American History

History project 

African American History

Independent Project (25% of Final Grade)

Each student is required to create a unique Independent Project that relates to some aspect of African American history since 1877.   (Group projects or other collaborations are not allowed.)  You have great latitude in selecting a topic and focus, but please seek suggestions (and approval) from the instructor by the end of Week 4.  You will find that the textbook and web sites provide lots of ideas and materials for potential projects. Probably the best way to approach this project is to ask:  What topic (or issue or person or event) in African-American history do I want to know more about?  

You will be pursuing independent research through print and electronic resources to explore your chosen topic, to be completed in a format appropriate to your skills and interests.  While these projects should demonstrate a sound reliance upon the course text(s) and web site, you are free to bring in outside materials through the internet or other external sources, including scholarly books and articles.  All sources and materials should be acknowledged in your Individual Project.

Ideally, your Individual Project will be submitted in one of four formats:  

• PowerPoint slideshow with rich content and audiovisual materials (minimum of 20 high-quality slides)

• Web site with rich content, audiovisual materials, and appropriate links (minimum of 15 high-quality pages)

• “Mini-documentary” movie in a digitized format with rich content and audiovisual materials (minimum of 10 minutes of high-quality edited video)

• 6-8 page written paper (double-spaced) with rich content, suitable resources, and scholarly citations in appropriate Chicago Style Notes and Bibliography format (and submitted to Canvas and its plagiarism detection resources)

Regarding references and citations for history papers and projects, some word-processing programs feature options to include citations and references in many styles, including the Chicago Style expected for your history paper.  For a quick overview of citations in Microsoft Word,