Note: This column is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

Mississippi is the beating heart of American culture.

Our writers have reshaped literature, our musicians have birthed modern genres, our freedom fighters have given voice to the nation’s conscience.

From Welty and Faulkner to Jesmyn and Kiese, from Robert Johnson to Jimmie Rodgers, from Ida B. Wells to Medgar Evers, Mississippi’s influence on American culture isn’t just important — it’s foundational.

Mississippi, for its many faults, excels at preserving and showcasing these contributions to the nation. We have, without question, gotten the humanities right. And in countless cases, local economies across our state rely on this cultural study and preservation through museums, monuments and programming to ensure that while we work toward a better future, we’re maintaining a full understanding of our past.

But today, the humanities are under attack. To defund them is to erase the roots of American identity, and no state has more to lose, or more reason to fight back, than Mississippi.

The Trump administration, at the direction of billionaire Elon Musk and his band of tech bros hunting for federal budget cuts, has gutted the National Endowment for the Humanities — slashing its funding and demanding an 80% reduction in staff. The effects of this mind-blowingly obtuse decision are devastating for Mississippi: the $1 million in federal funding appropriated annually to the Mississippi Humanities Council, whose decades of work and grant making touches every county and corner of this state, is gone.

The Mississippi Humanities Council is a nonprofit founded in 1972 that responsibly distributes these federal funds through grants to entities that are boosting our state’s arts and culture, preserving history for generations to come, and creating deeper cultural life in small towns across the state.

The abrupt budget cut jeopardizes more than 35 grants that were already awarded by the council for programs like an oral history of former Gov. Kirk Fordice’s time in office, a museum exhibit on Mississippians who fought and died in the Vietnam War, and lectures about the work and legacy of artist Walter Anderson.

Musk and Trump’s tech bros at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) may know how to download personal data and make sweeping decisions that may or may not be constitutional, but they don’t seem to understand the power of poems, paintings, songs or history. And they certainly don’t know a thing about Mississippi.

They’ve declared war on something our state has long treasured: the power of story, of memory, of meaning. And whether they know it or not, their budget cut stands to erase some of our nation’s most important culture.

Understand that the work of the Mississippi Humanities Council is not “woke,” focused on DEI or skewed toward liberal causes. These Trump administration cuts appear totally indiscriminate, which makes the situation all the more frustrating to those who rely on this funding. Though conservative politicians have long targeted the National Endowment for the Humanities budget, prominent Republicans — including those in Mississippi’s congressional delegation — support the work of the council.

President Ronald Reagan, not too long ago heralded by Republican Party officials as a model leader, likened humanities to a beacon of American freedom. At a time when the Soviet Union threatened our nation’s livelihood, President Reagan leaned into aspects of American life that brought people together. He wasn’t focused merely on the real threats to American society at the time. He went out of his way to underscore the importance of community theaters, small-town museums, library book clubs and school field trips — the very places and moments where Americans have long come to understand themselves and their neighbors.

“The humanities teach us who we are and what we can be,” Reagan said at the White House in 1987. “They lie at the very core of the culture of which we’re a part, and they provide the foundation from which we may reach out to other cultures so that the great heritage that is ours may be enriched by, as well as itself enrich, other enduring traditions.”

It was President Lyndon Johnson, who created the NEH in 1965, who warned: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Johnson rightly believed that the humanities were not a luxury but a local lifeline. They existed not in some marble gallery, but “in the neighborhoods of each community.”

Here in Mississippi, these neighborhoods and communities are literal. These are our hometowns, and these are our neighbors. Grants from the Mississippi Humanities Council have supported civil rights education in the Delta, local history archives in Gulf Coast libraries, and storytelling festivals in small towns where history is still passed down by word of mouth.

So when things feel more chaotic than ever, what can we do? We can fight. We must stand up and let our leaders know that the humanities cuts are too harmful to our state to let slide, that Elon’s tech bros cannot so easily erase the national contributions Mississippi has made. Demand they sponsor new bills to restore humanities funding that cannot be touched by a vulgar, spiteful billionaire or the president he serves. Implore them to save the Mississippi Humanities Council — to do anything before it’s too late for the preservation of our culture and for so many of our small towns.

If you’re eager to get more personal with our six members of Congress, here are some starting places:

Call U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and ask if she enjoyed her 2023 photo op at the opening of a traveling Smithsonian exhibit at her hometown library in Brookhaven. That exhibit and so many more in small towns across her state were underwritten by the Mississippi Humanities Council, which just lost its funding because Elon Musk said so.

Call U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and ask if he learned anything by narrating Vernon Dahmer’s story for the traveling exhibit “A More Perfect Union: Mississippi Founders,” which aims to “celebrate the rich legacy of ideas and ideals at the core of our democracy.” That exhibit and so many more across his state were underwritten by the Mississippi Humanities Council, which just lost its funding because Elon Musk said so.

Call U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly and ask whether he supports the Possumtown Book Festival in Columbus, the Oxford Conference for the Book, the Behind the Big House program in Holly Springs, or the Small-Town Preservation Symposium in Eupora. All of these community festivals or programs in his district are underwritten by the Mississippi Humanities Council, which just lost its funding because Elon Musk said so.

Call U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson and ask whether he supports Mississippi Freedom Trail unveilings across his district like a recent one in Canton, grants to support civil rights movement anniversaries, and a Jackson State University-supported program that created a book club at Parchman. All of these programs in his district are underwritten by the Mississippi Humanities Council, which just lost its funding because Elon Musk said so.

Call U.S. Rep. Michael Guest and ask him if he supports programs that bring history to incarcerated youth and provides prison education to adults who are incarcerated in Pearl, or the recent Jimmie Rodgers seminar at the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience in Meridian. These programs and so many more in his district were underwritten by the Mississippi Humanities Council, which just lost its funding because Elon Musk said so.

Call U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell and ask whether he supports the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum in Biloxi, the University of Southern Mississippi oral history center, or the Hancock County Historical Society. All of these entities boast recent programming underwritten by the Mississippi Humanities Council, which just lost its funding because Elon Musk said so.

For our six members of Congress to allow these cuts without taking action is to suggest Mississippi’s stories — the painful and proud, the devastating and inspiring — don’t matter. That we don’t matter.

But we do. We really, really do. And if we don’t fight for our culture, who will?

In the state where so much of America’s artistic and moral imagination was born, defending the humanities isn’t about nostalgia or wokeness. It’s about survival. It’s about reminding the nation — and maybe even ourselves — that Mississippi always has something important to say.

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