Hattiesburg High School students working on special project with USM

HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Hattiesburg High School (HHS) students received an in-person history lesson Wednesday at the Hattiesburg Library.

Three students asked Mayor Johnny DuPree questions during his time as a Senior at HHS in the 1970's.

Mayor DuPree is one of the first African-American students to attend HHS when it integrated in 1971.

The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) is working the students on the special project.

USM Education Professor Thomas O'Brien said, "We don’t have a very good sense of what happened in our town of Hattiesburg."

"When we began to look around and find new actual written and analysis of what happened, we approached the students and ask them if they would be interested in learning techniques of oral history" said Professor O'Brien.

The students interviewed other people for the project too and they have been working on it since November 2016.