Essential or Evil? Historians’ Take on Lynching During Reconstruction

For this assignment, my class was instructed to choose an aspect of the Reconstruction era in American history to study more thoroughly. I chose to write about the lynching of African Americans. First, I wrote a topic proposal to explain my intended area to study and what I hoped to find in my research. Next, I found eight scholarly sources on the topic of lynching that were published after the year 1900, and I summarized them in an annotated bibliography. Lastly, I used those sources to create a historiography that showcases the changes in the views historians have had on lynching over time. In the process of writing this historiography, I wrote multiple drafts and met with my instructor as well as the Write Place consultants to help strengthen each draft