Douglas Alexander: “I salute today the students who participated in the National History Day national contest that was held last week at the…”

“I salute today the students who participated in the National History Day national contest that was held last week at the University of Maryland. More than 700,000 students in grades 6 through 12 from all over the country chose topics, researched, and presented their projects at State and local competitions this year. I am proud that 52 students from Tennessee made it to Washington. I especially want to recognize two of those students, Daniel Jordan and Tyler Sexton, eighth graders at St. John Neumann School in Knoxville. Their National History Day project is a documentary on Sequoyah's Syllabary, which they presented at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Sequoyah was a Cherokee warrior who was born in east Tennessee and created a syllabary, which is often called the Cherokee alphabet. He was born in 1776 in the village of Tuskeegee, which was very near Vonore, TN, where the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum is located. Daniel and Tyler say the seed for their documentary was planted during a visit to the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum. The two boys got tired and decided to sit on several bales of hay in the center of a field. After a few minutes, two Cherokee approached the boys and explained that they were sitting on a holy prayer circle. The boys apologized profusely and removed themselves, but not before they learned more from Star Medicine Woman and Elk Dreamer about the Cherokee Indians, especially Sequoyah and the relation to present-day culture.…”