When Anne Walker stepped into her fourth-grade classroom two decades ago to teach Virginia history, she was surprised to discover gaps in her own education.
Walker — who now teaches at Forest Park High School near Montclair — grew up in Virginia, but she had learned little in school about her state’s complex past.
To find the answers to questions she anticipated her students might ask, she discovered Encyclopedia Virginia, a Virginia Humanities-funded digital treasure of primary resources, images and audio that bring the Commonwealth’s complex history to life.
“That was where I learned about Barbara Johns, and it embarrasses me that that name had never been uttered by any of my teachers,” Walker said.
Like many Americans, she had learned about the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. But she was unaware that a key plaintiff was a teenager who led a strike in Farmville, Virginia.
Now, in the wake of sudden cuts to the 2025 budget for the National Endowment for the Humanities, stories like Barbara Johns’ risk fading back into obscurity, taking with them critical strands of Virginia’s historical narrative.
“The recent cuts remove the boots-on-the-ground funding that goes to people doing documentation, preservation and amplification of local stories,” said Matthew Gibson, executive director of Virginia Humanities.
The cuts have eliminated $330,000 earmarked for the remainder of the fiscal year. When added to the additional $1.37 million it was due to receive in October, that will leave a $1.7 million funding deficit that will force staff layoffs and program cuts and drastically reduced grant-making, Gibson said.
The Mellon Foundation announced $15 million in emergency funding for state humanities councils nationwide, from which Virginia Humanities will receive $200,000 and an additional $50,000 in matching funds. But it’s not enough.
“What’s heartbreaking about this is that if you’ve gone into any local historical society, community organization, community festival, a local library or a library program that involves kids or literacy, chances are those organizations have gotten a grant in the past from Virginia Humanities,” Gibson said. “It’s probably going to be harder for them to get those grants now. Not impossible, but harder.”
Created by Congress in 1965 alongside the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities was born from a simple recognition that, while federal arts funding reached major museums and universities, everyday Americans needed access to their cultural heritage too. The legislation established 56 state and territorial humanities councils — Virginia Humanities was founded in 1974 — to serve as a cultural front line, distributing grants to preserve local stories and traditions.
For Gibson, the cuts represent an attack on the infrastructure that binds communities together.
“These are funding cuts to our entire cultural fabric,” he said.
Virginia Humanities is helping to document underrepresented voices in Virginia history. Dr. Brad Hatch, chief judge of the Potomac Indian Tribe and a citizen of one of Virginia’s 11 state-recognized tribes, understands intimately what happens when stories disappear. Through Virginia Humanities grants, his tribe has preserved traditions such as the making of Potomac eel pots — split white oak traps woven using techniques passed down for generations.
“Programs supported by the National Endowment for Humanities are really important to groups like ours because they let us pass those traditions along and keep them alive,” Hatch said.
The funding supported workshops teaching traditional crafts to younger tribal members, signs highlighting indigenous presence on Virginia’s landscape, and updates to Encyclopedia Virginia entries about the state’s Native communities.
Without this support, oral traditions and cultural practices would likely disappear, he said.
“When you lose your ability to understand why you do what you do, why you are the way you are, you kind of lose your compass in some ways,” Hatch said.
The ripple effects of the cuts are sure to extend into Virginia’s economic bloodstream as well. According to the Arts Action Fund, the arts and culture sector is a $19.3 billion industry — accounting for 2.67% of Virginia’s gross domestic product and nearly 120,000 jobs. Gibson said the organization insists on a one-to-one “cost share” for every dollar it receives and catalyzes revenue from cultural heritage tourism and dollars going into those communities — whether it’s for a specific program, spending money at local restaurants or staying overnight in a hotel.
“When we think about what the federal money does coming to Virginia Humanities, which we then distribute in the form of grants and programs, it’s sort of like compounding interest in a bull market,” Gibson said. “We’re an economic catalyst for the cultural economy.”
For Walker, who has received several research grants, including the James Madison Fellowship in Constitutional Studies, the cuts have a real impact.
Without NEH support, Virginia’s K-12 fellowship program, which brings teachers together to develop humanities-based learning resources, will disappear. The programs create networks of educators who share resources and perspectives across geographic and political divides — connections that become increasingly valuable as education becomes more politicized.
“We’re looking at an impact that is going to last for generations,” Walker said, fighting back tears. “If we are ignoring the stories that are just now being told, eventually we’re going to miss out on our sources. We’re not going to have the people who know these histories.”
As Virginia grapples with preserving its complex history — from Civil War battlefields to civil rights breakthroughs — the question becomes whether communities can fill the void left by federal withdrawal, or whether crucial chapters of the American story will simply slip away, unrecorded and unremembered.
“It’s hard to hate folks up close,” Gibson said. “The humanities promise to get people to look up from their devices, to look into one another’s eyes and form different kinds of respect and connection.”