John Henry Reading Questions

Posted on by

While you’re working through Scott Reynolds Nelson’s book this week, you may enjoy listening to some versions of the John Henry ballad available at NPR, including the earliest recorded version by Fiddlin’ John Carson, which is discussed in the book on pp. 138-141. You can also see one of the earliest printed versions of the lyrics here. For your reading response this week, use ONE of the following questions. But also be prepared to talk about all of these questions this Thursday.

  1. This is one of the first books we’ve read that relies heavily on songs, which Nelson calls “documents without paper” (p. 27), as primary sources. Are songs reliable historical sources?
  2. The short Disney film that we watched depicts Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation as a dramatic turning point, after which John Henry is freed from his chains, able to marry, and work for the promise of his own land. After reading the Nelson book, is this an accurate representation of the post-emancipation South?
  3. Are you convinced that Nelson found the real John Henry in “John Wm. Henry”? Does it matter to his larger story whether he did or not?
  4. The John Henry story is now often remembered as a heroic triumph of a hard-working man over machine that saved workers’ jobs and showed that human beings can accomplish anything. (Or, as James Earl Jones put it in the video, it shows that the American spirit is “indomitable.”) Based on evidence presented in the book, would the earliest keepers of the John Henry story would have viewed the story this way?

Though I don’t want you to use them for your writing response, here a couple of other things to think about:

  • Nelson argues that different groups of people–miners, prison convicts, railroad workers, twentieth-century “folk” musicians, and white Southern mill workers–all developed their own distinctive versions of the John Henry story and song. What were the key differences between the versions of these different groups? Can their versions of the song shed light on the way these various groups viewed the world?
  • Why did the John Henry ballad appeal to Communists in the 1930s? Why would he appeal to liberals and official American propagandists in the 1940s? Were the reasons for John Henry’s appeal the same in both cases?

If you want some more music, why not head over to YouTube to listen to Bruce Springsteen, Mississippi John, and Woody Guthrie singing about John Henry?

Image credit: “John Henry Building a Railroad,” by Fred Becker (1935), available at Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Writing Aids for This Class

Posted on by

Over the last several weeks, we’ve developed some documents in class that will help you as you complete assignments for the rest of the semester. If you’re concerned that your writing isn’t improving or you aren’t sure how to do better, one of my first recommendations would be to revisit these resources and make sure you understand them! Here’s a list:

I will add any other documents of this sort created this semester to this list.

Tubman Reading Questions

Posted on by

Hope you all had a good Spring Break! This week’s reading, listed on the schedule, is about Harriet Tubman. Be sure that you download both of the Sernett PDFs from OWL-Space. (Please note that I’ve slightly amended the syllabus, so you are only required to read the Sernett articles.)

Here are the reading prompts: pick ONE and write a response to it in your Google Doc for this week. I’d encourage you to revisit the Learning Rubric and the Google Doc we made collaboratively before the break (see links in the sidebar) to refresh your memory of what to work on in your responses!

  1. Milton Sernett argues that what a society chooses to tell its children about the past offers one of the best measures of what that society values and/or thinks worth remembering. Do you agree? If so, what does children’s literature about Tubman reveal about us?
  2. Sernett quotes Michael Kammen as saying that “what history and memory share in common is that both merit our mistrust, yet both must be nevertheless nourished” (p. 8). Do you agree with that generalization? If so, what parts of the histories that have been written about Tubman or her times merit mistrust? Which parts of the public memories of her merit mistrust? Which parts of the history or memory about her must nevertheless be nourished?
  3. How much influence did Tubman have over the making of her own legend?
  4. How many excursions did Tubman make back into the South to rescue slaves, and how many slaves did she ultimately help to escape North? Does getting the figures exactly right matter?
  5. Which image of Tubman do you think is more well-known today: Tubman as “Moses” or “General Tubman” the rifle-toting Civil War scout? Based on your reading of the material in Sernett, what accounts for the relative popularity or prevalence of these images?

Image credit: Photograph of Harriet Tubman, 1860s-1870s, from the Documented Rights exhibit at the National Archives.

Depolarizing People

Posted on by

I saw this article on The Seven Habits of Highly Depolarizing People making the rounds on social media, and thought it worth sharing. I found interesting how many of the tips discussed by the author resonated with statements on our learning rubric. Notice how the points on “qualifying” and “specifying” (instead of generalizing) are reflected in the rubric’s advice about complex position-taking, just as the points on “doubt” are reflected in the rubric’s advice about self-reflection. The advice about taking counter-arguments seriously is also a point that I’ve tried to stress in class. So who knows? Maybe working on the Four Capabilities won’t just make you a better writer, but will also help depolarize our political culture, just as Washington’s Farewell Address would have wanted!

Woodrow Wilson at Princeton

Posted on by

wilson

UPDATE: Read the recently released report explaining Princeton’s decision to keep Wilson’s name on University buildings.

Woodrow Wilson, one of the figures you have been reading about this week, made the news last semester when students at Princeton staged a protest demanding that his name be removed from the campus’s buildings and schools.

Their protest won the approval of the New York Times editorial board, and for some writers the event (coming in the wake of larger discussions about Confederate memorials in the South) raised larger questions about which figures should be honored in the public square and on college campuses.

Others, including a historian at Princeton, argued that the focus on Wilson’s racist policies at home was obscuring his problematic foreign policy. To put it in terms that Crisp and Trouillot might use, he suggested that in correcting one “silence,” the conversation about Wilson at Princeton raised the danger of creating another, different “silence.”

Writing Assignment for Feb. 25

Posted on by

Before writing in your Google Doc this week, be sure to complete the reading assignments. Then you’ll be ready to write this week’s writing assignment.

For that writing assignment, I want you to develop a position of your own on some question that has arisen so far in this course. I’m giving you greater latitude in terms of topic than I’ve given you before, but you should not forget to keep the learning rubric in mind as you write.

After you’ve developed a position that you’d like to take, you can craft an essay for ONE of the following scenarios:

  • Imagine you are submitting a 700-word op-ed reader essay to the Houston Chronicle.
  • Imagine you are writing an email home to one of your high school American history teachers.
  • Imagine you are addressing a letter to your elected representative on the Texas State Board of Education.

Put your assignment in your Google Doc as usual.

Also, here are some reading questions that I’d like you to consider. You are not required to use them to frame your writing assignment, but they and the other reading questions we have discussed this semester may help you form your position.

  1. Do you agree with James Loewen that “heroification” in American history textbooks is a problem? If not, be sure to respond directly to his arguments and show why you think they are faulty. If you do agree with Loewen’s analysis of “heroification,” what are some possible solutions? Be sure to use examples and evidence from Loewen’s article when answering this prompt to demonstrate that you understand his argument, whether you agree with it or not.
  2. Based on evidence presented in this week’s readings, how much of a role do you think textbooks, schools, and educators play in Americans’ sense of history and the past? If Americans have a distorted or selective view of the past, are teachers and schools the primary culprits? Or are there other causes that you can point to?
  3. Both Sam Wineburg and Michael Frisch report on experiments they have done that are very similar to the exercise we conducted on our first day of class this semester. What do you think their findings tell us about the way American students view America and its history? Be specific in your discussion of their findings, and notice that the articles are separated by about twenty years.
  4. Do you think there are hidden costs to society or national unity if “heroes” are “debunked”? Based on your evaluation of the costs and benefits of dispelling legends about the past, do you think the goal of teachers of history be to represent the past as faithfully as possible, warts and all, or do you agree with social conservatives on the Texas Board of Education that history teachers should represent America as positively as possible?