David Walker’s Appeal
In the “David story” unit, we, living three thousand years later, tried to read through the surface of the biblical text to seek to understand what was going on “behind” the text in terms of power, God, and justification for human/social violence. Your unit paper task was to imagine being a journalist now looking back on that time and narrative.
In this unit, the task is, in a sense, reversed: for this paper, imagine yourself a historian three thousand years in the future, considering the “ancient society of the United States of America.” Using only the resources provided in our “Readings and Resources Unit,” choose one of the two themes (either “war” or “othering” of nonwhite males) and show:
a. how the perpetrators of violence justified their actions (including the sources of their claims, such as the Bible, law, “nature,” “reason,” tradition, etc.) and what “real” reasons might lie beneath their “public” arguments.
b. how justifications changed over time, or appealed to earlier justifications (e.g., how one war’s justification refers to earlier wars; how anti-immigrant stances and actions appeal to earlier anti-immigrant arguments).
c. how just arguments were resisted or refuted by victims or others who saw the world differently.
Your paper should be 3-4 double spaced pages. Longer is fine. No external research, please: the exercise depends on us all having the same, limited information about the “ancient past” of the United States of America. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-of-luthers-printing-press/2015/12/18/a74da424-743c-11e5-8d93-0af317ed58c9_story.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/
https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/las-casas-discovery
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/columbus-confusion-about-the-new-world-140132422/
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/14/769083847/columbus-day-or-indigenous-peoples-day
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-shocking-savagery-of-americas-early-history-22739301/?all
https://cinephiliabeyond.org/the-new-world/
https://pequotwar.org/about/timeline
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b03hwn09
http://www.sceneonradio.org/rich-mans-revolt/
http://www.sceneonradio.org/s4-e2-the-excess-of-democracy/
https://www.thoughtco.com/african-americans-in-the-revolutionary-war-4151706
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7097/7097-h/7097-h.htm
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african-american-odyssey/abolition.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2931.html
http://www.sceneonradio.org/s4-e4-the-second-revolution/
https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/gettysburgaddress.htm
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/15/weekinreview/the-world-remember-yellow-journalism.html
https://allthatsinteresting.com/philippine-american-war#5
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation
Requirements: 4 pages 1000words
Answer preview:
word limit:1093
