Lewis University in Romeoville, IL has received a $230,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) collaborative research grant for its project “Breaking New Ground: A History of African American Farm Owners Since the Civil War.”
The three-year project is designed to collect digitally recorded interviews with hundreds of black landowners and their descendants across the South. Project Director and Lewis History Professor Dr. Mark Schultz plans to interview elderly Georgians who grew up on farms their parents owned to record their first-hand accounts of independent African American farming during a time when sharecropping was more common.
The NEH gave special recognition to the project with a “We the People” designation for efforts to strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture.