Connecticut Public Radio
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History teacher Al Meadows with student Margo Pedersen.
A Wilbur Cross High School sophomore who revived a forgotten story about the destruction of a racially diverse community off the coast of Maine has won a top national prize for her historical research.
That student, Margo Pedersen, took home a gold medal last week after competing in National History Day at the University of Maryland, where she submitted a paper she had written for teacher Al Meadows’s AP U.S. History class.
At a time when social studies teachers have been targeted in the latest round of budget cuts, district officials said her research is an example of the type of curiosity that they’re hoping to encourage in all their classes.
In her 2,500-word paper — the bibliography runs as long as the text itself — Pedersen wrote about the forgotten history of Malaga Island, part of an archipelago near Portland, Maine, where the state had evicted a racially diverse community nearly a century ago.
In her research, Pedersen read about the diverse community of African-American, Native and Portuguese people who coexisted on the island. Mainlanders didn’t pay them much mind until the early 1900s.
After the local wood shipbuilding industry started losing out to railroads and steamships, the neighboring town tried to reinvent itself as a vacation spot. But its residents worried about that “incongruous scene” of “southern negro blood … on a spot of natural beauty” visible from the steamship routes, as one reporter put it in 1905.
At the same time, the junk science of eugenics was taking hold. Its racist theories held that societies could breed out “‘undesirable traits,’ such as ignorance, criminality and sexual immorality,” as Pedersen wrote.
Soon, reporters from across the East Coast were visiting Malaga, describing its residents’ “ignorance, shiftlessness, filth and heathenism,” as one Boston headline put it.
In 1911, Maine’s governor said, “I think the best plan would be to burn down the shacks with all their filth.” A state agent evicted all the residents the following year, committing eight people to the Maine School for the Feebleminded.
All that remained were an empty schoolhouse and a cemetery, which even that the state exhumed and dumped into unmarked graves, to restore Malaga to “undisturbed pristinity.”
“The state and the press branded this cruel tragedy a triumph and their interpretation was accepted for almost 70 years,” Pedersen wrote. “What happened on Malaga Island demonstrates the power of the state — influenced by racism and pseudoscientific eugenic theory and fueled by sensationalistic journalism and economic factors — to define a human tragedy as a societal triumph.”
Sandra Clark, the district’s social studies supervisor, said that the award-winning research papers are standout examples of what students throughout New Haven get from “inquiry-based learning,” the model where students are encouraged to follow their own curiosities as they learn how to look for answers.
“Guided by classroom teachers and librarians, many of our students actively participate in the annual yearlong program leading to the development of inquiry-based projects,” Clark wrote in an email. “Our students gain so much throughout the experience, from research to presentation skills through the authentic application of their learning showcases publicly.”
That’s what happened for Pedersen. She first came across the history of Malaga Island after reading “The Rattled Bones,” a young-adult novel where the main character sees ghostly apparitions from the island’s history. “It haunted me,” Pedersen said.
Pedersen said that the key is for students to know that they have to be “really fascinated by what they’re choosing to pursue and really want to learn about it.” She said she’d seen that happen with her classmates’ projects on the Young Lords or the Freedom Summer, for instance.
As a prize, Pedersen will be granted a scholarship to the 2020 National History Academy, a five-week summer program on early American history, plus a $1,000 grant from the National Endowment from the Humanities. She said she’s planning to donate some of that money to the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and Students for Educational Justice.
Connecticut students competing at the National History Day.
During the state competition last month, 16 other New Haven students also won recognition:
- Outstanding Entry Related to World War II: Charles Wortman, Worthington Hooker School, for “Cracking the Enigma: How Alan Turing and Other Cryptoanalysts Changed the Course of the Second World War”
- Outstanding Entry in World History, Junior Prize: Marlon Coon and Young In Kim, Worthington Hooker School, for “The March 1st Movement: The Cries for Korean Independence”
- Outstanding Entry Related to Social Justice, Junior Prize: Sophia Arnaout and Athena Brown, Worthington Hooker School, for “Doctors Without Borders: A Journey to Save Lives”
- Outstanding Entry in Maritime History, Junior Prize: Askari Hussain, Worthington Hooker School: “Operation Dynamo: The Tragic Success of One of the Largest Evacuations in Military History”
- Bruce Frazier Prize for Outstanding Senior Paper and First Place Senior Paper: Margo Pedersen, Wilbur Cross High School, for “Malaga Island: How the State of Maine Devastated a Resilient Island Community in the Name of the Greater Good”
- Outstanding Entry in Maritime History, Senior Prize: Maria Lopez and Brandon Inahuazo, Wilbur Cross High School, for “The Voyage of Christopher Columbus”
- Outstanding Entry in Aerospace or Technological History: Federico Lora and Jason Lampo, Wilbur Cross High School: “The Manhattan Project: A Triumph for Science but a Tragedy for History”
- Outstanding Entry Related to Connecticut Law, Senior Prize: Hallie Hushion, Johanyx Rodriguez, Shakshi Patel and Jeinylee Salame, High School in the Community: “Griswold v. Connecticut: A Woman’s Day in Court”
- Outstanding Entry in Women’s History, Senior Prize: Eloise Benoit and Sadie Turner, Wilbur Cross High School: “Angela Davis: Trial of 1972”
Congratulations Margo!