East Central University students Porsha Courtney, of Blanchard; and Brandy Baldwin, of Wynnewood are the recipients of the Kroeker Best Historical Paper Awards.
The $300 award is presented annually to the ECU student who prepares the best paper in history and/or Native American studies. There were two awards presented this year because no award was handed out in 2012.
The award was established by Dr. Marvin Kroeker, a retired ECU professor, who taught at ECU from 1966 to 1993. He developed ECU’s first Native American studies courses, which led to the development of the current Native American Studies Program. The award recipient is selected by a committee from the History and Native American Studies Department.
Courtney wrote a paper titled Chickasha, a Rural Town’s Responses to WWII. The paper described Chickasha during World War II and the three installations that called Chickasha home, including the W&B Flight School, Borden General Hospital and a Nazi POW camp that was housed at the fairgrounds. The flight school and hospital were fought for by the townspeople. However, the people of Chickasha worked hard to repress the memory of housing prisoners during the last years of the war.
Baldwin, a junior history major and Alpha Chi member, wrote a paper titled A Battle for Extradition; The Inciting to Riot Cases of A.J. Smitherman, J.B. Stradford and Charles Smithie. The paper was a study to sort through evidence and provide a more discerning look into three extradition cases that transpired as a result of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.
Baldwin was also recently selected as winner of the 2013 Martin Luther King Junior Essay Award for her essay titled Faith, Hope and Love: Dr. King’s Journey to Nonviolence. The campus-wide competition was put on by the Cultural Diversity Committee.