Assignment Task:
Primary source: Knights of Labor, Preamble, 1886
Question 1: What is the historical background of the source? What was happening when the source was written?
Question 2: What was the context for creating the source?
- Who wrote it? When? For what purpose?
- For whom was it written?
- Did the creator of the source have a vested interest in how things turned out?
- If it's anonymous, then what can you gather about the creator?
Question 3: What is the usefulness of the source?
- What can be learned from the source?
- How are the creator's circumstances or interests reflected in the source (provide examples)?
- Does the source reveal anything about general societal attitudes toward the subject(s) being discussed (e.g. religion, gender, class, race)?
- What indirect information can you gather from the source that is not the direct object of the source's attention? In other words, how could someone not directly interested in the immediate topic gain other historical insights from the source?
Question 4: Conclusion. What is your overall assessment of the source? What further questions do you now have about this topic? What kinds of primary sources would you try to find to answer them?