Week 1- Introduction and initial impressions

 I'm Matthew Austin, a second semester graduate student in UCF's Public History program whose areas of interest are labor  and civil rights history. This internship with Howard middle school is a opportunity to get some experience in what public history is, working with groups outside your institution and hopefully helping to tell their story. While at Howard Middle we had the chance to look at some of the scrap books that had been made over the years dating back to the, I think at least, mid-40's; not only does this give us a chance to look at what was important to the individual who made the scrap books but what the Orlando news deemed important enough to be published in the news paper.  My hope with this internship is to gain skills that could be useful in a post graduate job or for other Internships, but also to opportunity to participate in what I would can only describe as a community history project.  While I have doubts we will be able to go through a lot of the material that Howard has because of the sheer volume for two people to be sorting through, I hope that we can provide the school a better understanding of it's own history and the role it has played in the Orlando community since its foundation.

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