Harpers Weekly Toward Racial Equality Thesis Paper

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  1. We need our thesis to consist of a single sentence that encapsulates the argument for the entire essay or paper in a manner that takes a clear position. This is of course quite difficult, and most are continuing to develop this skill. Remember the thesis quiz! We want a thesis that is making a strong, meaningful assertion rather than a bland assertion of fact. Rather than something so general that it can be assumed to be true, it needs to be something that is provable with your evidence and is specific enough that it can be argued with and alternative evidence presented. Ideally it should encompass all of your major sub arguments or topics, as these sub arguments are the major data points that you are using to support your thesis.
  2. The evidence being used should be quite specific. You are using this to support a 3-5 page paper (double spaced, not including the headers and bibliography) and your supporting evidence needs to be substantial.
  3. BE ALERT FOR BIAS!
  4. Outside of specific bias, keep in mind that many of the cartoons are often understood to some somewhat metaphorical.
  5. You do not have to organize the essay by image…if possible you can also structure it around theme or idea. That is also good as it starts moving the paper in a more analytical direction.
  6. I would recommend adding some secondary material to support your interpretation and provide context to the Harper’s images. Please use either the textbook or use some of the historical databases such as US History (Gale in Context). NO GENERAL INTERNET SOURCES WILL BE ACCEPTED! These also need to be cited via Chicago Notes and Bibliography.
  7. USING THE EXACT WORDING OF TEXT WITHOUT QUOTATION MARKS AND CITATIONS IS PLAGIARISM! This includes data in an outline. This includes our textbook. Paraphrasing information originating elsewhere also needs a citation.
  8. You need to record where is information is from in the Chicago, Notes and Bibliography citation style on all data points. This will be the case in the final paper as well. You will note the directions say MLA, and sadly this is in a portion I cannot edit. As such I can’t penalize you for using MLA, but I do highly recommend Chicago if only to keep my brain from exploding. I understand that you may be more comfortable using a system like MLA that uses parenthetical citations as opposed for footnotes, but learning different citations systems is unfortunately part of college and there are many things in history that work best in Chicago. Parenthetical citations do not work particularly well for this assignment since we are using large numbers of different data points from the same source, and this simply does not work well as a parenthetical citation. The footnote citation of Chicago Notes and Bibliography is much better in this regard. Most word processors support footnotes and if you don’t know how to do this now is the time to learn to do so. Below is an example of how to cite a sample image as both a footnote and a bibliographic entry.

Footnote (use the Insert Footnote functionality of your word process to insert these as needed.

“Slave Auction in the South,” Harper’s Weekly, July 13, 1861, https://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/S… .

Bibliography (Note this is almost identical, but with periods rather than commas, some other source types can have some other small variations, so I recommend always checking the OWL)

“Slave Auction in the South.” Harper’s Weekly. July 13, 1861. https://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/S… .Directions:

After receiving feedback on your thesis statement and essay outline from your instructor, write and submit a 3-5 page paper filling in the points you previously outlined. You may draw information from the Harper’s Weekly website and the online textbook for supporting historical information.

  1. Your paper should be 3-5 pages long, using 12 point font, double-spaced, and with 1 inch margins.
  2. All evidence and quotes and should be cited using MLA format.
  3. Your paper should have a bibliography (this will not be counted as part of the 3-5 pages).

Remember to fully introduce the theme and topic you have chosen to write about. How do your chosen illustrations describe and/or interpret your chosen topic? How did nineteenth-century society view your chosen topic and illustrations? What conclusions can we draw?

Here is the discussion of the themes and topics I chose + the illustrations for my topic that will have to be incorporated in the essay.

After reading the site’s introduction page and browsing through the illustrations, I have come to the conclusion to use is the slavery theme. I think it’s extremely important to talk about slavery and be honest with ourselves, because growing up in Los Angeles, we were taught black history and slavery in great depth. When I moved to Arlington, it wasn’t really mentioned whatsoever unless it was Black History month or they went over slavery for about a day or two.

In one of the illustrations called “At The South” this picture depicts that abolitionist are the ones to be feared, not the people that are trying to in slave you. It seems like the artist, Ben Day, is trying to instill fear in slaves and change the perception of who really wants to help them. https://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/Slavery/AtTheSouth.htm (Links to an external site.)

In the second illustration called the “Slave Auction In The South”, it was real eye-opening to see a picture like this because of how realistic it is. I chose this photo because it show’s what happened during auctions. https://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/Slavery/SlaveAuctionInTheSouth.htm (Links to an external site.)

In the final illustration called “The Africans of the Slave Bark, Wildfire” this one was the best to chose in my opinion because it shows many slaves in the middle of a slave deck, which is just hard to look at because these are my ancestors.

https://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/Slavery/AfricansOnSlaveBoat.htm