Choosing a topic
Picking a topic is research! Topics start very broad and then need to be narrowed down to a manageable size. For example, the broad topic for this assignment is the Civil Rights Movement; however, there are thousands of books, articles, and films made about this era. Choose an event that took place during that era to focus your research on. You can also choose to focus on gender or race, person or place, activity or movement. Try a variety of topics and see what kind of results you get. If you get very few results, change the topic and try again.
Check out this brief tutorial from North Carolina State University
Here are potential topics
The "Great Migration"
Slums & Poverty
Upper & Middle Class Differences
Professional Baseball
Higher Education for Women
Political Corruption
Reconstruction
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Prohibition
Women's Suffrage
Rationing of Food & Fuel
Women & Minorities in the Workforce
Gangsters
Spanish Flu 1919
Race Riots
Communism & The Red Scare
Ku Klux Klan
The Automobile & Assembly Lines
Theories of Evolution & Anti-Evolution
Silent Movies
Aviation
Jazz Music & Women Flappers
Harlem Renaissance
The Great Depression
Racial Violence
The Dust Bowl
The 1st and/or 2nd New Deals
The Home Front
Women in the War
Zoot Suit Riots
Japanese Internment
D-Day
The Holocaust
The Atomic Bomb
The Fair Deal
Suburban Life
Rock and Roll
Civil Rights See HIST 2232-20 Civil Rights Movement
Vietnam War
Watergate
Roe v. Wade
Iranian Hostage Crisis
The Internet
The AIDS/HIV Crisis
Healthcare Reform
Domestic Terrorism
Primary Sources
Primary sources provide first person experiences on your topic. Primary sources include letters, legal documents, interviews, live performances, images, and artifacts. Primary sources can be found in books, newspapers, and journals. They can also help you narrow your topic and discover keywords for further searching. To locate other primary sources use your topic keyword AND sources. For example: Civil Rights AND sources will retrieve all the primary sources about civil rights. Below are primary sources related to suggested topics:
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Milestone Documents in American History : Exploring the Primary Sources That Shaped America
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Primary Sources in Full Text with Overviews, Context, Explanation and Analysis. See vol. 3 & vol. 4 for Plessy v. Ferguson; Brown v. Board of Education; Southern Manifesto; Letter from Birmingham Jail; Civil Rights Act of 1964; Voting Rights of 1965; Equal Rights Amendment; Cesar Chavez's Commonwealth Address -
Rockin' the Free World!
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Call Number: ML 3918 .R63 K39 2018Rockin' the Free World then shows how artists have engaged in advancing change via opportunity and education; domestic and international issue advocacy; and within the recording and broader communications industry. The book is built around primary interviews with prominent American and international performing artists ranging from Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees and Grammy winners to regional and local musicians. -
Defining Documents in World History
Call Number: REF HQ 1236. W664 2018 vol. 1 & vol. 2This source is available online and in print formats.
Provide in-depth analysis of a broad range of historical documents from influential figures in women's history from the United States and around the world. See chapters about: Gloria Steinem, Shirely Chisholm, Ella Baker, Betty Friedan, and many more. -
Defining Doucments of American History: LGBTQ+ (1923-2017)
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Call Number: REF KF 4754.5 .L495 2018 v.1As gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals have continued their fight for basic rights and equal treatment under the law, various court cases and challenges to those cases have continued to refine the debate. This new resource provides important analyses of over 80 documents significant to LGBTQ rights -
Class Struggle and the Color Line: American Socialism and the Race Question, 1900-1930 by
As Black oppression moves again to the forefront of American public life, the history of radical approaches to combating racism has acquired renewed relevance. Collecting, for the first time, source materials from a diverse array of writers and organizers, this reader provides a new perspective on the complex history of revolutionary debates about fighting anti-Black racism. -
The Secret World of American Communism
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By interweaving narrative and documents, the authors of this book present a picture of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), one of the most controversial organizations in American public life. -
Milestone Documents of American Leaders
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The lives of notable Americans are illuminated through an in-depth study of the primary source texts they produced during their lifetimes. From presidents, jurists, and legislators to influential private citizens both past and present, ""American Leaders"" features important full-text sources written by the people who shaped the nation - and crucial scholarly analysis to help the documents come alive. -
Civil Rights (1954-2015)
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Defining Documents in American History: Civil Rights provides detailed, thought-provoking analysis of: Controversies and actions at the Dawn of the Civil Rights Movement Legal Challenges to Segregation The Civil Rights Act and Its Consequences Organizations and Leaders in the Movement Gay Rights, Criminal Justice, and the Movement for Social Justice. -
Music in the USA
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Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion charts a path through American music and musical life using as guides the words of composers, performers, writers and the rest of us ordinary folks who sing, dance, and listen. The anthology of primary sources contains about 160 selections from 1540 to2000. . -
Landmark Speeches of the American Conservative Movement
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Award-winning authors Peter Schweizer and Wynton C. Hall have gathered an authoritative collection of speeches representing the modern conservative movement. -
Black Workers Remember
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The labor of black workers has been crucial to economic development in the United States. Yet because of racism and segregation, their contribution remains largely unknown. Spanning the 1930s to the present, Black Workers Remember tells the hidden history of African American workers in their own words.
