Sheltering History in the Eye of the Storm

Bruce Cole

Last August, the Gulf Coast suffered one of the worst calamities in our nation’s history. No one was immune to the images on television. The human and financial tolls exacted by Katrina and Rita were staggering. So, too, was the historical/cultural toll: overnight, priceless elements of our past were reduced to memories.

As families across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama cared for their loved ones and took stock of their personal losses, local communities also began looking at the cultural heritage that had been destroyed or put at risk of being lost forever: the millions of documents, artifacts, books, and works of art that for centuries have been central to this region’s unique identity.

It does not take someone from Washington to tell members of the OAH how important a sense of place is to cultural identity. Nor did the people ravaged by the storm need to be reminded that they inhabit distinctive American places, rich with tradition, history, and art.

At the Humanities Endowment, we too are well aware of this and of the toll the events of last summer continue to exact. Within days of the Katrina calamity, the Endowment authorized the award of $30,000 to the state humanities councils in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and made available one million dollars in emergency humanities grants to help museums, libraries, historical societies, and cultural agencies salvage and preserve what was nearly lost.

In December 2005, we released an additional $250,000 for hurricane relief. In all, more than thirty grants have been awarded, six of which came under the auspices of We The People, an NEH initiative launched at the president’s direction in 2003, and designed to promote the study and teaching of American history and culture.
Here are just a few examples of how some of NEH’s emergency grants are helping:

• A grant to the nonprofit organization, Heritage Preservation, is helping to support the work of the Heritage Emergency National Task Force, a coalition of national organizations and federal agencies concerned with protecting cultural treasures from disasters. The Task Force has been coordinating the efforts of its members and other organizations eager to help salvage collections through national conference calls, expanded web resources, and distribution of disaster recovery information and tools.
• At the Biloxi Public Library, funds are being used to clean and restore local artifacts, books and historic documents. Elsewhere in Mississippi, they are helping restore and preserve the irreplaceable collections of Jefferson Davis’s Beauvoir, and conserve damaged American art at the William Carey College’s Sarah Gillespie Gallery.
• At Tulane and Xavier Universities in New Orleans, funds are helping preserve rare, historic works chronicling the lives of women and African Americans in the Gulf South. The New Orleans Notarial Archives, located near the Superdome, is using its grant to salvage and dry flood-damaged public records, from property sales to acts of incorporation, that go all the way back to 1734.

While several of these grants are helping rescue, restore and preserve national treasures, like the works of Gaugin, Monet and others at the New Orleans Museum of Art, many are also assisting small communities. In Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, for example, a grant is helping salvage the endangered collections of the Historic Fort Jackson Museum. In Mississippi, the Department of Archives and History is using NEH grant money to help Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Pass Christian—three small communities ravaged by wind and water—to save the only existing papers documenting their civic and public history.

At the end of March, I announced that the NEH will provide a round of smaller Preservation Assistance Grants, of up to $5,000, to help small cultural institutions get back on their feet. We also are sponsoring a nationwide conference through the nonprofit Heritage Preservation to take the lessons that we have learned from Katrina and Rita, and help train librarians, archivists, and curators to preserve their collections and prepare for future disasters.

In March, I had the opportunity to travel to Louisiana and Mississippi, where I saw for myself what had been on television, and what our friends from the Gulf region had been telling us. I was reminded that the humanities are about the things that last, that have staying power. This includes physical things, like architecture, art, and literature. But they also encompass programs in history and culture that are seemingly ephemeral, but which lead us in an exploration down to the very core of who we are.

In the wake of the hurricane, the Mississippi Humanities Council had emerged as a central force within the state for providing information and distributing funds, thus confirming our conviction in the power of the humanities to sustain community and renew hope. NEH provided additional emergency funds to support the council’s efforts and its steadfast commitment to keeping the state’s rich stories and traditions accessible to all.

The network news has moved on to newer, fresher stories. Americans are gradually and expectedly turning the channel. We do not have that luxury, for this is not a problem that is going away anytime soon. It will keep us occupied for years to come. And it is incumbent on all of us as historians, educators, and public servants, to see that this cultural rebuilding continues. Too much is at stake.