Mississippi National History Day Program at the Youthful Offenders Unit School

This TPS grant provides funding for the continuation of this civil rights course at the YOU School, supporting justice-impacted students who participate in National History Day. The goal of this course are: (1) to teach students how to analyze primary sources, (2) to train students in oral history methods as they conduct interviews with civil rights veterans, (3) to improve students’ reading comprehension and writing skills, (4) to give students space to connect the past to the present through guided discussions, and (5) to help students develop poster exhibits for the NHD contest. Facilitators will work collectively to prepare students for the NHD, with the state competition scheduled for early April 2026. Each course section opens with a lesson related to a central theme—Jim Crow, voting rights, school segregation and desegregation, among others. Students will work in small groups to analyze primary sources from the materials compiled from the Library of Congress’s Digital Collection. At the end of the course, students will create a poster exhibit on a topic of their choice related to NBD’s theme of “Revolution, Reaction, and Reform.”.