LEARNING ABOUT THE HISTORIANS
PRACTICE
Which list of activities best represents the basic practices of historians?
• a.)
o applying historical lenses,
o asking questions about the nature of history,
o compiling facts about past events and
o creating narratives about the past
Choose the factor that should influence a professional historian's interpretation
of politics in the Gilded Age.
• d.)
The questions the historian chooses to ask
Which of these is an example of a primary source for historical research on the American
Civil Rights movement?
• C.)
an audio recording of Martin Luther King Jr. giving his “I Have a Dream” speech
Consider the excerpt from a speech given by the former slave and abolitionist Frederick
Douglass to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society:
"I have had but one idea for the last three years to present to the American people, and
the phraseology in which I clothe it is the old abolition phraseology. I am for the
'immediate, unconditional and universal' enfranchisement of the black man, in every State
in the Union. [Loud applause.] Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you
might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition; for in fact, if he is not
the slave of the individual master, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a
privilege, not as a right. He is at the mercy of the mob, and has no means of protecting
himself."
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