TH171 Text Analysis for Actors
Cornish Library
Research Guide for Raisin in the Sun Oral Report
1. Cornish Library Resources
- TH171 Bibliography. These are suggested titles in the Cornish Library. Search the Cornish Library catalog for other titles.
- TH171 Class Reserves. Go to the Class Reserves search page and type in "th 171" to find your list of Class Reserve titles. You can ask for these at the library circulation desk.
2. Web Resources
Before going on Google or Yahoo try some of these sites to help anchor your search. Get ideas for names, places, events to search later on Google.
- Decades Resources
- 100 Years of New York City. From the NY Times.
- American Cultural History: The Twentieth Century. From Kingwood College Library.
- PBS Timeline : Civil Rights Era (1954 - 1971)
- African American History - Library of Congress
- The African American Mosaic Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture.
- American Memory Project
- The Postwar United States, 1945-1968, historical overview
- Photographs from 1935-1945 Pre-1950 documentary images: Great Depression, farm mechanization, the Dust Bowl and the mobilization effort for World War II.
- Chicago History
- Encyclopedia of Chicago Chicago Historical Society
- African American History Tour
- Bronzeville Cultural Links (African American neighborhood in Chicago's south side. Concentration of creative activities similar to Harlem in N.Y.)
- Bronzeville Digital Stories Illinois Institute of Technology history project.
- Chicago Blues Covers 1950's.
- Jazz Age Chicago Pre- 1950's jazz scene.
- Fair Housing History
- Hansberry v. Lee Summary of Supreme Court cast filed by Carl Hansberry, Lorraine's father, re. racial covenants in neighborhoods.
- The History Behind Hansberry v. Lee by Allen R. Kemp, U.C. Davis Law Review, v.20 no.3 pp481-499.
- The Great Migration
- Chicago - Destination for the Great Migration
- In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience Excellent authoritative site on all migration periods from slave trade to the present, including the Great Migration (1916-1930) and the Second Great Migration (1940-1970).
- US African American population by county, 1930 census Note the high concentration of African Americans in Chicago and Detroit.
Jacob Lawrence - The Migration of the Negro (panel No.1), 1940-41, casein, tempera on hardboard, 12 x 18 inches, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. © Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence.
- Civil Rights Movement
- African American Odyssey - The Civil Rights Movement Library of Congress American Memory Project
- Lorraine Hansberry
- National Public Radio web page on Lorraine Hansberry Listen to a radio documentary story about the opening of Raisin in the Sun, listen to an audio interview with Lorraine Hansberry, read a short biographical article, and other related information.
- Columbia University, Social Justice Wiki - Lorraine Hansberry, Click on the following links: Biography of an Intellectual, Her Writing, Hansberry as a Social Activist, Hansberry's Life: a Timeline.
3. Newspapers
- New York Times Backfiles 1851 to present Available online from Seattle Public Library. Index to back issues of the New York Times newspaper. Search for early reviews of Raisin in the Sun or anything of historic interest. You will need a Seattle Public Library card number to login.
4. Journals and Magazines
- ProQuest This is an online index to journal, magazine, and newspaper articles. Coverage is from roughly 1988 to the present. It has many full-text articles you can print or email to yourself.
- Jet magazine.
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Jet magazine. 1950's back-issues available through Google Books. Jet is a perfect resource for a national overview of popular culture, arts and politics from the perspective of a 100% black owned publication. It is also published in Chicago and includes Chicago news and commentary. |
- Life magazine
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Life magazine. 1950's back-issues available through Google Books. Excellent source for overall current events and cultural reporting. Great picture source. |
- Ebony magazine
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Ebony magazine. Unfortunatly, online back-issues for Ebony only go back as far as November 1959, so it may not be as useful for researching life in the 1950's. However, since Raisin in the Sun wasn't produced until 1959, you can still find articles related to the play, the actors, and Lorraine Hansberry in issues from the 1960's and beyond. Published by the same publishing firm as Jet, but with more in-depth articles and more pictorial content. |
Instructions for keyword searching the contents of articles in Jet, Life and Ebony:
When you've linked to each of the magazines above,
click on the Advanced Book Search link at the top of the page.
1. Put your keyword(s) in the box marked
Find results / with all the words ______________.
2. Put the magazine title in the box marked
Title / Return books with the title ______________.
3. Put the range of dates you want to search in the boxes marked
Publication Date / Return content published between Month/Year and Month/Year.
5. Other Libraries
Feel free to talk to a Cornish librarian before visiting other libraries for advice about which library is best for your project.