You will look for one of the businesses or organizations in the directory in the Chicago Defender database between 1905-1945 and find an article that references it. You can pick anything that appears in the directory. Tip: you may have to search for a few different ones before you hit an article. Don’t despair! If you’re lucky and hit upon a very large list, you could also limit your search to a specific time period or a specific kind of article (advertisement or front page). Use this ScreenCast to help you search for newspapers in the Chicago Defender. Save this article as a pdf and think about the following questions.
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What does this article tell you about this particular business or organization?
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What does this article tell you about African-American life in Chicago (or beyond) in this period?
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Examine the other articles in the newspaper on the day that this article is published. What else is going on? What else is important? How does this contextualize this article?
What kind of information is preserved in a newspaper? What kind of information is not preserved in a newspaper?