The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has announced four grants totaling $11.1 million focused on the collection, preservation, and dissemination of the narratives of communities marginalized from American history.

Two grants totaling $9.3 million are part of Mellon’s five-year, $250 million Monuments Project initiative, which provides support for public projects that accurately represent American history. A $5.8 million grant to the Montpelier Foundation (TMF)—which manages the museum and grounds that were the plantation of James Madison, a slaveholder and the fourth president of the United States—will support the creation of a memorial to enslaved people, described by TMF as the “Invisible Founders” of the nation. A $3.5 million grant to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation will support expansion of the Getting Word African American Oral History Project, which collects and shares the stories of Monticello’s enslaved community and their descendants. The foundation manages the museum and grounds at Monticello—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—which was the plantation of Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder and the third president of the United States.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity to build upon the [Getting Word] project’s mission to collect and preserve family histories from the eras of slavery and abolition to the present,” said Getting Word public historian and director Andrew M. Davenport. “Through archival research and collaboration with descendants, Getting Word historians have reconnected families riven apart by slavery and its aftermath. The project, as an archive and as a community, has helped to recontextualize Monticello as a Black heritage site of reflection, remembrance, and reunion.”

In addition, Mellon has awarded a $1.3 million grant to New York University’s Latinx Project to bolster existing programming, research, and publications and fund the development of the Latinx Project: Interdisciplinary Center for Arts and Culture. And a $500,000 grant was awarded to the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences to help fund the Haudenosaunee Archive, Resource, and Knowledge Portal, a community-driven digital resource for the collection, preservation, and dissemination of Indigenous research, teaching, and learning.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia/Martin Falbisoner)