This writing assignment focuses on the topic of inequality and equality in America between 1865 and the present. It challenges you to examine the historical documents from the period that relate to that topic (e.g. the primary sources) and to place those documents in the context of the secondary sources and lecture material from the course. The goal, in other words, is to demonstrate your ability to think like a historian by critically analyzing the types of evidence that historians utilize to make sense of the past and to answer the questions that interest us.
To begin this assignment, select at least three primary sources from the course that offer three different perspectives on the nature and experience of equality and/or inequality in the United States. You might choose, for instance, the primary documents that deal with any of the following or other topics:
race relations,
immigration,
imperial politics,
class inequality,
religious conflict, or
gender experiences.
You need not pick a single subject, such as race, but may choose to look at equality and inequality from three different episodes and perspectives from different time periods that intrigue you. Your paper should focus on the primary source documents but also draw on the unit lectures and textbook readings to contextualize those documents.
Your paper needs to contain a clear thesis statement. That thesis statement should make some claim about the character of the various American perspectives on inequality and equality in the United States that you have chosen to examine in your paper.
Provide a title to your essay that captures its content. There is no need for an individual title page.
Include page numbers in the right upper corner, excepting the first page.
Double-space your essay, with the exception of long quotations, which should be indented and single spaced.
Provide citations for the documents and sources you use. Cite these documents with footnotes or endnotes. Do not also include a bibliography for this short paper.
Check both spelling and grammar
Use the Chicago Manual of Style for citations
