I chose my project after I was looking for interesting women or men that really broke a barrier. I finally chose C.J. Walker because she looked very interesting. I had never heard of her before. She was a very successful African-American women who was determined, set up a plan, and worked hard to achieve it. That was intriguing to me. The barrier she broke and how she went about doing it was amazing. For this reason, I thought that she would be a very interesting person to research.
My research was very easy because I did find many quotes about how she felt about life and work and photos of herself and her business. There were many websites with lots of information. I also used several books to help me. The books had more information than some of the websites, so I used the books more than websites. My next step was to create outlines. After I completed the outlines, I created notecards in Noodle Tools to store my information. This information was going into be put in my final project. It was hard to find primary sources because my person’s time frame was over 100 years ago, but I did find one. However, there were many photos from the time period. I was lucky because I did find some very detailed books and websites. Some days I would sit down, research, and outline and other times I would read a book or a website to find more information about my person.
I chose a website to show my topic because I thought that it was an easy way to store and present information. I liked the idea of creating my own website because I have never made a website before. I felt that showing my person in a variety of formats such as photos, videos and text would be more interesting for a person to view. I also chose it because I thought that some of the other projects were too much for me because this is my first year doing a National History Day project. Overall, I am happy I chose a website because I found it very easy to make once I understood how to build it.
My project relates to the theme of “Breaking Barriers” because my person broke some important barriers. My person broke an economic barrier. She came from a sharecropping family of very little means to becoming a self-made millionaire living a very wealthy lifestyle. Achieving her goals broke barriers for African Americans as well as women because she provided opportunities for them. She did not let the color of her skin or her gender stop her. As a matter of fact, she used it to her advantage.