After a second place finish at National History Day last year, Anna Hamilton ’06 and Sjobor Hammer ’06 grabbed the gold this year with their documentary “Lighting the Dark Places: Esther Brown and the Webb v. School District No. 90 Case.” Anna and Sjobor finished first in the group documentary category at national competition in College Park, Maryland in mid-June.

Sjobor Hammer and Anna Hamilton produced
a documentary about a little known Kansas
school desegregation case.

These recent Topeka Collegiate graduates are veteran History Day competitors. They’ve produced ten-minute documentaries each of the past three years. Judges at the national contest said this year’s effort, “It is evident that this project has been a labor of love for both of you.”

Sjobor and Anna’s subject was a Kansas City area school desegregation case that came before the better-known Brown v. Topeka Board of Education case. “You hear a lot about the Brown v. Board case,” says Anna, “but we wanted something that wasn’t known.”

Brown was a white Jewish woman who helped lead the battle for equal rights by helping the black community through her involvement with the NAACP. This year’s History Day theme was “Taking a Stand in History”

“We wanted something that was close to home, so we would be able to research it, and have enough resources,” Sjobor says, “and we also wanted something that was fresh.”

The girls started on this project the day after returning from last year’s national competition, which means they put in a total of about 11 months of work. “I think they should call it History Year, not History Day!” says Sjobor.

Topeka Collegiate students Daniel Mandel ’06 and eighth grader Parker Featherston
finished seventh in the group exhibit category at National History Day. Their exhibit, “Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th: Taking a Stand for Racial Equality,” was also named the Outstanding State Junior Entry.

Katherine Ebeling ’06 also competed at the nationals with her historical paper, “Katharine Graham and the Washington Post: Taking a Stand for Freedom of the Press.”