Hey everyone,
First and foremost, I would like to publicly thank Mariam for helping me with my question. I had an idea in my mind, but couldn’t quite find the words to express it. So thanks Mariam!
As you all know, I really just couldn’t figure out what to write about. I had VOTER ID as the starting off point, but then decided against it. I moved onto child abuse, but then also decided against it. I was then going to move into public health, but also decided to go against that. And I thought about VOTER ID again because it really has been in the news quite often, so I took VOTER ID and spun around with it a bit. What I know about VOTER ID is about what is going on now. But in 1965, the Voting Act was passed to prevent racial discrimination against those that wanted to vote. So with that in mind, I am going to attempt to find how does today’s culture (socially, politically, economically) differ/compare with that of the era prior to the Voting Act of 1965 which required such an act? If voter ID is the new form of discrimination, why now and is it similar to the events that occured five decades ago.
I have begun doing research on this idea, but the difficulty in my research is due to the time period before, during, and after the Voting Act of 1965. Since I am doing a historical investigation, it is quite challenging to find first-hand or primary sources of the events that occured over 5 decades ago. There have been a lot of secondary sources, which is fine, but primary sources really just add more punch into a paper. Bias in these sources seem to be a constant characteristic as well. Of course, in past times, people held more tightly to their convictions, and it comes across on both ends of the spectrum, from those that believed in the necessity, or lack of such a necessity, for the Voting Act of 1965. Lack of the information-storing capabilities also seems to be an issue. Hard-copies were the primary engine for maintaining the accounts of the events that occurred decades ago, which again goes back to the issue of finding enough relevant sources.
In order to somewhat solve these issues, newspapers and magazines are a good starting off point. But like I said, as unbiased these sources seem to be, every source has a specific platform it stands on. I, therefore, must attempt to be unbiased myself. Documentaries, an avenue of research that I have never done before, might also actually help at this point. Documentaries tend to just recount what events had happened, so that might alleviate or narrow down the scope of what my paper would become.
