February 21-22, 2013, McComb Legacies Student-Led Conference and Documentary Premiere in Mississippi
From February 21-22, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program joined the McComb Legacies group of McComb High School in Mississippi for their conference, “Exploring Our Past, Shaping Our Future” a student-directed event celebrating local civil rights history. This special two-day event was organized by five McComb students who traveled through the Mississippi Delta last September with SPOHP on our annual Mississippi Freedom Project trip.
In The News: Good.is’s”These Mississippi Teens Should School the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act,” on 3/11, The Mississippi Clarion Ledger’s “Students’ documentary recognized: Story of 1960s walkout in McComb lauded” on 6/14, and Teaching for Change’s feature, “Students’ Film on Voting Rights Reaches National Audience” on 6/17. To find out more information about this conference, read the McComb High School Legacies blog post about the event.
The conference, organized and coordinated by McComb High School students, included an interactive panel discussion, student-led Civil Rights sites driving tour, and onsite oral history interviews. Legacies Project students also debuted their documentary, “The Voting Rights Struggle,” which they submitted for National History Day’s nation-wide contest. Their documentary later won first place in the state of Mississippi, and the students traveled this summer to Washington, D.C for the national contest.
The Zinn Education Project, coordinated by the non-profits Rethinking Schools and W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Teaching for Change, co-sponsored the event. This two-day convening coincided with research and documentation by the McComb Legacies students in preparation for the 2013 National History Day competition.