Zara Stewart and Emily Johnson are the First Labor History Award winners in NHD-Kentucky competition

EDITOR'S NOTE: We hope to get photos of Stewart and Johnson. If we do, we will post them with the story. 

By BERRY CRAIG

Alliance for Retired Americans

Zara Stewart and Emily Johnson received the first Kentucky State AFL-CIO Labor History Awards at Saturday's annual National History Day in Kentucky competition at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

They each took home $150. "Congratulations to Zara and Emily for their outstanding work," said Dustin Reinstedler, Kentucky State AFL-CIO president. 

Reinstedler said the state AFL-CIO hopes the Labor History Award will be become a regular part of the program, which is held yearly.

Stewart and Johnson's entries reflected the theme of this year's National History Day--"Turning Points in History." 

Stewart, the Junior Division Winner, is from Page School Center in Pineville. "Her Junior Individual Exhibit was titled 'The Radium Girls: A Tragic Turning Point in Factory Safety,'" said Ashley Buzzanca, National History Day in Kentucky coordinator. She is Museum Program Coordinator for Student Programs at the Kentucky Historical Society, which sponsors National History Day in the state.

Johnson, the Senior Division Labor History Award-winner, is a homeschool student from Hustonville, Buzzanca said. "Her paper was titled 'The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911: An Important Turning Point in Labor History."

Judges from the AFL-CIO were Bill Londrigan, the immediate past president; Steve Barger, a member of the state AFL-CIO Executive Board and treasurer for the Alliance for Retired Americans; and Berry Craig, the state AFL-CIO webmaster-editor and a professor emeritus of history at West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah.

A world leader in history and civics education, National History Day® is a nonprofit education organization improving the teaching and learning of history," says the NHD website. "NHD reaches more than half a million students and tens of thousands of teachers each year via its international student history contest and its wide range of teacher professional development programs, curriculum tools, and other educational activities.

NHD’s core program is its competition in which students in grades 6–12 choose a topic and dive deeply into the past by conducting extensive research in libraries, archives, and museums. They then present their conclusions and evidence through papers, exhibits, performances, documentaries, or websites, moving through a series of contest levels where they are evaluated by professional historians and educators. 

Through this process, students develop skills in communication, project management, and historical thinking. Their teachers do as well.