DISCUSSION POST 1

What are primary documents?

Primary documents are first hand accounts from persons who were there when an event happened.

How do historians use primary documents to write history? 

A historian will take primary documents from the past and analyze them to tell the story of the past or to give a good argument as to what was being reported first hand at the time period in question. 

What does Henry Louis Gates argue in "Black Studies at the Crossroads"?

His argument was simply, in that era he was teaching in colleges did not accept Afro-American studies as a discipline. I believed Mr. Gates even said those colleges who did have these course were merely to see them fail. 

POST 2

Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an activist in establishing Black history curriculums in colleges around the country. Harvard University professor and Director of black studies at Harvard University, Gates resume shows a dedication to enhancing the program and argues the importance of why it needs to be a funded department in all college intuitions.

     Professor Gates argued the legitimacy of studying black history and how it would benefit colored people and all other ethnicities. Gates described the “Crossroads” era we are currently in today determines if universities will recognize black history as legitimate and admit the program or will it fade away like some other insignificant programs that slowly vanish. Learning these fundamentals is just as important as other disciplines (JBHE 63). He stresses that for institutions to do this, they must have sufficient financial funding for research of black history.

    Is African American history or black studies a proven legitimate department in the field of study? I would argue that it is, reading through THE JOURNAL OF BLACKS IN HIGHER EDUCATION; I commend Professor Gates. I never learned about black history in high school or after. Studying this is important because African Americans contributed to what America is today. Learning that black studies are one of the least funded programs in HBCUs is striking and absurd (JBHE 64).

    Professor Gates emphasizes the importance of black studies since being a teacher at Harvard in the 70s. This “Crossroads Era” will be the breaking point in determining if institutions recognize this as permissible and fund this discipline or slowly disappear. If institutions don’t comply with Gates, there can be a vast incomprehension of American history.

 

JBHE Foundation, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (Spring, 2007), pp. 58-64