- Select a single primary source document from your previous post (it cannot be a newspaper article). Remember: you’re looking for a document that can tell us something about the role of cultural conflict in the 1968 presidential election.
- Embed the document in a new post, either as an image file or as partial quote, with a link to the original source in the database. Read the following closely.
- Answer the following questions as briefly as possible:
- Who created the artifact?
- When was the artifact created?
- Where was it created?
- Why was the document created?
- Why is the document a primary source?
- How trustworthy is the source?
- What other questions might you ask of the source in order to better understand what it reveals about the events of 1968?
- Then, write (at the end of that post) between 250-500 words that answer the following questions:
- If you were going to be constructing an argument about the relationship between the cultural conflict embodied by the artifact you’re presenting and the 1968 election, what other artifacts would you look for? How might you go about finding them? What other background reading would you need to do? What other questions would you ask?
Due Monday 10/1 by 8am
- Comment on at least two classmates’ posts. Have they successfully completed the assignment? Are you persuaded that they are on a viable path to making a historical argument?
Due Monday 10/1 by 5:50pm
- Read Stephen Brier and Joshua Brown, The September 11 Digital Archive: Saving the Histories of September 11, 2001, Radical History Review, Fall 2011.
Blog Posts Review
- Primary vs. secondary sources
- Categories
- Logistical challenges?
- Conceptual challenges?
- Models
- Sourcing: Think about a document’s author and its creation.
- Contextualizing: Situate the document and its events in time and place.
- Close reading: Carefully consider what the document says and the language used to say it.
- Using Background Knowledge: Use historical information and knowledge to read and understand the document.
- Reading the Silences: Identify what has been left out or is missing from the document by asking questions of its account.
- Corroborating: Ask questions about important details across multiple sources to determine points of agreement and disagreement.
- Ask students how they could proceed with this historical investigation: What questions arise, after careful reading and interpretation of the document? What other primary sources might corroborate or refute this interpretation? Have students discuss their responses in pairs and then share with the class.
- Free write: what is the difference between an “archive” and a “collection”?
- Key Concepts:
- Archive vs. collection
- Provenance
- Original order
- Collective control
- Authenticity
- “Materials created or received by a person, family, or organization, public or private, in the conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value contained in the information they contain or as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator, especially those materials maintained using the principles of provenance, original order, and collective control.”
[entry-title]
Database: AP Images
source:http://www.apimages.com/Search.aspx?st=k&remem=x&entity=&kw=robert+kennedy&intv=None&shgroup=-10&sh=14
Above is an image of Robert Kennedy meeting with colleagues while he was US attorney general. Years later he ran as a democrat for a presidential seat.
Database: The Wall Street Journal (1889-1994)
Source: http://search.proquest.com/hnpwallstreetjournal/docview/133434913/1395AD39F94679C7D2E/2?accountid=8500
This Wall Street Journal article was published in 1969 and it conveys the ideas and opportunities that we had been deprived of after the passing of Robert F Kennedy. He was a talented politician who many believed would have become president before he was assassinated.
Database: The New York Times (1851-2008)
Source: http://search.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/118473235/1395AC711AF43337AB6/21?accountid=8500
The above article from the New York Times shows a mourning Mrs. Kennedy at the Arlington National Cemetary. This is a good example of the large media coverage and magnitude of the assassination of RFK. At a time in which our country was undergoing great changes and conflict it was a huge loss of a popular candidate.
[entry-title]
“Medical evacuation of United States wounded troops” Image Copyright The Art Archive, Dept Defence Washington
I was able to locate this image through the Art Museum Image Gallery database. The photograph was taken 15 miles south west of Da Nang, Vietnam, on March 17, 1968, by an anonymous source. During this year the conflict in Vietnam seemed to reach a boiling point, with the highest casualty rate seen yet, sky-rocketing defense budgets, and the launch of the Tet Offensive by the Vietcong. The Vietnam War was undoubtedly on the minds of every voter in 1968.
“The All-Purpose Political Speech, 1968” – Copyright New York Times Company Jun 9, 1968, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851-2008)
The All-Purpose Political Speech shows how the game of politics was played in the 1968 election. Not much has changed since this time in our own modern political system, however, the article provides much meaningful insight into the minds of political analysts during the 1968 election.
“Planet Of The Apes [1968]” – Copyright 20th CENTURY FOX/The Kobal Collection
This screenshot from the 1968 film Planet of the Apes was located within the Cinema Image Gallery database. Now while you may be wondering, and rightfully so, how this film could possibly tie in to the 1968 Presidential Elections, it may help to take a more examined view of the plot of the film. In a society where humans are helpless against the tyrannical bureaucracy of a ruling elite, apes to be exact, the lower caste must rise above and assert their right to a meaningful existence. Given the context of the 1960’s in America, the role of the humans in the film certainly reflects many of the sentiments echoed through the emerging “anti-establishment” viewpoints of the youth in America.
Democrats Weigh 1968 rights pledge
by Gene Roberts, The New York Times (1851 – 2008)
This article on the New York Times is fundamental because during the 1968 elections, the civil rights movement played a big role in the running for president. As shown in this document, the plan offered would bar delegations from south if Negroes were not included and promise to uphold federal civil rights laws, this sparks cultural conflict in the elections as committee leaders find it “ubnoxious” and “evidence of discrimination”
Ap Images. Credit Associated Press
Photo Taken During Democratic National Convention of 1968, in chicago Illinois.
This photo represents cultural conflict because delegates Delegates hold up signs referring to the VietnamWar, while the democratic party is selecting the presidential candidate for 1968 presidential election. This photo shows the delegates interest to stop the war, and can make an impact in the upcoming elections of 1968.
[entry-title]
I found this image in the apimages.com. This image is taken by a anonymous sources on Wednesday, October 16, 1968, but its copyrighted by Corbis Corporation. This image related itself to the “cultural conflict” of 1968 because it show that racial injustice is still an important issues even after the passing of civil right act in 1964.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze medalists in the 200-meter run at the 1968 Olympic Games, engage in a victory stand protest against unfair treatment of blacks in the United States. With heads lowered and black-gloved fists raised in the black power salute, they refuse to recognize the American flag and national anthem. Australian Peter Norman is the silver medalist.(Copyright Bettmann/Corbis / AP Images)
The main point of this source is to get a first hand view at the effect of the Vietnam War. In a interview with Dava Ensell, a widow of a Vietnam veteran whom died in the Vietnam War with Journalist Joanne Kovace in the magazines Off Our Back title, “War Casualty:Gold Star Wife” state
It’s a mistake. I used to be for the war. I thought our country back in the revolution with the British was helped by the French. I figured we were doing the same for the South Vietnamese. But then it dawned on me that these people didn’t want help. They just wanted to be left alone to farm. They didn’t care if it were a democracy or communism. They didn’t care. They weren’t even fighting so why should we have our men killed for nothing. If any part of our mainland were attacked, then I could see war would be justified, like World War Two. But to go thousands of miles away is wrong. Men are getting killed for no reason. In my opinion if the politicians and the big business men, who are making money, would go in there and fight with the ground troops for one day that war would be over the next day. There are no two ways about it. They are keeping their own kids out of it.
This article relate back to the 1968 cultural conflict by exposing the damaging effect of war on a family. This article is published in May 27, 1971 and copyrighted by Off Our Backs, Inc.
“A Personal Memoir:1968, the watershed year” written by Kupchinsky Roman, Published in the Urkainian Weekly on July 27, 2008. Copyrighted by the Ukrainian National Association. In this memoir, Mr. Roman talks about his experience as a US soldier in the Vietnam War and his thinking about the year 1968. This relate back to the 1968 issues because it gave a first person view of parts of 1968.
1968 was the year my generation came of age. “The Year of the Monkey” was the year of dramatic, often hopeless; uprisings, brutal assassinations, riots, strikes and civil disobedience that challenged society’s ironclad beliefs and redefined for the coming generation the meaning of such terms as “democracy,” “socialism” and “national liberation.”
[entry-title]
AP Images
November 06, 1968
Taken by an anonymous photographer in NYC
– Nixon strikes his famous pose as he becomes the 37th President of the United States. Election itself was the epitome of conflict because of extremely small margin of victory by Nixon and a very strong showing by a third-party candidate. The president’s campaign promised to restore law and order in the times of public unrest, hence the double peace signs.
AP Images
August 07, 1968
Taken by an anonymous photographer in Miami
– The Chicago riot of 1968 Democratic Convention has taken away the attention from another riot that happened the same year. Interestingly enough, the Miami race riot happened during the Republican Convention(to attract more attention, no doubt). So why do we hear so little about it compared to the infamous Chicago riot? Perhaps the answer lies in the cause of each of the riots. In Chicago, people(mostly Caucasian) were protesting war, a popular topic at that time. In Miami, people(much fewer, and mostly African -American) were protesting poverty and racism.
AP Images
June 07, 1968
Taken by an anonymous photographer in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, NYC
– This picture, as good and as bad as it gets, gives us a sense of the tumultuous time period. A widow, Coretta Scott King, over the coffin of senator Robert F. Kennedy; same way he once stood over her husband’s coffin. The lost lives of two prominent civil rights activists, a presidential candidate and an iconic clergyman, will forever remain as the great sacrifices in the struggle for true freedom and equality.
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