The National Park Service (NPS), in partnership with Jefferson National Parks Association (JNPA), has awarded a $2,509 grant for the National Literary and Cinema.

The grant will fund a one-day teacher workshop Sept. 22 on the Natchez campus of Copiah-Lincoln Community College in the Redd Watkins Career-Technical Center. The workshop will focus on effective ways to use oral history to teach a more complete narrative and interpretation of African American voting rights in the 1960s Mississippi.

Registration is due by Sept. 9, and more information can be found at www.colin.edu/nlcc.

“We are pleased to partner with the National Park Service in ensuring that communities throughout the Lower Mississippi Delta region have an opportunity to preserve and promote the culture and heritage of this vibrant region,” said David A. Grove, President and CEO of JNPA. As the co-administrator of the program, JNPA is responsible for managing the online application process and distributing grant funding to recipients.

LMDI grants fund a variety of projects from building studies and museum exhibits to music heritage and cultural programming. This year’s grants will support projects such as the stabilization of the Indianola Freedom House, significant for its connection to Freedom Summer of 1964 and registering African Americans of the Mississippi Delta to vote; the No Tears Project outreach program, which connects the legacy of civil rights heritage in Jackson, Mississippi; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Memphis, Tennessee using music and conversation; and in Lafayette, Louisiana funds will be used to help efforts to inclusively share the stories, culture and ongoing struggle for sovereignty of the area’s indigenous people.

Established in 1994, the Lower Mississippi Delta Initiative has provided more than $3 million in grants to organizations exempt from federal income tax, such as non-profit organizations, tribal groups, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and state and local governments. 

Learn more about the LMDI grant program at www.nps.gov/locations/lowermsdeltaregion/what-we-do.htm