History 100: The American Experience

Paper 3

Due via Blackboard/Turnitin by 11:59 pm, 4.22.2016

Length: 6-7 double-spaced pages with 1” margins and a standard 12-point typeface

Number your pages!

Please remember to cite your articles in properly-formatted endnotes. Your citations will NOT count towards your page count.

Step 1: Choose one historical theme from the twentieth century that interests you. Examples include race relations, labor relations, gender relations, immigration, the environment, and international relations.

Step 2: Identify specific topics of debate, prominent individuals, or events related to your theme during the period 1930-1970. (Step two is to help you with step three.)

Step 3: Using USC’s subscription to the Los Angeles Sentinel (an African American newspaper) and the Los Angeles Times (a mainstream newspaper), find articles that address your theme during the period 1930-1970. For each decade (ie 1930-1940, 1940-1950, 1950-1960, 1960-1970), find at least one article from each of the two newspapers discussing your theme. (This means you will need to cite at least 8 articles. The most successful essays will probably draw on more than the minimum number of newspaper articles.)

Step 4: Journalists at both the Los Angeles Times and Sentinel sought to report the news for their readers. What is the perspective of each newspaper on your chosen theme? Does the newspaper’s perspective change over the course of the twentieth century? Compare and contrast the approaches that the two newspapers take towards your theme. Did different social groups view the same issue/person/event differently? Similarly? Why? How does newspaper coverage compare to the way that relevant documents discuss your theme in Voices of Freedom? Remember that you are writing about perspectives on your theme rather than narrating the historical events that your newspaper articles describe.

Historical Los Angeles Times

http://libguides.usc.edu/go.php?c=9232472

Historical Los Angeles Sentinel

http://libguides.usc.edu/go.php?c=9232399