Kassandra V. Martinez, a Northeast Texas Community College Honors Scholar, and Tanika Santos, a member of the NTCC Women?s Soccer Team have become the first winners of the Bonnie Spencer Awards for superior essays in history.† Spencer, an alumna of Northeast, and the leader of NTCC?s first history club in 2003, established the fund that awards the prizes. She also read the submissions, and helped select the winners. Spencer resides on a ranch in Leesburg, raises Appaloosa horses, and works as an ICU nurse at Good Shepherd Medical Center in Longview.
Martinez?s first-place ($100) essay was an apt premiere for an award designed to encourage historical scholarship at Northeast. Her revisionist work of James Cyclone Davis, a populist orator who resided in Wood, Franklin, and Hopkins counties, brought an important regional tale to life. Martinez called Davis the ?Ultimate Populist? because she rated him the top orator of a political party whose appeal focused in oratory. ?Cyclone? not only was the long-term ?populist? spellbinder, he was ?ultimate? because he came from the populist base of Northeast Texas, and left a legacy there. With figures from a 1992 Almanac unearthed by NTCC?s reference librarian Heather Shaw, Martinez showed for the first time that Northeast Texas had a stronger populist following than central Texas--long regarded as the birthplace, and base constituency of populism. Populism was a late-nineteenth century movement of impoverished farmers to even the economic playing field between the cities and rural districts.†Martinez is a resident of Mount Pleasant, and her parents are Claudia and Manuel.
?I am thrilled by Kassandra?s work,? Andrew Yox, NTCC History Professor, said.†?I hope to see this essay published. It is interesting to note as well that just one year ago, Martinez was working full-time on a night shift at Pilgrim?s, and she has simply transformed herself into one of our college?s best young scholars.?
Santos, a lively and articulate athlete, also wrote on a theme that reverberates regionally - temperance. Her colorful account traced the rise and fall of Prohibition in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to two major national events?the nineteenth-century pietistic religious revival, and the Great Depression. She won $50, and second place.†Santos will return this summer to her hometown of Shenandoah, Texas.
An honorable mention, third-place was presented to Carley Moody who wrote on the seldom-studied phenomena of women in the First World War.† Her parents are Deanna Jerry Moody of Omaha.
