Phoebe Jones stood in the hallway of the Mississippi Two Museums on April 5, 2025. Behind her, a two-story trifold board rose from a folding table. A judge listened intently as Jones explained the life of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his connection to the Hebrew language. Jones, a Starkville High School sophomore, spent months researching the topic with freshman Michael Taquino to present at Mississippi History Day. The project earned first place in the Senior Group Exhibit category.
“Mississippi History Day is where students from across the state are able to choose a topic of their liking to fit the annual theme. This year (that theme) is ‘Rights and Responsibilities in History,’” Mississippi Department of Archives and History Outreach Programs Coordinator Bently Cochran told the Mississippi Free Press at the state contest last month.
Mississippi History Day is a program focused on helping students improve their research and critical-analysis skills through historical data collection and presentation. The competition is organized into two divisions: junior for grades 6 through 8 and senior for grades 9 through 12.
“This is one of the more important things that a student can do because they are the future of our country,” Cochran said. “If they can start looking into history and how they can find credible sources (and) if they can find their own arguments and have evidence to back that up, that makes them a more informed adult in the world. … And it all starts with learning how to research and how to find sources.”
Students find and review primary and secondary sources from archives, museums, libraries and credible historic websites. From their research, they design an individual, original argument about their topics to display as a paper, website, performance, exhibit, or documentary. Students then present their work to judges on the regional level for the opportunity to compete at the state competition.
The theme is intentionally broad, leaving students the opportunity to discover history beyond their school textbooks. Students presented individual or group projects on topics such as science, math, culture, foreign language and other subjects.
“(The theme) allows students to pick what they think should be discussed more,” Cochran said. “This year, we have topics about citizenship. We have topics about queer history. We have topics that aren’t usually focused on in school as heavily, but this contest allows the students to still learn about that true history. It allows them to figure out whether or not what they’re being fed by social media or by the news is biased in any way.”
Funding Cuts May Affect National Contest’s Fate
Mississippi History Day is the state’s National History Day affiliate. First- and second-place finishers in each category qualify for the national contest held at the University of Maryland at College Park in June. Students from all 50 states and seven other countries participate in the contest, which started in 1974.
However, cuts to National Endowment for the Humanities funding could stall the competition in upcoming years. The Department of Government Efficiency terminated more than a thousand NEH grants, including grants that have long been provided to state councils like the Mississippi Humanities Council. National History Day announced on April 2 that it had been notified that its grants from NEH totaling $336,000 were cancelled, but the organization will still hold its national competition this year from June 8 to June 12.
Cochran said the national competition incurs fees from the University of Maryland for the use of its spaces, food for judges and other costs associated with hosting an international contest.
“As of right now, it is still on,” Cochran said. “They’re just trying to figure out how to get the money they lost.”
National History Day Executive Director Cathy Gorn said in an April statement that while the organization plans to host the national contest this year, without funding, the future is unclear.
“With state and local National History (Day) competitions already underway this year in 49 states and Washington, D.C., as well as U.S. territories and international schools around the world, we are committed to continuing with the National Contest this June but will have to re-evaluate our future programmin(g) without these critical funds,” Gorn wrote.
Congress established NEH with the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965. Together, the agencies provide federal grants for arts and culture. In addition to providing operating support for state humanities councils, NEH funds history, research and preservation at museums, libraries and universities. President Trump intended to eliminate the agencies during his first term in office, writing them out of the federal budget, but a bipartisan move from Congress blocked that attempt. The Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025, called funding the agencies wasteful.
Because Mississippi History Day isn’t directly funded by NEH, the loss of funding did not affect the state competition, as the Mississippi Department of Archives and History provides the primary funding for Mississippi History Day. Additionally, the University of Southern Mississippi and the Mississippi University for Women serve as regional competition sponsors, and the Mississippi Historical Society donated a sizable amount to the contest last year.
Learning Beyond State Standards
Tougaloo Early College High School teacher Alexandria Drake said the competition provides her students the opportunity to move beyond the required high-school standards.
“I teach U.S. history, which is a state-tested subject,” Drake told the Mississippi Free Press on April 5. “We’re sticking to the curriculum and the standards, but History Day allows them to explore topics they are interested in in any part of history. I like how it’s student-centered and gives them the freedom to explore their interests within history.”
Drake requires all her students to complete a project that would qualify for entry into the competition as a class assignment, but she allows them to choose whether they would like to formally enter their finished projects into the contest. Four of her students qualified for the 2025 state competition.
“It gets students excited about history and the emphasis on research, which is a skill that they’ll need to use in college,” she said. “This is really just their research and something that they’re able to own and hopefully build on in the future. Just to see students light up about a historical topic is amazing to me.”
One of her students, sophomore Taja Mock-Muhammand, presented a website showcasing information on Hawaii’s annexation and how it affected native Hawaiians. She became interested in the topic after her family visited the island and she learned about its history and culture. Mock-Muhammand said the process taught her skills that she will use at the next level.
“This program has definitely been beneficial because it’s taught me how to analyze information better and also do research that’s actually accurate,” she told the Mississippi Free Press on April 5.
Cochran, who participated in the contest as a student, said that it changed the trajectory of her life.
“I rediscovered my passion for history, and I just fell in love with the program because it allowed me to find the things that I’m interested in and tell other people about it,” Cochran said. “But also I realized I wanted to do history for the rest of my life, and I’ve been able to help students discover that as well.”
Mississippi earned its first-ever first-place win in the international competition last year when Harrison Shao won in the paper category for his essay “From Small Wonder to Big Salvation: How the Mass Production of Penicillin Became Possible in the Early 1940s.” Another Mississippi student placed eighth in the international documentary category for his film, “Mississippi Turning: The Pivotal Role of School Desegregation in a Southern Town.”
Cochran encourages supporters to donate to the organization and to lobby members of Congress to reinstate the funds. Find additional information about the national contest or how to donate at nhd.org/en/contest/national-contest. Learn more about Mississippi History Day at mdah.ms.gov/mississippi-history-day.
