Fall 2025 NCHC Portz Grant Recipient

University of North Carolina Wilmington

"Collaborative Research for Community Connections: The Williston Navy Day Program"

Project Description

In the fall of 2024, UNC Wilmington Honors and a key community partner ran a pilot program at a local public school, Williston Middle. The goals were to engage middle school students in social studies, introduce them to research methods, and develop pride for their school by having them research Williston history. We partnered with the Wilmington African American Community Remembrance Project (WAACRP), led by nationally recognized genealogist, Tim Pinnick. Mr. Pinnick and UNCW’s Dr. Nathan Ragain led workshops in collaboration with the school’s librarian and AIG coach. We began with a list of Williston graduates who served in World War Two that we found in an old newspaper article about a Williston “Navy Day” celebration. Pinnick and Ragain taught the students genealogical and historical methods and how to formulate research questions. Students then compiled information about a selection of the veterans. (The list includes one-hundred names.)

Williston has asked us to develop this pilot into a regular part of the school’s curriculum. The greatest need during the pilot was to have more trained researchers to assist students with search strategies and database navigation. To run these workshops on a consistent basis, we propose to organize a team of six UNCW honors students who would then help run workshops throughout the spring 2026 semester. Williston’s need corresponds with one among UNCW’s honors students: last year, students began organizing a club to coordinate volunteers in the public schools but are having trouble developing a structure on their own.

We propose to develop a semester-long Williston Research Program that will meet with middle school students for one hour weekly. Over the course of the program, students will return to the Navy Day list and begin developing biographies of the men who served. The genealogical work will be overseen by Pinnick and honors students will be organized by Ragain. The honors students will be trained in genealogical methods and will run the hands-on research sessions. At the end of the semester, middle school and honors students will develop their findings into a public presentation to be given at Williston, the Battleship North Carolina, or the Cape Fear Museum of History and Science, all of which have worked with us in the past.

This program is an innovative attempt to use community-engaged service learning to further align our mission with UNCW’s strategic focus on developing interdisciplinary research hubs. Students will practice inclusive pedagogy and learn cultural competency through hands-on experience in a diverse middle school classroom. Training students for workshops builds on our goal to use co-curricular programming to promote civic engagement and student professional development by having students increasingly responsible for designing and leading programs.

Project Beneficiaries

Williston was an important Black high school and is now a majority minority middle school. Formed during Reconstruction, it was a central institution in Black Wilmington both before and after the 1898 coup. During desegregation, struggles over the high school’s closure led to violence and the trial of the Wilmington Ten. The school is currently Title I and is approximately 80% Black or Hispanic, with most students qualifying for free or reduced lunches. Students at Williston have fewer opportunities for exposure to college-preparatory skills, so a central benefit is introducing them to research methods and mindsets. The school’s rich and under-acknowledged history is a resource that can help students see their own value. For instance, both tennis legend Althea Gibson and Greensboro Four leader Joseph McNeil attended.

Tim Pinnick founded the WAACRP as a platform for continuing work he did to trace descendants of the 1898 Wilmington massacre. His work developed into a broader effort to trace a city-wide genealogy of Wilmington’s Black communities. He has conducted that through many community partnerships, including with local schools, churches, and the NAACP, usually on a volunteer basis. Grant funding would allow us to compensate him for his expertise ,and the project itself would allow him to focus on military families and provide publicity for this work. This publicity is especially important in community research, which requires community investment, not only in the form of money but more importantly in the form of oral histories, funeral programs, family records, and other documents that exist within the community rather than in archives.

The UNCW Honors College itself will benefit by strengthening our relationships with multiple community partners and by providing a more sustainable framework to develop our students’ research and teaching skills in community-engaged contexts. Our Education majors have many opportunities to work in schools, but students from other majors have expressed their desire to bring their interdisciplinary training into educational settings. (Honors students in this program will also receive one credit hour, under a rubric designed for experiential learning projects.)

Institutional Support

Money from the grant would be devoted to compensating Mr. Pinnick for his time and expertise. Additional funds will be provided by UNCW in the form of the percentage of Dr. Ragain’s salary devoted to the project, an additional stipend for Mr. Pinnick, and the printing of materials needed for workshops and presentation. UNCW devoted a portion of Dr. Ragain’s workload to the pilot program in 2024 and has supported Mr. Pinnick by paying him for one-day research events. An NCHC grant would allow us to build the honors student component through Mr. Pinnick’s training. This in turn would position the project to be more competitive for sustaining grants from organizations like the Landfall Foundation or NC Humanities as we deepen our commitment to Williston in the future.

Reporting Outcome and Value

The workshops will produce much that will allow us to assess the program. Both honors and middle school students will write reflections on their experience, and we will also have Williston teachers assess our effectiveness in supplementing and deepening their curriculum. Additionally, the program will produce workshop materials that can be shared with other programs interested in collaborative community research, and the students will produce biographies of the veterans and a public presentation that will be recorded. Dr. Ragain and Mr. Pinnick will co-present the results at an NCHC conference so the two can discuss their approach to using research to build community connections.