Peer Review

Tangled Roots

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Reviewed:: Jan 5, 2010 by History

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Content Quality:

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Overview:: According to the Home page, Tangled Roots is a research project about the shared history of African Americans and Irish Americans. It grows from the mission of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Abolition, Resistance and Slavery at Yale University to investigate and disseminate information concerning all aspects of the Atlantic slave system and its destruction. With the support of the Gilder Lehrman Center, the Tangled Roots project seeks to investigate the history of American slaves and immigrants from Ireland and to consider the links between them. A collection of primary documents from the 17th century to the present provides portraits of people and events from the history of African and Irish Americans. The site is most appropriate for teaching American history or Western civilization in grades 10-12 or in freshman/sophomore courses in college. The learning activities suggested on Tangled Roots are primarily meant to promote discussion and/or to encourage searches of the database maintained by the Gilder Lehrman Center. The searches could become the basis of assignments such as papers or document analyses. Most of the sites content is in three areas. One, called Barbadosed, talks about the history of slavery on the English island of Barbados and how some Irish were sent there as slaves or indentured servants by the English under Oliver Cromwell. A second, Making Connections, has subdivisions focused on Questions from the history, Three ways of thinking about the history, Modern Americans on acceptance in America, and some resources such as a blank lesson plan form that teachers might use and bibliographies of print and online materials. The third is called Shared Heritage and focuses on interracial interactions.
Type of Material:: Reference
Recommended Uses:: This module serves as source material for a research project. Selected sources could also be included in lecture presentations.
Technical Requirements:: Browser. Some links may require the use of HTML, .PDF, or flash.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: Students will examine a variety of primary sources. Students will compare and contrast the African American and Irish experience in the United States. Students will evaluate the conditions in the United States faced by African Americans and Irish immigrants.
Target Student Population:: Undergraduate history students. Graduate students would also find the collection of documents useful.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: The most important skill will be an ability to read primary sources written using common syntax of the period starting around 1790. Some of the primary sources are official documents or speeches made in Parliament or Congress, which are often particularly difficult to understand. If students have not previously developed that skill, then teachers will need to assist them in developing it. The most important concept will be that of slavery as it existed in the United States, particularly in the nineteenth century. A second important concept will be nativism, i.e. the desire of native-born Americans to keep immigration and the influence of immigrants and their children to a minimum.

Content Quality

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Strengths:: Tangled Roots presents a large amount of primary sources for African American and Irish history. The site contains a wide variety and type of sources including speeches, articles and editorials from newspapers, political cartoon, data taken from the United States Census and other sources. The site includes several bibliographies and additional information on the same subject. There are enough sources presented within the site to complete short research projects on the subjects or to be used as a foundation for a larger project. Quality is high for the information provided. The site provides easy access to a large number of primary sources, many of which are never or rarely available in commercial collections.
Concerns:: As with many collections, many of the sources on the site are edited. A review of selected documents does not indicate that this editing materially affected the content of the documents. Another concern is that the “contemporary” sources only include items to 2001. One of the greatest issues with the site is that it really doesn’t make the direct connections between African Americans and Irish groups. The user of the site needs to use the sources in the collection to make an independent interpretation of these connections. Perhaps there could be more depth in the Making Connections and Shared Heritage sections of the site, which are the main areas in which the tangled roots of African Americans and Irish Americans are explored. The information provided and suggested activities seem somewhat shallow. Coherence varies in the different parts of the website. The section called Getting Started (one part of Making Connections) seemed the least coherent. The goal of that section was to introduce first-time users of the site to ten questions about some of the history of African and Irish Americans. The answers to each question provide a link to documents. The links show how anyone can begin to explore the overlapping history (from the "About the Project" page). Yet the link between the question and its answer sometimes seemed tenuous. Take for example #4 (from the "Getting Started" page). When did England end its participation in the international slave trade? The answer given was 1807. Of the four linked documents with the answer, two are from England in the 1790s and make no mention of a date in connection with the English ending the legality of the international slave trade. The third talks about slavery in the U.S. in the 1830s (published in 1841) and the internal slave trade. While the fourth (also from 1841) says the best way to end the international slave trade is to end slavery, most of it provides an argument that there is no similarity between slavery in the U.S. and the slavery of Irish people to Great Britain. Therefore, this is not the most effective possible use of the primary sources. For historians of minorities in America, the site provides little new information, reducing its historical significance. However, for teachers in K-12 or community college settings, who appear to be its principle targets, much of the information may be new.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

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Strengths:: The site is infinitely flexible and adaptable because its searches connect to the entire database of online resources maintained by the Gilder Lehrman Center. Teachers could literally design dozens of different assignments, although the easiest to design would involve writing research papers or doing document analysis. Teachers could also use homework assignments to enhance class discussions. Contacting the people maintaining the website is very easy. There is a link on the main menu that opens an automatically addressed email message. I take this as a sign that online support would be forthcoming if requested.
Concerns:: The site has only a few suggested learning activities. Three of the suggested activities involve classroom discussions, while the others involve research into particular questions, which could lead to discussions or other kinds of assignments. Teachers could also design their own research activities. The site would benefit from a better overall introduction and specific direction for using the website. Because the site has no developed lesson plans associated with it, teachers would be on their own in terms of selecting the most appropriate ways to use the site. Whether or not the site made effective use of the students time would depend entirely on what the teacher had the students do. The site does not provide learning objectives for the individual learning activities that are suggested. The site makes no attempt to guide teachers in regard to skills needed prior to making use of Tangled Roots. The presumption seems to be that the teacher will easily figure that out.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

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Strengths:: The site is very easy to navigate, with the same main set of links on the left side of every page. Secondary hyperlinks are easily visible within pages. Using a T1 line, download is instantaneous. No special equipment or software is needed to use the site. The design is clean, and the logo (which uses the flags of Ireland, the U.S., and Black Nationalism) is explained on a page that links from the homepage.
Concerns:: Tangled Roots does have a few issues that make the site slightly difficult to use. The lack of a clear introduction to the site and its overall objectives makes casual use of the site difficult. The lack of clear navigation paths, detailing which items should be viewed first, make it more difficult to determine exactly what to do and where to go on the site. The internal search engine located on the site does not work. Some, but not many, of the sites listed on the “resources” link do not work. It will be difficult for students to use the site without a detailed assignment or task linked to the site.

Other Issues and Comments:: One question the site is not attempting to answer is why?. It allows students to see what happened, but does not include any exercises or information to aid teachers (or students) in understanding such questions as why oppression of and discrimination against African-Americans lasted much longer than that of Irish-Americans. If the project is dedicated to an understanding of race and ethnicity in America (Home), then something more needs to be done to achieve it.
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