Hello r/AskHistorians, I badly need help. I'm doing my senior thesis and decided on a memory study of a certain event; the 1921 West Virginia Battle of Blair Mountain. To be clear my thesis isn't about the details of the battle of itself but, rather, how the battle has been remembered or forgotten by the American people.
To that end I've been seeking out US History textbooks published from 1971 onwards. My goal is to see how much they covered the event or if they mention it at all. The issue? I can't find them. I've been to my university library and have spent hours googling, but I've hit a brick wall.
Does an internet friendly database of old (US History) Textbooks exist? Are there specific US history textbooks that anyone knows were very popular in the education system? Any help or tips would be deeply appreciated.
Hi - we as mods have approved this thread, because while this is a homework question, it is asking for clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself, which is fine according to our rules. This policy is further explained in this Rules Roundtable thread and this META Thread.
As a result, we'd also like to remind potential answerers to follow our rules on homework - please make sure that your answers focus appropriately on clarifications and detailing the resources that OP could be using.
Additionally, while users may be able to help you out with specifics relating to your question, we also have plenty of information on /r/AskHistorians on how to find and understand good sources in general. For instance, please check out our six-part series, "Finding and Understanding Sources", which has a wealth of information that may be useful for finding and understanding information for your essay.
If I were a librarian trying to de-accession books that weren't needed, I confess that older, obsolete history textbooks would be high on my list...ones that showed Native Americans as bloodthirsty savages, or happy Black slaves in the South....
I went over to AbeBooks and did a search for used US history textbooks published after 1971 but before 1980, and got a number of hits. Armed with the specific title , author etc. you might try searching for those in libraries online. Also, you might try checking for entries in older editions of encyclopedias: those, too, are becoming rarer, but smaller libraries sometimes still have some , stowed in a dark corner. Encyclopedias had ( and have) their biases and you will notice a change of opinion over different editions, different encyclopedias.
And if you venture into a used bookstore, know that a lot of them- maybe most of them- are simply overwhelmed with books and only display a part, maybe a small part, of what they have. Ask at the counter if they've got any older US History textbooks. I doubt any of them would cost more than a couple of $ these days....