I did not learn about the true nature of slavery or how vicious Columbus’s discovery of the Americas was until I was in my second semester of Community College. It was in an American History to 1865 course, at Brookdale Community College, where I found out how the man on my twenty dollar bill ordered a virtual genocide against the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chicasaw, and Seminole people for the sake of expansion. In the Spring of 2013, Dr. Chanelle Rose, Associate Professor of History and Co-Coordinator of the Africana Studies Department at Rowan University, taught of how the federal government handled Civil Rights Movement protests and their leaders in a History of the 1960s course. Prior to my undergraduate education, teachers had neglected …show more content…
I want my life’s work to further the collective understanding of the African-American experience in this country, as experienced by those who lived it. It is with this in mind that I have arrived at my decision to apply to your 20th Century U.S. History PhD. program. Specifically, I would like to focus my studies on the crossovers between Modern African-American History, Urban History, and Social History within New York City. Although societies and cultures are largely influenced by the ideas of major personalities, it is the experiences of common men and women which I am most interested. They are whom control how ideas evolve and pervade throughout society, and whom are owed the greatest deal of …show more content…
I wrote on the Orthodox Jewish interpretation of Halakhah, and how it affected their views and seemingly low-key participation, as compared to Catholics, during the tumult of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973. It was during the research process for this piece that I most clearly utilized the broadest array of sources available to me. My main primary sources were interpretations of Talmudic scholarship by such Rabbis as Shlomo Yitzchaki and Maimonides, as well as responsa by later Rabbis David Feldman and Eliezer Waldenberg. It also proved useful to frequently reference the Bible while researching these responsa, providing context for the translated segments I was able to