Note: You may have received the sources in a different order during your interactive practice.
- "1963 video footage taken during the March on Washington." The correct answer is that this is a PRIMARY source. This is live video documentation of the event itself; you couldn't get much closer to "primary" without being there yourself!
- "2010 book. Oral histories from participants of March & author notes." The correct answer is that this source has BOTH PRIMARY AND SECONDARY content.
Reports from people who participated in the March are first-hand reports and so are primary. The notes added by the modern author are secondary.
It is worth noting that personal accounts written at the time of the event and personal accounts written many years later (like "memoirs") are often viewed differently in terms of determining primary versus secondary sources. This is because a person's memory of an experience are likely to fade, change, or be influenced by outside forces as more and more time goes by.
With a source like this book, you might want to read the author's introductory materials to determine when the oral histories were actually done and then consider how close or far they are from the event itself. If you're in doubt about the source's qualifications as "primary" for a certain class research assignment, be sure to ask the History librarian or your professor.
- "Retyped text of MLK Jr's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech in 2008 book." The correct answer is that this is a PRIMARY source.
Remember that a source is called "primary" or "secondary" based on the content (not the format) and how that content relates to the research question. Whether you have King's handwritten draft of the speech, an audio recording of the speech, a retyped version of the speech in a book, or a transcript of the speech on a website -- the content is the same and can be primary in all these formats.
KEEP IN MIND: it is true that someone who retyped the original speech could make a mistake, or might hear a word differently from someone else; this is why it is so important to CITE which version/format you consulted.
Nevertheless, because the source intends and attempts to faithfully recreate the original source and does not contain another person's added commentary, interpretation, etc., we still consider it to be primary if the content of the original source itself is primary to our research question.
- "2009 encyclopedia. Overview of topics in African American history." The correct answer is that this is a SECONDARY source.
In encyclopedias, modern scholars synthesize and condense all the most important facts about a person, place, or topic into a short essay (between 1 paragraph and 1-2 pages). A lot of details are excluded, and quotations from primary sources (the first-hand experiences) are rarely included. The scholar writing the encyclopedia article may consult primary sources, or may predominately consult secondary-source books and articles.
- "2002 book by historian. Complete history of the March on Wash." The correct answer is that this is a SECONDARY source.
When historians write comprehensive overviews of a historical event like this, they consult a wide variety of both primary and secondary sources. They synthesize the information from all those sources into one coherent story line and usually integrate their own interpretations along with the "facts."
- "1988 D.C. news article. Includes memories of the March, 25 yrs later." The correct answer is that this source has BOTH PRIMARY AND SECONDARY content.
This article was written 25 years later, which is a bit distant, but still well within the lifetimes of many participants. Descriptions of first-hand experiences in the article could be primary, while the journalist's text of the story and discussion of the commemmoration and impact of the March would be secondary.
To keep things in perspective, however: If your paper was going to investigate the way that the March on Washington was remembered, discussed, and commemmorated in the 1980s, then it is possible that this entire article could be a primary source for THAT paper.
