COMPARISON/CONTRAST ESSAY ASSIGNMENT Malcom X and John Lewis Directions: Using the Similarities & Differences chart (or making your own), your written responses to study questions, class notes, biographies, the readings themselves, and any speech clips or interviews you have seen or listened to, write an essay comparing and contrasting Malcolm X and John Lewis. Use the Sandwich Paragraph for your body paragraphs. You should pick and choose what you think are the most important details for each sandwich paragraph. If you use specific words or sentences from the texts, please be sure to use quotation marks, and cite the source, page and paragraph (or panel) numbers (58/3 for instance), or the speech clips by name. If you use information from the podcast, cite the transсrіpt page numbers. Organize your essay as below. As you think about this paper you may want to insert an additional area of comparison and contrast in the Similarities & Differences chart. Follow your intuition. BUT each paragraph you write should focus on either a major similarity between them, or a major difference, using evidence from our sources. Paragraph One: Introduction – DO THIS LAST! Introduce the two figures you are about to write about. Write general statements about how their personal backgrounds and the settings (time and place) were similar and different. Paragraph Two QUESTION How did Jim Crow impact them? Were their individual experiences under Jim Crow more similar than different, or more different than similar? Why do you say so? Find evidence about their youth, including their families, the impact Jim Crow had on each in their early years, and/or how Jim Crow impacted their educational opportunities. Paragraph Three QUESTION How did their educational achievements affect each of them? Were the results of their educational experience more different than similar, or more similar than different? Find evidence about how education shaped or changed how they saw themselves. Can you point to one moment in each text where they experienced a change in their sense of self or sense of direction? What new sense of self did they develop? Paragraph Four QUESTION How did their education influence Malcolm X and John Lewis to become activists? How was their approach to activism and Civil Rights similar? Different? How or using what methods did they influence the people around them? Compare and contrast these two in relation to their choices as activists. Paragraph Five: Conclusion (Keep this to 6-10 sentences max) QUESTION Based on what you have written, do you think these two men were more similar than they were different? Or more different than they were similar? Make a statement and summarize the evidence you have presented in paragraphs 2, 3, &4 with an eye to answering the question. Then go back and write/re-write your Introduction to connect with this Conclusion (see p.4). Change the Introduction as needed. Paragraph Six: Your Connection. Compare and contrast these two people with yourself. How do you connect with these writers’ experiences around education? Which of their life experiences connect more closely to your own? With which of them do you share attitudes and understandings about the power of education, the structures of power, or the approach to activism? Which of them do you find most inspiring – or most interesting – and why? i have all the documents
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