My senior year of high school, I was enrolled in an Advanced Research Seminar course. The final project for that course was to write a 25 page research paper on any topic we desired (as it related to history). While there were a few guidelines, all of the research was primarily up to the students. I was worried about being able to find credible sources for my topic, both arguing for and against the argument that I was trying to make. However, through a few different mediums I was able to construct a paper that satisfied the criteria.
Source: agentnewsjournal.com
My topic focused on the relationship between the African-American community and the police from a historical point of view and concluded with moments of police brutality today. I wanted personal accounts, scholarly articles, and news clippings, anything that would help me to prove my point.
Source: Giphy
I started with jstor, a website that offers students access to a wide range of scholarly journals and books on almost any topic. There I found the majority of my secondary sources. Then, in looking to find primary sources I decided to try youtube. There I found videos of first accounts from individuals in the Black Panther Party and within Black communities (in the 1950’s-1970’s) who had something to say about their negative relationship with the police. Finally I used google (pictures) and found various news clippings of incidents where police brutality was reported on and petitions were advertised for equality under the law.
I like that the beam method allows background use from sources like Wikipedia. In high school using Wikipedia (in any way) was the equivalent of an F. I’ve always used secondary sources or scholarly journals/articles to give myself background on the topic, so this method is interesting, and I’m excited to be able to engage with it.