Monmouth College
Monmouth, Illinois
Instructions
 | Hand in a thoughtful and thorough essay with perfect grammar and beautiful prose in answer to one of the following questions. Your essay should be no shorter than five pages--and that is five pages to the bottom of page five. Your paper cannot earn an A if you cannot find five pages worth of interesting thoughts about this book. |
| This essay is due at the beginning of class on the date specified on the syllabus, Wednesday, 7 April 2010. |
| I encourage you to work with each other on this exam. Discuss the book among yourselves, and talk through your essays. |
| Do not plagiarize each other’s exams, however. If you do, both of you will be asked to rewrite your papers, and a penalty may be assessed. If you plagiarize from the book, you will also have to rewrite your paper, and a penalty may be assessed. |
| Direct quotes from the book must be inside quotation marks. The page number from whence the quote came must be noted in parenthesis after the period (that is, outside of the sentence, Chicago Manual Style, not MLA). The Scots Guide contains the College’s plagiarism policy, which I follow strictly. |
| If you have any questions at all, call me, e-mail me, or stop by my office. I will be happy to look at a draft of your essay. I’ll be happy to look at your thesis statement, or your outline, or your opening paragraph--whatever will help you to write a really excellent essay. |
| This is a 50 point exam. |
| NOTE: Emmitt Till and Mamie Till Mobley are famous Americans, and their story is told nearly everywhere. Do not attempt to cut corners on this exam. Your PRIMARY JOB is to convince me that you have read the book, engaged with her story, wrestled with the troubles and the mores of past eras, and thoughtfully, sympathetically and critically analyzed her story. I need to know that you have read the book. If I can't tell that--and not just from your including quotes--then your essay will not have succeeded. |
1. This year the theme for African-American History Month is "Heroes of the Movement." You are a journalist for the Chicago Defender. Write a compelling article that will keep your readers riveted. Tell the story of Mamie Till-Mobley as it centers around the murder of her son for the front page of the Defender for 1 February 2010. Begin with a good title. Base your article on Death of Innocence, Mrs. Mobley's memoir. Find the balance between the objective tone you should have as a reporter and the assignment you've been given--that is, to write about a "Hero of the Movement."
2. In the subtitle to her memoir, Mrs. Mobley called the murder of her son "the story of the hate crime that changed America." How? Write an essay that explains how Emmett Till's murder "changed America." In order to do this, you will have to demonstrate change over time. You must rely ONLY on her memoir. Do not use outside sources.
3. This autobiography tells, in part, the story of the relationship between a woman and her community--including her family. In this way, the book also serves as a document for women's historians. Women's historians seek to focus on women's experiences, including the connections they have with friends and family. Write an essay as a woman's historian that explains about the life of Mamie Till-Mobley. Consider the entire breadth of her life, and put at the forefront those things tha happened to her and those things she did (those choices she made) because of her gender. How did being female affect her? In essence, you are writing her biography, but NOT centering it around the murder of her son.