Students use National History Day to challenge power, spark change
Students use National History Day to challenge power, spark change
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CA Gov. Newsom fired back at Trump, border czar Homan
California Governor Gavin Newsom fired back after President Trump hinted border czar Homan should arrest him if he interfered in ICE raids.
COLLEGE PARK, MD – The day President Donald Trump sent 700 Marines to Los Angeles to help stop protests over immigration enforcement, dozens of middle school students defended their research projects on friction between governments and protesters.
Among the displays in the exhibit hall at the annual National History Day competition was a New York entry titled "The Kent State Massacre: Tension Between Protests and Authority." The website competition included an entry from Louisiana on Vietnam War protests, and in the documentary section, a South Carolina entry discussed the first major colonial protest, the Boston Tea Party.
The annual competitions' theme of rights and responsibilities was selected long before last fall's election, but many entries took the opportunity to explain the history behind what is happening in America under the new administration.
"They are very in tune to what's happening in the world, and they're concerned, and they want to know more," said the organization's executive director Cathy Gorn. "And they're drawn naturally to topics of fairness. So you'll see a lot of civil rights, human rights, justice-type of topics here, but that's so natural for a young person to kind of gravitate in that direction."
About 3,000 of the 500,000 students who participate in the local and state competitions make it to the national contest, which involves multiple days of judging at the University of Maryland.
Their final projects – which can take the form of displays, websites, essays, performances or documentaries – detail the history of the First Amendment, the country's responsibility to refugees, LGBTQ+ people being kicked out of the military, abortion rights, women's suffrage, foreign policy, medical experimentation and much more.
The Trump administration has attacked or downplayed many of the events that are the subject of their entries, saying that American history reflected in museums, archives, libraries and education should not emphasize the country's failures.
"Some have suggested that if we teach kids about the tragedies in our past, that somehow we're going to make them feel bad. Well, the exact opposite happens, because they're coming at it fresh, and they're looking at all the angles. And we tell them, you have to have multiple perspectives. You have to look at all sides and do the research and let the historical characters speak to you and tell you their story," Gorn said.
Future unclear
In early April, National History Day lost the grant the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded is consistently for more than 50 years, which makes up about 20% of its budget.
More: States scramble after Trump's 'devastating' cuts to humanities grants
State Humanities Councils, which organize and hold the local and state level competitions students participate in to reach the national contest, all had their grants canceled. Without that funding, several states might lose their humanities councils altogether in the coming weeks.
"The loss is much bigger than what happens at the top. People think up here at the federal level 'we kicked out an agency, and that's great because we're saving some money,' but that has a ripple effect. It has a domino effect, all the way down to the local level, and certainly we're seeing that with National History Day," Gorn said.
This year, the National History Day organization was able to rally public support and get funding for students who couldn't come without state help.
"Everybody is here, but I don't know what next year is going to look like," Gorn said. "It'll be a horrible, horrible shame for kids and teachers not to be able to participate."
Tens of thousands of teachers use materials created by the National History Day organization to make the topic more hands on, teaching students to analyze information for themselves and how to verify sources to determine the truth.
"It's not just this contest. This culminates in a contest. It's a year-long program that's done in the classroom, and teachers use History Day and the materials we have, the training programs we have, to make their teaching better. But if that goes away, then we are back to boring textbooks, taking the multiple choice test, fill out the blank worksheet, never remember it again," Gorn said.
Trading pins and asking good questions
Clusters of students in business attire filled the hallways of the University's Stamp Student Union, stressing about their presentations and trading buttons and pins with students from other states.
Some had focused their research on bigger, well-known topics like the Little Rock Nine, the Holocaust or passage of the Endangered Species Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
McKenna Menold, 13, and Sarah Haney, 14, of St. James School in Elizabethtown, Kentucky researched the history of banning books in part because they realized it is happening in the United States today.
"I felt really connected to the topic," Sarah said. "I wanted to share with people that banning books does still happen, and it shouldn't be happening anywhere, not just the United States, but anywhere in the world, because literature is such an important part (of) history."
Other kids zoomed in on local or specific people and topics.
Sadie Lankford, 14, and Scarlett Rauen, 14, of Holly Shelter Middle School in Castle Hayne, N.C. said they chose to focus on the case of the Wilmington Ten civil rights activists from in their backyard ‒ but who have been left out of school textbooks.
"It was surprising that we hadn't learned about it outside of specifically doing the research, because this was honestly a defining moment for the U.S.," Sadie said.
The Wilmington Ten were 10 civil rights activists who were falsely convicted of arson and conspiracy and incarcerated for nearly a decade following a 1971 school desegregation riot in Wilmington, North Carolina. To create their report, the girls reviewed autobiographies, newspaper clippings and even interviewed protest leaders.
"These kids, they are not shy about calling up presidents and generals and civil rights heroes and all that," Gorn said. "And they'll talk to them.. because the kids are genuine and they're asking good questions."
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