ALSC Executive Director Paul F. Cole awards the 2009 NHD Gold Medal to Mark Castera for his paper on Samuel Gompers.
Each spring, a student may enter his or her work into a local National History Day contest where it will be judged by professional educators and historians. If the work is chosen as one of the best, it will move on to the state’s NHD contest. As a winner of the state NHD contest, a student will be eligible to attend the Kenneth E. Behring National History Day Contest at the University of Maryland at College Park in June. This is where the best National History Day projects from across the United States, American Samoa, Guam, International Schools and Department of Defense Schools in Europe all meet and compete. For more information on the contest, go to http://www.nhd.org/contest.htm.
The American Labor Studies Center sponsors a NHD Special Gold Medal Prize ($1,000) for the best entry on American labor history. It also offers a $250 prize for the best New York State entry. This year’s theme is Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History. The intentional selection of the theme for National History Day is to provide an opportunity for students to push past the antiquated view of history as mere facts and dates and drill down into historical content to develop perspective and understanding. This theme provides a number of different opportunities to examine various aspects of American labor history from the Industrial Revolution, reaction to deplorable and unsafe working conditions throughout American history and various efforts at reform including child labor laws, the right to organize and bargain collectively, safety and health legislation, minimum wage and working hours legislation, labor law reform, civil rights, and social legislation such as labor’s support for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Family and Medical Leave, and others.
