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Bruton High School Virginia History Day (Fall 2024)

Counterculture Protest Music during Vietnam War

Important Details

  • Focus on 1960s and 1970s

Keywords

  • "anti-war song" 
  • "protest music"
  • anti-war artist"

Extra considerations

  • may need to focus to a specific artists or a specific audience (Ex people at home, draft resisters, deployed soldiers, etc

Types of Primary Sources

I suggest narrowing a bit more to a specific group (ex college students or soldiers)  

 

The closing of mental institutions in the 1960s/70s

Important Details

  • Focus on 1960s and 1970s
  • consider language used during 1960s and 1970s

Keywords

  • asylum
  • psychiatric center
  • psychiatric hospital
  • closure 

Extra considerations

  • may look at broader critiques of the system as a whole, rather than individual cases.
  • can't use "Asylum" as a search term alone because you'll get a bunch of false hits (like people seeking asylum)

Types of Primary Sources

Best bet is looking at a specific institution(s) and then looking them up in newspapers, state legislation, etc. 

Ex: 

  • Ah-Gwah-Ching State Sanatorium: 1907-1961
  • Fergus Falls State Hospital: 1890-1967 (ex)
  • Glen Lake Sanatorium: 1916-1976
  • Rochester State Hospital: 1879-1965
  • Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane 1886-1977 (ex)
  • Edgewood State Hospital 1940-1971
  • Gardner State Hospital ?-1975
  • Grafton State Hospital 1901-1973 (ex)
  • Taunton State Hospital 1854-1975 (ex)
  • William C. Lovering Colony State Hospital 1914-1974
  • Lakin State Hospital 1926-1979
  • Agnews Developmental Center 1906-1972
  • Belgum Sanitarium 1916-1963
  • Modesto State Hospital 1946-1972
  • Mendocino State Hospital 1893-1972
  • Livermore Sanitarium 1894-1965
  • Undercliff State Hospital 1910-1976
  • Morningside Hospital (Oregon) 1883-1968
  • Peoria State Hospital Historic District, also known as Bartonville State Hospital or Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane 1902-1973 (ex)
  • Traverse City State Hospital 1881-1978
  • Adams-Nervine Asylum 1875-1976
  • Boston State Hospital 1839-1979 (ex)
  • Lovering Colony State Hospital 1914-1974
  • Laurel Sanitarium 1905-1964

Search any of these in newspaper from the time period.

 

 

 

Jazz Artists of Harlem Renaissance

Important Details

  • focus on 1920s and 1930s
  • Mostly in NYC but also other locations (ex Paris)

Keywords

  • Jazz AND harlem

Extra considerations

Types of Primary Sources

Photographers/Journalists during Civil Rights Movement

Important Details

  • may need to define which Civil Rights Movement(s) and narrow time period
  • may focus on specific event(s)
  • may focus on work/experience of a specific individual as an illustrative example

Keywords

  • photographer* OR journalist*

  • "civil rights movement"

  • "Equal rights"

Extra considerations

  • Best to focus on individuals or specific events, it's a very broad topic otherwise

Types of Primary Sources

  • Use books like This light of ours activist photographers of the civil rights movement  or Reporting civil rights / Clayborne Carson 2003 to identify notable individuals to study
  • Autobiographies of notable figures:
    • Crusade for justice : the autobiography of Ida B. Wells / Ida B Wells-Barnett;  Alfreda Duster;  John Hope Franklin 1970
    • The right time; an autobiography, Harry Golden 1969
    • Bluff City : the secret life of photographer Ernest Withers / Preston Lauterbach 2019 First edition.
    • Son of the rough South : an uncivil memoir / Karl Fleming 2005
    • Trailblazer : a pioneering journalist's fight to make the media look more like America / Dorothy Butler Gilliam 2019
    • My people : five decades of writing about Black lives / Charlayne Hunter-Gault;
    • Shocking the conscience : a reporter's account of the civil rights movement / Simeon Booker;  Carol McCabe Booker 2013
    • Freedom now! : forgotten photographs of the civil rights struggle / Martin A Berger 2013
    • Deep South dispatch : memoir of a civil rights journalist / John Herbers;  Anne Farris Rosen;  Gene Roberts 2018
    • Scoop : the evolution of a southern reporter / Jack Nelson;  Barbara Matusow 2013
  • Photographs themselves

I suggest narrowing on a specific journalist or photographer, than looking at books/autobiographies and their work as primary sources.

Concentration Camp survivors

Important Details

  • 1933-1945
  • most materials will be published after the fact
  • will be mostly in German

Keywords

  • Concentration Camp, Holocaust survivors

Extra considerations

  • may need to narrow (ex women, children, individuals to moved to another country, etc)
  • "holocaust " as an event doesn't become a specific phrase until the late 1950s so it's a bad keyword -- the word is used loosely before then.

Types of Primary Sources

AIDS crisis in the gay community 1980s

Important Details

  • begins 1981

Keywords

  • AIDS OR HIV
  • Gay, homosexual.
  •  

Extra considerations

  • the disease is not identified until 1983, so AIDS/HIV isn't going to be a good keyword if you're interested in those years. You'll need to see what term they were using before then
  • LGBT and queer adopted in the early 1990s

Types of Primary Sources

women's rights in Virginia during the Suffrage Movement

Important Details

Keywords

  • "womens suffrage" AND virginia
  • limit to VA newspapers

Extra considerations

  • Try to identify key leaders

Types of Primary Sources

The start of slavery in English colonies 1619

Important Details

  • focus on 1619 helps, very broad topic

Keywords

  • slave or slaves may not be in the documents, and may not be a good keyword.
  • Example, this 1567 document is the first record of an English ship becoming engaged in the slave trade but he never actually uses the word slave, slaves, enslaved, or African

Extra considerations

  • We can focus specifically on virginia history
  • We are unlikely to find records by the enslaved for this period.
  • most of our databases don't go back to ~1600

Types of Primary Sources

Tip: use secondary works to also identify primary sources. ex see pg23 another example and example

Bacon’s Rebellion

Important Details

  • Took place 1676-1677
  • Key figures were Nathaniel Bacon, William Berkeley

Keywords

  • Bacon, Beverly, rebellion, revolt

Primary Sources (See specialized databases)