For thousands of students around the world, autumn marks the start of another chance to get excited about learning with the National History Day Contest. Students enter their projects in local level contests, with the top entries advancing to regional, state/affiliate, and finally, the National Contest in June 2018. Along the way, students compete for the gold medal in their category as well as honors, awards, and thousands of dollars in prizes and scholarships. Guided by an annual theme, students are encouraged to choose a topic that matches their personal interests. The 2018 theme is "…

It’s time to reject historical uniformity and historical integration. Black history has its own historical entry points, historical timelines, and historical perspectives.  

A close look at the history of African American voting rights can launch a lively classroom discussion about present-day democratic struggles.

Studying the nineteenth-century educator and civil rights leader Octavius Catto can help students move beyond the simplistic U.S. narrative of racial progress to a more complex understanding of race and resistance in America.   

Laura H. Darolia

The featured primary documents related to white violence against African Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, and Red Cross relief efforts, can springboard into an important classroom discussion about who gets to tell history.

Stephanie Schroeder

Comparing questions from the 1920 Census and the 2020 Census can be a great jumping off point into a lesson on the importance of a national count and how Census questions reflect the prior decade.

It was fall 1979. The Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati was gathering for its annual meeting. The top item on the agenda was the Iranian hostage crisis and how to handle the anti-Iranian fervor that was growing in the United States. Particular attention went to a young boy in Wilmington, Ohio—a small, closely knit farming community that was proud of its Quaker college, considered a beacon of tolerance and intellectualism. The fifth-grade boy on the meeting’s agenda had an American mother and an Iranian father working at the college. Being the lone child in town with an Iranian connection…

Studying local history stimulates student interest and can provide an entrée into studying larger national narratives.