Overview
Common to Advanced Placement exams, Document-Based Questions (“DBQs”) require students to compose coherent essays that synthesize findings from historical documents with outside research. Document-Based Questions help students contextualize a historical era, examine bias in primary sources, and support a thesis with evidence–competencies equally valuable to students outside AP classes.
The materials in this Suggested Path allow students to encounter a variety of documents, both musical and non-musical in scope, which relate to events and time periods often featured in Advanced Placement exams and high school history classes. Topics include the abolition of slavery, The Second Great Awakening, The Wounded Knee Massacre, The West Virginian Mine Wars, The Civil Rights Movement, The Red Power Movement, The Vietnam War, and The Cold War.
Lessons
lesson:
The Banjo, Slavery, and the Abolition Debate
What is the relationship between the banjo and slavery, and how did music making by enslaved people influence the abolition debate during the 18th and early 19th century?
lesson:
Indigenous Music from Wounded Knee to the Billboard Charts
In what ways did the music of Native Americans mark them as outsiders from the developing narratives of “American-ness” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and how did the federal government attempt to use music as a tool to force assimilation?
lesson:
Singing Democracy During the Second Great Awakening
What was the Second Great Awakening, how did it change American society, and how does Sacred Harp singing exemplify its ideals?
lesson:
Mining and Union Songs in the Early 20th Century
How do Nimrod Workman’s songs and stories about his life as a coal miner illustrate the struggles of working class people during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era?
lesson:
The Civil Rights Movement: A Document-Based Question
In what ways did the Civil Rights Movement mark a turning point in United States history?
lesson:
The Music and Poetry Behind the Red Power Movement
What was the Red Power movement, and what role did Folk and Country music play within it?
lesson:
The Vietnam War: A Document-Based Question
In what ways and to what extent did the Vietnam War change American culture, society, and values?
lesson:
Reagan and the Cold War: A Document-Based Question
Did President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War policies serve to heighten or to reduce tensions with the Soviet Union?