Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on May 22, 2014

The culmination of months of hard work and research came to a head Tuesday for a group of Billings West High students as they began setting up a museum exhibit they created on hate speech and hate crimes in Billings.

About 20 students from Bruce Wendts combined American history-English class spent the afternoon at the Western Heritage Center, setting up their exhibit in half of the buildings basement. The exhibit uses a series of hate-related incidents in the early 1990s including white supremacist activities, the throwing of a brick through a young Jewish boys window and Billings ensuing stand against hate crimes that sparked the Not In Our Town movement as a jumping-off point to examine hate crimes in the area.

When it first started, it was hard to envision, said Tim Dutton, a junior in the class. But weve put in a lot of work and its all coming together really nicely.

The multimedia project, called Community Storytelling Partnership, is a collaboration between School District 2, the Western Heritage Center, Montana PBS and the Billings Public Library.

It features filmed interviews with about a dozen people who were either involved in the movement that sparked NIOT or were around when it happened or deal with similar modern-day hate issues. The exhibit also has displays, photographs and historical documents that challenge viewers to think about hate in their own lives.

That includes old flyers and posters from hate groups, as well as news clippings spanning decades in Billings.

Students said that when they first started, they werent too sure what to do with the project the guidelines were intentionally vague to let the students explore the assignment but soon began to refine and shape it.

The cool thing about this is theyre solving the problems on their own, said Julie Dial, who helped the class throughout the project and is the Western Heritage Centers executive director.

While the museums basement walls were bare on Tuesday, the students quickly went about changing that, prepping it for mirrors, lights, photos and other parts of the exhibit, including a pair of videos of the interviews.

They spent the day building and painting exhibits, but also had the chance to reflect on what theyd done so far.

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West students begin setting up hate speech museum exhibit

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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