Dick Gregory and the Birmingham Campaign

Reflection

As I selected my research question and began my research for Dr. Cooley’s Civil Rights in the 20th Century course, I came face to face with some of the rigors of real primary research.  My research topic was that on celebrity influence and impact on public attention on the Birmingham Campaign of 1963, with a focus on comedian Dick Gregory’s role in Civil Rights activism and the “Children’s Crusade”.  In this course, we were guided through the research process in manageable steps that focused on primary sources.  This exercise helped me better interpret and synthesize primary sources into a cogent historical argument.  Analysis of the sources allowed me to put together a larger picture of the Birmingham Campaign, beyond the narrow scope of my historical question and thesis.  Additionally, an early revelation to me was the sheer magnitude of the task in gathering and interpreting a mountain of telegrams, newspaper articles, NAACP memos, photos, and memoirs.  What I learned here was how paralyzing it could be at times to be selective in source inclusion.  I felt as if I could have written a short book on the subject.  Additionally, it became readily apparent that the research and analysis of the sources of the documents themselves had increased weight.  Researching and looking for trends and bias of a specific news outlet led to questions like, “how does this paper usually lean regarding civil rights stories?  How much space is usually given for events of this size?  Did this paper even cover this event?”  That was a hard one to consistently be aware of and recognize:  What is left out… what ISN’T there.  In many ways, my teaching of AP United States History served me well for the most part.  The course itself heavily stresses the importance of document sourcing.  I have a long list of activities and strategies, like SOAPSTone, OPVL and HIPPO, to help students navigate the value and limitations of historical documents.  The fact that I’ve been teaching that course for nearly fourteen years, teaching these skills with varying degrees of success prepared me for this exercise in a way that would have been overwhelmingly difficult for a younger and less experienced version of myself twenty-five years ago at the beginning of my career.  At that time, my use of primary sources was superficial at best, and non-existent (save for the occasional textbook special feature) at worst.  In this way, I suppose my experience teaching, AP training, and my continuing history education helped me evolve into a more competent researcher and historian.