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Virginia Students Make History
By Paul Michel and Mohammad Rasool, 12th grade students from Monticello High School in Charlottesville, Virginia
This article appeared in the 2007 winter edition of the newsletter.
The past five years of NHD have been an adventure that we never could have imagined when we began back in seventh grade. That first year, we were so proud of ourselves. That following year, 2004, we won a bronze medal for our junior performance entry on school integration in Charlottesville. The medal was nice, but what was even better was the feeling that, along with the other members of the team, we had visited a piece of history more intimately than we had thought possible. Our personal interviews with those who had lived through school segregation provided moments we would never forget. We were hooked on the history.
The next year, we added Mona Hovaizi to our team and she hosted our meetings at her house. Before long we were having long conversations with her Iranian parents and we had found our next topic: communication between the US and Iran. That year we won a gold medal for "Oil, Arms, and Hostages." More importantly, we discovered the treasure trove of scholars right in our own back yard, at University of Virginia. That year we received guidance from RK Ramazani, who was one of President Carter's advisers during the 1979 hostage crisis. We were later invited to meet former First Lady Rosalynn Carter and to perform our winning entry at the Carter Library in Atlanta.
In 2006 we tapped the UVA resources again in order to research the period of Massive Resistance in Virginia. Attending lectures by civil rights activist and university professor Julian Bond helped us understand the effect that Harry Byrd and the Dixiecrats had on the civil rights movement. In order to peruse the documents at the special collections library, we had to obtain permission from Senator Harry Byrd, Jr., now in his eighties. We saw hand written letters from President John F. Kennedy and got a peek into the personal wheeling and dealing within the US Senate during the fifties and sixties.
We knew we had to enter the following year just to see if we could find a topic as exciting as our past three. By September, we had decided on the Arab-Israeli crisis as the focus of our research. This research was particularly heartbreaking as we heard the stories of Palestinians who had been exiled in 1948. Though the triumph of the Jewish state was undeniable, there was great tragedy in the Palestinian exile, tragedy that persists even today. The immediacy of our topic made it all the more appealing as we contacted scholars at UVA and abroad for direction. William Quandt, UVA political scientist, had been instrumental at the Camp David Accords and was able to lead us to a balanced array of resources.
After winning the bronze medal, we heard our names called for the David Von Tassel scholarship to Case Western reserve. Never in a million years did we imagine that one of us would win a scholarship, let alone both of us. Our visit this summer to Case was a pleasure. This school offers everything imaginable in both humanities and sciences. It would be impossible not to get a world class education there and have fun as well. We have been overwhelmed by the enrichment that our five years as amateur historians have provided. We are richer people for researching the roots of our conflict with Iran, which can be found in the CIA coup of 1953 when we interfered in their democratic process. We are richer for having learned about the Massive Resistance movement and how its architect, Senator Harry Byrd, stalled civil rights for a decade in the South. We are certainly richer for having examined the painful discord that surrounds Israel and how British colonialism combined with European anti-Semitism brought about this conflict. We are richer for having experienced National History Day and for those magical five days at College Park that we looked forward to all year, every year. |
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