When you're assigned to research a topic for a school report, your teacher
may ask you to include "primary" as well as "secondary"
sources. A primary source is an actual record of the past. When a newspaper
reports on events happening now (news), gives firsthand opinions (letter to the
editor, editorial) or provides glimpses of current life (feature story,
photograph, ad with prices, etc.), it can be a primary source.
Newspaper articles may also be secondary sources when they feature articles
about the past (the first log cabin in your town, how the Civil War was fought,
etc.) because the writer went to other sources for the information. (Are the
stories in "Newspapers—A Good Read!" primary or secondary sources?)
The United States entered World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, December 7, 1941. But the war started in Europe in 1939. Americans
followed the war in their newspapers' headlines. In the Michigan Historical
Museum's Arsenal of Democracy Gallery, Chip and Rickelle,
students from Dansville Elementary School, look at pre-1941 front-page headlines about the
war.
