Primary Document Assignment: Race Relations in America Description

This writing assignment centers on the topic of race relations from the settling of the Americas in 1492 up to the Civil War. Its goal is to challenge you to examine the historical documents from the period that relate to that topic (e.g. the primary sources) and to place those documents in the context of the secondary sources and lecture material from the course. In short, your task is to demonstrate the ability to think like a historian by critically analyzing the types of evidence that historians utilize to make sense of the past and to answer the questions that interest us.

To begin this assignment, select at least three primary sources from the course that offer three different perspectives on the nature and experience of equality and/or inequality in the United States. You might choose, for instance, the primary documents that deal with any of the following:

European or Native perspectives on