| Student: Donnaka Mount
Mentor: Alyssa Williams
Case Study: Green V. Samuelson
Ms. Mount presented a clearly organized paper, which was well written, and sufficiently grounded in the primary documents we provided her on the case. Although I only saw Ms. Mount come into the Archives twice to view her case materials,
she made a good use of the extensive three volume court transcript, the original bill of complaint and the original court decision. I am assuming that she figured out how to operate teachersmd and made good use of the materials we posted.
I was impressed with her presentation of the case, although she never seemed to offer much of a critical argument. Which was why I was somewhat disappointed with both her introduction and the conclusion.
I examined the www.sage.edu/SAWSJ/buy1.htm site, which she quoted extensively for her background on both Costonie and Black Baltimore in the 1930’s. While it appeared to be an article which I found out after a bit of searching had been
condensed from Skotones’ thesis, the actual document which is posted to the cite does not specifically cite any of its sources. This seemed like a deficiency that Ms. Mount should have examined, even if it was just to have found either the
original article or thesis in order to verify there were citations and even just for curiosity to examine a few of those sources for her case study.
It would have been nice if she had included more than one background source as well. Although it seems she was lucky to find such a nice secondary source on the "Buy Where You Can Work" boycott, she could have found many more sources
to provide her with a more diverse literature review about the African American community in Baltimore during the 1930’s. Ms. Mount’s conclusion was a better attempt than the background study with the use of the Afro American Articles, but
the final conclusion seemed a bit abrupt, especially as it related to how or if this boycott/picketing movement affected subsequent efforts in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Over all, however, I thought she did a nice job creating a very readable paper.
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