Good afternoon. Thank you, Mike, for your kind words. I am grateful for the hospitality of the Board of Directors and the entire staff of the Truman Library. It's always good to get out of Washington to a place like Independence, as President Truman certainly understood.

Let me begin by offering my congratulations on the 50th anniversary of the Truman Library and Museum. I am delighted to be here for today's groundbreaking ceremony for the new Truman Working Office.

Today I wish to speak about a subject that was very close to Harry Truman's heart: the importance of history and historical memory. And then I want to discuss what the National Endowment for the Humanities is doing to promote greater understanding and appreciation of American history and principles.

I can't think of a more appropriate place to address these subjects than a library that honors the life and legacy of President Truman, for two reasons.

The first is that, from a very young age, Harry Truman enjoyed learning about history, and he understood its importance. Late in his life, he said: "Reading history, to me, was far more than a romantic adventure. It was solid instruction and wise teaching which I somehow felt that I wanted and needed." By studying history, Harry Truman found models of character and leadership that would guide him through an extraordinary life of service to his country.

There is a second reason why the Library is a good fit for my topic today. In order to understand the significance of history, to impart historical knowledge, we must recognize the value of real, material things - the objects and places that connect us to our past. These make history not just the stuff of dry textbooks, but a living thing that inspires us, challenges us, and strengthens us.

That's why the NEH, in cooperation with the National Park Service, was proud to award a "Save America's Treasures" grant of $125,000 dollars to help preserve the irreplaceable materials of President Truman's Working Office. When the preservation and construction are complete, citizens will be able to come to this place and see the President's books, his papers, and other cherished objects - including the desk from his upstairs study in the White House, where he made so many momentous decisions. Seeing this office and its contents will give visitors an unforgettable sense of the extraordinary man who worked here.

This same spirit of promoting the value of historic people, places, and ideas led the NEH to create our We the People program five years ago this month. On Constitution Day in 2002, I joined President Bush in the Rose Garden, along with a great friend of the Truman Library, historian David McCullough, to launch We the People. This program seeks to encourage and strengthen the teaching, study, and understanding of American history.

The need for We the People is quite simple: Our society is growing less familiar with our origins and key institutions, and our citizens are becoming less informed about their rights and responsibilities.

Every year brings yet more dismal headlines about Americans' lack of historical and cultural knowledge, particularly among our young people: College seniors score an average of 53 percent - an F - on basic questions about U.S. history … almost two-thirds of Americans misidentify a famous passage from Karl Marx as language from our Constitution … and more than half of high school seniors can't say which nations America fought during World War Two. I'm pretty sure I know what Harry Truman would think of that. Given all this, one must wonder: A decade from now, what will our young people know and learn about 9/11?

This collective loss of memory - this "American Amnesia" - is dangerous. A nation that does not know why it exists, or what it stands for, cannot be expected to long endure. This is especially significant in a time of war. If we cannot define our liberties and our principles, how can we defend them?

The NEH has a crucial national role to play in addressing this challenge. Indeed, our agency's founding legislation declares, quote, "Democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens."

But democracy is not self-sustaining; its habits and principles need to be learned and passed down through the generations. Our nation is not bound by common ties of blood or birth or religion; instead, we are united by our devotion to shared ideals. So each generation of Americans must learn our history and our great founding principles and understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens.

Through We the People, the NEH is leading a renaissance in knowledge about American history and ideals. Since its inception, the program has received over $51 million dollars in support from the President and Congress. The Endowment has used that support to provide over 1,300 We the People grants - and these grants have gone to every state and territory in the Union.

As we celebrate We the People's fifth anniversary, I'd like to take just a few minutes to give you a sense of what we've accomplished … where we've been … and where we're going.

One of the We the People programs we are most proud of is our "Landmarks of American History" workshops for school teachers. Thanks to this program, a teacher from anywhere in the country can now spend a week encountering American history first-hand at places like Ellis Island, Pearl Harbor, and Mount Vernon. At these workshops, teachers do more than just see the historic sites - they meet with renowned scholars, who provide them with new knowledge that they take back to their classrooms to share with generations of students. To date, over 7,000 teachers have benefited from the Landmarks program. It makes these teachers more knowledgeable and enthusiastic about American history and principles - and that, in turn, brings these subjects alive for their students.

We the People also reaches students more directly through our "Bookshelf" program. The "Bookshelf" puts students in touch with classic texts that explore enduring American themes such as "Courage," "Freedom," and "The Pursuit of Happiness." So far, this program has provided free sets of books to more than 6,000 schools and public libraries nationwide. Just as young Harry Truman took inspiration from the books he read in the Independence town library, thousands of young Americans today are being inspired by titles from the We the People "Bookshelf."

The success of the "Bookshelf" has inspired another endeavor that the NEH will launch early next year: "Picturing America." This program will tell our national story through our greatest artistic masterpieces, and it will bring outstanding American art to students who might never have had the chance to view it. "Picturing America" will offer students the most vivid way to experience American history - because as we all know, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words. This program will give teachers a valuable resource for teaching history, literature, and other subjects through the visual arts.

Through "Picturing America," schools and libraries across the country will receive forty large, high-quality reproductions of our nation's finest art, along with resources to help display the images and explain their importance in the development of our culture. It's a diverse selection of American masterpieces, ranging from Gilbert Stuart's "Landsdowne" portrait of George Washington, to Dorothea Lange's famous photograph of a "Migrant Mother." I'm sure President Truman would be pleased to know that "Picturing America" includes "The Origins of Country Music," a painting by one of his own favorite artists, Thomas Hart Benton, who also painted the mural that adorns the main lobby of this building.

This spring, the NEH launched a pilot run of "Picturing America." We did very little publicity, yet the response was overwhelming - we received more than six thousand inquiries. The Endowment made "Picturing America" awards to over fifteen hundred public and private elementary, middle, and high schools, in all 50 states. Almost half are in towns with fewer than 25,000 people - which means we are meeting our goal of reaching rural and underserved populations. The great success of the pilot phase has us very excited about the potential of this program. Our ultimate goal is to provide "Picturing America" materials to all 140,000 schools and public libraries in the United States.

Beyond the classroom, another We the People project we are proud of is the National Digital Newspaper Program, which we launched in 2004 with our partners at the Library of Congress. This new effort has another ambitious national goal: to make available online, fully-searchable, digital files of historic American newspapers, from every state and territory - the first great draft of our history. Over the next two decades, we will make more than 30 million pages of these historic American newspapers available online. Thanks to NEH and the wonders of digital technology, this remarkable historical resource will be available to the American public for free - forever.

We the People is reaching millions of citizens, and all the elements of the program - the Landmarks workshops, the Bookshelf, "Picturing America," TV documentaries and museum exhibitions, and digitizing historic newspapers - all have the same goal: Through We the People, the NEH is working to ensure that every citizen knows the great American narrative, so that they are motivated and prepared to add their own chapters to that ongoing story.

Of course, at an occasion like a fifth anniversary of a government program, an obvious question arises - and I'm sure if he were still a Senator, Harry Truman would be the first to ask it! How can the NEH show that We the People is working? (Or, in the current jargon of Washington: What are the "metrics" for success?) How can we measure progress?

There are some positive signs, such as this year's test results from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as "the nation's report card." On the U.S. history section of the test, student scores registered a modest yet significant improvement. At each grade level tested - fourth, eighth, and twelfth - student performance improved since the last time the history test was administered, in 2001. The rise in twelfth-grade scores was the first national gain in any high school subject in eight years.

These encouraging results suggest that We the People and other similar efforts are beginning to turn the tide. Ultimately, perhaps, we will really know that We the People has succeeded when some future leader like Harry Truman reveals how her character and mind were shaped by a We the People "Bookshelf" text … or by an image from "Picturing America" … or by an inspiring teacher who attended a "Landmarks" workshop.

What we do know with certainty is how vital it is that we succeed in recovering our historical memory. Many of you probably recall the story of what Benjamin Franklin said after he signed the Constitution. He was asked what the Founding Fathers had given the people - a monarchy or a republic. He answered, "A republic - if you can keep it." And how do we keep it? We keep it by ensuring that our young people know our story, the whole story, the center and the margins, the good and the bad … for it is a remarkable story. And we keep it by developing educated and thoughtful citizens who can participate wisely in our government of, by, and for the people.

In closing, I want to share something that President Truman wrote in a letter to his beloved Bess, who was back here in Independence. It is dated June 12, 1945, exactly two months after he had assumed the awesome burden of the wartime Presidency. He wrote:

"I sit here in this old house and work on foreign affairs, read reports, and work on speeches - all the while listening to the ghosts walk up and down the hallway and even right here in the study. The floors pop and the drapes move back and forth - I can just imagine old Andy and Teddy having an argument over Franklin."

I love that image of Presidential ghosts walking through the hallways and the study of the White House, as Truman wrestled with the enormous challenges he faced in those fateful days.

As Harry Truman knew well, we are all surrounded by the ghosts of history. By reading history, teaching history, examining the tangible "stuff" of history, and visiting historic places, we can bring these ghosts back to life. And they can shake us from the tyranny of the present. From their voices, we can draw guidance, perspective, and consolation, as we face the unique tests of our time - just as President Truman did in his.

And that is the great purpose behind this wonderful library that Harry Truman left us - and it is the guiding principle behind the We the People program.

Thank you.