Clues left from the past make up the historical record. These clues include both primary and secondary sources in the form of books, personal papers, government documents, letters, oral accounts, diaries, maps, photographs, reports, artifacts, coins, stories, stamps, etc.
Primary sources provide firsthand evidence of historical events. They are actual records that have survived from the past, such as letters, photographs, articles of clothing, journals, speeches, interviews, diaries, videos, autobiographies, artifacts, etc.
Secondary sources summarize, explain,comment on, or draw conclusions from primary sources. They are accounts of the past created by people writing about events sometime after the event. Examples of secondary sources are textbooks, encylopedias, etc.
Activity #1
1. Identify the following as either primary or secondary sources in your blog post.
Diary kept by John Smith, a soldier in the Confederate Army, published in a collection
of Alabama papers
2. Photograph of George Washington Carver taken in 1898
3. Biography of George Washington
4. Newspaper article about the assassination of President Kennedy written on November
23, 1963
5. Television mini-series about President Franklin Roosevelt’s life
6.. Scrapbook kept by Mrs. Mary Smith in 1883 with copies of recipes and household
items
7. Photograph album containing pictures of classmates at Tuskegee University in 1923.
8. Letter written by Emily Smith to her friend Paula Jones, May 3, 1826, describing her
trip by wagon from North Carolina to Huntsville, Alabama and the log cabin her father
was building
9. Article about Martin Luther King, Jr., in People Magazine, 1988
10. Information about Creek Indians in World Book Encyclopedia
11. Cassette tape of an interview with Dr. James Lee describing his life as a doctor in
Montgomery County during the 1920s
12. The Story of Alabama, a textbook by Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton
13. Matthew Mason’s will, 1896
14. Map of Alabama drawn by John LaTourette, 1841
15. Minutes from the 1898 organization of Dexter Avenue United Methodist Church
published in a play in 1988
Activity #2
Go to the internet and locate a primary and secondary source. Paste the link in your post and give a description of the source, the title and author of the source, the source type (book, diary, picture, newspaper, etc.), and explain why it is a primary or secondary source.
*** Please do not use about.com, wikipedia.org, or any other website that is not a trusted site.