Taking on the Case (Blog 1)

Preliminary Research

This summer, I began my journey by looking through a variety of topics that interested me including women's rights, world religions, and law in order to determine which "case" to take on. When the class started, I ended up abandoning these ideas and switching my focus to history. History is my favorite subject in school, and I am extremely interested in it. I avoided it at first because I believed that it would be too difficult to make work for this class, but I realized that I could find a way to make it happen. With no idea what specifically I wanted to look into, I explored databases such as JSTOR and EBSCO and came across the paper "Brown as a Cold War Case" by Mary Dudziak. In her paper, Dudziak situates Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court Case that ruled "separate educational institutions are inherently unequal" and reversed the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson, in its global context of the Cold War in order to demonstrate that the ruling was a result of global pressures. Further research revealed that this type of research had never been done on the other Civil Rights Supreme Court cases. Hence, the idea for my project was born.

Refining the Question

Now I had an initial idea for my project, but I had a long way to go to get to the question I have now. I closely read and annotated Dudziak's paper in order to determine if I could apply her methodology to my project, but I hit a road block because her methodology would not work for this class' requirements, and the requirements to complete this level of research were beyond my capabilities at the high school level. As such, I knew I needed to tweak what I was researching.

I still wanted to focus on connections between the Supreme Court and the Cold War, so I read other papers and spoke with my mentors in order to figure out alternative ideas. I decided to switch my focus to just analyze propaganda and speeches from the Soviet Union to attempt to get the global context aspect of Dudziak's paper. I scraped analyzing other things to signify global pressure because I had a difficult time finding many sources to analyze, and I am working under a very restricted time frame.

Something unique to my project that I decided to analyze as well was the potential similarities between communism and the Civil Rights Supreme Court Cases. I realized this may be relevant because the premise of communism is a classless and raceless society: in theory, a perfectly egalitarian society. The Civil Rights Supreme Court Cases also aimed to provide more racial equality within the United States. This made me wonder if there are thematic similarities across the two things. As America was trying to fight against the spread of global communism, is it possible they were being influenced by it simultaneously? The communist works I decided to analyze include the Communist Manifesto because it is the basis of communist ideology and Stalin's Constitution because it discusses communism as it specifically pertains to the Soviet Union.

The final thing I decided I need to analyze is Supreme Court Cases pertaining to Civil Rights before the period I'm analyzing. I think this is important so I have a basis of comparison to see how the Supreme Court evolved in relation to global pressures/communism. The cases I will analyze include Plessy v. Ferguson and Scott v. Sandford. All of these ideas together create my current research question: To what extent are communist works and speeches and propaganda of the Soviet Union thematically connected to Civil Rights Supreme Court majority opinions from 1954-1971?

Approval!

I spent about a month working on my research proposal in which I needed to determine my project's context, complete a literature review, detail my methodology, explain my analysis process, and ultimately justify the importance of the research. After many hours of work and refinements, I was approved to move forward. Yay!

Introducing the Evidence

My current goal is to analyze as many of these sources as possible.

Supreme Court Cases

Brown v. Board
- Ruled that separate educational institutions are inherently unequal.
Brown v. Board (II)
- Ruled that desegregating public schools should occur with all deliberate speed.
Bailey v. Patterson
- Ruled segregation is not permitted on public transportation.
Loving v. Virginia
- Ruled banning interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.
Swann v. Board
- Authorized the use of cross-district bussing to increase desegregation.
Plessy v. Ferguson
- Ruled segregation was constitutional as long as it was equal.
Scott v. Sandford
- Ruled that African Americans are not United States Citizens.

Communist Works

Communist Manifesto
- Basis of communist ideology
Stalin's Constitution
- Basis of communism in the Soviet Union

Soviet Speeches and Propaganda

Speeches and Propaganda TBD

Image of Soviet Flag (which has come to symbolize communism)

Next Steps Before Initially Constructing the Case

I need to cement the speeches and propaganda I want to analyze. I have some ideas for sources that I have gathered throughout my research, but I need to decide on which ones I want to analyze. I also want to try and find a couple more. Finding Russian propaganda pertaining to US race relations and speeches from the Soviet Union is much more difficult than I had anticipated!
I need to print all of the above sources to analyze (sorry, trees), and sort all of my materials into different binders because I think it is going to be around 1000 sheets of paper! I am a little intimidated by the sheer amount of text I have, but I am excited to dig in and get started!

Thank you for reading this update! I am excited to continue this journey!

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