HIST 152: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Meanings of Equality: Primary Sources

Primary sources are first-hand accounts by participants of a particular event or materials produced at the same historical time period. Secondary sources are books and articles written by scholars investigating a research topic using primary sources.

If you were examining racism in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica , the article in the encyclopedia on the "Negro" would be a primary source. However, an article in the American Historical Review analyzing racism in the Britannica would be a secondary source . (Richard Marius, A Short Guide to Writing About History , pp. 14-15.)

Some examples of primary sources include:

• Memoirs, speeches, writings, correspondence
• Papers of a political party, agency, or association
• Official documents such as congressional hearings and reports
• Contemporary magazine and newspaper articles
• Contemporary art works, films, literature and music
• Contemporary artifacts, such as buildings and monuments

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