6 pages minimum (typed double-spaced; Times New Roman –12point font)
Your argument synthesis will address one or more of the following:
1. In her book The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson quotes Black Boy in which Richard Wright wrote, on arriving in the North: “I had fled one insecurity and embraced another” (p. 242). What unique challenges did black migrants face in the North, East and West? How did these challenges affect the lives of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster? How were Gladney, Starling and Foster’s experiences representative of the experiences of millions of African American migrants who left the South during the Great Migration? What was the significance of the Great Migration in America? What impact did it have on the North? What impact did it have on the South? Moving forward into the future, what do you expect to be the ultimate outcome of this great period in America’s history?
2. Near the end of the book, Wilkerson asks: “With all that grew out of the mass movement of people, did the Great Migration achieve the aim of those who willed it? Were the people who left the South—and their families—better off for having done so? Was the loss of what they left behind worth what confronted them in the anonymous cities they fled to?” (p. 528). How does Wilkerson answer these questions? How would you answer them based on what you read in the book and what you know of life for African Americans today? Why do you think as you do about the situation? Use evidence from the book and your knowledge of current events to support your argument. What is the continuing impact of the Great Migration on America in general; on relations between blacks and whites in America? Moving forward into the future, what do you expect to be the ultimate outcome of this great period in America’s history?
3. At a neighborhood watch meeting in Chicago’s South Shore, Ida Mae listens to a young state senator named Barack Obama. In what ways is Obama’s presidency an indirect result of the Great Migration? In answering this question your will need to discuss how the Great Migration not only affected the lives of Gladney, Starling, Foster, and other African Americans like them, but also how it changed the North. Do you think that Obama’s election as the first African American President of the United States indicates a complete change in America with regards to the black/white racial situation of the inequality? Why do you think so? Does inequality affect other racial groups in America? What more can be done or should be done? If there is more work to be done, should it be the work of the government or the work of individuals, or both? Explain with suggested courses of action. Don’t simply say things like, “We should all just get along.” Instead explain, how we may be able to learn to get along.
A well-structured argument synthesis has the following components:
A. Introduction:
a. gives background of the subject and lays out the issue to be discussed in essay
b. contains your thesis (assertion, opinion, stance, claim, proposition, etc. related to the issue. Your thesis in this case can come from an opinion related to questions posed for above writing options 1, 2, or 3.
B. Body offers your evidence to support or prove your thesis— This will come in the form of information from The Warmth of Other Suns addressing questions posed for above writing options 1,2, or 3. And it will come from your own knowledge of current events.
C. Conclusion—may contain your strongest proof for your thesis;
*can suggest a next step course of action related to the Great Migration and the current issues within the African American communities;
*can discuss the significance of the Great Migration in American history;
*can make inferences about the ultimate effects of the Great Migration;
*can address possible future effects of the urbanization of the majority of the African American population that resulted from the Great Migration;
*can address question–in what sense might Ida Mae Gladney’s life, and the lives of George Starling and Robert Foster as well, serve as models for how anyone can persevere and overcome tremendous difficulties?