Monticello receives $3.5 million grant to collect, share stories of enslaved families
LOCAL
Monticello receives $3.5 million grant to collect, share stories of enslaved families
Crystal Graham
Published: March 21, 2023 | 11:02 am
The Mellon Foundation recently awarded $3.5 million to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello to expand an African American oral history project.
The UNESCO World Heritage Site’s pioneering Getting Word project was established in 1993. It is a decades-long initiative to collect and share the stories of Monticello’s enslaved community and their descendants.
This transformational, multi-year donation from the Mellon Foundation represents an unprecedented investment in the project.
“The Mellon Foundation’s confidence in our boundless efforts to research, share, and rightfully acknowledge the history of Monticello’s enslaved community recognizes the Thomas Jefferson Foundation as a model in this important work,” said Gardiner Hallock, interim president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. “We are deeply appreciative of Mellon’s support, which will propel the Getting Word project forward and build upon the remarkable contributions of former and current staff as well as the hundreds of descendants of Monticello’s enslaved families who have generously shared their families’ oral histories with us over the past 30 years.”
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