National History Day Resources
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://hdl.handle.net/10605/362535
The resources on this page were selected to support students and teachers participating in the National History Day Contest. The Contest encourages more than half a million students around the world to conduct historical research on a topic of their choice. Students enter these projects at the local and state/affiliate levels, with top students advancing to the National Contest at the University of Maryland at College Park. The Contest is supported by National History Day, a non-profit education organization that offers year-long academic programs that engage over half a million middle- and high-school students around the world annually in conducting original research on historical topics of interest.
The five main topics covered by these materials are: Tornadoes, Wind Energy, Severe Weather; Space Exploration; Racial Equity; Title IX and Universities; and Frontiers. Collections and materials were identified through collaboration by the Texas Tech University Department of History and the Southwest Collection. For more information, please contact Dr. Monte Monroe (monte.monroe@ttu.edu), Dr. Matthew Johnson (matthew.j.johnson@ttu.edu), or Robert Weaver (robert.g.weaver@ttu.edu).
Wind and Severe Weather Research
The F-Scale, used for measuring the strength of tornadoes, was developed by Dr. Tetsuya Theodore Fujita during his decades as a severe weather research. Dr. Fujita’s materials are housed at the Southwest Collection. An inventory of his work can be found here: Dr. Tetsuya Theodore "Ted" Fujita Papers, 1875-2003 and undated. Portions of Dr. Fujita’s materials have also been made available digitally.
In 1970, Lubbock, Texas, was devastated by an F-5 tornado. Numerous photographs of its aftermath can be found in our 1970 Lubbock Tornado Photograph Collection. The Southwest Collections’ archivists have also written about the event here and here
Texas Tech University is also home to the National Wind Institute (NWI). Many of its published reports and other archival material may be found here. The NWI was also featured in articles in Texas Tech University’s Daily Toreador newspaper here and here.
The Southwest Collection owns many oral histories relating to severe weather and the study of wind power and wind energy. Some of those are:
Many more oral histories may be found among our oral history abstracts as well as among our oral history transcripts.
NASA
The archival materials of the first Chief of Medicine at NASA, Dr. Sherman Vinograd, can be found at the Southwest Collection. They are the Dr. Sherman P. Vinograd Aerospace Exploration Papers, 1957-2010 and undated. Much of those are also available in our digitized collections.
Astronaut Rick Husband, who commanded the Columbia Space Shuttle on its final mission where it tragically disintegrated over east Texas, was a Texas Tech alumnus. His papers, the Rick Husband Papers, 1969-2008 and undated, are available at the Southwest Collection as well.
The Southwest Collection owns many oral histories relating to severe weather and the study of wind power and wind energy. Some of those are:
Many more oral histories may be found among our oral history abstracts as well as among our oral history transcripts.
Racial Justice in Lubbock, Texas
The Southwest Collection recently featured an exhibit, "Black and Brown in Print", that highlighted the African American- and Latino-owned newspapers in Lubbock and the South Plains. It features newspapers such as the Southwest Digest (also known as the West Texas Times or the Manhattan Heights Times), which documented the history of Lubbock's African American community in their own words for almost 60 years. Nearly every volume of that newspaper has been digitized and made available online. It also celebrates numerous Spanish-language, Latino-focused newspapers, particularly El Editor, which has been published from the 1970s until the present day. These are among the 300,000 other newspaper volumes that the Southwest Collection makes available online.
The Southwest Collection also houses several archival collections related to the region's Mexican American and Latino history, including the papers of El Editor's publisher, Bidal Aguero, some of which are digitized, as well as the papers of his wife, Olga Aguero. We have a complete list of all our other Mexican American and Latino archival collections here.
We have lists of all our other Mexican American and Latino oral histories here, and even discovered videos and transcripts with Bidal and Olga Aguero at the University of Texas at Arlington and at Texas Christian University (TCU).
Title IX/Women's Sports at TTU
The Texas Tech University Archives, housed within the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, document the history and day-to-day operations of Texas Tech University. Their many archival collections, photographs, artifacts, and other materials can be discovered here. In fact, many of their items have been digitized and are available online!
Many of the University Archives' items relate to Women's Sports at TTU, including their support through Title IX's support of women's sports in university athletics. They helped the TTU Athletic Department construct a helpful timeline for Title IX at Texas Tech. Perhaps one of the most useful resources for that information, however, are our digitized issues of Texas Tech University's student newspaper, the Daily Toreador. We even found some specific articles about the history of TTU's highly successful Women's Basketball team here, here, and here.
We conducted several oral history interviews with prominent sports figures such as coach Marsha Sharp and Judith Henry. Many more oral histories on these topics may be found among our oral history abstracts as well as among our oral history transcripts.
Frontiers
From the first collections the Southwest Collection gathered, it has focused on documenting the history of the frontier in Texas and throughout the U.S. Southwest. Our collection of digitized maps is one of the best ways to see the changing geography of the region over time. The maps date from as early as the 1500s all the way up to the 21st century.
This history of ranching and agriculture is also a key component of the story of the frontier, at least on the South Plains of Texas. Recruiting potential farmers to immigrate to Texas was constant, as reflected in these land promotionals and advertisements for 60,000 Acres of cotton farms.
The Texas Revolution of 1836 was an important moment in the history of the United State's changing frontier. The Southwest Collection has digitized nearly 200 newspapers from cities and towns throughout the U.S. at that time, all of which feature stories about the conflict in Texas at that time.