I am a coach for a group of students competing in this national competition called History Day. Students choose an event in history related to the year's theme, research it more extensively than I ever researched for college, and then create a project to show their findings. The group I am coaching are doing a 10 minute performance. We start working on our project in October and the first level of competition, county, is in March. That gives you an idea of how extensive this can be. This year, my group chose to portray a court case called Mendez Vs. Westminster. A CA case that led to CA being the first state to desegregate in the 1950s- 8 years before Brown Vs. Board of Edu. It's hugely important in our state's history, yet it's not very well known.
Anyway, last Thursday, I went on a trip with my group. We left at 5AM for Laguna Nigel (3 hours south of here). Our first stop was the National Archives and Records Admin. Depository. We looked through 700 pages of court transcripts. Then we went to UC Irvine where we met a professor who has written several books on our topic. Then we ate a quick lunch (tried to find the beach, but failed) and headed to Sylvia Mendez's house (she is the person our project is on!). Sylvia was amazing! She was so interesting to listen to we ended up spending two hours listening to her! Before we knew it, we needed to leave. Next (it was like 5pm by now), we went to CSU Fullerton library to find some important newspaper articles. It took forever to find these! By 7pm we were on the road and hit bad traffic. We finally made it home around 10:15pm!
Talk about a crazy day! I was exhausted! All in all, it was totally worth it. A very productive day. Now to begin writing the script. (oh, the picture is of my and the other coach, Brenda with Sylvia Mendez).
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