Process Paper
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- Topic's Importance and Selection Process: Martin Luther King, Jr. has indisputably changed the social structure of America ever since his first actions in the Civil Rights Movement. More specifically, Dr. King’s use of nonviolence allowed him to achieve the success that he had. Without him or his philosophy of nonviolence, there is a chance that African Americans would still be segregated and discriminated against as they were in the early 20th century. Last year, in AP U.S. History, I chose to do a document analysis paper on Dr. King’s inspiring speech I Have a Dream. I was already incredibly interested in civil rights, and I thought that it would be very beneficial to my learning and to the success of my project if I extended my research into Dr. King and his use of nonviolence.
- Topic's Relationship to Theme: The theme of the 2012 National History Day is: Revolution, Reaction, Reform. With the understanding that a revolution is a sudden, radical, or complete change, I found that Dr. King’s use of nonviolence sufficiently fit the first part of the theme. Before him, no one had used nonviolent resistance to the extent that Dr. King did, and a great deal of protest would be violent. So, by definition, Dr. King’s use of nonviolent resistance was revolutionary. With something as revolutionary as Dr. King’s nonviolence, there was automatically an explosive reaction. In the past, any form of protest on behalf of African American civil rights that was violent would not stir up and guilt in the American public, but as protests were nonviolent with Dr. King, that guilt became present. Guilt created a desire to change, and with this desire to change, reform came in the form of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Source Research Efforts: Most of my sources came from a visit to the Minnesota State University – Mankato library. I was able to find New York Times articles very precisely by time and subject. Moreover, I had the opportunity to find books that were directly relevant to my project. Beyond that, I found sources online. Everything from pictures, to websites, to news articles, to movies, and to published interviews can all be found online. Surprisingly, I used less secondary sources than primary sources. I believe the use of primary sources further legitimatizes my research.
- Design, Development, and Creation: I initially started out by outlining my project from theme, to interest, to topic, to issue. From that I knew exactly what sort of information I was looking for and what I needed to know. Next, I outlined what I already knew about Dr. King’s nonviolence and separated them between revolution, reaction, and reform. Based off of that, I knew where I needed to fill in information. Once I found all of the information from news articles and books, I filled in what I could on the website. Following that, I went through and found where I could use clarification and further explanation. I used quotes from Dr. King and others to do this. Finally, I experimented with the formatting and some of the more stylistic elements of the project.