SBOHP History Issues

Shannon and Carol are the class historians. If you need background information or historical context either before or after you conduct your interview, please post your questions to this site and Shannon and Carol will look them up and post the answers here.

SBOHP Questions

Please share with each other one good interview question. As Fred Fussell suggested, questions should be open-ended so the person cannot just answer yes or no. Also, questions should elicit an easy response without being too invasive.

Jena 6 Rally

The Rally on Thursday was a very powerful experience for those of us who attended, and I saw a lot of you there. I wanted to create a post where you could share your thoughts in the aftermath of the event. What did you think about the rally? How did you feel? What feedback have you received?

Harriet Jacobs

Who does Harriet Jacobs imagine her audience to be? (Hint: Pay close attention to the preface.) Focusing on moments in the narrative when she breaks from the story to address her audience directly, do you find that her audience makes her self-conscious? Of what? What does she want from them? (You must post your response before class on Thursday, September 20).

Oral History Project

Let's use this blog space to talk about our emerging Oral History Project. You may want to record your thoughts about why you think this is a worthwhile project for the class. Later, you may want to shares ideas, tips, information with each other.

Frederick Douglass

I have asked you to read the first several pages of "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" and My Bondage and My Freedom. "Narrative," as you may have expected, is prefaced by two authenticating letters by white abolitionists. In the one letter, William Lloyd Garrison describes Douglass at his first abolitionist meeting when he got up a spoke to the group. Douglass himself describes his experience in the excerpt from My Bondage and My Freedom that I gave you to read. Do Douglas and Garrison both tell the same story? Do their details differ? What are some of the differences in their accounts and how are those differences significant? (You must post a response before class meets on Tuesday, September 11.)