This research paper is designed to encourage students to mimic the historian’s craft by a) collecting primary sources in order to b) construct a historical narrative. First, choose a significant historical event between 1929 and 1980. A few examples: The Great Depression, WWII, The Cold War, Vietnam, JFK’s assassination. Second, interview one person about their personal experience of the event you have chosen. Third, locate 6-8 newspaper articles on your historical event from Chicago Defender, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and/or The Washington Post. Last, write a historical narrative using the oral history and newspaper articles you have collected. Each historical narrative should make an argument and tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Requirements
Your paper must be between 8-10 double spaced pages in length. Please use The Chicago Manual of Style to properly cite your sources. Your historical narrative should be the product of a close reading of the newspaper articles and oral history, therefore, avoid all secondary sources. Last, make sure that you print out and hand in all the newspaper articles used in the construction of your narrative.
The newspapers chosen for your assignment can be found online through the UC Berkeley website. You can access electronic versions of the newspapers by following this link: http://cluster4.lib.berkeley.edu:8080/ERF/servlet/ERFmain?cmd=allResources