A month after completing the AP U.S. History exam, students at Easthampton High School stepped out of the classroom and into the role of bona fide local historians, scouring archives and flipping through newspaper clippings to make their own discoveries about the Pioneer Valley’s role in major moments in history.
After doing weeks of research at local libraries, archives and historical societies, the students of history teacher Kelley Brown will present their findings Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Easthampton High School auditorium.
The topics range from the King Philip’s War, to the legacy of the Pomery family, to the efforts of students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to increase African-American enrollment. Though the students covered some three centuries years in their presentations, the Forbes Library librarian who helped lead the young scholars’ efforts says a thread runs through them.
“Everything begins at a local level,” Elise Bernier-Feeley, the local history and genealogy librarian at Forbes.
Bernier-Feeley and Brown say that the project offers a unique and rewarding opportunity for students to do the type of in-depth, self-guided research that many people don’t have a chance to do until college.
“It gives young scholars a chance to actually see original manuscripts, diaries, letters, scrapbooks – all the things adult researchers use,” Bernier-Feeley said. “It allows them to become familiar with these things and to do the research required … to actually make a thesis statement and follow through with a paper and then they do this magnificent evening of telling people their story.”
What’s more, Brown says that the papers, about 10 pages in length, are valued contributions to local research in the valley. Upon completion, the papers are all submitted to the Easthampton Historical Society. And topics involving Smith College are sent to the archives there.
“They make an authentic contribution to local history,” Brown said. “In a real way they get to play the role of historian while gaining basic research skills.”
Bernier-Feeley kicked off the research project with several visits to Easthampton, where she helped students learn about the many resources available to them in the Pioneer Valley and help students narrow down their topics.
In addition to the Hampshire Room at Forbes, the students also performed research at the Easthampton Historical Society, the Holyoke History Room at the public library in that city, the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College and the Wistariahurst Musuem.
Pektra Nhem and Karina Patterson, both 16, came to Bernier-Feeley with an interest in feminism and World War II.
Bernier-Feeley introduced them to the memoir of Margaret Clifford Dwyer, a Hadley resident who, during World War II, served in the U.S. Naval Reserve’s Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, or WAVES.
The women of WAVES performed roles such a decoders, cooks or administrative assistants to high-ranking Naval officers. Some 11,000 of them were trained in Northampton after Smith College and the Hotel Northampton were transformed into a training center for the corps.
“They didn’t just want the women,” Patterson said. “They needed the women.”
Dwyer’s memoir led them to other sources, including extensive scrapbooks of newspaper clippings cut by Forbes librarians during the entirety of the war.
There’s a unanimous agreement among the students in Brown’s class when it comes to the value that the library and archival research has.
“Wikipedia is not good,” said Emma Blomstrom, 16, who has studied local women’s suffrage efforts.
It’s all about primary sources – documents written by, or about, the people involved in a particular topic as it’s happening.
It might be hard to understand and contextualize the argument against women’s right to vote a century after the 19th amendment passed. But primary sources provide the best understanding of those points, she said.
“When you see the primary sources, you see the opinions of people at the time,” Blomstrom said. “You also see the perspective of why women shouldn’t vote.”
For Carlie Raucher, Carly Detmers and Sierra Raskavietz, primary source means something much closer than a faded Gazette clipping.
They interviewed three veterans of World War II, two black and one white, about how their wartime experiences impacted their experience during the Civil Rights movement.
The lived experiences of the three men provide a much deeper insight into their topic, they agreed.
“Dates and times in a text book aren’t going to tell you as much as facial expressions and tone of voice,” Raucher said. “Normally you try to put aside the bias. In a situation like this, we need to embrace the bias.”
It’s that excitement about history that Bernier-Feeley said makes her happiest.
“Kelley and I both try very hard to put these young people in touch with the reality of history in people,” she said. “These young people were able to connect with the last generation of World War II – the people who are not going to be with us in 10 years.”
Brown and Bernier-Feeley have been working together to mint young scholars for over a decade. But they first met at Forbes when they were both in different roles.
Brown worked with Bernier-Feeley when Brown was an Easthampton High School student herself and Bernier-Feeley’s duties also included working as a reference librarian.
“Until I started working with her again, I didn’t realize,” Brown said.
Brown said Bernier-Feeley makes shepherding a love of local history for students possible.
“She is such a tireless and unsung hero of the community in that she has worked with so many scholars and has helped so many people,” Brown said. “Not only is she a mentor to the students, but she’s been a mentor and a friend to me. I really couldn’t have built this project and its legacy without her.”
And for Bernier-Feeley, helping people learn about local history is such a passion that it prompted her to come out of retirement after leaving work in 2006.
“I feel privileged and honored for the last 10 years of being in any way connected with Kelley Brown and her students,” she said. “It’s wonderful to watch what (the students) produce. Because ultimately it’s their creativity, it’s their take on the sources, it’s their handle on history and it’s their, if I can say it – great accomplishment.”
Chris Lindahl can be reached at clindahl@gazettenet.com