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On Wednesday, July 31, 2024, Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Shelly C. Lowe traveled to Uvalde to attend a celebration at El Progreso Memorial Library marking the twentieth anniversary of the library’s current building and the ceremonial groundbreaking for its expansion.

While there, library staff introduced Chair Lowe to the Los Angelitos de Robb Archive, which was made possible with significant support from NEH, Humanities Texas, and the Summerlee Foundation. The archive preserves thousands of items sent to the Uvalde community from across the globe in the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School shooting on May 24, 2022.

Below, we are pleased to share the remarks Chair Lowe delivered to the more than one hundred community members who attended the event.

Remarks by Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities Shelly C. Lowe

Good morning. My name is Shelly Lowe, and I’m chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH. Thank you to Humanities Texas Executive Director Eric Lupfer, Library Director Tammie Sinclair, and former Library Director Mendell Morgan, who had the vision behind the El Progreso Memorial Library archive and oral history project, and to everyone here today. It’s a pleasure to join you for this groundbreaking ceremony and to mark the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the El Progreso Memorial Library.

I have learned it was here, in 1903, that a group of pioneer women started a new civic organization called the El Progreso Club. Upon establishment, they set three goals: self-improvement, civic improvement, and, thankfully, the founding of a public library.

Libraries are sources of hope and community across our nation. A library is never just a building in the same way a book is never just a collection of pages. I know this intimately as the daughter of a retired librarian. I literally grew up in a library. It’s a world—a world of science and history and language and culture. It’s a world of people. It’s a world of stories. It’s a community. The humanities remind us that we are in a community, too. We are not alone, so long as we tell our stories, so long as we listen.

At the National Endowment for the Humanities, we provide financial support that strengthens communities, enabling the creation of educational programs, documentaries, exhibitions, books, online resources, and preservation projects that foster cultural knowledge and understanding.

Among the many strengths of the humanities is that they shine a light on human experience. The act of documenting, discussing, and telling stories is itself a healing experience, allowing individuals and communities to understand their own suffering, receive acknowledgment and support from others, and create a sense of hope and agency. Doing work in the humanities is an act of love and dedication.

One recent example is our award to Humanities Texas—in partnership with Baylor University, the Harry Ransom Center, and El Progreso Memorial Library—in the fall of 2022 to establish an archive to preserve community and national responses to the Robb Elementary School massacre on May 24, 2022.

The arts and humanities have always been instrumental in acknowledging and expressing pain, coming to terms with that pain, and building support networks for survivors. In moments of loss and tragedy, we come together to both create and turn to art, poetry, music, and literature for solace and healing. Combating hate not only requires us to identify the root causes of that hate but also to identify our inherent capacity for love, acceptance, empathy, and belonging.

In September 2022, the White House hosted the first ever United We Stand Summit, which convened leaders to counter the destructive effects of hate-motivated violence on our democracy and public safety, mobilize diverse sectors of society and communities across the country to these dangers, and put forward a shared, inclusive, bipartisan vision for a more united America.

A year later, in September 2023, in a joint partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the NEH issued $2.8 million to create a nationwide United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture initiative that builds united fronts against hate at the community and national levels. NEH partnered with each of its state and jurisdictional affiliates to develop localized and place-based humanities programming that fostered cross-cultural understanding, empathy, and community resilience; educated the public on the history of domestic extremism and hate-based violence; promoted civic engagement, information literacy, and social cohesion; and deepened public understanding of community, state, and national history.

As of August 2024, NEH has awarded more than $13 million in funding for humanities projects in all fifty-six states and jurisdictions through the United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture program. This September, NEH will host a national convening with all fifty-six state affiliates focused on this initiative. Finally, I am proud to share that in September 2025, NEH will offer an additional $2.8 million to NEH’s state and jurisdictional partners to expand this program to rural, urban, and Tribal communities.

James Baldwin wrote an essay in Life magazine in 1963 in which he observed:

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

That’s the power of the humanities. They remind us that we aren’t alone, in our heartbreak or our joy. We’re connected. We always have been. The humanities show us the horrors of our history, but they also show us how people—people just like us—persevered in the face of those horrors. They’re a kind of guidebook, a way out, a way forward.

How lucky we are to have libraries like this one. To learn about the people who came before us. People who struggled and were knocked down. People who didn’t see a way forward but pushed on anyway. Thanks to the humanities, thanks to libraries like El Progreso Memorial, we can meet those people. And if we ever forget how to be brave, they can remind us.

In closing, I want to acknowledge the lives that were lost, this community, and the relatives that are still grieving and healing from this unthinkable attack. I give gratitude to the Humanities Texas staff, the staff of El Progreso Memorial Library, and the leadership of Tammie Sinclair and Mendell Morgan. Today, NEH is honored to sit with you and to be here in love and dedication to the community of Uvalde.