Eugene Patterson- Civil Rights

Jennifer M. Callahan
Instructor Snyder
English 1003-05
31 May 2009

On kinsfolk 16, 1963 The Atlanta Constitution published an editorial piece compose by Eugene Patterson. This was just champion of the 3,200 columns Patterson had written for the paper. The piece was titled A Flower for the Graves, about the infamous bombing of a Birmingham church in which four children were killed. As a exsanguinous southerner himself, Eugene Patterson wrote to his fellow white southerners daily, giving them guidance when guidance was needed. Patterson was venturesome for writing such a column in a time when, as a white man, going against Jim Crowe meant that he was part of the minority.
In A Flower for the Graves, Patterson uses narrative small-arm making an argument. In the first paragraph, he tells a tale of a negro mother weeping in the bridle-path on a Sunday morning in breast of a Baptist Church in Birmingham. In her hand she held a habilitate, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child. This allows the reader to picture and to sympathise with that mother. The emotional appeal of this opening helps Patterson to get the audiences attention. The white southerners, with children, could then feel the pain of this woman, regardless of her color.




At the end of the first paragraph he places himself and anyone reading in the news report when he says we hold that shoe with her. Every one of us in the white south holds that small shoe in his hand. The one bloody shoe, emphasized by Patterson gives the story an ironic yet devastating feeling, which also adds to the emotional appeal. This miserable mother probably thought she was doing something good by direct her child to church rather than sending him or her out-of-door to play in the violence unfolding in the streets.
By putting the shoe in every white southerners hand, Patterson is evoking shame and blame on them rather than the sick criminals who bombed the church. slice reading, you wonder where Patterson is going with his column....If you want to get a salutary essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



If you want to get a full essay, wisit our page: write my essay .