Six Rockbridge County High School students will compete in the senior division of Virginia History Day at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture in Richmond this Sunday, April 27.
They qualified for state competition after placing first or second at district competition in March. These students worked on their historical research projects in the National History Day club in its first year at RCHS. The club is led by RCHS teacher Lauren Williamson and Amanda Conway.
The 2025 theme of NHD is “Rights and Responsibilities in History,” and each research project needs to reflect the concepts of the theme.
Emil Hierman created an individual website about the legacy of a public building after the reunification of Germany entitled “Aufarbeitung: The Palace of the Republic and Memory Work in Post-Reunification Germany.”
Sarah Edgar and Liesl Niebur explored the fight between the government and local residents in the creation of Shenandoah National Park in a group website titled “What Isn’t Yours: The Shenandoah National Park Land Grab and the Struggle for Property Between Government and the Individual Citizen.”
Grant Swenty created an individual exhibit on the history of gold mining in Virginia entitled “The Real Cost of Gold Mining.” Luke Eicholz and Ru Bucy researched the Tuskegee Airmen and created a group website called “Flying with a Red Tailwind: How the Tuskegee Airmen Spearheaded a Larger Civil Rights Movement.”
National History Day is an international competition with participants from all 50 states and several international territories. In 2024, nearly 500,000 students created projects for local competitions around the world. The top 3,000 qualifiers participate in a national competition held in Washington, D.C., in June.
