HIST 4120 Civil Rights Movement Fall 2014: Assignment Description and Details

Assignment:

Write a 10-12-page paper on any aspect of the civil rights movement era in Georgia. 

Your topic selection may come from any of the following categories:

• a personality (elected official, activist, etc.)
• an organization or institution
• an event between 1940 and 1980
• a project, trend or cultural phenomenon (1940-1980)
• a particular county, city or town in Georgia
• a concept or debate
• a court case
• a related protest movement or cause during the era (e.g. women’s liberation, gay liberation, the environmental movement, antiwar movement, Black Power movement, the prison abolition movement, the Chicano movement, the student movement, the Native American movement,  welfare rights movement, etc.)
  
  

Key Dates: 

• Introduction to Archival Research Session: October 9, 2014 (during class time, meet in Room 329 special collections building

• Submit special collections material requests by 5 p.m., October 14, 2014

• Archival Research Practicum: October 16, 2014 (during class time, meet in Room 329 special collections building)

• Paper Proposal Due:  October 30, 2014 (at the beginning of class)

• Final Paper Due: by 11 a.m., December 11, 2014  

Introduction to Archival Research
October 9, 2014 (during regular class time)
Location: Room 329 Special Collections Libraries Building

Archivist Jill Severn will introduce you to strategies for finding and using archival materials in the special collections libraries at UGA and archives in general (bricks and mortar and online). She will also go over the home work assignment that is due at the second meeting of the class with her on October 16, 2014.

Homework Assignment
Submit requests by 5 p.m.,Tuesday, October 14, 2014 
Review requested materials in class on October 16, 2014 

Using the online requesting system, request one box or item of primary source materials related to an aspect of the civil rights movement that interests you and might be connected to your chosen paper topic.

Watch a how-to video for requesting using the online system here

Archival Research Practicum
October 16, 2014  (during regular class time)
Location: Room 329 Special Collections Libraries Building

During this session you will examine the materials that you requested, discuss them with each other, get individual assistance from the archivists and Dr. Lee. 

Research Proposal Guidelines 
Minimum length: 5 pages
Worth: (20 points)
Due: beginning of class, October 30, 2014

After you have identified a topic of interest, think about how you might turn your topic into an historical problem to be solved.  This involves conceptualization. A proposal helps us plot out your research and general organization for the paper.

In writing a proposal, you should describe your planned paper in as much detail as possible. You must include with your proposal a bibliography-in-progress of at least 10-15 sources (see below). Your proposal must be typed (use standard font size with double spacing and one-inch margins).

Formulate your proposal into four major sections:

1. Introduction
2. Questions/Hypotheses
3. Research Plan
4. Literature Review.

In those sections, include the following content:

• Introduction:
• What is your topic? 
• If it is an event, describe it in detail.
• If your topic is an individual, give a brief biography of that person.
• If your topic is an examination of a concept or policy, define it in detail.
• If your topic is a social or cultural trend, then define it, identify when it began and ended, and talk about its impact
• What do already know about your subject?
• Questions/Hypotheses:
• What makes this topic interesting to you?
• What questions do you have about your topic?
• Detail any preliminary conclusions or perspectives about your topic. 
• In other words, what do you expect to find and why?

• Research Plan:
• What brick-and-mortar library research do you have planned?
• What have you done already in order to do this proposal?
• What online research will you do or have done?
• Identify the Internet sites that you will visit or have visited.
• What do you hope to find at these sites?
• What primary research collections will you examine

•  Literature Review: 
•  At the end of your proposal, please include a bibliography of 10-15 sources: books, academic articles, newspaper articles, and web sites.
• The citation format that you must use is located on the UGA library website:  http://www.libs.uga.edu/ref/turabian.html

The Department of History Research Paper Guidelines
Paper Length:  must be 10 to 12 pages in length.
Worth: 80 points
Due: December 11, 2014 (by 11 a.m.)

Topics for the paper must be sufficiently broad. However, the objective is to give you the experience of conducting original research on a subject of particular interest to you. All topics must be approved by the professor.

Each paper must include use of primary source material. Students are expected to analyze those sources by raising critical questions and by offering your own interpretations and conclusions.

The product of student research is a final paper that stands on its own as the result of independent study.

In style and format, all papers must conform to the latest edition of Kate Turabian’s Manual of Style. In submitting your final papers, you must also include all drafts commented on by the professor. Do not discard those.  You must use footnotes, not endnotes. Your papers must also include a full bibliography. Please use standard font types and size (10-12 point). Paper margins must be one inch, top, bottom and sides. Avoid excessive block quoting. 

The professor is required to evaluate papers for content, style, clarity of argument, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and prose.  

All students at the University of Georgia are expected to adhere to the university’s Honor code and Academic Honesty Policy. It is your responsibility to read and abide by the standards specified in “A Culture of Honesty,” which is found at http://www.uga.edu/honesty/index.html

It should go without saying that any work submitted under your name must be work authored by you and no one else. Please ask if you have the slightest doubt or concern about using or relying on the work of others.  Submitting work under your name that was done by someone else, or using sources without proper attribution, is plagiarism, and the punishment for such is quite severe at UGA and at most institutions of higher learning.  Academic departments make professors aware of the many Internet sites that sell research papers to undergraduates. Please do not even think about going down that road.

Suggested Topics:

Listed below are some relevant people, places, events, organizations, movements, activities related to the civil rights movement era..

Think long and hard about what most interests you.  

There are some obvious events, organizations and individuals that are not listed because others have written exhaustively on these subjects (e.g. Martin Luther King, Jr., the desegregation of UGA, SNCC, etc.). However, if you wish to make a case for doing some aspect of a familiar topic that (you believe) has yet to be explored sufficiently, then I will let you make your case.

 The objective is to have you examine some aspect of the movement that we did not cover. You should allow yourself to be informed and inspired by the themes that we covered in looking at individual leadership and collective activism.

Affirmative Action

Albany movement

Atlanta Civic and Political League

Atlanta Daily World (black newspaper)

Atlanta Inquirer

Atlanta Journal

Atlanta Life Insurance Company

Atlanta NAACP

Atlanta Project (The)

Atlanta Welfare Rights Organization

A.T. Walden

Black Colleges and the Movement

Black Panther Party

Central Atlanta Progress (a business organization)

Civil rights legislation--Civil Rights Act (1964); Voting Rights Act (1965)

Coca-Cola Company

Cobb County White Citizens for Segregation

Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR)

Confederate flag (reintroduction of)

modern conservative movement (or some aspect of—e.g. tax revolt)

county unit system

Democratic Party and/or the Republican Party of Georgia

Donald Hollowell

Ellis Arnall

Ernest Vandiver

Eugene Talmadge

Georgia League of Negro Women Voters

Georgia Tech (desegregation of)

Georgians Unwilling to Surrender (GUTS)

Grace Towns Hamilton and the Atlanta Urban League

Herman Talmadge

Mozley Park Home Owners’ Protective Association (residential segregation)

HOPE (Help Our Public Education Inc.—white mothers’ organization)

hospital protests

Ivan Allen (mayor)

Jane Stembridge

Jimmy Carter

Ku Klux Klan

Lester Maddox

Lillian Smith

Lonnie King

Mary Frances Early

MARTA (establishment and protests)

Maynard Jackson (election of)

media and the movement (television, newspapers and radio)

Neighborhood Protest Movement in Atlanta (Dixie Hills protest, Summerhill protest)

PASS (People’s Association for Selective Shopping—segregationist organization)

racial violence

Ralph McGill

residential segregation (general)

Rich’s Department Store boycott/sit-in (or department stores in general)

Richard Russell, Jr.

school desegregation (K-12)

Sibley Commission

sports teams (collegiate and professional--segregation in baseball, golf, football)

Temple Bombing (Hebrew Benevolent Congregation)

Thomas Brewer

“three governors controversy”

white resistance

William Hartsfield (mayor)