Artifact 2 Description: Ray's Biggest Research Paper (Ever!!)

Ray’s Biggest Research Paper (Ever!!)

Last school year, I had the opportunity to receive honors credit in a few different classes.  I took honors in Science, Math, and US History.   First off, my US History Honors research paper is about where in Africa most of the slaves brought to the United States, and to the British Colonies that preceded them, originated.  I chose this topic because I had often wanted to know more about just what tribes in Africa can African people living in diaspora throughout the Americas trace their roots to.  Around this time I was also very interested to generally learn more about the influences and histories of Native American Indians in the US.  I was torn between these two topics for a little while.  In fact, what helped me to decide in the end was that I had to find a fictitious book to read about my topic.  I decided to research African-American origins in this instance due to the fact that I had already read a book roughly four years prior that I largely remembered quite well on the topic of the Middle Passage called Slave Dancer.  I took advantage of this fact and therefore decided it would probably work better to research African-American origins than it would to research about the Navajo Code Talkers.  The only novel on the Navajo Code Talkers, if I’m not mistaken, is the one and only memoir of these people, namely the book “Code Talker”.  This concludes my list of reasons why I chose my topic of research.  

 I used data based both off of modern DNA studies and slave ship records information.  In this research paper, I had to both find real information about this topic and compare it to information out of a historical fiction book. The findings of my research most supported the overall majority of African Slaves being from Southeastern Nigeria, namely from the Yoruba and Igbo tribes.  Learning of this link between the Black People of the United States, and the people of Southern Nigeria was very enlightening indeed!  I enjoyed the process of researching the material especially, as well as to a lesser extent the challenge of organizing all the information I gathered into a report.  This was, however, a true test of whether I had really mastered writing as much as I thought I had that year.  I was successful in writing my paper to the level of not having any noticeable errors after a lot of editing!  Furthermore, both Sue Schwartz my English teacher, and Audrey Southern my US History Teacher at that time found my research paper to be quite interesting!  This all goes to show that I did a very good job of writing an essay.  

This artifact most aligns with the school-wide outcome of “Communicators.”  I feel this because it is one of my best pieces of written work ever and “Communicators” specifically means people who demonstrate a knowledge and mastery of skills with the English Language and use it effectively in order to convey ideas and perhaps especially ideas to make the world a better place.  Furthermore, in continuation to the last point, I hereby submit this artifact as an academic artifact due to the way that it is perhaps my only real honors work artifact from high school, as well as just generally one of my best pieces of written work ever!