Chloe Willis, now a sixth grader at New Iberia’s Jefferson Island Road Elementary, was only 3 years old when her great-grandfather Rev. T.J. Jemison passed away. She’d heard snippets here and there from the family about her great-grandfather knowing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but it wasn’t until Chloe decided to make him the subject of a documentary that she learned the full extent of his contribution to the Civil Rights Movement.

Jemison is largely credited with organizing the Baton Rouge bus boycott of 1953 – a strategy so successful (it led to the passing of Ordinance 222, changing seating policies on public buses), that King used the same tactic in the bus boycotts of Montgomery, Alabama.

For the project, Chloe worked with Margaret Simon, her ELA gifted education teacher since first grade. Simon encouraged Chloe to enter the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes’ Discovery Award competition, an international student contest that recognizes creative research projects about “unsung heroes” who have had a positive impact on history.

The student worked on the project for five months, researching, collecting history photos, interviewing, making videos and editing. In all, seven prizes were awarded, including $1,000 given to Chloe for winning the Discovery Award in the Outstanding Elementary School Project category for her ten- minute documentary titled “Making a Difference: The Life of Rev. Dr. T.J. Jemison.”