Paper Two Assignment

The Task:  For this assignment, I’m asking you to combine the skills you used for the first writing assignment and the Group Research Project.  In broadest terms, the topic for this paper is “history” as Baldwin understands it in “The White Man’s Guilt” and, especially, “Down at the Cross.”  Certainly, this history has a personal component for Baldwin, as we see when he reports that Elijah Muhammad momentarily “made me think of my father and me as we might have been if we had been friends” (“Down at the Cross” 323).  Just as certainly, “Down at the Cross” alludes to important public and national people, events, and concerns.  Your central task in this paper is to learn about one of the historical events, people, or issues to which Baldwin refers in “Down at the Cross” (first published in The New Yorker late in 1962), and then analyze how Baldwin represents your topic and speaks to his specific audience of 1962.  In other words, you’ll need to do some research so you can determine, and explain for others, how Baldwin situates himself as a person created by history who attempts to speak back to history.

Sample Topics:  You may research and write about any person, event, or issue to which Baldwin refers in “Down at the Cross.”  Below are some sample possibilities:

• Malcolm X;
• the nation of Islam movement;
• the odd and ironic agreement between Malcolm X and an official of the American Nazi Party on the value of segregation;
• liberation movements in African countries seeking independence;
• the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP);
• the progress of public-school integration in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education;
• student sit-ins;
• American relations with Cuba;
• The television program in which both Baldwin and Malcolm X participated;
• Attempts to investigate Malcolm X in Congressional committees.

Since the essay was first published in 1962, please don’t make the mistake of investigating and writing about events that happened later (e.g. the assassination of President Kennedy).  Remember to take a look at the “Chronology” provided on pages 845-55 of the Collected Essays.

Audience:  You should direct the content and ideas of your paper—your discoveries and analyses—to your classmates, hoping to show them something new, interesting, and valuable.  Since “Down at the Cross” is a long essay, be sure to provide a context for the passages and ideas you quote, paraphrase, and summarize; otherwise, your readers may not follow you.  Your language—formal without being stuffy, prissy, or wordy—should show me you’re thinking carefully about your language as you draft, revise, and proofread.

About the Research:  As in the first Group Research Project, I’d like you to concentrate on original sources of the time.  In other words, look for newspaper and magazine coverage of your topic.  An important tip: read this coverage skeptically, looking for disagreements and difference in emphasis and interpretation among sources, and ask yourself whether and how these sources differ from Baldwin’s version of events.  In addition, I’d like you to find and use one contemporary source—a recent article, essay, or book chapter that looks back on the events of 1962 and tries to make sense of them.  We will work on finding such sources in class.

Length:  Your revised paper should be about 5 pages (1750 words) long.  I will not penalize papers longer than 5 pages.  Drafts should be at least 4 pages long.

Format:  MLA, as before.  Be sure to cite all sources properly, using a Works Cited page and appropriate in-text citation.