News Releases

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a $100,000 Humanities Access grant to MDAH to launch an online classroom learning initiative in December 2017.

The project will extend the reach of the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum directly into schools by using state-of-the-art equipment and multimedia programs delivered on the web. Students will communicate with curators, historians, and history makers and interact with artifacts, stories, music, and art as they experience the museums from their classrooms before and after visits to the site.

“We are committed to expanding our outreach across the entire state and connecting the resources of the department with teachers, students, and communities,” said Lucy Allen, MDAH Museum Division director. “This program, developed with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will allow students to immediately access the holdings of the museums and interact with Civil Rights Movement veterans, Mississippi authors, musicians, and historians right from their desks.”

The project will provide technological and academic funding for a pilot program in select schools across Mississippi to support teaching innovation and student engagement with Mississippi history, culture, and literature.

“We are very grateful to many people who supported this application, including Senator Thad Cochran, Mrs. Mrylie Evers, and Mississippi teachers across the state who made the case regarding the impact of this initiative,” said Kane Ditto, president of the MDAH Board of Trustees.

MDAH will provide a dollar-for-dollar match for the grant with non-public funds. The NEH grant is one of 34 totaling more than $3 million in their new Humanities Access program, which offers matching grants toward term endowments for programming at cultural institutions that broadens access to excellent humanities content for underserved groups.