|
Finding and Interpreting Historical Threads and Patterns through Archival Research Primary
Source Documentation: A Primer
|
||||
|
Research Process: Where to Start? Maybe you have a primary document you want to find the story for? or You have a hunch or a question? Perhaps you want to verify information? Maybe you would like to know more about a particular person, or situate a person within a historical debate or controversy? Maybe you're wondering if you know enough to develop a research question? Perhaps you have a theory but are unsure how to get enough background information to substantiate or test the theory? How can you find out if your question has already been researched? How might your interpretation of the same sources differ from those that have already been discussed? What if you found a document or source that could influence previous understanding of a subject and its meaning to a particular community? There is no one best place to start! It depends upon the approach. However, it is useful to
work with "informed conjecture" until one can make a historically
significant argument. This workshop will focus on a few examples of
scholars who have pieced together and interpreted the past through
their research on the lives and resisistance of enslaved Africans. Search Process Exploration, Organization and Good Scholarship Get ready to enjoy the discovery process and the practice of sharing your steps! Keep your own process diary, note search terms you come across, find your own method to value and note your ideas, questions that emerge, and sources you have used to lead you to other sources. Try using the quilt metaphor to piece together and document your process. Respect all the threads! Remember, history is a conversation! If your reader cannot follow the steps you made through your sources, the conversation could end! Cite sources you have used whether they be from direct oral statements, published documents or unpublished sources. Piecing Together the Past: Reference Tools and Guides Formulating a question, finding search terms, developing a search strategy, or advancing a theory requires some background history on a topic. Those who create indexes and bibliographies of resources on a topic can provide you with a backdrop or sketch of what is out there so that you get enough of a sense to start working. Sources that address methodology or historiography indicate perspectives on a topic. Sometimes research guides are available on the Web such as the Underground Railroad site done at Colgate University Library. However, these guides often refer you to both print and Internet sources, often they are more promotional than in-depth. Not all refererence tools are available on the Web. Some of the best ones for this field are not available electronically. Here is a more comprehensive example of a reference source not available on the Web. The Harvard Guide to African-American History This exceptional guide includes state and local studies under the topics slavery and race relations. It highlights repositories, historiography, bibliographies, key primary and secondary sources and collections. Most importantly it is indexed chronologically from 1492 to present by topic. Starting here can lead you directly to key sources related to a particular period. Timelines are useful for providing historical context and gathering search terms. Tools which link these historical threads will become very useful when piecing together and interpreting your sources. Sometimes timelines are found in published and non-published books, in articles, reference sources and also now on the Internet. (Please remember, timelines are also interpreted through the selection of events noted. Perhaps you will notice or uncover something key that was not included and therefore create a need for another timeline which may include what you noted as significant by its absence.) Timelines - Toward Racial Equality Chrononolgy
on the History of Slavery and Racism What Story or Pattern Emerges As I Gather Terms, Sources and Background? Search Strategies Ask Questions of the Material: Every perspective has a bias or point of view. However, as storyteller, you can ask for example, "Who is left out of this story?"
What are Primary Sources? Why Use Them? Primary sources provide first hand information for historical inquiry or interpretation. Researchers sometimes feel transported to a previous time through their use and interaction with primary source materials, helping to build a relationship with the past and to people not known to them. Primary sources vary a great deal which is why there is so often confusion about what is and isn't a primary document. Strictly speaking, primary sources are those written by someone who participated in or observed an event or time period. Such sources reflect the perspective of the individual and are valuable in trying to understand a personality, period, event, or a social movement such as the Underground Railroad. Diaries, journals, speeches, interviews, and letters are examples of documents that are clearly recognized as primary. Memoirs and autobiographies, government records and legislation, photographs, and organizational records all qualify as well. Using Historical RecordSometimes primary sources are used to establish facts of a particular period. However, not all primary sources can be considered to be evidence. For example, a diary may provide a perspective and an interpretation of the events of a particular period but may not be considered factual evidence. Where a government document such as a birth certificate could be considered to be historical evidence of that birth. Accounts or records of experience, events from a particular period enable the researcher to re-construct and interpret the meaning of events. Other sources which may sometimes be used as primary resources include: newspaper articles, period journals, advertisments, opinon polls, letters to the editor, and artifacts such as badges worn by slaves who were permitted to "hire" out. Historian, William Kelleher Storey reminds us, "You may have a hunch that space aliens helped the Egyptians to build the pyramids, but after careful review of primary sources and secondary works, you will find no evidence to support your hypothesis. Don't expect too much from your sources and try not to read into them what you hope to find." Writing History: A Guide for Students, p.53 You may have to recognize the limits of your sources and possibly move on to others or re-define your questions. or You may find something so compelling that you will want to change your topic. Using Primary Sources in the Classroom Written Document Analysis Worksheet
How Do I Find Primary Source Documents? Identifying Historical Records Method 1: Once you find an appropriate collection, go directly to primary source materials, allow themes to emerge from your study and interaction with them. Utilize people with knowledge. Ask reference librarians to identify sources and/or refer you to people who may have the subject expertise you are looking for. Archivists and librarians often enjoy the chance to guide you when doing in-depth research but they need to schedule the time. You will need to feel that your inquiry is heard and respected. To benefit both parties, it is best to acknowledge the time, patience and determination this work requires by asking to make an appointment. Ask for any "finding aides" that will help you locate materials within collections. Method 2: Go to secondary sources first, works that interpret or reflect on earlier times. One good method of finding primary sources on a topic is to find those who are also interested in your initial topic or research question! Check their bibliographies and notes! While this approach begins with secondary sources, it may lead you to primary sources that have not been mined! Respect all the threads, cite all your sources! Remember that there are many published sources that have yet to be used and interpreted. Examples: Tracing Steps of Scholars Who Have Used and Interpreted Primary Sources Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard. (1999). Hidden In Plain View: The Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. "We memorized Ozella's story and looked to related sources for evidence connecting quilts to the Underground Railroad." Authors state, "That since the field of African American quilt history is relatively new, Jacki and I acknowledge that ideas and theories might not always be conclusively proven as much presented for serious consideration. Our methodology will open the field to further exploration and to the piecing together of ideas and the making of connections. Because the Quilt Code was recited in story form, we began our research by considering the relevance of storytelling in the African American community, an by examining well-known stories about quilts and the Underground Railroad to determine what clues they might contain. p. 26
How did their questions develop? What is the author's thesis? How do they support their thesis statements through the use of primary and secondary sources? What collections did they use to find materials? Leslie M. Harris.(2003). In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. "The construction, destruction and recovery of the Negroes Burial Ground, renamed the African Burial Ground in 1993, encapsulates the ways New York City's early black history has been forgotten, but also how this history may be recovered in unusual places. In this book, I uncover the early history of enslaved and free Africans and African Americans in New York City between 1626 and 1863. To do so, I have relied not only on documents produced by black men and women, such as newspapers, literature and organizational records but also documents produced by whites that reveal, perhaps unintentionally, the contours of life for New York City's blacks from seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. As we know, black men and women left few of their own sources. But the descriptions left by non-blacks, read and interpreted carefully, can provide a wealth of information. " p. 2 Milton C. Sernett.(2002). North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Discusses the origins and varieties of abolitionism in upstate New York(the "burned over district"), the impact of religious revivals of the 1820's such as the Great Awakening which the author claims, motivated abolitionist activity. Elizabeth McHenry.(2002). Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies. "In providing this "public channel" through which to communicate, they created for the black community a social and cultural space in which to articulate their opposition to white oppression while also providing an invaluable lesson in literary interaction and the power of print. In the pages of Freedom's Journal reading was not portrayed as passive or solitary activity; rather, it was an invitation to participate, a means of orienting the individual towards social and communal models of exchange, be they written or oral, that would enhance civic life and facilitate involvement in the public sphere." p. 102
Local and Regional Collections
"Albany's University Libraries are among the top 100 research libraries in the country. The University Library and the newly opened Science Library on the uptown campus, and the Thomas E. Dewey Graduate Library for Public Affairs and Policy on the Rockefeller College campus contain more than two million volumes, subscribe to 5,410 periodicals, and provide access to over 2.8 million microform items." Several resources pertaining to Abolitionism and the Underground Railroad can be found in printed reference sources, reprinted primary sources in the stacks or as microform in the general collection in the main library. On-site community access to books, journals, and reference sources and historical Black newspapers relevant databases which index secondary sources (and some primary sources) include America History and Life, African American Studies, Black Studies on Disc, International Index to Black Periodicals, Harper's Weekly, JSTOR(full-text journal articles), and Lexis-Nexis Primary Sources in History(also includes microform collection finding aids). M.E.
Grenander Department of Special Collections
Records
Relating to African Americans in the New York State Archives
Albany Institute of History and Art Library Collections
Research Library
Schenectady Digital History Archive Albany County Hall of Records Index
to Historical Records
Albany Public Library Local History Collections
Troy Public Library Local History Collections
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture General Research and Reference Division
This section provides examples of selected scholarly collections which include a significant number of digitized primary sources. Library of Congress: American Memory African American Perspectives:
Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907 Born in Slavery: Slave
Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 The Nineteenth
Century in Print
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries North American Slave Narratives,
Beginnings to 1920
Howard University The
Moorland-Spingarn Research Center Witchita State University Libraries-Department
of Special Collections Boston Public Library Anti-Slavery Collection (Rare
Books and Manuscripts) 617-536-5400 ext.
4432 Broadsides Collection (Print
Department, ext 2280; Rare Books & Manuscripts)
In the Print Department are 136 broadsides advertising
19th century theater productions which include the venue, date, time,
cast members, and production titles. The collection includes broadsides
for the Boston Athenaeum’s January and February 1863 productions
featuring John Wilkes Booth as Othello and other characters. The 2,000
plus American historical and political broadsides (18th and 19th century)
in Rare Books cover Boston theatre, the anti-slavery movement, fugitive
slave law, and Boston imprints. History Resources New York
History Net
Related BackgrouRelated Background Links nd Links African American History of Western New York African American Mosaic Conflict of Abolition and Slavery African Americans in Early Albany African-American Women On-line Archival Collections Special Collections Library, Duke University Africans in America (PBS) Americans Journey through Slavery African American Women Writers Africans In America - Phyllis Wheatley Afro-Lousiana History and Genealogy, 1719-1820 American Visionaries - Frederick Douglass “Been Here
So Long”- Selections from the WPA American Slave Narratives Black Population in the U.S. (includes historical census, 1790-) Frederick Douglass Papers - Library of Congress and Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass and The Frederick Douglass Museum Freedom's Journal, 1827-1829 (pdf access through the Wisconsin Historical Society) George Washington's Census of Slaves at Mount Vernon Gerrit Smith Biographies and Home Page Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History iabolish.com - The American Anti-Slavery Group Museum of Afro American History of Boston The North Star - An Journal of African American Religious History Nineteenth Century Documents Project The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (PBS) Resources on Sectionalism and Slavery Slave Narratives(Excerpts) Slave Voices, "Third Person, First Person" Duke University Library Steal Away: Songs of the Underground Railroad Testimony of Canadian Fugitives Threads of Scholarship: History and Storytelling in African American Quilts Exhibit Bibliography and Program The Underground Railroad - National Geographic The Underground Railroad in Rochester New York W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro American Research Harvard University William Grant Still - Still Going On! Duke University William Still Underground Railroad Foundation Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-2000
Updated February 2003 Produced and Maintained by
|
||||