Hexbears. I need your help. I have a term paper that I need a topic for. Here’s the rub: It’s for US history, and the topic has to be US history before 1893. I wanted to write about labor unions, which took off in the US around the 1870s, but the real “history” of organized labor in the US takes place well past 1893. So the professor will very likely reject that.

I’m not a history person. I know, I know “those who don’t learn from the past…” I don’t want to write about the American civil war and all that shit though. It’s been done to death. Any ideas on a topic I could pick that would be more interesting and more left-leaning?

Not asking for any help writing it. I just need some help picking a topic that would be interesting to research.

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    1 month ago

    How to kill a Slaveowner.

    It turns out that most of the black women who were executed in the era of slavery had killed their white masters. According to Baker, “slave women mostly strangled, clubbed, stabbed, burned, shot, poisoned, or hacked to death their White masters, mistresses, overseers, and even their owners’ children (p.66).” Poisoning and arson were the most prevalent methods slave women used to kill their oppressors.

    [CW: for SA and all sorts of horrible shit] https://www.usprisonculture.com/2010/11/09/killing-black-women-capital-punishment-during-slavery/

    Counter-revolution of 1776 is a good read on a ton of uprisings, touches on poisonings.

    Haven’t read this yet, not about US in particular but is supposed to be good:

    • i_drink_bleach [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      I definitely appreciate it. I’m trying to not have to do research on a bunch of shit that I would have to put a [CW] tag on though. I’m old, I’m exhausted, I’m unemployed and going back to college, I’ve got a kid, the world is rapidly turning into even more of a cesspool than it already was. I know history isn’t a light-hearted affair, but researching that sounds like a fucking horror show.