Well after much tedious research, I think I am finally ready to put the finishing touches on my paper! I have it all written out on Word, I just have to wrap up the end and create my Works Cited page with KnightCite. I am really excited. I don’t know if it’s going to be considered a well-written paper or not, but I am pretty proud of it. I like writing, I’ve always been really good at it, or so I am told, so I hope it showed in this paper! I have always been best at writing on what I am interested and/or educated in, as most people, I write what I know. So I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about before I wrote it, that makes what your saying more believable and educational for your audience AND yourself. I really liked my topic too. The title of my paper is simply “African Americans in Early New York” but if I had to describe what my paper was really about and what I learned from it…it’s pretty much about how and when slaves first came to New York and their emergence as citizens throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Although slavery first started in the world as early as 1400, I wanted to focus on New York because that was the major city for African emergence in the U.S. I read (and stated in my paper) that at one point in time, New York has the highest count of slaves out of all the Northern States. African American history has always interested me because, as I said in class, I do have a mixed African American cousin who had a hard time growing up and since we were so close, it always bothered me. See, I never saw a problem with the color of anyones skin, sexual preference, clothes, hair, etc. My parents raised me to love and accept everyone, despite what they look and sound like, I was taught that everyone was equal. So growing up with that kind of outlook and growing older with my cousin and watching him struggle with friendships was really confusing for me. The white children didn’t want to play with him, and neither did the black children. He had one other mixed friend who didn’t even attend school with him. I remember, he was named D.j. and he was about four years younger than us. That didn’t bother my cousin, though. He just wanted friends. One of the first things our class did together was attend the Jim Crowe exhibit at the Vista Tech center and I think that sparked some old emotions from the past with my cousin and I think that’s what really motivated me to write my paper on this particular subject. I’m pretty happy with it, so I’m hoping for the best! I hope all of your papers turned out well, too! Good luck to everyone. I’ll see you all on Tuesday.