National Archives Awards $4 Million for Historical Records Projects, Launches Programs for Congressional Papers and HBCU Archives
Press Release · Thursday, June 13, 2024

Washington, DC

Dr. Colleen Shogan, Archivist of the United States, approved 32 awards totaling $4,070,583 for historical records projects in 20 states. The National Archives grants program is carried out through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). A complete list of new grants is available online. 

The Archivist also approved two new funding opportunities designed to meet pressing fieldwide needs: Discovery and Access to Congressional Records Collections and Capacity Building for Historically Black Colleges and Universities Archives. 

Grants went to 17 projects to publish the papers of key figures such as George Washington and Frederick Douglass. 

Four projects will enhance public engagement with historical records:

• Vanport Mosaic to use audio and video histories and other materials to create an augmented reality walking tour of the lost city of Vanport, Oregon, destroyed in a 1948 flood.
• A partnership of the North Carolina American Indian Heritage Commission and the state archives to publish online at least 144 oral histories and train American Indian youth as oral historians.
• Upstander Project, Inc., in Boston to expand access to historical records relating to Indigenous peoples from the 16th through the 19th centuries held at the American Antiquarian Society and to create new history curricula.
• South Asian American Digital Archive for a nationwide participatory archiving initiative in which community members will collect, preserve, digitize, transcribe, and share 1,500 archival items online to shed light on the diverse experiences of South Asian Americans. 

An additional 11 archival projects will enhance access to collections documenting Alabama’s coal and iron labor history, the records of Automobile Quarterly documenting classic American automobiles, aviation manufacturing records at the San Diego Air and Space Museum, reparative description of 80 collections related to enslavement in Georgia, the records of African American masons in Louisiana, the photography work of Emile Bocian who documented New York’s Chinatown in the 1970s and 1980s, records related to the landmark 1974 Bronson v. Cincinnati Board of Education desegregation case, New York City’s Commission on Human Rights (1945–76), employee records from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Relief Department, the records (1870–2015) of the Great Plains Black History Museum, and over 1,200 whaling logbooks and journals (1669–1977) at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

A first-time NHPRC award was given to Pennsylvania State University to support the Colored Conventions project to collect, catalog, and transcribe scattered records collections of the 79 Colored Conventions held in the Civil War era, the nation's largest movement for Black civil rights during the 19th century.

Christopher Eck, Executive Director of the NHPRC, presented the grant applications and policy issues to the full Commission. The Archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan, is the Chair. Established in 1934, the NHPRC awards grants for preserving, publishing, and providing access to historical documents.