Unfortunately, I was not able to find the book that I wanted to read called Colour of their skin and therefore I found a different source that was an online article. It was still covering the same topic and I wanted to research more to ask my question regarding the extent to which the segregation of races in Virginia affects the educational system, the session that we had with the librarian was extremely helpful. I had previous experience in research but not to that Deb, especially for an annotated bibliography. Therefore I used the information provided and found other two resources that would help me answer my exploring question. The first one is a peer-reviewed journal, while the other man is not using all the information I had, and the article or under the instructions for the assignment, I tried to make a summary and a reflection of the first resource from the book and I applied the same methodology to the other two sources. Overall, through the steps until now I didn’t just explore more in-depth my questions, but it was also a really useful process really significant in the academic world.
Category: prep note Page 11 of 24
I have never had to do an annotated bibliography before, so I was interested in this assignment because I like that we are getting the opportunity to explore Richmond’s Unhealed History in more detail. I found it hard to find an accessible source to bring to class so that did take longer than expected. I chose an excerpt about annexation because I think that was a significant topic and relates to Richmond now, so my thought is that there will be more secondary sources that relate to this one. The source I’m using is from The Politics of Annexation gives a more in-depth explanation of how the history of the city was affected by divisions.
I’ve never had to do any assignments in Chicago style so I was a little nervous, but after reading the format and example link I’m confident that it will be doable. All of my previous teachers have been extremely strict in terms of MLA format so getting used to Chicago format will be an adjustment. I ended up looking up a few other examples on Google which was very beneficial.
I didn’t have a problem finding something in the book that I wanted to learn about, so picking my source was easy. I wanted to learn more about those who were very vocally opposed to integration in schools. On page 162, the quote “…dedicate our every capacity to preserve segregation in the schools” stuck out to me. I knew that people were against integrating schools but I never read about politicians being so openly against it. The source I’m using is The Color of Their Skin by Richard Pratt. The chapter this quote is included in is titled “A Shameful Legacy”, and this is the perfect way to capture what the pages before and after the quote is about. The source is about Brown v. The Board of Education and the effects it had on politics. It also mentions how adamantly some Southerners fought against integration in schools.
A topic that stuck out to me from the reading came from chapter 7. This chapter goes into depth on the specific restrictions and strategies Richmond politicians placed on African Americans to limit their rights. A specific restriction was on marriage and miscegenation. In this section of the chapter, Campbell reference the influence of the eugenics movement in the 1920’s and the impact it had on African Americans as well as other groups. This section struck out to me before the only other time I’ve heard of eugenics was during readings or discussion of the Nazi’s who believed in eugenics and therefore believed the Aryan race was superior over all other races especially the Jewish race. The fact that there was somewhere in America that had been influenced by this movement really goes to show the amount of hate and divide that was present in the country.
In footnotes 297 and 298 Campbell used information out of the book “Managing White Supremacy”. In one of the chapters of this book, the author discusses the Anglo Saxon Club and their push of eugenics in politics and the media. In this source, I learned about the origin of the eugenics movement, how it started in Amnerica, the extent to which it was favored and proposed as well as the effects that resulted from the eugenics movement.
https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=civil&handle=hein.civil/mwsrp0001&id=100&men_tab=srchresults
One thing that intrigued me while reading the book was the burial ground for African-Americans in Richmond. It’s a place where several very different things are put together in the context of a space – and they all play off of each other. First of all, there’s always something a little off-putting about a burial ground that is not meticulously kept – like a graveyard that has fallen into disrepair or an unmarked tombstone. There’s this sense that somehow, we’ve forgotten the dead, which is unsettling to us, because most cultures throughout the world take great care to ensure that doesn’t happen. But there was no care taken, no honoring the deceased, in the burial ground.
Second, the space was once considered sacred ground to African-Americans in Richmond. To be buried anonymously and callously in a space your ancestors once called sacred is different from being buried anonymously in just any space. To me, the history of a place qualifies the events that take place in that space in a new way. The history of a place means something.
And third, people weren’t just buried in the burial ground. Some were killed there – hanged on the city gallows. There’s a difference between standing in the spot where someone is buried and standing in the spot where someone died. And on top of all that, the graves where people were buried were often washed away by rainstorms (and their coffins washed into the James River). The people who are and were entombed in the burial ground were often forgotten in life, and now forgotten in death.
It feels like there’s a lot of “story” here.
(The source I found was the memoir-ish of Christopher McPherson, a free black clerk in Richmond, who described the burial ground in the book. There’s probably a lot I could learn from his collection of papers about general day-to-day life in Richmond as a person of color in the late 1700s and early 1800s, in addition to more details about the burial ground.)
Source:
Theresa M. Guzman-Stokes, “A Flag and a Family: Richard Gill Forrester, 1847-1906,” Virginia Cavalcade (Spring, 1998), 52-63.
Chicago Annotated Bibliography Format and Example:
Source:
Deyle, Steven. The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life. Oxford University Press, 2015. This source located on page 110, source number 239.
Author:
Steven Deyle, an associate professor of history at the University of Houston, is a renowned scholar in the field of American history, particularly focusing on the domestic slave trade.
Summary:
In his book, The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life, Steven Deyle delves into the intricate history of the domestic slave trade in the United States. It focuses on the spillover effects of low price volatility in the Richmond slave market and its profound impact on the burgeoning cotton industry in the region. Deyle provides an in-depth analysis of how the prosperity of the cotton industry was intricately connected to the dynamics of the slave trade during this period.
The book has 389 pages comprises 15 comprehensive chapters that meticulously illustrate the historical context and far-reaching consequences of the domestic slave trade in America. The credibility of this source is bolstered by its publication under Oxford University Press, a globally recognized and reputable academic publisher known for its stringent peer-review process that ensures the accuracy and reliability of its publications.
Chicago Style Formatting is a new experience for me. Although it is regarded as one of the more common styles of citation, I have always found myself using MLA, APSA, and APA formatting. It is almost a foreign experience to me, however, the premise of an annotated Bibliography is not new to me, so that was generally alright. The content itself was almost eye-opening, as most of my annotated bibliography were combinations of both the surface-level research into author, reliability, etc. as well as an analysis as to how it can be applied in terms of my paper. Seeing it differentiate into two types was fairly interesting.
In terms of the source that I’ve selected for my Annotated Bibliography, I’ve chosen to dive deeper into the legal encodings, most notably the “Vagrant Laws.” The source referenced, that although the initial link to “gwu.edu” ended up failing and not working, I was able to find the primary document dating back to January 25th, 1866.
The exact document itself is a reference to a New York Times article in which the Union General makes an announcement that the Vagrant Laws under no means will be enforced by any civil servant under his territory and goes on to criticize the law itself over what it will do, and how white business-owners have already made agreements to not hire freedmen at respectable wages in order to force them into qualification over the vagrancy statute and work at near dirt-level wages.
It raises questions as to what other laws were encoded into their system as attempted loopholes, as well as who were other figures who stood up to fight against the Law? The Vagrancy Law, while not enforced, was still in effect in Virginia’s Legal System until 1904 which means over the course of close to four decades it was in effect.
The first source I have decided to use for my annotated bibliography is found on page 93 and is source number 209. The excerpt comes from Frederick Douglass who gave a speech titled “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country” in which he begins by giving a quote from William Meade, the Bishop of Virginia Episcopalians in 1841. In this page-long quote, Bishop Meade talks about how slaves should view their masters as God’s overseers and therefore should be obedient and complete all work given to them as if they were doing it for God himself. He even references God as “your great Master in Heaven”. He then goes on and talks about how slaves should fully accept any punishment their master gives them because, “It is your duty, and Almighty God requires that you bear it patiently.”
I found this section extremely interesting because it perfectly demonstrates how slave owners of the 19th century used any means necessary to justify slavery. Coming from a religious upbringing myself, it’s hard to imagine how a bishop, a man supposedly of faith, can try to justify the enslavement of others through religion. This book is filled with slave owners trying to justify slavery and not accept how horrific it truly was.
I found the entire text of Frederick Douglass’ speech “Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country” with the quote from William Meade online and saved it as a bookmark. It would be interesting to read more into both Meade and Douglass to get a better overall understanding of their beliefs.
In terms of the reading on how to make an annotated bibliography, I was a little worried because I have never done one before but the source did a good job of explaining it. It seems fairly easy and I definitely see the benefit in having an annotated bibliography instead of just the typical MLA formatted Works Cited. The annotated bibliography forces you to dive deeper into the source and get an overall better understanding of it instead of throwing your sources on the Works Cited page without much attention like in MLA.
Reading about Chicago Style was a bit intimidating to me at first because this is the first time I’m being exposed to it as a citation style. I mostly used MLA in high school, but there was one time I used APA. But after reading about it, Chicago Style doesn’t seem all that different and the examples really helped me visualize what I’m supposed to do later. In terms of the annotated bibliography, I have done one once before, but it was in MLA format. But the layout seems fairly similar, with the citation, summary, and evaluation. When I did it in high school, I made an annotated bibliography that I then used to write a paper, but I know we won’t be doing that for this assignment.
For finding a source to use from Campbell’s book Richmond’s Unhealed History, I was able to narrow down my choices of interest by jotting down a few sources I was interested in, and then eliminating based on availability. I found myself interested in topics like bus boycotts and forced sterilization, but I ultimately settled on forced sterilization. Through UR’s library website, I was able to find a book online that Campbell referenced. I will most likely read around the page that he cited, and maybe skim around to see what else I can find about the eugenics movement.