The Historian’s Toolbox

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The Historians Toolbox

• Discovery, Analysis, Interpretation, Communication

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What Do Historians Do?

• Obviously historiography writing history cannot
  be a science. It can only be an industry, an art,
  and a philosophy an industry by ferreting out
  the facts, an art by establishing a meaningful
  order in the chaos of materials, a philosophy by
  seeking perspective and enlightenment." - Will
  and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History (1968)

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The Building Blocks of History Primary Sources

• Primary sources are actual records that have
  survived from the past. They are pieces of
  information created from direct experience that
  help us to understand history letters, diaries,
  public documents, photographs, remnants of
  clothing, furniture, tools, coins, and other
  artifacts.
• Primary sources are created by people who
  witnessed or participated in an event and
  recorded it in some way.

This photo was taken about 100 years ago at the
turn of the century. It shows Laura May Wilson
and her bike.
Note Any item created in the past which provides
information about the period is also considered a
primary source (e.g., a newspaper advertisement
from the 1940s, a political cartoon from the
1920s,or a recipefrom the 1800s.)
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Using Primary Sources

• The photograph on the left shows Laura May Wilson
  on her wedding day. Through using documents such
  as a Certificate of Marriage (below the picture),
  we can learn more about this event. For example,
  she was married on March 14, 1917, in Coon
  Rapids, Carroll County, Iowa. From this document,
  we also know that her two sisters Hazel and Rhoda
  witnessed the marriage.

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Tools for Doing History Well
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Locating Primary Sources

• Looking for primary documents is like a treasure
  hunt. Historians often have to go to many places
  to collect materials including libraries,
  museums, government agencies, and historical
  societies. They even may create their own
  documents by interviewing relevant people. (Audio
  and video tapes are primary sources too.)

Resources at the Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C.
1933 Chicago World's Fair View Book, Boston
Museum of Natural History
Above (right) 16th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution Federal Income Tax (1913), National
Archives
Group Listening to V-E Day Radio Commentary,
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison
Slaves who fled their masters, 1862, Library of
Congress
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Broadening the Search

• Today, many historians use digital reproductions
  of original materials. A digital reproduction is
  an electronic version of an artifact such as a
  diary, letter, newspaper clipping, object, or
  original photograph. Digital reproduction allows
  the original to be stored, protected, and
  preserved, while making the resource widely
  available for study.

Photographer Les Goodey creating digital
reproductions, The Taylor-Schechter Genizah
Research Unit, Cambridge University Library
Documents from the Genizah Collection help to
shed light on the medieval world. Its 140,000
manuscript fragments are mainly in Hebrew and
Arabic.
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More Examples of Digital Reproductions

• The article on the right is a digital
  reproduction of a newspaper article. The article
  notes that Mrs. Laura Wilson Anderson had her
  poems published in The Poetic Voice of America.
  The original article was scanned.
• The pictures show the "Always Ready Class" at the
  Star Methodist Church where Clara May Wilson
  taught. A number of scans were completed. First,
  the photo is displayed in a black photo album.
  The back of the photo was also scanned. The
  close-ups are of Clara and Glenn Bolger, Mrs.
  Andersons niece and nephew.

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The Limitations of Digital Reproductions

• Reading a scanned copy of the marriage
  certificate yields similar information to the
  original. But it doesn't allow us to see the
  reverse side of the sheet unless that side is
  scanned too. So the exploration may be incomplete
  when examining digital reproductions. Some
  historians also miss the smell and touch of an
  original item.

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Transcriptions

• Many historical primary resources are transcribed
  into a digital form to make them easier to access
  and search. This is a diary entry made by Eileen
  Kinnick on January 1, 1936, when she was 17
  years old. A scanned digital reproduction of the
  diary page is at the top. The transcription is
  below it.

Wednesday, January 1 Up to Edna's
all day. Gertrude's, Lillian's and Lucille's
and we were there. At nite read book and
listened to Gracie Allen. "The Music goes
Round Round."
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Errors in Transcription

• Examine this example from Ruth West's 1920 diary
  and see if you can identify issues or concerns
  with transcription. Errors in transcriptions are
  common.

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Examining Primary Sources

• Historians go to primary sources in search of
  evidence to answer questions about what happened
  in the past and why. When working with primary
  sources, answering a series of basic questions
  can help us judge their quality and draw more
  accurate conclusions.
• The Document Analysis Worksheets on the following
  pages were developed by the National Archives for
  educators and young researchers to assist in the
  evaluation of primary sources of various types.

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Interpreting Primary Sources

• Interpretation is the process of explaining
  primary sources by revealing their context,
  meaning, and significance. Lets look at an
  example involving Civil Rights activist Rosa
  Parks.

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The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks

• The documents shown here relating to Mrs. Parks
  arrest are copies that were submitted as evidence
  in the Browder v. Gayle case. They are preserved
  by the National Archives and Records
  Administration-Southeast Region in East Point,
  Georgia, in Record Group 21, Records District
  Courts of the United States, U.S. District Court
  for Middle District of Alabama, Northern
  (Montgomery) Division. Civil Case 1147, Browder,
  et al v. Gayle, et al.
• This booking photo, taken at the time of Mrs.
  Parks' arrest, was discovered in July 2004 by a
  deputy cleaning out a Montgomery County Sheriff's
  Department storage room.

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Police Report, December 1, 1955, Page 1
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Police Report, December 1, 1955, Page 2
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Fingerprint Card of Rosa Parks
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Illustration of bus where Rosa Parks sat,
December 1, 1955
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Telling the Story Behind the Primary Sources

• Authors Stacey Bredhoff, Wynell Schamel, and Lee
  Ann Potter studied Rosa Parks arrest records and
  combined their new knowledge with what they
  already knew about the Civil Rights movement and
  published this article "The Arrest Records of
  Rosa Parks." Social Education 63, 4 (May/June
  1999) 207-211.

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Rosa Parks Arrest Records
From "The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks." Social
Education 63, 4 (May/June 1999)

• On December 1, 1955, during a typical evening
  rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old
  woman took a seat on the bus on her way home from
  the Montgomery Fair department store where she
  worked as a seamstress. Before she reached her
  destination, she quietly set off a social
  revolution when the bus driver instructed her to
  move back, and she refused. Rosa Parks, an
  African American, was arrested that day for
  violating a city law requiring racial segregation
  of public buses.

Note In this section, highlighted passages
indicate interpretive statements.
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• In police custody, Mrs. Parks was booked,
  fingerprinted, and briefly incarcerated. The
  police report shows that she was charged with
  "refusing to obey orders of bus driver." For
  openly challenging the racial laws of her city,
  she remained at great physical risk while held by
  the police, and her family was terrified for her.
  When she called home, she spoke to her mother,
  whose first question was "Did they beat you?"

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• Mrs. Parks was not the first person to be
  prosecuted for violating the segregation laws on
  the city buses in Montgomery. She was, however, a
  woman of unchallenged character who was held in
  high esteem by all those who knew her. At the
  time of her arrest, Mrs. Parks was active in the
  local National Association for the Advancement of
  Colored People (NAACP), serving as secretary to
  E.D. Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter.
  Her arrest became a rallying point around which
  the African American community organized a bus
  boycott in protest of the discrimination they had
  endured for years. Martin Luther King, Jr., the
  26-year-old minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist
  Church, emerged as a leader during the
  well-coordinated, peaceful boycott that lasted
  381 days and captured the worlds attention. It
  was during the boycott that Reverend Martin
  Luther King, Jr., first achieved national fame as
  the public became acquainted with his powerful
  oratory.

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• After Mrs. Parks was convicted under city law,
  her lawyer filed a notice of appeal. While her
  appeal was tied up in the state court of appeals,
  a panel of three judges in the U.S. District
  Court for the region ruled in another case that
  racial segregation of public buses was
  unconstitutional. That case, called Browder v.
  Gayle, was decided on June 4, 1956. The ruling
  was made by a three-judge panel that included
  Frank M. Johnson, Jr., and upheld by the United
  States Supreme court on November 13, 1956.

Judgment After trial on the merits and careful
consideration of the evidence therein adduced and
after oral arguments and submission of briefs by
all parties, the Court, being fully advised in
the promises, found in an opinion handed down on
June 5, 1956, that the enforced segregation of
Negro and white passengers on motor buses
operating in the City of Montgomery as required
by Section 301 (31a, 31b and 31c) of Title 48,
Code of Alabama, 1940, as amended, and Sections
10 and 11 of Chapter 6 of the Code of the City of
Montgomery, 1952, violates the Constitution and
laws of the United States.
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• For a quiet act of defiance that resonated
  throughout the world, Rosa Parks is known and
  revered as the "Mother of the Civil Rights
  Movement."

February 4, 1913 - October 24, 2005
February 4, 1913 - October 24, 2005
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Why Study History?

• For the Big Payoff

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• A Lesson from History
• Even ordinary citizens can serve as agents of
  constructive change. Conventional wisdom says
  that if you want to play a significant role in
  history, you have to do something big. But it's
  small acts of leadership refusing to move to
  the back of the bus, circulating a petition,
  organizing a strike that eventually move
  mountains. Small acts of leadership, not big
  heroic acts, performed by like-minded people
  ultimately add up. Small acts of leadership
  slowly and effectively bring about constructive
  change ESM

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Bibliography

• "Analysis of Primary Sources." The Historian's
  Sources. The Library of Congress. 14 Nov. 2005
  lthttp//lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/psour
  ces/analyze.htmlgt.
• District Court of The United States for the
  Middle District of Alabama-Northern Division.
  "Browder v. Galye." National Park Service. 22
  Dec. 2004. National Historic Site, National Park
  Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. 15 Nov.
  2005 lthttp//www.nps.gov/malu/documents/browder_v_
  gayle.htmgt.
• Education Staff. "Document Analysis Worksheets."
  ARCHIVES.GOV. U.S. National Archives and Records
  Administration. 14 Nov. 2005 lthttp//www.archives.
  gov/education/lessons/worksheets/index.htmlgt.
• Education Staff. "Teaching with Documents The
  Arrest Records of Rosa Parks." ARCHIVES.GOV. U.S.
  National Archives and Records Administration. 15
  Nov. 2005 lthttp//www.archives.gov/education/lesso
  ns/rosa-parks/documents gt.
• "History and Culture Questions and Answers."
  Open Door Ideas and Voices from MIT. 2003.
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 15 Nov.
  2005 lthttp//alumweb.mit.edu/opendoor/200211/dower
  .shtmlgt.
• Lamb, Annette, and Larry Johnson. "Analyzing
  Primary Sources." E-Scrapbooking. Feb. 2005. 14
  Nov. 2005 lthttp//escrapbooking.com/primarysource
  s/index.htmgt.
• "Using Primary Sources." Do History History
  Toolkit. Film Study Center, Harvard University,
  and Center for History and New Media, George
  Mason University. 14 Nov. 2005 lthttp//dohistory.o
  rg/on_your_own/toolkit/primarySources.htmlgt.