...it must ensure that the region’s humanistic resources are made available to the broadest possible audience.

In May 1999 the National Endowment for the Humanities announced a national competition for the establishment of ten Regional Humanities Centers, the boundaries of each region being determined by the NEH. It was a two-tiered competition. The planning grant competition was for initial grants of $50,000.00 each, to be awarded to two applicants in each region as seed money for a year-long planning period to lay the groundwork for each humanities center.

Tulane University received one of sixteen planning grants awarded by the NEH.  Assisted by matching funds generously donated by the Lupin and Learcy Foundations and by the vigorous support of the University, the Regional Humanities Center Planning Group is preparing an exhaustive implementation grant proposal to the NEH.  The implementation grant competition will result in one $5,000,000.00 award made in each region.

According to NEH guidelines each humanities center must serve three crucial functions:

1. it must lead the way in promoting new scholarly research that deepens our understanding of the region’s rich cultural resources;
   
   
2. it must tap into the strength of existing resources through sustained collaborative efforts;
   
   
3. it must ensure that the region’s humanistic resources are made available to the broadest possible audience.

This last function is crucial. In the Deep South region the challenge of bringing the humanities to the general public is especially daunting. The region stretches 400 miles from the wooded mountain ridges of the Southern Appalachians, through hills and narrow valleys, sloping gently westward to the wide alluvial plains formed by the Mississippi River. Within that broad geographic region are flourishing traditional cultures ranging from the French-speaking Houma Indians of South Louisiana to the Protestant, often fundamentalist, Anglo-Saxon, often Scotch-Irish folk of the Arkansas Ozarks.

In recent years the region, and particularly New Orleans, has become the center of a flourishing tourism industry and prosperous manufacturing centers. Yet poverty still afflicts a considerable part of the population, much of which remains scattered across a largely rural region of farms and small towns. The principal mission of the NEH Planning Group is to create new ways of reaching all of the disparate constituencies that make up the region and to assist them in understanding and internalizing their own unique histories and cultures within the context of the region.