History Paper of A History of African Americans

Write a 3-5 page paper that makes an argument about the historical significance of one of the primary sources from The Cruel Years assigned to the class in unit 4 (Feb. 23-March 9).
Your paper should have an introduction where you articulate this significance claim as the paper’s thesis statement. This thesis statement should explain as specifically as possible how the source either 1) supports, 2) adds to, or 3) challenges one of the arguments in the secondary source assigned on the same day as the primary source. For instance, if writing about the primary source for Feb. 25 (“An African American Woman: Surviving the South”), the significance claim would explain how that text supports, adds to, to challenges arguments in the secondary source (Franklin, “The Era of Self-Help”, Chap. 13 in From Slavery to Freedom).
A good test of whether your thesis is sufficiently specific is if it answers a how or why question. If, for instance, your thesis states that a primary source adds a “personal” or “emotional” perspective to our understanding of a particular topic in U.S. history, but doesn’t explain how or why, then it is incomplete because it is not sufficiently specific.
To prove your thesis in your paper requires demonstrating an ability to summarize and analyze a primary source, as well as summarize and analyze at least one argument contained in a secondary source. Failure to do both of these things will make the paper incomplete.
Your paper’s body paragraphs should therefore have three parts: 1) summarize the primary source in its entirety, 2) summarize the secondary source in its entirety, and then 3) demonstrate how or why the primary source supports, adds to or challenges the secondary source argument that you’ve described. You may present each section in any order you like. Each section may be one long paragraph, or can be broken into multiple paragraphs organized around particular topics. Each body paragraph must begin with a topic sentence that summarizes the subject of the paragraph. Each body paragraph must also present evidence— in the form of a quote or information drawn from assigned reading— to support its claims.