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Veterans Memorial Early College High School’s Felicity Fok was one of 13 students at this year’s National History Day National Contest to have her performance chosen to appear at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Fok’s performance of “Sharp as a Needle and Steady as the Hand Which Guides It” came as the penultimate performance at the Smithsonian and helped close this year’s event, her sponsor Rodrigo Garcia said.

Fok had prepared her 10-minute presentation about the impact of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union during the early 1900s to illustrate this year’s theme of “Rights and Responsibilities in History.” She presented against a backdrop of uncertainty about National History Day.

Leading up to this year’s 50th national contest, the NHD website included repeated popup reminders from Cathy Gorn, the group’s executive director, that the organization’s funding is in danger.

This spring, the national organization lost more than $300,000 — nearly 10% of its annual budget — after President Donald Trump’s administration canceled virtually all existing grants by the National Endowment of the Humanities, the New York Times reported.

The Veterans Memorial group, which also included qualifiers from Hanna Early College High School and Faulk Middle School, was reminded of the national mood surrounding rights and responsibilities when U.S. Army tanks were being moved into Washington D.C. for the army’s 250th birthday parade passed by the restaurant where they were dining.

The National History Day National Contest takes place annually at the University of Maryland, which is headquartered in College Park, Maryland, in suburban Washington, D.C. On Monday and Tuesday and into Wednesday, 18-wheelers rumbled by delivering the tanks for the parade.

“Two evenings in a row we were dining at a restaurant, and you could hear this whole calamity. The roads were cleared. Easily half a dozen tanks were driven right before us as we were eating dinner on both nights. We knew that the event was going to happen to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, which is remarkable, but we also are aware of the happy coincidence of the president’s birthday. We were kind of a little bit shocked to see armored vehicles being taken into the nation’s capital,” Garcia said.

Fok said she intends to continue with National History Day as a senior this coming school year, again in the performance category. She said she has no regrets about this year’s performance, which she began writing, practicing and performing back in October.

She said the performance at the Smithsonian allowed her to share her research.

“I felt really honored to perform on that stage. When I was there I felt such excitement and energy from the audience, because that one was less about competition and more about sharing your research and your passion with others,” she said.

“I felt really inspired by the other performances as well, because it kind of gave me a glimpse of the ways we as students from all over the country can express ourselves in different ways while acknowledging the past,” she said.

One of the activities at National History Day is pin trading, during which students trade lapel pins or buttons from their state or country.

“I got to talk to and traded pins with students from China, Korea, and Guam,” Fok said, adding that she sees National History Day as a conference where students come together to share their passion for history, for research, in a lot of different ways.

In terms of the funding issues, she said she thinks it is important that students continue to have the opportunities to study and research history that she has had through National History Day.

She admitted that history wouldn’t have been her first choice as a subject, but said that researching the International Ladies Garment Workers Union for her performance opened her eyes to the union’s impact.

Through her research about the union she learned that it was the first to make the connection between work life and personal well-being.

“They were the first union to offer a health center and a retirement plan for their members. They also offered English as a second language courses,” helping union members transition to English from their native Yiddish in the New England states where the union drew its membership, she said.

The post Brownsville student presents at Smithsonian during National History Day appeared first on MyRGV.com.