Hello everyone and welcome to my first internship blog post!
I am currently a junior at the University of Central Florida pursuing a BA in History with an Education minor. I am currently in ROTC and after I serve my contract, I plan to get my Masters and possibly my Ph.D. My dream goal in life is to become a teacher in secondary or college education. My research interests include Dutch economics and colonialism, naval shipbuilding, the Rashidun caliphate, the Islamic Golden Age, and Peter the Great and the Swedish Empire. I am especially fascinated by the development of the Dreadnought class battleship and how it wrought such great change in naval combat in the early twentieth century. What I hope to gain from this internship are better research skills, a greater appreciation of public history and its sources, and finally, I hope to improve my teaching skills for the future. History is an incredibly dense and complex field and I believe this internship will help me better understand how to present research for use by the general public.
Earlier today I met with Mrs. Sarah Boye, who has completed hours upon hours of research about Greenwood Cemetery and the City of Orlando. We laid out the plan for the semester; six essays with each being roughly five hundred to six hundred words, including an overview at the beginning. The six subjects I will be writing about are Charles Lord and the Lake Eola Swans, Francis Eppes, Gertrude Sweet, the Ocoee Massacre, Sam Salisbury, and William Reynolds. From the brief look at these subjects I have done, I see that the history of Orlando and Greenwood Cemetery is much more tumultuous and scarred with controversy than I previously thought. It appears that white supremacy and the KKK held great power in some places across Orange County. The Ocoee Massacre and what befell July Perry for practicing his right to vote is atrocious and the attempts in the past to hide the massacre are a disgusting reminder of crimes and atrocities committed against African-Americans. Whilst the United States has come far from its slavery beginnings, stories such as July Perry's serve as reminders of the irrational hate for those who are different that perseveres to this day.
I cannot wait to begin writing about such interesting local history, and I hope I can give it the reverence it deserves.
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