For the past five years, the history department has pushed to get more students to write a senior honors thesis, said Edward Balleisen, director of the senior thesis seminar. Faculty also wanted more and better opportunities for students who choose to undertake the rigorous seminar, he said.

With new money becoming available from the Office of Undergraduate Research Support, these students have more opportunities to make a contribution to the field of history.

In January, Van Kirk, Griffin and Avalone presented their research at the Phi Alpha Theta honors society convention in New Orleans -- the first undergraduates to do so, Balleisen said. The other members of the honors seminar will present their research at a regional Phil Alpha Theta meeting in Wilmington on April 17.

Van Kirk, Griffin and Avalone were among the 38 students who received Deans' Summer Research Fellowships in 2003, which allowed each of them to pursue their topics -- and to have unforgettable experiences.

Wallis Avalone: A community's story gets told

The day Wallis Avalone got a call from Betty Gregory's grandchildren, she realized that her senior honors thesis was more than just a paper.

"We don't know how long my grandmother is going to be around, so we'd like to make sure you come soon so her story gets told," one grandchild told her.

Gregory had been a high-school teacher and resident of Brooklyn, an African-American community in Charlotte destroyed in the 1960s. Avalone was interviewing residents and researching old records to tell the story of this forgotten history.

When Gregory's grandchildren called Avalone to her hospital bedside to continue the research, Avalone knew this project wasn't just an intellectual exercise.

"I feel like I owe it to them to do a good job, not just to get a good grade," she said. "That was the first time that I realized that not only was it important to me, but there are people who still want people to know that what happened to them was unfair."

With the support of a Dean Summer Fellowship and as part of the Ann Firor Scott Award from Women's Studies, Avalone spent the summer traveling to Charlotte, Henderson, Oxford and other parts of North Carolina, conducting interviews with about 15 former residents of the once-thriving community.

She did original historical research, sifting through three years of City Council minutes, legal documents, newspaper clipping and records at the public library. Her goal was to reconstruct the story of how the 1,000 people living in downtown Charlotte found their community declared an eyesore and demolished.

One thing she found, for example, was that, over a five-year period, the neighborhood went from being recognized in the white community as middle class to being described as a "blighted slum." This coincided with the availability of federal money for "urban renewal," part of the Great Society efforts during the 1960s to rebuild blighted neighborhoods. Local critics often saw these efforts as a cause of neighborhood destruction and social and economic dislocation, and an excuse for white-dominated local governments to seize black homes and businesses.

The residents of Brooklyn fought back for eight years -- sometimes violently -- but between 1961 and 1971, they were evicted, relocated and their homes and businesses were torn down.

When Avalone searched out former residents, she found that many of them had never been interviewed about it, and she found that their feelings hadn't diminished after more than 30 years.

"It's still a sore spot," she said.

Her sources were people such as Sarah Tate, who is in her 70s but still remembers the name of her next-door neighbor's high school teacher. "There were approximately 1,000 people in Brooklyn, and I think she knew every one of them."

Avalone also spent many hours with the Rev. James Alston, now 96 and living in Charlotte, who was a key figure in the AME Zion church that was active in the neighborhood.

Gregory recovered from her illness, and Avalone was able to get her story as well.

After finishing her research in October, Avalone has been working this semester to absorb it all and write her paper. She said she hopes to get it published -- if only so the former residents can see their story finally told.

"It was a thriving black community that was shut down," she said. "There's a lot of poignancy."

A history and computer science major, his schedule had been too packed to permit study abroad. So when the summer grant money became available from the Deans' Summer Fellowship, he realized it was his chance.

Working with Professor Jan Ewald and Karin Shapiro, a visiting assistant professor of history from South Africa, he set his sites on that country. His topic: How evolution was and is taught in South Africa.

"It can either support or refute stereotypes," he said. "It's likely to reflect the society."

His question was how did South Africa's history of racial apartheid, combined with the fact that it contains many important sites of early man going back 3.5 million years, affect the cultural attitude about teaching Darwinism?

What he found was that, unlike the United States, there were no public battles over the teaching of evolution in South African schools. It was simply not taught.

He found instead that research into early man went on in museums, and generally the scientists did not address the question of the implications of evolution theory for their society.

"The average white may have believed that they were superior to the average black, but the museums didn't address this," he said.

Although some pre-WWII scientists claimed a racial hierarchy with whites as superior, the Nazi promotion of scientific racism made that kind of assertion taboo, even in South Africa, he said.

"There were less involved in progression, and more in the life of early man," he said.

His research took him to museums in Cape Town, where he stayed, as well as Johannesburg and Pretoria. He had a three-hour tea with South Africa's leading physical anthropologist, climbed Table Mountain, saw lions hunting wildebeests and went clubbing on Friday and Saturday nights.

Living in South Africa for two months proved to be a lesson in itself.

"It was strange at first, always being a minority," he said. "Which, in turn, makes you think about what it's like to be a minority here.

"South Africa really makes you come to terms with your own racial background in a way I had never experienced."

All in all, a radical cultural experience.

That's the intellectual journey Griffin embarked on when he undertook research in Paris last summer for his senior honors thesis.

The class discussed decolonization, especially the Algerian war of independence, a bloody conflict lasting from 1954 to 1962.

He spent most of his research time in the National Library, looking at records of the movement and the government's response.

Although many of the participants were denounced as traitors and were arrested, imprisoned, deported and even killed, they saw themselves as taking part in the French tradition of equality and resistance, he said.

"They were only 15 years removed from the Nazi occupation," he said. "In addition to colonialism, they felt they were fighting a rising tide of authoritarianism in France."

He said his research has given him a different perspective on the post 9/11 atmosphere here in the U.S., whereas many Americans tend to see the events of 2001 as unique.

"As soon as you look at history you see that it has happened before and people have reacted in many different ways," he said.

One similarity he sees, for example, is the political use of the word "terrorist," he said. The French government used rhetoric that painted all Algerians (who were largely Muslim) as terrorists. This helped the government justify many of its repressive policies in Algeria and in France, he said.

"I see parallel after parallel to the political discourse that's going on today," he said. "It's pertinent for us in how we think about ways to break this discourse down."

With his research paper nearly completion, he's studying Arabic and considering some post-graduation travel.

"I'd love to go learn Arabic in Algeria," he said.