ADA — Ohio Northern University hosted its annual spring Social Studies Day Friday in the Dicke Forum, with about 130 students from Ada, Lima Senior and Piqua high schools attending.
ONU associate professor of history Russ Crawford said the event is held each winter and spring in an effort to get high school students more interested in history.
“The intent is to provide high school students and teachers with a deeper understanding of and appreciation of the social studies,” Crawford said. “We set a theme, and discuss different aspects of that theme.”
The theme for this spring was civil rights. Crown Equipment Corporation CEO James Dicke II discussed “William M. McCulloch and the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” assistant ONU history professor Robert Waters discussed “The Civil Rights Movement,” Crawford discussed “Sports and Integration” and ONU students Emily Mohr and Nathaniel Bracy discussed “Digital History at ONU.”
Dicke had the distinction of working for McCulloch, who served as a Representative in Washington D.C. from 1947-1973, representing Ohio. McCulloch took a leading role in the civil rights movement. He introduced civil rights legislation months before Kennedy presented his act to Congress. He was instrumental in legislation that was finally passed in 1964.
“It was a very interesting time in our country,” Dicke said. “He was quite a remarkable guy. This was the one thing he made sure he got done.”
Waters defined the early 1920s as having “some of the ugliest, most brutal race riots in history.” He said that African-Americans had expected more equality after serving their country during World War I, only to return home to more racism.
“Very quickly, they tried to reimpose slavery through terrorism,” Waters said.
Crawford’s presentation focused on integration through sports as civil rights became more prevalent, Mohr and Bracy’s presentation focused on the university’s current push to create a program that will include a course in digital history techniques. Crawford said digital history is a collection of processes and tools to preserve historical records and have them more readily available.
“It is our goal with this event to get more students interested in the topic of history,” Crawford said.
Dicke said the day is helpful because it presents information to students in a typical university format.
“Many of these students will be attending college and they get to see what a day in college is like,” Dicke said.
.neFileBlock {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
padding-bottom: 5px;
padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
font-size: 85%;
}
