NEH Awards $190,000 Education Grant to JANM

LOS ANGELES, CA – The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) a $190,000 Landmarks of American History and Culture for K–12 Educators Grant for the project, Little Tokyo: How History Shapes a Community Across Generations 2025. JANM has been the recipient of this grant for the third year in a row. 

The project will support two five-day, residential workshops for seventy-two secondary school teachers, focusing on Japanese American history and community history through Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo neighborhood. Workshops will examine how Little Tokyo has been impacted by events and issues such as restrictive covenants, eminent domain, the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, the civil rights movement, and gentrification to consider how the past is relevant to present day issues of identity and preservation. Teachers will be joined by scholars, educators, curators, and community historians to learn about Little Tokyo’s evolution throughout history. They will also explore teaching through primary sources, including JANM’s collection, and create lesson plans for classroom use. JANM’s project is one of the 240 humanities projects nationwide that are funded by $37.5 million in grants from the NEH.

“Our dedicated team of Museum professionals and volunteers as well as community leaders and organizations create an impactful and meaningful program that advances the teaching and scholarship of Japanese American history and contextualizes it against the backdrop of civil rights, social justice, diversity, and inclusion. We are proud to offer this outstanding opportunity to educators from across the country once again,” said Ann Burroughs, JANM President and CEO.

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About the Japanese American National Museum (JANM)

Established in 1985, JANM promotes understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience. Located in the historic Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles, JANM is a center for civil rights, ensuring that the hard-fought lessons of the World War II incarceration are not forgotten. A Smithsonian Affiliate and one of America’s Cultural Treasures, JANM is a hybrid institution that straddles traditional museum categories. JANM is a center for the arts as well as history. It provides a voice for Japanese Americans and a forum that enables all people to explore their own heritage and culture. Since opening to the public in 1992, JANM has presented over 100 exhibitions onsite while traveling 40 exhibits to venues such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Ellis Island Museum in the United States, and to several leading cultural museums in Japan and South America. JANM is open on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday–Sunday from 11 a.m.–5 p.m. and on Thursday from 12 p.m.–8 p.m. JANM is free every third Thursday of the month. On all other Thursdays, JANM is free from 5 p.m.–8 p.m. For more information, visit janm.org or follow us on social media @jamuseum.