Project overview: Work with an intern to research and create a video featuring Shelton Johnson’s quest to uncover the Buffalo Soldier Story, highlighting “how we know what we know about history” for Virtual Learning Lab programs.

How your support helps: Uncovering history is a process that requires curiosity, initiative, and persistence. It is important for Yosemite to recognize and celebrate the diversity of the nation by offering relevant educational programming.

With your support, students can learn about primary source research by following park ranger Shelton Johnson’s search for information about Yosemite’s first rangers: the Buffalo Soldiers. Students will hear a story featuring a researcher who is a person of color, uncovering histories of diverse people, as told by a diverse filmmaker.

Students will see themselves in the people who are doing the research and understand national parks are places that protect and preserve history. Educators teaching historical and social sciences analysis skills and curriculum will benefit from this lesson featuring a Yosemite historian. And schools will receive distance learning content that is relevant, diverse, inclusive, accessible, and incorporates education best practices.

This year: A 12-week intern will work with NPS staff to create a brief video featuring Shelton Johnson’s quest to uncover the Buffalo Soldier story through primary source research in Yosemite. The video will focus on the process behind how we know what we know about history and how we can learn more. It will be used by hundreds of students participating in curriculum-based Virtual Learning Lab programs.

Project partners: Yosemite National Park and Greening Youth Foundation 

Anastasia Roy

Education and Community Outreach, Yosemite National Park

Project Notes

"A new generation of historians is needed to unearth untold stories, and the school programs featuring Shelton Johnson’s quest will help equip and inspire them."