Analyzing History Assignment Paper
Based on your reading in the webtext, respond to the following prompt in one to two paragraphs.
Describe the impact of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on the effort to expand civil rights for African Americans. How might the struggle for civil rights have evolved differently if Dr. King had not been killed?
Be sure to answer the following questions in your post:
- What were one or two specific consequences of Dr. King’s assassination?
- Do you think these events would have taken place even if Dr. King had not been assassinated? Why or why not? Analyzing History Assignment Paper.
When it’s done right, an historical essay can read like a mystery novel. Trying to figure out what really
happened in the distant past requires us to search for clues (primary sources) and listen to expert
witnesses (secondary sources). But in the end, all that historical evidence doesn’t speak for itself; it’s up
to the historian to make sense of things.
That’s what we mean by historical analysis.
In Theme: Analyzing History, we’ll see how
historians sift and assess the evidence to come up
with—and then refine—their thesis statement and
message. Because historical research is an
ongoing process, so too is the process of thesis
development. In Theme: Analyzing History,
you’ll have an opportunity to revise your thesis
statement to reflect research you’ve conducted
since turning in your writing plan.
The thesis, of course, is just the jumpingoff point
for the historical essay you’re working on
throughout this course. Like a good mystery
novelist, you’ve also got to give your readers the
lay of the land, with an overview that provides
them with background information and relevant historical context.
Another important part of the historian’s job is showing how different historical forces and events relate
to each other. In this theme, we’ll explore the historical concept of contingency, which stresses the
interconnectedness of historical events and the difficulty of predicting future outcomes. Analyzing History Assignment Paper.
Finally, you need to show how the evidence supports your thesis. That’s the essence of historical
analysis: choosing the most compelling evidence and interpreting it in the most convincing way, to build
the strongest possible argument for your thesis. In this theme, you’ll see how historians construct an
analysis and begin the process of building one yourself.
Course Outcome
After completing this theme, you should be able to:
Utilize historical evidence in drawing conclusions about the impact of historic events on American
society
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(Click icon for citation)
Theme: Analyzing History | Learning Block 5-1: The Struggle for Civil
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Rights
The Struggle for Civil Rights
From the earliest colonial days, American history has been haunted by the specter of African slavery.
Even after its legal abolition in 1865 America’s “original sin,” as James Madison first called it, lived on
through a deeply entrenched system of legal, social, and economic discrimination against African
Americans. (Madison, 1820)
The movement to overturn that systemic discrimination has been
ongoing for more than 150 years. The most blatant form of racial
discrimination—the system of de jure segregation enacted in the
South, which legally required the discriminatory treatment of African
Americans—was essentially abolished by federal legislation, including
the Voting Rights Act, in the 1960s. But the problem of de facto
segregation has long been a fact of life not only in the South but
throughout the nation.
It continued—in the segregated schools of cities such as Boston, and
the segregated housing markets of cities such as Chicago and Los
Angeles—long after the legal and political battles of the modern Civil
Rights Movement had ended. While African Americans, as a group,
have made significant gains in income and educational attainment over
the last 50 years, de facto segregation continues to affect many aspects
of American life. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012; National Center for
Education Statistics, 2012)
In this theme, we will focus on the modern Civil Rights Movement,
looking at efforts to affirm and expand AfricanAmerican rights in two specific areas that have been
central to the overall civil rights struggle: voting and public education. The fight to end the
disenfranchisement of AfricanAmerican voters and secure their right to vote, free from intimidation and
legal obstruction, culminated with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Analyzing History Assignment Paper. The struggle to desegregate public schools and win equal educational opportunities for AfricanAmerican children—first
affirmed in the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education (1954)—has continued for
generations. In this theme, we will look specifically at the tumultuous and emotionally charged effort to
desegregate Boston’s public schools in the mid1970s. Analyzing History Assignment Paper.
We will use these two case studies to examine the historical concept of contingency and to learn how to
use historical evidence to draw conclusions about the impact of historical events on American society,
through the process of historical analysis.
Learning Objectives
In this learning block, you will:
Review the historical context behind the struggle for civil rights for African Americans, the core
concept of this theme
Analyze the relationship between the following key approaches to studying history: research
question, historical evidence, and thesis statement
The house in Atlanta where Martin
Luther King Jr. was born is now part
of the Martin Luther King Jr. National
Historic Site. (Click icon for citation)
References
Madison, J. (1820). Letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, November 25, 1820. Retrieved from
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/mss/mjm/19/19_0641_0643.pdf
National Center for Education Statistics (2012). Fast Facts: Degrees Conferred by Sex and Race. Retrieved from
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72
U.S. Census Bureau (2012). American Community Survey. Retrieved from
http://blackdemographics.com/households/africanamericanincome . Analyzing History Assignment Paper.
