Since President Trump proposed to cut out the arts and humanities endowments a couple weeks ago, I’m sure you’ve come across many articles that talk about what NEA and NEH are, as well as their historical backgrounds. Here are the facts:

• The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) are two independent federal agencies that were created by President Johnson in 1965.
• According to their website, the NEA “gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, … develop their creative capabilities…celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its works to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America.” (from here) Similarly, the NEH “promotes excellence in the humanities,” with the term humanities including to mean the study and interpretation of “language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts.” (from here)
• The NEA’s grants are given to states across the nation, in all congressional districts. Furthermore, the NEA concentrates forty percent of its activities in “high-poverty” neighborhoods with thirty six percent of grants helping vets and people with disabilities. (from here)

By now, we all know the facts. What I’d like to focus on are two fascinating aspects that I came across during my research of this topic: historical roots of the NEA and NEH that date before the creation of these agencies, and the idea of “The Great Society” and the role this idea played in uplifting a generation of Americans who witnessed two world wars and a global recession.

Historical Roots 

I found it intriguing to learn that resource allocation for the arts dates even before the creation of the NEA and NEH. During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt spearheaded the Works Progress Association (WPA) as part of his New Deal programs in order to ensure that people had jobs. Specifically within the WPA, the Federal Writers’ Project was created to ensure that the countries’ historians, teachers, writers, and librarians were employed. The Federal Art Project (FAP) was created to ensure that that painters, sculptors, muralists and other artists were provided relief.

The purpose of creating these programs was to provide jobs and alleviate poverty. The fact that the federal government in the 1930s recognized the importance of artists and allocated a federal budget is telling. The arts were being protected, even back then. And though the NEA and NEH differ in purpose from their predecessors, parallels can be drawn between the Federal Writers’ Project and NEH, as well as the Federal Art Project and NEA because each parallel caters to the same team of professionals.

This sets the precedent of the federal government recognizing the importance of the arts. Why must it do so? Because it feeds into the vision of the Great, (futuristic) Society. This vision was shared with a society that was burdened by two world wars and a global recession in order to pull them out of that negativity and set their sights on greener pastures.

The Great Society

In 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson gave a speech in which he envisioned a Great Society:

“The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning… The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.”

This vision paints art, beauty and community as part of the human experience. President Johnson recognized that a country is more than its economy and that were is something to be said for the cultivation of well-versed, cultured and creative individuals. He recognized art as a means to live vicariously, escape problems and imagine a brighter future.

He sought to awaken the American public to realize the highest version of itself, which is not only about eradicating poverty and feeding the body, but the mind and spirit too, through dispersing art throughout local communities.

President Johnson would go onto creating the NEA and NEH in 1965, which was created to symbolize hope – hope that communities can rise above and beyond their problems to create safe, nurturing and supportive communities by engaging in activities that transport them spiritually.

Monetary allocation – as endorsed by Congress – to the arts and humanities suggests that these sectors contribute to a modern day society. His push to allocate money for these agencies signaled his serious investment in this Great Society. Furthermore, his vision uses art as a barometer to encourage people to live, dream, and hope big – to be part of a society that looks beyond its physical needs, and to really transcend.

That is why it is important to keep funding the NEA and NEH. People need to keep that feeling of hope alive and thriving in the difficult and globally dangerous times we live in. Even though only 0.004 percent of the federal budget is allocated to the agencies, it is the symbolism that counts. It is hope that must be kept alive to combat all the battles we are facing both as a nation and as individuals. Terrorism, poverty, human trafficking, drug abuse, gun violence – today, these are our issues. And to fight these global problems, we need our bodies as well as our minds and souls.

The programs initiated by the New Deal, as well as the idea of a Great Society still provides hope to generations of Americans were who fighting a crippling economy, staggering poverty rates, and soaring unemployment rates. It was time of struggle and hardship in American history and these programs recognized that every professional needs to feed their family, and so needs to be employed. After the Great Depression, the NEA and NEH were meant to sustain that feeling of hope in the American society – a hope that things will get better. And today – in 2017 – we need that more than ever.