Sixty-five Hingham High School juniors competed at this year’s HHS History Day contest. This annual competition, held at the Hingham Historical Society’s Heritage Museum, featured the top historical research projects of all 271 members of the Class of 2025.
Established in 1974, National History Day (NHD) is a non-profit education organization that offers year-long academic programs that annually engage over half a million middle- and high-school students around the world in conducting original research on a topic of their choice aligned to a particular theme, which this year is “Turning Points in History.” These research-based projects are entered into contests at the local and affiliate levels, where the top student projects have the opportunity to advance to the national contest at the University of Maryland at College Park. The first step in this contest is the school level, and high schools in Massachusetts may send up their top projects to their regional competition on March 2nd.
That excitement was evident at the Hingham Heritage Museum on Sunday afternoon, where students gathered to present and discuss their work to a team of volunteer judges from the Hingham Historical Society.
Deirdre Anderson, Executive Director of the Hingham Historical Society, and Andy Hoey, HPS K-12 Director of Social Studies, offered their congratulations to all 65 participating students for their scholarship, as well as the teachers who guided them through the process: Ms. Molly Baggott, Mr. Patrick Doerr, Ms. Kathleen Dwyer, Ms. Christina O’Connor, Ms. Susan Petrie, and Ms. Jamie Zelenka.
The 33 students listed below were promoted to compete at the Foxborough Regional History Day contest and a chance to move on to the state and national competitions.
Paper
First Place: Tala Sanford: “The Rosies of Hingham Shipyard: Welding Women’s Way Forward”
Second Place: Nina Murphy: “Silent Spring: The Pivot Point for the Environmental Movement”
Third Place: Cab Amidei: “Getting into the (Twilight) Zone: How Rod Serling’s Battle with Censorship Transformed American Television”
Fourth Place: Julia Scipione: “The Seneca Falls Convention: The Start of a Bitter Struggle to Gender Equality”
Fifth Place: Audrey Walker: “The Pure Food and Drug Act: How Public Advocacy Transformed Food and Drug Regulation in America”
Individual Documentary
First Place: Ava Green: “Making Peace with Nature”
Second Place: Alexander Dinardi: “Immigration During the California Gold Rush”
Third Place: Lily Dong: “‘There’s Blood On Those Grapes!’: How the Delano Grape Strike Revolutionized the American Farm Labor Movement”
Group Documentary
First Place: Claire Farrington & Neely Sgobbo: “From the Ashes of a Nightclub: The Cocoanut Grove Fire”
Second Place: Ryan Burns & Declan Kelley: “Ryan White’s Journey Shaping the AIDS Narrative”
Third Place: Drew Golden & Adam Healey: “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”
Individual Website
First Place: Matty Cummings: “The Battle of Saratoga”
Second Place: Violet Palmer: “Andy Warhol: The Fame of Pop Art”
Group Website
First Place: Logan Brennan, Owen Cline, Logan Traynor: “Battle of Midway”
Individual Exhibit
First Place: Grace Petitti: “Nellie Bly: The Treatment of Mentally Ill”
Second Place: Taylor Sargent: “Clara Barton: The Angel of the Battlefield and Warrior for Women’s Suffrage”
Third Place: Ana Shirokova: “Turning Points: Understanding and Addressing Child Labor”
Fourth Place: Sammy Powers: “Pride Started as a Riot: The Stonewall Uprising”
Group Exhibit
First Place: David Bennion & Abby Griffin: “The Destroyer Escort That Fought Like a Battleship”
Second Place: Jasai Shakespeare & Olivia Tamburro: “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory”
Third Place: Sean Curry & Ayden Gaughan: “Bootleggers, Battles, and Bribery”
Fourth Place: Clare Lowther & Addie Sibley: “Hollywood”
Group Performance
First Place: Sergio Munoz Albors & Herbert Seto: “The Religious Barrier: How Engel v. Vitale Changed the World”