Index

Group Research Project 2

Due Date:  Thursday, April 15, 2004 at the beginning of class.  Please submit a print copy (identify all members of your group, please) and upload a digital copy.

Format and Length:  I’m looking for about four pages of text and (crucially) a Works Cited page naming all resources you consulted (even if you didn’t actually refer to them in your report).  Use MLA format.

Content:  Your report should do the following:

  • It should report the crucial facts of the event or topic;
  • It should examine coverage of the event in its own time as it was initially reported;
  • It should discuss agreements and disagreements among various accounts, and discrepancies (if any) in the amount of coverage provided by major magazines of the time;
  • It should name two or three books related to your topic (but you do not need to check out or read these books), and it should include a summary of at least one review of one of those books (use the Book Review Index and Book Review Digest);
  • It should include a report of how you found out what you found—in other words, it should include about a page describing your research methodology.
  • Optional:  What photographs (if any) accompany the magazine reportage?  How do the photographs, in your judgment, influence readers’ response to the reportage?  Why?

Resources

As for the first Group Research Project, you’re likely to find the following helpful:

  • The Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature (print, arranged by year in the Newspaper; reading area of the Undergraduate Library; also available in the Main Reference Library);
  • The New York Times Index (print, arranged by year in the same area);
  • Book Review Index and/or Book Review Digest (print, arranged by year in the same area);
  • New York Times Historical Index (online database);
  • UIUC online book catalog;
  • Physically scanning the UGL holdings of back issues of major weekly and monthly magazines.

Note

You’ve been through this drill before.  Your goal, this time around, is to perform your search as efficiently as possible.  I would suggest that each member of the group take responsibility for one element of the research, but I leave delegation of tasks to the discretion of the group.  As before, I will ask each member of the group to report on the division and execution of the collective labor.  Please type this up (two or three sentences will do) and submit a print copy to me at the beginning of the April 15 class.

Topics

Group 1:  James Meredith and the integration of the University of Mississippi

Group 2:  The 1963 March on Washington

Group 3:  “Freedom Riders” (civil rights activists from the North, many of them white, who went South to participate in voter registration drives and civil rights activities)

Group 4:  The 1963 civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama

Group 5:  The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Group 6:  The march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965

Group 7:  The assassination and funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968