Warriors Don’t Cry Paper (25%)
Due August 5th at start of class
PROMPT
What does Melba Pattillo Beals’s memoir Warriors Don’t Cry show us about integration, white resistance, and African American life in the 1950s? Discuss the author’s experience as a “warrior” at Little Rock’s Central High School, noting how this time affected her life, family, and country.
Write an essay answering these questions by including a strong thesis statement and evidence from the text to illustrate your study and knowledge of the book.
I. Introduction-
Thesis statement
-Add your thesis statement here and defend your interpretation with concrete examples in the body of your paper. Be sure your responses connect to the prompt. (This paper argues that…)
Provide historical context
-Drawing from lecture material, textbook readings, the handout I gave you, and outside research discuss civil rights activism that is taking place in the U.S. You may include a discussion of major Supreme Court rulings and tell me why these are significant and how these events/laws/sit-in’s, etc. relate to efforts to integrate Central High School.
-Ideas: You can write about Brown v Board of Education, Lemon Grove Incident, sit-ins, marches, Rosa Parks etc.
Provide a summary of the book (plot)
-Offer a brief summary of what the book was about: include main characters, and how their actions impacted integration at Central High School, and the main themes that book touched on. (Melba Pattillo Beals’ memoir, Warriors Don’t Cry discussed …)
II. Body of Paper: Text Analysis (discuss each section in one paragraph) Body advances the thesis statement.
A. Examine integration efforts. You may use the themes you’ve written about here. Racism, Segregation & Discrimination—for example, harassment at school; school officials; different teachers and their responses
B. Examine the community’s response to integration. You have already started exploring a range of responses from Whites and members of the African American community. Choose a few characters to describe how their actions might represent a “range” of responses to integration. Why do you suppose they acted in these ways?)
C. Examine impacts on her life and family. Think about the themes of courage and truth.
-The body should focus exclusively on the text—no outside sources
-Use quotes to illustrate your points (but they should not fill up all your pages. Don’t just insert quotes, explain what the quote means.
III. Conclusion:
-Restate your argument and the main points you discussed in the paper in a succinct way. Wrap it up or can point to a new direction.
Formatting:
1. Paper length: 2.5 (3 max) page essay
2. Typewritten in 12-point font in Times New Roman
3. Indent each paragraph one tab stop, and block indent all quotations that are more than three lines in length. (if you’re not sure what that means see me, writing center, or google it)
4. Insert page numbers, at the top right hand corner of each page. (if you’re using google docs, hit insert, page numbers, and select option)
5. Cite: For in-text citations, for example, provide the author’s last name followed by the page number enclosed in parenthesis (Beals, 63). If you want to use information from discussions cite as (Lecture, 4/6).
6. Submit work via turnitin link in BB
