As you saw in the primary source video on Hurricane Katrina, raw footage of an event can be very powerful. However, you may have wondered what some of the videos were focusing on--or exactly when the events they show occurred. When viewing a video that contains primary source material, most people expect to see an introduction that gives them a context for the footage or explains how the clip relates to the "big picture" of the event.
In this video, a reporter who did not experience Hurricane Katrina puts together raw footage, interviews, and his own commentary to help viewers understand the disaster.
The mighty Mississippi and the trail of destruction caused by a hurricane whose fetching name has left a very bitter taste, Katrina, nature's fury that has now unleashed a political storm. Five days after the eye of that storm did this, killing no one knows how many, the cavalry is now on its way. The longest aid convoys ever seen on American soil are making their way to New Orleans. The superpower is finally behaving like one.
Most of the city's inhabitants had fled, but the thousands that stayed behind and now living in utter squalor. These trucks will bring much-needed relief, but they will not quell the anger that has been brewing with every day that the water, the food, and the medical aid has failed to materialize. New Orleans, the Big Easy, one of the grandest and most gracious cities in America, now resembling a vision of hell, especially for the poor blacks, the underclass of the world's richest and most powerful nation.
And they would make a promise to us that they were gonna move us, move us, and move us, and we've been believing in it, and people just really been getting frustrated at thus point.
Everywhere and every hour, new bodies appear. Even now, the sick and the elderly have been dying. Some are holding on, but only just.
You know, sister, all you need to do is start taking little sips of water.
New Orleans is now a city besieged by legions of police, army, and National Guard. There is a shoot-to-kill order for all looters, even though many of the people we saw were merely taking the bare necessities not provided by the authorities. Today, the arrival of aid may have heralded a turning point in the fortunes of their lives, but the political winds unleashed by Katrina will continue to howl for a very long time. Matt Frei, BBC News, New Orleans.
The words of the reporter in this video are an example of secondary source material. Secondary sources provide "secondhand" information and often take the form of narration or storytelling. Secondary sources can also include interpretation (explaining what an event means) or analysis (explaining the relationships between events). Historians, journalists, and other people who create secondary sources help turn the myths, rumors, facts, fragments, and artifacts of the past into the story of history.
Question
How do secondary sources help us understand history?
