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Informative Research Essay Assignment

Write an Informative (also known as an Expository) Essay. The function of the informative/expository essay is to explain, or to acquaint your reader with a body of knowledge, you do not present your opinion, but “inform or educate the audience on a given topic” (The KU Handbook for Writer). By explaining a topic to the reader, you are demonstrating your own knowledge. You will be using The Writing Process – you have the handout in your folder. Your pre-write will be done as an OUTLINE – example below. You will do in-text citation within the essay – examples are below.

Your paper must be typed, MLA heading, Times New Roman font, 12 size type, and double-spaced, don’t forget your title.

Paper Topic: a. You are going to research a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement. You may select a person from the list

below. If you would like to research someone else, you must get permission from Mraz. You may not select James Baldwin.

b. Topic Choices:1. Martin Luther King, Jr.2. Malcolm X

Grading:a. The following items will be included as a part of your grade:

1. Research (20 points)2. Outline (20 points)3. Rough Draft (20 points)4. Revision – done in one color on the rough draft (10 points)5. Edit/Proofreading – done in a different color on the rough draft (10 points)6. Peer editing (20 points)7. Final Draft (112 points, graded on a 4-point rubric)8. Bibliography/Word Cited (10 points)

Total possible points – 222b. There will be spot checking and grading throughout this process – make sure you have items finished when

they are due!c. Grading Rubric and forms will be handed out

Parts of the Research Paper:a. Introduction Paragraphb. Body Paragraphsc. Conclusiond. Bibliography/Work Cited

Research Available and Requirements:a. In this packet you will find several sources.

1. One primary source about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X2. Two secondary sources about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X3. Three or more web links with more information about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X

b. If you choose your own topic, you are responsible for finding ALL your own research.c. You must find two (or more) additional sources about Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X.d. The sources must be reliable and accurate.e. You are required to use at least three sources:

1. You must use at least one or more of the attached sources, if your paper is about Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X

2. You must use at least one source that you find yourself.

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OUTLINE EXAMPLEI. Introduction

i. Background informationa. James Baldwin was born in Harlem on August 2, 1924 and died from stomach cancer on November

30, 1987. (Solomon, par. 3).b. He is known for his writing, which dealt with issues of identity, race and sexuality.c. Baldwin is a unique figure in the Civil Rights Movement because he was not only African American,

but also homosexual, so he faced many areas of discrimination. ii. Importance

a. Baldwin is a critical figure in the Civil Rights Movement because he has influenced generations of other writers, such as Toni Morrison, and because he is known as one of the most prolific and significant African American writers of the Civil Rights Era. (Turner, par. 2).

iii. Thesis statementa. The three major contributions of James Baldwin to the Civil Rights Movement are his essays Notes of

a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, and The Fire Next Time. He wrote these three works when the Civil Rights Movement was at its peak. (The New York Times, par. 6).

II. Body Paragraph #1: Notes of a Native Son i. Transition: Baldwin’s first published work was Notes of a Native Son.ii. Main Idea #1: Notes of a Native Son is a collection of essays that James Baldwin wrote in 1955 that made

important comments about race relations in America and Europe at the time. iii. Supporting Detail #1: Notes of a Native Son criticized popular African American literature at the time,

including Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Richard Wright’s Native Son. (Solomon, par. 4). iv. Supporting Detail #2: According to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the famous Harvard professor, “[His] essays

articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be American and a black American at the same time” (Powell, par. 6).

v. Restate main idea: Therefore, Notes of a Native Son is a prominent work that directly commented on race relations at the time.

III. Body Paragraph #2: Nobody Knows My Name i. Transition: Another major accomplishment of James Baldwin’s is his essay collection Nobody Knows My

Name.ii. Main Idea: Nobody Knows My Name explores relations between whites and blacks in a way that was

especially important at this time in history. iii. Supporting Detail #1: In their 1961 review of this book, The New York Times lauded this book of essays as “a

splendid book,” and dedicated an entire article to its review (The New York Times, par. 27). iv. Supporting Detail #2: Baldwin wrote these essays while he was living in Europe, and this gave him a certain

credibility to white Americans (Hart, par. 5). v. Restate main idea: Thus, Baldwin’s essays Nobody Knows My Name mark James Baldwin’s entry into

mainstream white American culture.

IV. Body Paragraph #3: The Fire Next Time i. Transition: Finally, his most important work and biggest contribution to the Civil Rights Movement is his

essay collection The Fire Next Time.ii. Main Idea: The Fire Next Time, a collection of essays James Baldwin wrote in 1963, is widely considered as

one of the most important statements of the Civil Rights era by an African American.iii. Supporting Detail #1: Baldwin’s essay “caused an immediate sensation” (Turner, par. 1). iv. Supporting Detail #2: It was widely thought of as the most definitive statement ever written of African

Americans’ struggle for equal rights (Powell, par. 2).

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v. Restate main idea: Thus, The Fire Next Time was not only popular, but also an important statement about the Civil Rights Movement.

V. Conclusion i. Transition: In conclusion,ii. Restate thesis: James Baldwin’s most important contributions to the Civil Rights Movement were his three

collections of essays, Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, and The Fire Next Time.iii. Importance of Main Idea 1: Notes of a Native Son established James Baldwin as a commentator on the

importance of race at this time. iv. Importance of Main Idea 2: Nobody Knows My Name opened white Americans up to the writing of James

Baldwin, solidifying his place in American literature. v. Importance of Main Idea 3: Finally, The Fire Next Time was widely considered to be the most important

statement about the Civil Rights Movement at the time. vi. Significance for today: James Baldwin’s accomplishments are significant today because his opinions on race

and racism are just as relevant today as they ever were.

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Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Primary Source: “Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” 1957

At age 28, the Rev. Martin Luther King was a recently minted PhD, a young father, and the face of the rising Civil Rights Movement. When he wrote this article explaining the credo of nonviolent resistance, he and the black community of Montgomery, Alabama had just ended their successful boycott of segregated city buses.

It is commonly observed that the crisis in race relations dominates the arena of American life. This crisis has been precipitated by two factors: the determined resistance of reactionary elements in the south to the Supreme Court's momentous decision outlawing segregation in the public schools, and the radical change in the Negro's evaluation of himself... Once he thought of himself as an inferior and patiently accepted injustice and exploitation. Those days are gone...

... the basic question which confronts the world's oppressed is: How is the struggle against the forces of injustice to be waged? There are two possible answers. One is resort to the all too prevalent method of physical violence and corroding hatred. The danger of this method is its futility. Violence solves no social problems; it merely creates new and more complicated ones...

Alternative to ViolenceThe alternative to violence is nonviolent resistance. This method was made famous in our generation by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who used it to free India from the domination of the British empire. Five points can be made concerning nonviolence as a method in bringing about better racial conditions.

First, this is not a method for cowards; it does resist. The nonviolent resister is just as strongly opposed to the evil against which he protests as is the person who uses violence. His method is passive or nonaggressive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent. But his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade the opponent that he is mistaken. This method is passive physically but strongly active spiritually...

A second point is that nonviolent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.

A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who are caught in those forces. It is evil we are seeking to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil. Those of us who struggle against racial injustice must come to see that the basic tension is not between races...

A fourth point that must be brought out concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives...

... it means understanding, redeeming good will for all men, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. It is the love of God working in the lives of men. When we love on the agape level we love men not because we like them, not because their attitudes and ways appeal to us, but because God loves them. Here we rise to the position of loving the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed he does.

Finally, the method of nonviolence is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. It is this deep faith in the future that causes the nonviolent resister to accept suffering without retaliation. He knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship. This belief that God is on the side of truth and justice comes down to us from the long tradition of our Christian faith. There is something at the very center of our faith which reminds us that Good Friday may reign for a day, but ultimately it must give way to the triumphant beat of the Easter drums...

Citation: King, Jr, Dr. Martin Luther. "Nonviolence and Racial Justice." The Christian Century, February 6, 1957, pp. 165-167.

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Secondary Source #1: Biography from Nobel Peace Prize site

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Secondary Source #2: “Montgomery Bus Boycott” (1955 – 1956)

Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) coordinated the boycott, and its president, Martin Luther King, Jr., became a prominent civil rights leader as international attention focused on Montgomery. The bus boycott demonstrated the potential for nonviolent mass protest to successfully challenge racial segregation and served as an example for other southern campaigns that followed. In Stride Toward Freedom, King’s 1958 memoir of the boycott, he declared the real meaning of the Montgomery bus boycott to be the power of a growing self-respect to animate the struggle for civil rights.

The roots of the bus boycott began years before the arrest of Rosa Parks. The Women’s Political Council(WPC), a group of black professionals founded in 1946, had already turned their attention to Jim Crow practices on the Montgomery city buses. In a

Citation: Haberman, Frederick W., ed. Nobel Lectures, Peace 1951-1970, , Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972.

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meeting with Mayor W. A. Gayle in March 1954, the council's members outlined the changes they sought for Montgomery’s bus system: no one standing over empty seats; a decree that black individuals not be made to pay at the front of the bus and enter from the rear; and a policy that would require buses to stop at every corner in black residential areas, as they did in white communities. When the meeting failed to produce any meaningful change, WPC president Jo Ann Robinson reiterated the council’s requests in a 21 May letter to Mayor Gayle, telling him, ‘‘there has been talk from twenty-five or more local organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of busses’’(‘‘A Letter from the Women’s Political Council’’).

A year after the WPC’s meeting with Mayor Gayle, a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging segregation on a Montgomery bus. Seven months later, 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger. Neither arrest, however, mobilized Montgomery’s black community like that of Rosa Parks later that year.

King recalled in his memoir that ‘‘Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history,’’ and because ‘‘her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted’’ she was ‘‘one of the most respected people in the Negro community’’ (King, 44). Robinson and the WPC responded to Parks’ arrest by calling for a one-day protest of the city’s buses on 5 December 1955. Robinson prepared a series of leaflets at Alabama State College and organized groups to distribute them throughout the black community. Meanwhile, after securing bail for Parks with Clifford and Virginia Durr, E. D. Nixon, past leader of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), began to call local black leaders, including Ralph Abernathy and King, to organize a planning meeting. On 2 December, black ministers and leaders met at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and agreed to publicize the 5 December boycott. The planned protest received unexpected publicity in the weekend newspapers and in radio and television reports.

On 5 December, 90 percent of Montgomery’s black citizens stayed off the buses. That afternoon, the city’s ministers and leaders met to discuss the possibility of extending the boycott into a long-term campaign. During this meeting the MIA was formed, and King was elected president. Parks recalled: ‘‘The advantage of having Dr. King as president was that he was so new to Montgomery and to civil rights work that he hadn’t been there long enough to make any strong friends or enemies’’ (Parks, 136).

That evening, at a mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, the MIA voted to continue the boycott. King spoke to several thousand people at the meeting: ‘‘I want it to be known that we’re going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong.… If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong’’ (Papers 3:73). After unsuccessful talks with city commissioners and bus company officials, on 8 December the MIA issued a formal list of demands: courteous treatment by bus operators; first-come, first-served seating for all, with blacks seating from the rear and whites from the front; and black bus operators on predominately black routes.

The demands were not met, and Montgomery’s black residents stayed off the buses through 1956, despite efforts by city officials and white citizens to defeat the boycott. After the city began to penalize black taxi drivers for aiding the boycotters, the MIA organized a carpool. Following the advice of T. J. Jemison, who had organized a carpool during a 1953 bus boycott in Baton Rouge, the MIA developed an intricate carpool system of about 300 cars. Robert Hughes and others from the Alabama Council for Human Relations organized meetings between the MIA and city officials, but no agreements were reached.

In early 1956, the homes of King and E. D. Nixon were bombed. King was able to calm the crowd that gathered at his home by declaring: ‘‘Be calm as I and my family are. We are not hurt and remember that if anything happens to me, there will be others to take my place’’ (Papers 3:115). City officials obtained injunctions against the boycott in February 1956, and indicted over 80 boycott leaders under a 1921 law prohibiting conspiracies that interfered with lawful business. King was tried and convicted on the charge and ordered to pay $500 or serve 386 days in jail in the case State of Alabama v. Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite this resistance, the boycott continued.

Although most of the publicity about the protest was centered on the actions of black ministers, women played crucial roles in the success of the boycott. Women such as Robinson, Johnnie Carr, and Irene West sustained the MIA committees and volunteer networks. Mary Fair Burks of the WPC also attributed the success of the boycott to ‘‘the nameless cooks and maids who walked endless miles for a year to bring about the breach in the walls of segregation’’ (Burks, ‘‘Trailblazers,’’ 82). In his memoir, King quotes an elderly woman who proclaimed that she had joined the boycott not for her own benefit but for the good of her children and grandchildren (King, 78).

National coverage of the boycott and King’s trial resulted in support from people outside Montgomery. In early 1956 veteran pacifists Bayard Rustin and Glenn E. Smiley visited Montgomery and offered King advice on the application of Gandhian techniques and nonviolence to American race relations. Rustin, Ella Baker, and Stanley Levison founded In Friendship to raise

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funds in the North for southern civil rights efforts, including the bus boycott. King absorbed ideas from these proponents of nonviolent direct action and crafted his own syntheses of Gandhian principles of nonviolence. He said: ‘‘Christ showed us the way, and Gandhi in India showed it could work’’ (Rowland, ‘‘2,500 Here Hail’’). Other followers of Gandhian ideas such as Richard Gregg, William Stuart Nelson, and Homer Jack wrote the MIA offering support.

On 5 June 1956, the federal district court ruled in Browder v. Gayle that bus segregation was unconstitutional, and in November 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Browder v. Gayle and struck down laws requiring segregated seating on public buses. The court’s decision came the same day that King and the MIA were in circuit court challenging an injunction against the MIA carpools. Resolved not to end the boycott until the order to desegregate the buses actually arrived in Montgomery, the MIA operated without the carpool system for a month. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, and on 20 December 1956 King called for the end of the boycott; the community agreed. The next morning, he boarded an integrated bus with Ralph Abernathy, E. D. Nixon, and Glenn Smiley. King said of the bus boycott: ‘‘We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. So … we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery’’ (Papers 3:486). King’s role in the bus boycott garnered international attention, and the MIA’s tactics of combining mass nonviolent protest with Christian ethics became the model for challenging segregation in the South.

Web Links:1) Nobel Peace Prize Speech: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-lecture.html2) “I Have a Dream” Speech: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk3) Photo and Video Archive from The King Center: http://www.thekingcenter.org/PhotoVideo/Default.aspx4) Eyes on The Prize: Primary Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/sources/index.html

Citation: “The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955 - 1956).” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Stanford University, n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2009.

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Topic: Malcolm X

Primary Source: “What Does Mississippi Have to Do With Harlem?” (1964 Speech)

In fall 1964, after the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's delegates had been denied seats at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, Malcolm X delivered this speech.

...How can you and I be looked upon as men, with black women being beaten, and nothing being done about it? Black children and black babies being beaten, and nothing being done about it? No, we don't deserve to be recognized and respected as men, as long as our women can be brutalized... and nothing can be done about it except we sit around singing "We Shall Overcome."

...If they don't want to deal with the Freedom Democratic Party, then we'll give them something else to deal with. If they don't want to deal with the Student Nonviolent Committee, then we have to give them an alternative. Never stick someone out there without an alternative. We waste our time. Give them this or give them that. Give them the choice between this or that...

...We will never communicate talking one language and he's talking another language. He's talking the language of violence...Let's learn his language. If his language is with a shotgun, get a shotgun. If he only understands the language of a rifle, get a rifle. If he only understands the language of a rope, get a rope. But don't waste time talking the wrong language to a man, if you want to really communicate with him. Speak his language. And there's nothing wrong with that. If something was wrong with that language, the Federal government would have stopped the cracker from speaking it to you and me.

I might say, secondly, some people wonder well, what does Mississippi have to do with Harlem?... America is Mississippi. There's no such thing as a Mason-Dixon line. It's America. There's no such thing as the South. It's America. If one room in your house is dirty, you've got a dirty house. If the closet is dirty, you've got a dirty house. Don't say that that room is dirty but the rest of my house is clean. You're over the whole house. You have authority over the whole house. The entire house is under your jurisdiction. And the mistake that you and I make is letting these northern crackers shift the weight to these southern crackers.

Every senator from a state where our people are deprived of the right to vote, they're in Washington, D.C. illegally...

...Out of 36 [Congressional] committees that govern the foreign and domestic direction of this country, 23 are in the hands of southern racists. And the reason they're in the hands of southern racists is because the areas from which they come the black man is deprived of his right to vote. If we had the ballot in that area, those racists would not be in Washington, D.C. There'd be some black faces there. There'd be some brown and some yellow and some red faces there. there'd be some faces other than those cracker faces that are there right now. So what happens in Mississippi and the south has a direct bearing on what happens to you and me here in Harlem.

And likewise, out of the Democratic party, which black people supported -- recently, I think, something like 97 percent -- all of these crackers -- and that's what they are, crackers -- they belong to the Democratic party. That's the party they belong to. Same one you belong to. Same one you support. Same one you say is going to get you this, and get you that.

Why, the base of the Democratic party is in the South. The foundation of its authority is in the South. The head of the Democratic party is sitting in the White House. He could have gotten Mrs. Hamer in Atlantic City. He could have opened up his mouth and had her seated. Hubert Humphrey could have opened his mouth and had her seated. Wagner, the mayor, right here, could have opened up his mouth, and used his weight, and had her seated. Don't be talking about some crackers down in Mississippi, in Alabama, in Georgia. All of them are playing the same game. Lyndon B. Johnson is the head of the cracker party...

...These northern crackers are in cahoots with these southern crackers. Only these northern crackers smile in your face, and show you their teeth, then they stick the knife in your back when you turn around....

Wagner is a Democrat. He belongs to the same party as Eastland. Johnson is a Democrat. He belongs to the same party as Eastland. Now, Wagner was in Atlantic City... Lyndon B. Johnson was in Atlantic City. Hubert Humphrey was in Atlantic City. The crackers that you voted for were in Atlantic City. What did they do for you when you wanted to sit down? They were quiet. They were silent. They said don't rock the boat...

As Mrs. Hamer pointed out, the brothers and the sisters in Mississippi are being beaten and killed for no reason other than they want to be treated as first-class citizens. There's only one way to be a first-class citizen. There's only one way to be a first-class

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citizen. There's only one way to be independent. There's only one way to be free. It's not something that someone gives to you. It's something that you take... If you can't take it you don't deserve it. Nobody can give it to you... We obey the law... But at the same time, at any moment that you and I are involved in any kind of action that is legal, that is in accord with our civil rights, in accord with the courts of this land, in accord with the Constitution, when all of these things are on our side and we still can't get it...

We have to let the people in Mississippi as well as New York and elsewhere know, that freedom comes to us either by ballot, or by bullet. That's the only way freedom is gotten. Freedom is gotten by ballot, or bullet. These are the only two avenues, the only two roads, the only two methods or means, either ballot or bullet. When you know that, then you are careful how you use the word freedom...

They've always said that I'm anti-white. I'm for anybody who's for freedom. I'm for anybody who's for freedom. I'm for anybody who's for justice. I'm for anybody who's for equality. I'm not for anybody who tells me to sit around and wait for mine. I'm not for anybody who tells me to turn the other cheek when a cracker is busting up my jaw. I'm not for anybody who tells black people to be nonviolent while nobody is telling white people to be nonviolent...

Secondary Source #1: “Malcolm X (1925 – 1965)”

As the nation’s most visible proponent of Black Nationalism, Malcolm X’s challenge to the multiracial, nonviolent approach of Martin Luther King, Jr., helped set the tone for the ideological and tactical conflicts that took place within the black freedom struggle of the 1960s. Given Malcolm X’s abrasive criticism of King and his advocacy of racial separatism, it is not surprising that King rejected the occasional overtures from one of his fiercest critics. However, after Malcolm’s assassination in 1965, King wrote to his widow, Betty Shabazz: “While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had the great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem” (King, 26 February 1965).

Malcolm Little was born to Louise and Earl Little in Omaha, Nebraska, on 19 May 1925. His father died when he was six years old – the victim, he believed, of a white racist group. Following his father’s death, Malcolm recalled, “Some kind of psychological deterioration hit our family circle and began to eat away our pride” (Malcolm X, Autobiography, 14). By the end of the 1930s Malcolm’s mother had been institutionalized, and he became a ward of the court to be raised by white guardians in various reform schools and foster homes.

Malcolm joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) while serving a prison term in Massachusetts on burglary charges. Shortly after his release in 1952, he moved to Chicago and became a minister under Elijah Muhammad, abandoning his “slave name,” and becoming Malcolm X (Malcolm X, “We Are Rising”). By the late 1950s, Malcolm had become the Nation of Islam’s leading spokesman.

Although Malcolm rejected King’s message of nonviolence, he respected King as a “fellow-leader of our people,” sending King articles on the NOI as early as 1957 and inviting him to participate in mass meetings throughout the early 1960s (Papers 5:491). While Malcolm was particularly interested that King hear Elijah Muhammad’s message, he also sought to create an open forum for black leaders to explore solutions to the “race problem” (Malcolm X to King, 31 July 1963). King never accepted Malcolm’s invitations, however, leaving communication with him to his secretary, Maude Ballou.

Despite his repeated overtures to King, Malcolm did not refrain from criticizing him publicly. “The only revolution based on loving your enemy,” Malcolm told an audience in 1963, “is the Negro revolution…That’s no revolution” (Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots,” 9).In the spring of 1964, Malcolm broke away from the NOI and made a pilgrimage to Mecca. When he returned he began following a course that paralleled King’s – combining religious leadership and political action. Although King told reporters that Malcolm’s separation from Elijah Muhammad “holds no particular significance to the present civil rights efforts,” he argued that if “tangible gains are not made soon all across the country, we must honestly face the prospect that some Negroes might be tempted to accept some oblique path [such] as that Malcolm X proposes” (King, 16 March 1964).

Citation: X, Malcolm. “What does Mississippi Have to do with Harlem?” Harlem, NY. 1964. Rally speech.

Audio file available at: http://www.brothermalcolm.net/mxwords/whathesaidarchive.html

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Ten days later, during the Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 King and Malcolm met for the first and only time. After holding a press conference in the Capitol on the proceedings, King encountered Malcolm in the hallway. As King recalled in a 3 April letter, “At the end of the conference, he came and spoke to me, and I readily shook his hand.” King defended shaking the hand of an adversary by saying that “my position is that of kindness and reconciliation” (King, 3 April 1965).Malcolm’s primary concern during the remainder of 1964 was to establish ties with the black activists he saw as more militant than King. He met with a number of workers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), including SNCC chairman, John Lewis and Mississippi organizer Fannie Lou Hamer. Malcolm saw his newly created Organization of African American Unity (OAAU) as a potential source of ideological guidance for the more militant veterans of the southern civil rights movement. At the same time, he looked to the southern struggle for inspiration in his effort to revitalize the moribund Black Nationalist movement.

In January 1965, he revealed in an interview that the OAAU would “support fully and without compromise any action by any group that is designed to get meaningful immediate results” (Malcolm X, Two Speeches, 31). Malcolm urged civil rights groups to unite, telling a gathering at a symposium sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality, “We want freedom now, but we're not going to get it saying 'We Shall Overcome.' We've got to fight to overcome" (Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 38).

In early 1965, while King was jailed in Selma, Alabama, Malcolm traveled to Selma, where he had a private meeting with Coretta Scott King. “I didn’t come to Selma to make his job difficult,” he assured Coretta. “I really did come thinking that I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King” (Scott King, My Life, 256).

On 21 February 1965, just a few weeks after his visit to Selma, Malcolm X was assassinated. King called his murder a “great tragedy” and expressed his regret that it “occurred at a time when Malcolm X was…moving toward a greater understanding of the nonviolent movement” (King, 24 February 1965). He asserted that Malcolm’s murder deprived “the world of a potentially great leader” (King, “The Nightmare of Violence”). Malcolm’s death signaled the beginning of bitter battles involving proponents of the ideological alternatives the two men represented.

Secondary Source #2: “The Life of Malcolm X”

If one had to select one historical personality within the period 1940 to 1975 who best represented and reflected black urban life, politics, and culture in the United States, it would be extremely difficult to find someone more central than the charismatic figure of Malcolm X/El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, and growing up in the Midwest, young Malcolm Little was the child of political activists who supported the militant black nationalist movement of Marcus Garvey. After his father’s violent death and his mother’s subsequent institutionalization due to mental illness, Little was placed in foster care and for a time in a youth detention facility. At age sixteen he left school, relocating to Boston upon the invitation of his older half-sister, Ella Little. During World War II, the zoot-suited “Detroit Red” became a small-time hustler, burglar, and narcotics dealer in Harlem and Roxbury.

In January 1946, Little was arrested for burglary and weapons possession charges, and received a ten-year sentence in the Massachusetts prison system. While incarcerated, Little’s siblings introduced him to the Nation of Islam, a tiny black nationalist-oriented religious movement led by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Converting to the NOI’s version of Islam, Little experienced a spiritual and intellectual epiphany behind bars. Emerging from prison in August 1952, as Malcolm X, the talented and articulate young convert was soon the assistant minister of the NOI’s Detroit Temple No. 1. . In 1954, Malcolm X was named minister of Harlem’s Temple No. 7, which he led for just short of a decade. As an itinerant spokesman for black nationalism, Malcolm X traveled constantly across the country, winning thousands of new converts to the NOI.

Between 1955 and 1961, Malcolm X was personally responsible for establishing more than one hundred Muslim temples or mosques throughout the U.S. As the chief public spokesperson for Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm built the NOI from a marginal sect to a spiritual organization of over one hundred thousand. By the early 1960s, Malcolm X was a widely celebrated (and feared) public speaker and debater at universities and in the national media. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s efforts to discredit the Nation and its leaders led the agency to engage in illegal acts of wiretapping, surveillance, disruption, and harassment.

Citation: “Malcolm X (1925 – 1965).” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Stanford University, n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2009.

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In 1960 Malcolm X established the newspaper Muhammad Speaks, which by the end of the decade would have a national circulation of 600,000, the most widely-read black-owned newspaper in the country. However, by this time, serious divisions developed between Malcolm X and the NOI’s patriarch, Elijah Muhammad, and his coterie of organizational leaders based in Chicago, over a number of issues. Malcolm X was personally dismayed when it was publicly revealed that Muhammad had fathered a number of children out of wedlock. He also chafed under the NOI’s political conservatism and its refusal to support civil rights protests.

In reaching out to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., James Farmer, and other civil rights leaders, Malcolm X proposed a broad coalition of black activist organizations, working in concert to achieve social justice.

In March, 1964, Malcolm X announced publicly his break from the NOI. He soon created two new organizations, the Muslim Mosque, Inc., designed for former NOI members as a spiritually-based group, and the secular-oriented Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).

Converting to traditional Islam, Malcolm X completed his spiritual hajj to Mecca in April, 1964, and returned to the United States the next month as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

During his two extended journeys through Africa and the Middle East in 1964, Malcolm X gained new insights into the problem of racism. In his Autobiography, he later wrote: “I was no less angry than I had been, but at the same time the true brotherhood I had seen had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision.” He now believed that race war was not inevitable, and felt that “America is the first country … that can actually have a bloodless revolution.”

Malcolm X’s new political strategy called for building black community empowerment, through tools such as voter registration and education, economic self-sufficiency, and the development of independent politics. He called upon African Americans to transform the civil rights movement into a struggle for international human rights.

Malcolm X emphasized the parallels between the African-American struggle for equality and the Asian, Latino, and African campaigns against European colonialism. Malcolm X also drew attention for criticizing the growing U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

Upon Malcolm X’s return to the United States in November 1964, death threats escalated against him and his family. in the early morning hours of February 14, 1965, his home in Elmhurst, Queens, was firebombed.

On Sunday afternoon, February 21, 1965, just before delivering an address at the Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm X/El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was assassinated before a crowd of hundreds of people, including his pregnant wife Betty Shabazz and three of their four children.

The profound religious and political sojourn of Malcolm X was hardly noticed in the immediate aftermath of his assassination. The New York Times editorialized that Malcolm was “an irresponsible demagogue” and “an extraordinary and twisted man,” who had utilized his “true gifts to evil purpose.” Time magazine declared that the dead leader was “an unashamed demagogue” whose “gospel was hatred.” But others saw Malcolm X more clearly. President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana sent a telegram of condolence to Malcolm’s widow, saying that “your husband lived a life of dedication for human equality and dignity so that the Afro-American and people of color everywhere may live as man. His work in the cause of freedom will not be in vain …”

Web Links:1) The Malcolm X Project at Columbia University: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/mxp/index.html2) Eyes On The Prize: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/profiles/19_malcolmx.html3) Malcolm X: A research site: http://www.brothermalcolm.net/4) Official website of Malcolm X: http://www.malcolmx.com/5) Malcolm X: Make It Plain: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/malcolmx/

Citation: “The Life of Malcolm X.” The Malcolm X Project at Columbia University. Columbia University. Columbia University, 2004. Web. 8 Nov. 2009.

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**Make sure you do in-text citation whether it is a direct quotation or a paraphrase from the source. Also do a Work Cited/Bibliography page.

In-Text Citation:

Guideline on when to cite resources:1. You don’t need to mention resources for facts or ideas you know based on firsthand experience2. You don’t need to cite resources of common knowledge. For example, you would not need to explain where

you learned that Robert Kennedy was assassinated.3. You DO need to cite information, ideas, or opinions that you take from others that is NOT considered common

knowledge. In general, if it’s not your idea or you didn’t know it before you started your research, then you need to cite it.

Transitioning/Weaving resource material:You cannot simply “drop” information from your resources into your paper. Instead, you would transition direct

quotations or paraphrases smoothly into your own sentences. Introduce them somehow. One way to do this is with signal phrases:

Examples:According to William Shakespeare, “……” (direct quotation)Author John Steinbeck has noted, “…….” (direct quotations)Mark Twain has stated that ….. (paraphrase)Emily Dickenson believes ……. (paraphrase)Once you work your resource material into your essay, you must be prepared to comment on it. You cannot just

throw in a paraphrase or direct quotation and let it stand on its own. You should show a relationship between the direct quotation and the point you are trying to make or explain in your own words what the direct quotation means and/or how it relates to what you are trying to say. Helpful lead-ins to your comments include:

Examples:In other words, …..It seems that ……It is clear how …….As Jane Doe points out, ……

You should present about EQUAL amounts of borrowed material and your own comments.

Examples of Direct Quotations:Book with signal phrase, page number in parentheses:

Example: According to Francis Lerner, “America’s heritage is fast becoming a thing of the past. Traditions once considered sacred are now being replaced with a hodgepodge of makeshift pageantries” (17).

Book without signal phrase; author and page number in parentheses:Example: Some people believe that America’s heritage is fast becoming a thing of the past. Traditions once sacred are now being replaced with a hodgepodge of makeshift pageantries” (Lerner 17).

Article with signal phrase, page number in parentheses:Example: According to the article “Impact of Global Warming”, we see so many global warming hotspots inNorth America likely because this region has “more readily accessible climatic data and more comprehensive programs to monitor and study environmental change …” (6).

Article without signal phrase; author and page number in parentheses:Example: We see so many global warming hotspots in North America likely because this region has “morereadily accessible climatic data and more comprehensive programs to monitor and study environmental change …” (“Impact of Global Warming” 6).

NOTE: Direct quotations of more than four typed lines (long quotation) are indented ten spaces and have NO quotation marks. In-Text Citation punctuation goes after the end of the text – before the parentheses. “Text then”. (Lerner 17)

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Direct quotations of four or fewer typed lines (short quotation) are worked into the body of your paper and quotation marks are needed. In-Text Citation punctuation goes after the parentheses. “Text then” (Lerner 17).

Examples of Paraphrases:Article (no author) with signal phrase; page number:

Example: The article “The American Patriot” says, American’s heritage ceases to be what it once was. New customs are replacing the old ways (2).

Article (no author) without signal phrase; article title and page number in parentheses:Example: Many hard-core patriots think that America’s heritages ceases to be what it once was. New customs are replacing the old ways (“The American Patriot” 2).

Book with signal phrase, page number in parentheses:Example: Wordsworth extensively explored the role of emotion in the creative process (263).

Book without signal phrase; author and page number in parentheses:Example: The role of emotion in the creative process has been extensively explored (Wordsworth 263).

NOTE: A shortened version or acronym of the title of an article from the website should be placed in parentheses – do not put the URL (web address) in your citation. End punctuation (period) is placed AFTER the parentheses.

Format for Citation With-in the Text:The simplest way to credit a resource and avoid plagiarism is to insert the information (usually the author’s last name – if no author the title of the article – and page number) in parentheses after the direct quotations or paraphrasing taken from that resource. Include only enough information to enable the reader to identify the resource in the Work Cited/Bibliography page.

A. If the author’s name is included in the text, only the page number is needed within the parentheses.Example: According to Chris Hart, the process of the literature searing and analytical reading can be time consuming (7).

B. Multiple authors:Example: These ideas have been emerged from several works (Hart and Marshall 32).

C. More than three authors:Example: text and then (Hart et al. 43).

D. Two different works:Example: text and then (Hart 67, Griffith 58).

E. Citing from more than one location of the resource:Example: (Hart 26, 75).

F. Citing from a resource without an author – use the title:Example: text and then (“Literature” 48).

G. Citing from an article in a newspaper, journal, magazine etc. – name of the article and then page or section number:Example: text and then (“The Books on the Top Ten List” A5).

H. Citing from a dictionary: type the dictionary word with quotation marks and give the page number:Example: text and then (“Determination” 32).

I. If more than one work by the author is listed in the Works Cited/Bibliography, the citation should include the author’s name whenever possible, and use the resource’s title otherwise (or a shortened version of the title) along with page number:Example: text and then (Hart 1) or (“Literature Analysis” 1).

Again, keep in mind that the primary purpose of an in-text citation is simply to point readers to the correct entry on the Work Cited/Bibliography page.

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Work Cited/Bibliography Page:

Examples:Book with a single author (also the format for a pamphlet)o Author’s last nameo Commao Author’s first nameo Periodo Title of book (in italics)o Periodo City book was published ino Colono Publisher’s nameo Commao Date publishedo Periodo Medium of publication – Print – all ‘hard copy’ books are listed as “print”o PeriodSample: Jones, Alexander. The Wonders of Ireland. Dublin: Green Isle Press, 1996. Print.Book by two authorso Last name of first authoro Commao First name of first authoro Commao and (type the word and)o Second author’s first nameo Second author’s last nameo Periodo Title of book (in italics)o Periodo City book was published ino Colono Publisher’s nameo Commao Date publishedo Periodo Medium of publication – Print – all ‘hard copy’ books are listed as “print”Sample: Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Boston: Allyn, 2000. Print.Book with an editoro Editor’s last nameo Commao Editor’s first nameo Commao ed – actually type: edo Periodo Title of book (in italics)o Periodo City published ino Colono Publishero Commao Year published

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o Periodo Medium of publication – print – all ‘hard copy’ books are listed as “print”o PeriodSample: Peterson, Nancy J., ed. Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,

1997. Print.Dictionary Entryo Word looked up (in quotation marks) o Period (inside of end quotes)o Title of dictionary (in italics)o Periodo Number of the Edition (if availableo Periodo Publication dateo Periodo Medium of publication – print – all ‘hard copy’ books are listed as “print”Sample: “Ideology.” The American Heritage Dictionary. 3rd ed. 1997. Print.Magazine Articleo Author’s last name (if no author use title – goes in quotation marks)o Commao Author’s first nameo Periodo Title of the article in quotation markso Period (inside of the ending quotation marks)o Title of the magazine (in italics)o Date of magazineo Colono Pages of articleo Periodo Medium of publication – print – all ‘hard copy’ magazine are listed as “print”Sample: Buchman, Dana. “A Special Education.” Good Housekeeping Mar. 2006: 143-48. Print.Newspaper Articleo Author’s last name (if no author use title – goes in quotation marks)o Commao Author’s first nameo Periodo Title of the article in quotation markso Period (inside of the ending quotation marks)o Name of newspaper (in italics)o Date of newspapero Colono Pages of articleo Periodo Medium of publication – print – all ‘hard copy’ newspapers are listed as “print”Sample: Krugman, Andrew. “Fear of Eating.” Rapid City Journal 21 May 2007: A1. Print.Interview (that you conducted)o Last name of the person who was interviewedo Commao First name of the person who was interviewedo Periodo Personal interview (actually type Personal interview)o Periodo Date of the interview

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o PeriodSample: Purdue, Pete. Personal interview. 1 Dec. 2000.

Web SitesHere are some common features you should try and find before citing electronic resources in MLA style. Not every Web page will provide all of the following information. However, collect as much of the following information as possible both for your citations and for your research notes:• Author and/or editor names (if available)• Article name in quotation marks (if applicable)• Title of the Website, project, or book in italics. (Remember that some Print publication have Web publication with slightly different names. They may, for example, include the additional information or otherwise modified information, like domain names [e.g. .com or .net].)• Any version numbers available, including revisions, posting dates, volumes, or issue numbers.• Publisher information, including the publisher name and publishing date.• Take note of any page numbers (get these from when you print the resources out)• Medium of publication.• Date you accessed the material.• URL• If there is no publisher name – use n.p. OR if no publishing date is given - use n.d.Web Siteo Author’s last name (if no author use title – goes in quotation marks)o Commao Author’s first nameo Periodo Name of the site (in italics)o Periodo Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher)o Commao Date site was updated or publishedo Periodo Medium of publication for electronic resources, list the medium as Webo Periodo Date you printed out the informationo Periodo <o URL/website addresso >o PeriodSample: Perdue, Pete. The Purdue Owl Family of Sites. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2008. Web. 23 Apr. 2008. < http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/>.A Page on a Web Siteo Title of the article (use quotation marks) (if you have an author use that)o Period (inside of the ending quotation marks)o Title of the website (in italics)o Periodo Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher)o Commao n.d. (no publishing date is given)o Periodo Medium of publication for electronic resources, list the medium as Webo Period

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o Date you printed out the informationo Periodo <o URL/website addresso >o PeriodSample: “How to Make Vegetarian Chili.” eHow. Demand Media, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2009. < http://www.ehow.com/how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html>.An article from an online magazine or newspapero Author’s last name (if no author use title – goes in quotation marks)o Commao Author’s first nameo Periodo Title of the article (in quotation marks)o Period (inside of the ending quotation marks)o Title of the Web magazine (in italics)o Periodo Publisher nameo Periodo Publication dateo Periodo Medium of publication for electronic resources, list the medium as Webo Periodo Date you printed out the informationo Periodo <o URL/website addresso >o PeriodSample: Bernstein, Mark. “10 Tips on Writing the Living Web.” A List apart: For People Who Make Websites. A List Apart Mag., 16 Aug. 2002. Web. 4 May 2009. < http://www.alistapart.com/articles/writeliving/>.

If the kind of resource you are using is not listed, please ask me.

By following these instructions you will avoid plagiarizing!