Must be at least 60 pages also needs graphs etc

Uses primary sources to answer a unique and significant historical question.

Demonstrates mastery of relevant historical literature.

These are the critiques from my initial draft

Your argument must be historical in intent explaining why or how something occurred the way that it did.  You can include a short section at the end in which you state your ideas for the future but it cant be the bulk of your thesis.  If you look at your thesis from page 21 forward, you are primarily making an argument about present public policy.  Instead of debating whether decriminalization is a good idea, your primary focus might be on why did Mississippi and Louisiana criminalize narcotics?  Or, how did Mississippi and Louisiana drug laws cause mass incarceration?  Your focus needs to be historical, an explanation of how or why something occurred.

You have a problem with sources.  Websites are not an acceptable source in a thesis.  Mustos book is a good source but you need more Ive attached a list of some books and articles to this email as a starting place.  Also, there is your reading list.  You draw a great deal on the Drug Policy Alliance.  The DPA is an advocacy group so their materials cannot be used as unbiased evidence of what occurred.

I would begin by making a timeline of all the events that you discuss: changes in drug use, drug laws, changes in imprisonment, etc.    This will help you keep events straight and prevent you from wandering in your discussion.

For the section on drug use:

You need to revise it so your sources are not internet sites.  This is important because they are not acceptable but also because some of them are wrong.  Include drug control policies in your discussion.  When you are discussing the nineteenth century, talk about the lack of drug laws.  When you talk about the early twentieth century panics, discuss how the anti-drug laws were passed and policies started.  And so forth, for every period of drug use, discuss the legal and public attitudes that went with it.

You have a very detailed discussion of federal drug policies in the different presidential eras that I think can be condensed a great deal.  By the Obama administration, you are really talking about the present and that needs to be removed.

For the discussion of mass incarceration, you need to do more research and focus specifically on Mississippi and Louisiana.  Both states had convict leasing systems after the Civil War and you need to discuss that background.  Then you need to look at specifically how incarceration changed over time in Mississippi and Louisiana.  Make tables of information so you can analyze it:  What was the incarceration rate in the 1920s, 1930s, etc. ?  What was the racial comparison in those years?  In other words, did Mississippi and Louisiana always have high rates of incarceration compared to the rest of the country?  Did it always stay so racially disproportionate?  When did Mississippi and Louisiana pass their drug laws?  If you can find out what were the top reasons for imprisonment, how did that change over time?  When did drugs become a major reason for imprisonment in Mississippi and Louisiana?  If you can answer those questions, you will have a good start.  I believe the census will have at least some of the data starting in the 1920s.  They did a National Prisoners Statistics program and your library should be able to get you access.  I think once you have this data, you will find it easy to write about and compare the story in Mississippi and Louisiana to the national story that you learned about in the books that youve read.