Journalism / MLK Revolution

I like your piece, but there are a few problems.

I think your dates are wrong. Several sources state King was shot on April 4, 1968, including wikipedia.

There are parts of this piece that are on the passive side or are too wordy, including your opening sentence. “April 23, 1968, may have seemed like another beautiful Tennessee morning but that was proven false when a bullet exploded from the chamber of James Earl Ray’s rifle.” It could be changed to (with the right date) “April 4, 1968 started as any other beautiful Tennessee morning, but it changed with a shot from James Earl Ray’s rifle.”

There are several places where extra words can be removed or can be rewritten to make the sentence a little more active.

You don’t need the extra periods before and after King’s quote in your second paragraph.

Proper style is to put Jr. instead of Junior, too.

Also, it’s important in an opinion piece to get your opinion in the opening lines. I don’t know what your assignment was, so I can’t say what it should be here. I like this, but it needs to be more focused, including with the above changes.

Good luck with working on this.

I think we’re part of the way there, but  there is still inequality amoung people, and unfortunantly, I think that’s the way it will always be, unless every person on this earth opens their hearts. I liked this little diddy.

Since this is an essay, format and content are really important. The key to essays is that they have to say something. What is this essay trying to state? You recount what happened MLK, but what are you trying to say? Is it that we will always remember him, or is the statement of what have we done? You need a much clearer topic sentence that what you have. But you do have excellent flow of words, and I think if it was written at midnight it would better laid out.

It sounded like you might have copy and pasted some of it my advice to you is to show more of your self in your words and make it sound like you know what you are talking about because to me it sounds like you are just stating facts that everyone already know you need to go into reshearch and find out new things and write about it but other than that you did ok.

line 8: too
line 9: (will)still read (future tense)
line 10: to hear (not hearing)
line 12: Don’t start a sentence with “And”.
  You have made an excellent point with this thesis and it just needed a little polishing. Hope you made a good grade on this; you deserve it.

Dr. King was shot on April 4, 1968.  Aside from getting the date wrong, the whole thing reads like you wrote it at 12:00 the night before.  Which leads me to wonder why you would post it on here.  Aren’t we supposed to be sharing our best work, not our worst?

• add/view comments (1)

April 18, 2007

by JRQuick628

personal info reviewer stats

No. of Reviews	Overall Quality	Comment Followup
336	56.2% (48 votes)	28.0%

Age	Gender	Location	Last Login
18	M	Birmingham, AL	August 10

I really did write it 12 at night. And I put all my work on here even if I think it is bad or good so I can learn how to get better and stop from making so many mistakes in the future. Thanks for the review. JR.

You must login to the site or create an account in order to post a comment.

Considering this was a rush job done at midnight it’s actually pretty good, and although you don’t go into much detail I think you do just enough for this piece to come across as being quite emotive and thought provoking. My only complaint would be it’s brevity and lack of detail – the reader almost needs to be familliar with Martin Luther King to appreciate this I feel, and you’d do well to assume that your readers know nothing of him and then show them just why the man is such a legend.

I think the writing was well done. It reminded me of Bill Morgan’s writing while reading the biography he did of poety Allen Ginsberg, very much alike in style. Maybe because it’s almost a little biography, I don’t know, I’ve never attempted one. Anyway I think this little piece was well done and hope you expand on it.

Great use of metaphor with comparing James Earl Ray to a

“famous thief.”

In the final paragraph, where you write about Mr. King

leaving earth, you write that the day “stayed sunny,” it may

just be a personal thing on my part, but when I see

something as beautiful as a soul flying up to heaven, I

would expect it to be sunny, not dark.  Dark reminds me of

hell…

Structurally, this piece needs some work, I would suggest

reading it aloud and flushing out some of the extra

verbiage.  

Overall, you have a good start, although I think if you

were going to submit it somewhere, there would have to be

some more substance… not bad for a last minute essay.

Mr. & Mrs. King-don’t leave out mother/wife-also Mr. King Senior might have been a little better

To-too immense

Saved from decadence is nice

heart’s-hearts of every generation to come, yet

compared to hearing

awaiting awestruck crowd

tough enough-I would have went with steadfast and true enough

add tear gas

turned their hopes to the sky

prayers were denied-dreams were dashed/prayers went unanswered

arguably weakens your stance

fight the good fight

I would have squeezed a “We shall overcome” in there

Mimic the sun-nice

Stepping stone to evolve to a higher level/making the world a better place

Sit idle in indifference

Depreciate-decay/waste away

crisp clean writing-I only stated a few personal preferences and 2 type-O’s

you should strive to make it as strong as one of his speeches-not quite there yet