steidel Wall approved 31 proposals totaling $1,904,539 in National Archives awards for projects in 25 states and the District of Columbia, pending appropriations of a final budget for FY 2023. The National Archives grants program is carried out with the advice and recommendations of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). A complete list is available online.

Publishing Historical Records – $522,740 for four projects that document major historical figures and important eras and social movements in the history of the nation: John Adams and Family Papers, Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Edition, Correspondence of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, and the Documentary History of the Ratification of the U.S. Constitution & Adoption of the Bill of Rights. 

A $120,000 NHPRC-Mellon Planning Grant for Collaborative Digital Editions in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American History and Ethnic Studies will go to Fisk University in Nashville to support a two-year planning grant to develop a collaborative digital edition, Remaking the World of Arturo Schomburg, in collaboration with the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Schomburg (1874–1938), a historian, writer, and activist of Puerto Rican and German descent, became one of the most important collectors of Afro-Latin American cultural heritage in the United States. 

A Major Collaborative Archives grant of $330,253 will support the University of Central Florida’s People, Religion, Information Networks, and Travel (PRINT) project to create a curated digital repository of 2,700 letters written by Anabaptists, Quakers, and Pietist refugees to the American colonies (1630–1730) from five repositories in the United States and Europe. 

The NHPRC will award $325,152 to four planning grants and three implementation grants for Archives Collaboratives. Planning Grants will be awarded to collaboratives at the New York Folklore Society, Civil Rights collections in Alabama, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, and a partnership among Basque history collections in Nevada and California. 

Implementation Grants will be awarded to Archivists for Congregations of Women Religious, a consortia of the Internet Archive’s Community Web Programs, and the Ka Ipu Makani Cultural Heritage Center in Hawaii to create a Molokaʻi Community Repository, including digitizing 12,000 records from collaborating repositories and community collections, on the small rural island of Molokaʻi.

An additional $606,394 in 18 State Board grants will go to state historical records advisory boards to carry out programs that assist smaller archives, provide workshops and educational tools, and provide statewide archival services. 

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) of the National Archives supports projects that promote access to America's historical records to encourage understanding of our democracy, history, and culture. The 15-member Commission includes representatives from all three branches of the federal government as well as the leading archival and historical professional associations. Acting Archivist of the United States Debra Steidel Wall  is the Chairman, and Christopher Eck is the Executive Director. Since it was established in 1934 along with the National Archives, the NHPRC has awarded 5,000 grants for preserving, publishing, and providing access to the nation’s historical documents.