This exercise gives students excerpts from two interviews with ex-slaves taken as part of the WPA Act that reflect opposite points of view.  Yet, these excerpts share a connection, which the students are encouraged to find.  Both sources are interviews of the same person, three months apart, who gave the negative interview to a young black man and the positive one to a white woman, from whom she hoped to receive monetary compensation.  This exercise brings questions up about the reliability of primary sources and the necessity to consider the audience, agenda, and context of primary sources.

This presentation on Andrew Jackson  begins with Jackson’s career as it is often seen - a political and military hero. The second half of he presentation offers a different perspective on Jackson as a violent and unschooled man who took powers into his own hands during his presidency and is responsible for the removal of the Native Americans.

The assignment for the students was, based on the material presented, evaluate these documents and decide whether Jackson was the hero of democracy or whether history has misrepresented him, and why.

This exercise incorporated the paradigm from the previous slavery exercise in how to examine these sources, but also went further in making the students take a stance and defend their reading of the sources.

Online historical research database hints.doc

Interactive Witch Trial

Links to a interactive online with-hunt in Germany in 1628