Dr. Jami Forrester, social studies chair at Haas Hall Academy in Springdale, is experiencing a full-circle episode. When she was in high school, she participated in National History Day. While in college, she was a National History Day judge, and as a professor at Northwest Arkansas Community College, she supervised National History Day Region 10 for 11 years. Now she's helping her high school students prepare and present in National History Day events. She says the annual competition for students across the country and in about a dozen other countries began in the 1970s.
"Started out just kind of like exhibits, research papers, contests between that. It's evolved now with technology. We now have documentaries, websites, exhibits, performance, and then the old-fashioned research paper. And so the students choose a topic. It can be any topic in history, but as long as they relate it to a theme. And this year's theme is,”
“Revolution, reaction and reform.”
“Exactly."
That's Hannah O'Toole finishing Dr. Forrester's sentence. The theme this year, as you heard, is revolution, reaction and reform. Hannah moved through the regional and state History Day events this year and qualified for the international contest taking place next month at the University of Maryland. She's presenting in the senior individual performance, performing as Phillis Wheatley, the poet.
"And she was the first African American or African slave to be published in the U.S. So what I did, I did a performance about her, which is where I talked about how her becoming published was a big thing, because it has never been done before, and how that led way for many other African American like literature people to be able to like, get their works like seen more and recognized more. And she changed the whole scene when you think about like African Americans, like intellectuality. And so that's why I did my performance about — it was very — I had a very good time doing it because I like kind of like acting and like being big on the screen, I guess. And so that was — yeah, that's what I did for my project."
Also qualified for the international contest: Brinley Cotton, for her senior paper about the National Cancer Act of 1971.
"And kind of how that changed how the National Cancer Institute works with their research, but also kind of how the social atmosphere around cancer changed. So before that, not a lot of people, even family, were really comfortable discussing cancer. And I kind of talked about how the social campaign around the National Cancer Act kind of changed the discussion around it. And like legislators were able to talk about it. So it kind of changed how people viewed it and kind of made things easier for cancer patients all together, just being able to talk about their diagnosis and get help with it."
Both Brinley and Hannah are seniors heading to the University of Arkansas Honors College next fall. They agreed to spend about an hour of their last day of high school talking about their History Day projects and what inspires them to learn.
Brinley says she decided to research the National Cancer Act of 1971 last summer when she was reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning book about cancer, "The Emperor of All Maladies."
"It was a really long book. It was like 600 pages or something. And about halfway through the book, the National Cancer Act gets mentioned. And before that, it was kind of just cancer researchers in hospital basements and stuff funding their own research. So after the National Cancer Act, research starts changing and they start actually taking preventative measures, not just trying to treat the symptoms. It just kind of revolutionized the way that cancer research was conducted. And I was kind of like, they didn't go really in depth on the National Cancer Act. So when I saw that, I wanted to go back up a little bit and be like, wait, what happened? Like this changed so quickly. So I put my book down and I started researching it and it was really perfect for this year's theme."
Likewise, a catalyst for Hannah spreading the word about Phillis Wheatley came from a book recommended to her by Dr. Forrester.
"I was reading through and I realized she, as a person, as like revolutionary as she was, she isn't mentioned that much when we talk about like U.S. history or even like history of African Americans and slavery in the United States. So I looked a bit more into her and I realized all these things she did. She talked with like so many big people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, yet she wasn't recognized as much. So I was very interested in her. And I wanted to do my project about her to kind of, I guess, spread the word about her more."
Kellams: So you did a performance? So I imagine as Phillis Wheatley, you recited poetry.?
“Yes, I did recite poetry. That was one of my best things about the performance. Since I have to write the script, I could just get a lot of her poetry and weave it into there. Her poetry is very interesting because she writes — all she — her favorite type of form was like iambic pentameter. And then she'd write in like sonnets, couplets, and it's a lot of like high-level stuff that you didn't see from a lot of people from African descent at the time, because their education was taken away and they weren't able to like, read and write English. So reading her poems was very like, cool and interesting because it merged a lot of themes around the time, like religious themes, text themes, like about slavery. And putting that into the script made it really easy to like, capture her essence in my performance."
Kellams: What I love about Phillis Wheatley's poetry is that there are two sides or layers, because there's her poetry, but what she's also doing is being somewhat subversive here and challenging the status quo. And when you start reading, she's brilliant.
“Yeah. That's the biggest thing about her, like, for me, was that she wrote all these poems, all this poetry. And then when she wanted to publish the book, there had to be like an 18-member panel to be like, is she actually able to write this? Is this like something she can do? And once they started reading, she had to like defend herself because like her brilliance wasn't like seen as possible. And so that was something that she did really well. And then integrating like so many themes to be palatable for like audiences who might not think she's able to write it while still kind of pushing for the freedom of like slaves — like it's just like really cool, like how she did that at her time, you know."
In all, seven students from Haas Hall Springdale qualified for the international finals, taking place in June in Maryland. Sidney Schmidt won the overall state honors for her use of primary research, and four students together are qualified in the senior group performance. Estimated cost per scholar for registration, travel, lodging and food is about $1,000. Jami Forrester says the students are brainstorming how to raise the money in time for next month's contest.
"It's going to take a great deal of fundraising for us. The Department of Heritage does give $600 — it's grant money to each student, so that's going to pay for part of an airline ticket."
She points out the grants help, but they come as reimbursements late in the summer, not as upfront help. But the good thing about having intelligent scholars who love research:
“Literally, I came into my room the other day, and my room was filled with all these ideas that they had put on the board. So I let them talk about their brainstorming, what they were trying to do."
"Yeah. We've started. We are calling everybody. We're calling all the banks. Like I remember calling people and being like, hey, can you please sponsor us? And they're like, we'll call you back. They haven't called back and that's OK. But so we started this GoFundMe. We have this link and we're trying to get it like around, spread the word, so that people can come and help us raise money."
In between those fundraising idea sessions, the students are fine-tuning their history work. Brinley Cotton says even though her first draft was completed in November, it wasn't really completed. She says she's still battling what she calls a confounding 2,500-word limit, and for the final event, it's more than her written words that will be judged.
"So the biggest thing that I have to prepare for with these competitions is probably interviews for my paper. That's probably the biggest change between state and nationals, is that we're going to have to do serious interviews, at least for me. I know that with the performances, they're refining at every level and they're really preparing to perform in front of an audience, and that's really nerve-wracking. But for me at least, it's the interviews."
Jami Forrester says she's been thrilled to watch all of her participating students research and prepare, exercising all kinds of skills like critical thinking that translate beyond National History Day.
"I think one thing that the History Day students have realized is that they never have enough sources — they are continuously adding to it. And especially with, you know, the primary sources that are at our fingertips, to the Library of Congress, through the National Archives, through all of the presidential libraries, there's so much that is digitized now and accessible that I think a problem for our students now is that it's too overwhelming and they don't know where to start. And I've been in education for a long time and that's the problem I'm seeing students have now. It's not that they can't comprehend or that they can't analyze, it's that they don't know how to begin."
National History Day not only requires participating scholars to research their topics — they're also asked to critically place their topics into the year's theme, like this year's revolution, reaction and reform. It is a competition, but Brinley and Hannah are interested in stressing the importance of their chosen topics — the National Cancer Act of 1971 and Phillis Wheatley — and how each translates to 2026.
"Right now, I'm ending my paper with discussing how a lot of proposals for — not for — the National Institutes of Health cuts are coming up, and they're losing a lot of the funding that was allotted through the National Cancer Act of 1971. Still, there are billions more dollars from that act. So it's still having an ongoing impact. And of course, the social influence is still there. But I think it's important to remember that cancer funding isn't just going to exploring for fun scientific things. It's really about reducing mortality rates. I mean, the National Cancer Act — the mortality rates dropped almost immediately from 1969 to 1972. I wrote about it in my paper, and I think it's just important to remember that these funds are important and that they aren't there for fun, they're important, and they're having a direct impact on people's lives."
"When I introduce Phyllis Wheatley to people, I'm like, yeah, I'm doing my project about Phyllis Wheatley. And then you can see on their face they're like, who's Phyllis Wheatley? But they don't want to ask. And then I follow up with she was the first slave to be published in the United States. And I think just knowing someone so integral to like African American education today, you can trace it back to like just her being published. She's just such an important figure that has helped develop the ideas around even the Constitution, because a lot of the times when they were debating about slavery, they were debating about the like cognitive level of slaves and if they were intellectual or not. And so her being able to like, write and produce such great literary works — that was a direct — it directly affected how slaves were treated in the colonies and then in the United States. And I think that's something that she should be recognized for, because she kind of pushed back against the ideas that African Americans can't write, they can't read, they can't contribute to the poetic arts. So that's what I really try to like, to people when I talk about her."
Hannah, who also won the state PBS award for her performance as Wheatley, could also be chosen to perform at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. In the fall, Brinley will study animal science with a pre-vet concentration at the UofA, and Hannah will be at the University of Arkansas studying mechanical engineering with a concentration in aerospace. That's a major she says is very much in line with her interest in the poet Phillis Wheatley.
"I was inspired by the movie 'Hidden Figures,' and so that's also something that's kind of really connected to Phillis Wheatley in a way, too, because like African American intellectuality is seen both there and in the like aerospace engineers. Katherine Johnson, who like sent people to the moon. And so like, I guess it's kind of like the same like base level, but like seen in different ways that like, I feel like connects to my interests in life."
Dr. Jami Forrester says that sums up pretty well the importance of knowing and understanding history now and in the future.
"When you're in the social sciences and especially in social studies in K through 12, we're put on the back burner for pretty much everything. They're reducing the amount of classes that kids have to take for history. They're reducing the time. I love STEM, I love STEAM, but — where's history? And as I tell my students, history is everything, literally. And to leave it purposely out is damaging. A history class is where students are going to learn how to critically think, how to analyze, how to think for themselves and determine, you know, why we are where we're at."
The international edition of National History Day is June 14-19 at the University of Maryland. You can find the students' fundraising page here.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
