Local Fort Scott High School student Zoe Self was the recipient of an award that gifted her with $7,500 in unrestricted funds Friday.
Prior to the announcement, students and staff gathered in the school’s media room, where Lowell Milken told the audience that the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes “considers ourselves incubators of history.”
The Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes Discovery Award is an international competition that awards creative projects highlighting role models whose positive impact on history remains largely unnoticed.
Self created a performance which depicted the story of Lilla Day Monroe.
Monroe was a Topeka-based suffragette who advocated for women’s rights. She established and edited The Club Woman and The Kansas Woman’s Journal. In addition, she served as the president of the Kansas State Suffragette Association.
“Lilla Day Monroe was the first female lawyer in Kansas,” Self told the audience. “She helped pass the Nineteenth Amendment…she was determined to effect change by working through the court system. She was an incredible woman.”
“This unsung hero project changed my life,” she said.
In the Discovery Award process, students in fourth through twelfth grades are invited to use their creative talents to develop projects that feature people from history who demonstrate that one person can make a positive change in the world. Projects can take the form of documentary/multimedia, performance or website. Projects must show potential for the ability to inspire people to take sustainable actions that carry out the legacies of their subjects, according to an LMC press release.
