Research Guides: HIST 491C / LAS 450/ AMS 490 / Africana 406: Race and Racism in the Americas (Spring 2025): Primary Sources: Strengths and Weakness

Primary Sources

What are the Strengths and Weaknesses of these primary sources? Questions to consider:

Americus times-recorder. [volume], June 06, 1921
Context: you're studying the Black Wall Street incident of 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma. Evaluate this source
Young athletes show solidarity with Kaepernick by 'taking the knee' The Washington Post (Online), Washington, D.C.: WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post. Sep 21, 2016.
Context: You're studying the controversy around Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the during the national anthem
Jensen, the Grave Robber. a Source of Terror to Colored People Removed Daily Critic (published as The Washington Critic) (Washington (DC), District of Columbia) November 4, 1887
[Via America's Historical Newspapers].
Context: You're interested in graverobbing by medical institutions in need of cadavers. Specifically grave robbing of Black bodies.
"When Building a Diverse Leadership, Emphasize Culture, Not Quotas" - Chroncle of Higher Education
Context: You're interested in the importance of diversity in higher education, specifically as it relates to mentoring.
FBI Vault - Declassified reort on Martin Luther King JR
Context: you are studying the impact FBI Surveillance had on MLK and his career.

University Archives Oral History Collection
Oral histories of W&M alum who were in Sororities.
Edwidge Danticat's "Nineteen Thirty-Seven"
Note: found through secondary literature, specifically: Performing Postmemory: Remembering the Parsley Massacre in “Nineteen Thirty-Seven” and Song of the Water Saints Elizabeth Langley The Latin Americanist, Volume 60, Number 1, March 2016, pp. 63-77
Colonial Echo, 1978 [See "Perspectives" on page 75 (78th page of PDF]
See discussion of social/economic inequality at WM in 1978.
Letter from Doctor Edward Jenner, to William Dillwyn, Esq., on the effects of vaccination, in preserving from the small-pox : to which are added sundry documents relating to vaccination, referred to and accompanying the letter
[Found in Sabin using Dr. Balmis as keyword]
Studying spreading the smallpox vaccine in the colonial Southern Cone [Balmis-Salvany Smallpox Expedition]