For the third summer in a row, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial will sponsor a summer internship through the Student Conservation Association (SCA). SCA is a national non-profit organization founded in 1957 which provides opportunities for college-age volunteers through internships, conservation jobs, and crew experiences. In addition, this special internship is being conducted under the auspices of the National Park Service’s Cultural Resources Diversity Program (CRDIP), which provides career exploration opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students from diverse communities in the fields of historic preservation and cultural resources management. The program also gives national park units opportunities to meet promising young people who might choose a career in the cultural resource field.
This year we have chosen Gabriela Sentano-- a student at Humboldt State University in California who has a strong interest in African-American Studies--for the summer internship. She will spend her time examining historic court records in a search for materials pertaining to criminal court prosecutions of African Americans in 19th century St. Louis. We also hope to locate records pertaining to white citizens who were prosecuted for aiding slave escapes along the Underground Railroad (two such cases have already been discovered). The St. Louis court records have never been systematically searched for this type of information.
Gabriela’s findings will result in a summary paper and lists of cases which fit the project criteria, which will be posted online. The Memorial already has an extensive body of research information on slavery in St. Louis posted on its website, including the work of the past two summer interns, Miel Wilson and Ebony Jenkins. Gabriela will also conduct three history sessions for the park staff to summarize her findings at the conclusion of her internship.
In addition to her time working in the archives, Gabriela will have one day per week to spend as a “practicum session,” learning in depth about an aspect of the National Park Service and ways that cultural resources specialists fit into the overall picture of park management and conveying interpretive information to the public. These sessions will include spending a day with the education specialist, the archivist, the historian, the interpretive staff, and with the document preservation specialists at the Missouri State Archives. Gabriela will be in the park from June 1 to August 7; her final week with the program will be spent in a special nationwide meeting of all program participants in Washington, D.C.
