Jim Crow Comparison Essay Lesson 1: Warmth of Other Suns and Signal Phrases

Jim Crow 1.0 and 2.0 First Lesson

 

Teaching Jim Crow Is the Counter Response to the American Myth of Disneyland Innocence

When I grew up and went to public schools in the 1960s and 1970s, I received what you might call the American Mytho of Disneyland Innocence. 

In this Innocence Narrative, slavery was given a tiny paragraph in the history textbook and treated like a hiccup in the narrative. Once the hiccup ended, America was back on track with Disneyland innocence. Equality, freedom, and justice defined the American scene for all Americans. 

 

This same Innocence narrative informed the history of the pilgrims and the American settlers.

Christopher Colombus was portrayed as a hero who “discovered” America and was worthy of our admiration. The atrocities he committed against indigenous peoples, including severing the limbs of children, were never addressed because these atrocities would violate the myth of American innocence.

Likewise, the pilgrims and settlers were portrayed as benign travelers who shared cultural good with the native Americans and celebrated a Kumbaya moment. 

As a ten-year-old child in the fifth grade, I assumed the Myth of Innocence to be true. 

Then something happened that pulled the curtains apart and revealed the real America, an America that did not resemble the Disneyland innocence inculcated into me since my days in kindergarten.

As a fifth-grader, I was obsessed with baseball, and I read every baseball biography I could get my hands on. I’d either find baseball player biographies at the library or buy them from Scholastic Books, a mail-order program offered at my public schools. 

A lot of the biographies I read were about African American baseball players, many who played Minor and Major League baseball in the Jim Crow South during the 1950s. Here is what I learned:

 

• Henry Aaron’s wife and other black players’ wives could not sit in the bleachers with the white baseball players’ wives. She had to sit isolated in a section for people of color. 
• Black players could not eat in restaurants with the white players.
• Often, white players would buy food from the restaurant, scurry out of a back door and chow their grub in a back alley inside a car.
• Black players could not ride the trains with the white players.
• Black players could not sleep in the same hotels as white players.
• Black players had to be five times better than white players to get a full-time position. 
• Great black players were resented by white players and white fans because their greatness violated the Myth of White Supremacy. 

As I read about these Jim Crow humiliations, it occurred to me that what my public school was teaching me about America as a place of Disneyland Innocence was a lie. 

As I read about these Jim Crow humiliations, it occurred to me that white supremacy was used against other people of color, including Asians. 

I started thinking of my favorite TV show at the time, Kung Fu, starring David Carradine who played Caine, a Shaolin monk who travels through America’s Wild West in search of his half-brother, and along the way, he was subjected to racist taunts and violence. After reading about the black baseball players being humiliated by Jim Crow, I looked at Cain’s struggles from a broader perspective. 

White supremacy was a systemic disease brought on by deliberate doctrine. Only later would I learn that this odious doctrine was largely created by the founder of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, who as I write this, is venerated as a hero by having over 200 public schools in the South named after him.  

I was only ten years old. I was no expert on human relations, no psychologist, no professor, but I knew what I was reading about was my heroes being abused, and this abuse was a refutation of the lie of American Innocence. Several thoughts swirled in my mind:

 

• What the African American players were facing was abuse: mental and physical abuse and this abuse did not square with the America my school was teaching me about. 
• Their abuse was sanctioned and supported by the southern state governments in policies that were made by legal decree, a contradiction of a country that was supposed to be fair, just, and equal.
• The white people committing the abuses were exceedingly pleased with themselves and committed their acts of degradation with absolutely no shame or moral compunction. This told me their behavior had been normalized by some code that needed to be revealed, a code that I would later learn was the code of Jim Crow. 
• My schools withheld this information from me and were complicit in propagating the lie of American innocence and therefore my schools could not be trusted. 
• Either the public school system committed the lie of Innocence through incompetence or deliberate deceit, but it did not matter: Their lie made them worthy of contempt. 
• As a ten-year-old boy, I learned I was going to have to read on my own if I were going to learn the truth about various subjects, not the least of which was America’s original sin of slavery and Jim Crow. 
• I often wondered that if I did not love baseball so much and love Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Lou Brock, Larry Doby, Curt Flood, and others, I may have never had such a personal experience with Jim Crow, and I may have grown up brainwashed by the Disneyland of Innocence. 

 

To this day, I teach Jim Crow because I don’t trust institutions that sweep the truth under the carpet. 

To this day, I teach a unit on Jim Crow in my English 1A class. 

Overview

Outline for Essay 2, a Contrast-Comparison of Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0

Paragraph 1: Write an extended definition of Jim Crow 1.0 (Building Block #1)

Paragraph 2: Write an extended definition of Jim Crow 2.0

Paragraph 3: Write a thesis that presents a contrast and comparison of Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0.

Paragraphs 4-6: Show similarities between 1.0 and 2.0

Paragraphs 7-9: Show key differences between 1.0 and 2.0

Conclusion: a dramatic restatement of your thesis

Works Cited with 4 sources

 

Essay #2 (Essay worth 200 points): Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0

Due as an upload on April 6.

The Assignment:

In a 1,200-1,500-word essay that adheres to current MLA format, provides a minimum of 4 sources for your Works Cited page, and presents either a block-paragraph or point-by-point paragraph comparison design, develop a thesis that connects Dr. David Pilgrim’s video presentation of the Dr. David Pilgrim’s video “The New Jim Crow Museum” as an explanation of “Jim Crow 1.0” to Childish Gambino’s video “This Is America” as a gut-wrenching picture of “Jim Crow 2.0” today. 

Your essay should explore the following: What are the parallels between Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0? What new mutations do we see in Jim Crow 2.0? How has Jim Crow evolved to be in its current state that is in many ways less flagrant yet more insidious than Jim Crow 1.0? 

The Purpose:

In terms of content, I want you to understand the meaning of Jim Crow as a pernicious, bald-faced racist ideology that persisted in many parts of the country after the Civil War in which recalcitrant or unrepentant racists resented the downfall of the slave plantation economy and wished to resurrect oppression of African-Americans in any way they could. Additionally, I want you to see how Jim Crow morphed after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s into a more sneaky beast, revealing itself through media stereotypes, mass incarceration, and normalized violence against African-Americans, as we see in Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” By seeing how Jim Crow exists today, we can fight against its normalization and resist it becoming part of the mind-numbing “ambiance” of American society. 

In terms of writing skills, I want you to see how a comparison design, either block method or point-by-point, gives more depth, power, and detail to an important term such as Jim Crow.

For example, author Michelle Alexander in her magisterial nonfiction work The New Jim Crow, a book that focuses mainly on mass incarceration, she devotes a lot of time in her book to the evolution of “The Old Jim Crow” with “The New Jim Crow.”

Moreover, a comparison expository design is an effective way to roadmap and organize your essay. We use comparisons all the time to help us weigh the value of similar things or to understand how something evolves such as the early stages of Facebook, Twitter, or Netflix with their current state in order to understand what kind of trade-offs these changes make. 

The Method 

Your First Paragraph

In your introductory paragraph define Jim Crow as you see this term presented in David Pilgrim’s video “The New Jim Crow Museum.” Give a one-sentence definition of Jim Crow and expound on your definition by giving distinguishing characteristics an example from the video.

Remember that when you provide an extended definition, you provide three things:

One: single-sentence definition of the term you’re defining

Two: the class that the term belongs to

Three: the term’s distinguishing characteristics.  

Example of an Extended Definition

Term: Metacognition

Single-sentence definition: Metacognition is a form of self-analysis in which individuals identify undesirable thought and behavior habits, map alternative courses to their self-destructive habits, and put in safeguards to prevent repeating old mistakes of thinking. 

The Class: Form of self-analysis

Distinguishing Characteristics: individuals with metacognition do the following:

One, identify undesirable thought and behavior habits

Two, map alternative courses to their self-destructive habits

Three, put in safeguards to prevent repeating old mistakes of thinking.

Use Extended Definition for Jim Crow in Paragraph 1

By doing this, you are writing an extended definition to help the reader understand Jim Crow. You’d be surprised how many people have no idea or at best a vague idea of what Jim Crow is. 

Some of you may be asking, what class does Jim Crow belong to?

While there is no single right answer, here some suggestions:

• Racism
• Oppression
• Systemic Inequality 
• Systemic Racism
• Segregation

Helping your reader have a clear grasp of a central term in your essay makes your writing more clear and effective. The Purdue Writing Lab has an effective description of extended definitions with the link here. 

So to recap, in Paragraph 1 you would summarize the YouTube video presentation of David Pilgrim’s “The New Jim Crow Museum” by giving the reader an extended definition of Jim Crow.

You might focus on the history of Jim Crow as a misinformation campaign to saturate minds with racist ideas that dehumanized black Americans in the service of promoting the false religion of white superiority. You might want to call this original Jim Crow the first incarnation: “Jim Crow 1.0” because in the second paragraph you’re going to contrast Jim Crow 1.0 with today’s Jim Crow, what might be called “Jim Crow 2.0.”

Importance of Signal Phrases in Your Introductory Paragraph

It is important that you show your ability to summarize, paraphrase, and quote Dr. Pilgrim’s points by using signal phrases, which are short phrases you use to introduce quoted, paraphrased, or summarized content. Here are 6 important components to consider when writing signal phrases:

Review Complete 6 Components of Signal Phrases

1. Vary your transitions so you're not only using "say" and "write."
2. Transition from your own writing to quoted or paraphrased material. 
3. Vary your location of the signal phrase, beginning, middle, or end.
4. Provide credentials of the person being cited in your signal phrase.
5. Provide correct in-text citations for MLA format, as provided by Purdue Owl. 
6. Return to what you just cited and analyze its significance to your argument. 

For a fuller explanation of signal phrases, I would refer to my Breakthrough Writer blog post, “Mastering the 6 Components of Signal Phrases.”

 

In Paragraph 2 you want to transition to Childish Gambino's “This Is America” video by summarizing the distinguishing characteristics of Jim Crow that are presented in the video.

In paragraph 3, you want to create a comparison thesis that shows the similarities of Jim Crow 1.0 in the Jim Crow Museum and Jim Crow 2.0 in the Childish Gambino video. 

Here are some template sentence examples of transitioning from the first paragraph to the second paragraph:

While Jim Crow 1.0 consisted of _________, ___________, and __________, we see in “This Is America” that Jim Crow 2.0 has morphed into a new oppression characterized by __________, _____________, and _________________. 

With similar characteristics of Jim Crow 1.0 illustrated in “This Is America,” Childish Gambino also shows Jim Crow’s new manifestations, which include _______________, _________________, and _________________. 

What’s important is that you provide a clear transition between the first and second paragraphs. The Purdue Writing Lab has a good explanation of these paragraph transitions, which you can find on this link.  

Make Paragraph 3 Your Thesis Paragraph

You might find it easier to make Paragraph 3 your lone thesis paragraph in which you develop a thesis that will highlight the parallels between Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0.

Sample Comparison Thesis Templates

While Jim Crow 1.0 emphasized __________, __________, __________, Jim Crow 2.0 became a different beast in that it focused on _______________, _______________, and _________________.

While there were some key differences between Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0, especially in that 2.0 emphasized __________ and __________, they have key similarities, which include ________________, ___________________, __________________, and ________________________.   

Deciding on a Structure After Your Thesis Paragraph:

Before you go on, decide on a comparison structure, either block method in which you spend the first half of your body paragraphs explaining Jim Crow 1.0. Then in the second half you explain the characteristics of Jim Crow 2.0. On the other hand, you may want to use a point-by-point in which you show the parallels between Jim Crow 1.0 and 2.0 point by point. There is an excellent site explaining the correct use of block and point-by-point method by Michelle Bickwell of the MJC Writing Lab. 

Once you decide on what kind of comparison to write, you might want to focus on these parallels between the Jim Crow Museum and “This Is America”:

We see normalized violence against the African-American community as seen in both videos.

We see White America consuming black culture for entertainment (depending on all variations of minstrel stereotypes) while turning their back on social injustice as seen in both videos.

We see White America using guns as a form of intimidation and oppression against the African-American community as seen in both videos.

We see White America exploiting African-Americans as a form of entertainment in the form of violence as seen in both videos . 

We see black America wearing a dual mask to survive in America: a happy entertainment face on one hand and the horror of violence and being gaslighted every day on the other. 

If you want, you can have a contrast paragraph: Childish Gambino addresses the use of American consumerism a technology ("This is a celly" and the worship of bling) as a distraction for all Americans, regardless of skin color, from racism, violence, and white-ethnic fascism, which is spreading throughout America and the world. 

Your conclusion should be a powerful restatement of your thesis designed to achieve pathos or emotional impact. For a further discussion on using pathos for more effective writing, consult Purdue OWL University article “Aristotle’s Rhetorical Situation.”

After your conclusion, you will have a separate page for Works Cited using current MLA format as explained in this these videos:

Purdue OWL video for Word 

Purdue OWL video for Google Docs

Title for Your Essay

Make sure your essay has a strong title. Avoid a generic title like “Jim Crow” or “Essay 3.” Try to have a catchy title that is relevant to your focus. 

Here is a somewhat dry academic title: “The Meaning of Jim Crow Throughout American History.”

Here is a more impressive title: “Let Us Not Sweep Jim Crow Under the Rug.”

Time Needed for the Assignment

Of course, everyone is different, but estimating the time based on the assigned videos, supplementary material, note taking, first draft of a 1,500 word essay of about 8-10 paragraphs, making a Works Cited page, and then rewriting your draft for correct grammar, spelling, and format, I would say that over the course of 4 weeks you could very well spend 16 hours, or 4 hours a week, to get this essay to a polished state that is ready to upload. 

Your main sources are the following:

 

The New Jim Crow Museum

 

This Is America

 

Suggested Supplementary Material

For the “This Is America” video, you may consult the following:

 

Insider’s content:

Hidden Meanings Behind Childish Gambino’s ‘This Is America’ Explained

Inside Edition’s content:

The Hidden Meanings Behind Childish Gambino’s ‘This Is America’ Video” (with Dr. Lori Brooks

PBS Newshour's content:

 

The stark, chaotic power of Donald Glover’s ‘This Is America

 

Make Stuff’s content:

 

This Is America: Childish Gambino’s Genius Absurdity

 

BucketHeadNation’s content:

 

Dad Reacts to Childish Gambino--This Is America

 

Regarding the Jim Crow Museum, I recommend the following:

 

David Pilgrim’s Ted Talk video:

 

My Racial Journey: Using Hateful Items as Teaching Tools

 

David Pilgrim's autobiographical online essay, “The Garbage Man: Why I Collect Racist Objects.”

Suggested Design and Format Resources:

For comparison essay structure, I recommend the following:

Free English video:

Point-by-Point vs Block-Style Essay 

For MLA format, I recommend the following:

Jason Morgan’s video:

 

Formatting a paper in MLA style 

How Points Are Earned on This Assignment

Essay 3 has a maximum 200 points. You earn points through the following:

 

1. Meaningful thesis statement that generates compelling body paragraphs of a thesis or claim and a strong exposition driven by a distinct writing voice (authorial presence). This thesis produces meaningful content and a powerful writing voice that passes the “So what?” question, meaning that the writing matters, is significant, and elevates the reader to a higher understanding about an urgent topic. 80 points maximum.
2. Clear organizational design, also called an expository mode, that has a logical sequence and follows a clear comparison design. 40 points.
3. The use of signal phrases and correct MLA in-text citations whenever you cite paraphrased, summarized, or quoted material. 30 points.
4. The essay has sound sentence mechanics, sentence variety, correct spelling, and correct grammar usage suitable for college-level writing. The most common errors students make are comma splices and sentence fragments. 30 points.
5. The essay conforms to updated MLA format for pagination, spacing,  and Works Cited page. 20 points.

 

Essay Checklist to Maximize Your Success

1. Do you have a meaningful thesis statement that generates compelling body paragraphs of an argumentative thesis or claim and a strong exposition driven by a distinct writing voice (authorial presence).
2. Does your essay have a clear organization design that logically drives your exposition?
3. Does your essay correctly use signal phrases and correct in-text citations?
4. If your essay is a counterargument, do you have an adequate counterargument-rebuttal section to show you have addressed opposing views?
5. Does your essay have a Works Cited page with a minimum of 4 sources for the first three essays and minimum of 5 sources for your fourth essay? Do these citations satisfy the requirements of authorship credit so that you are staying clear of plagiarism?
6. Are your sources credible, that is to say do they come from authors who have peer credibility as opposed to authors with a sneaky, biased, or strident agenda?
7. If your authors are biased, did you disclose that bias in your essay?
8. Is your essay free of frequent grammar and sentence mechanic errors, especially comma splices and sentence fragments?
9. Does your essay conform to the current MLA format? 
10. Does your essay have a distinctive title that alerts your readers to your tone and main focus? 
11. Does your essay have college-level paragraph transitions to make your essay flow and enhance its clarity? 
12. Do you have a conclusion paragraph that contributes to the expressiveness and/or persuasiveness of your essay?

Submission Method

Your essay should be turned in as an upload to Canvas.

 

What Is Jim Crow 1.0?

Jim Crow was born of white southern resentment to losing the Civil War, losing slavery, and being told by the northerners that their way of life was evil. 

Full of resentment, white southerners scapegoated black people by crushing them with a series of cruel and often ridiculous laws that were enforced by violence. These oppressive laws in the words of Isabel Wilkerson constituted a “feudal caste system” with the privileged and servant classes. 

Jim Crow was a sneaky way white southerners brought back slavery “off the books” by making black people subject to violence and exploitation with no protection from the law. In other words, slavery was illegal but Jim Crow brought it back under another name. 

 

In other words, the Civil War did not end slavery; it merely shifted slavery into another form called Jim Crow. This shift is chronicled in Douglas A. Blackman’s book Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. 

 

Perhaps the best book ever written about Jim Crow from the point of view of African Americans is Isabel Wilkerson’s award-winning The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration in which six million African Americans fled the south to escape Jim Crow.

Wilkerson interviewed over 1,000 black Americans who lived in the terror of Jim Crow and fled for their lives to the Northern and Western states between 1915 and 1970. 

Over six decades, six million African Americans fled the Jim Crow south not knowing what was in store for them. By the end of the Great Migration, almost half of all the black Americans in the south were gone. They had no job, no place to live, no assurance of the means to survive, but they went anyway.

That should tell us just how bad Jim Crow was. “I don’t know what’s in store for me, but I’m getting the hell out.” Jim Crow was a 24/7 Torture Chamber. 

 

All they knew was one thing: Whatever they faced, it couldn’t be worse than living in the Jim Crow states. 

 

Characteristics of Jim Crow

One. Jim Crow didn’t allow black people to flourish.

In 1953, a black doctor Robert Joseph Pershing Foster got out of Monroe, Louisiana, and headed for California. Why? Because even though he was qualified in the highest medical procedures, the whites wouldn’t let him practice surgery. 

In the Jim Crow south, whites didn’t like to grant any rights to blacks that suggested that blacks were equal to them. Allowing a black man to practice surgery was just too much for the whites to bear. The mere suggestion that blacks were talented and intelligent was a scandal to white southerners and a threat to their carefully curated racist paradigm, so Dr. Foster got in his car and headed for California. 

Two. Jim Crow was a living hell.

Jim Crow was so hellish that it created The Great Migration, the greatest migration ever recorded in America, a migration that far exceeded the California Gold Rush of the 1850s, and yet the Great Migration, Isabel Wilkonson points out, is underreported. Not much is known about a migration that completely changed America, sending black people to urban cities in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and other major cities. 

 

Three. Jim Crow was a danger to black lives.

Isabel Wilkinson makes an astute observation: A lot of black people that we know about would not have existed except that their parents got out of the deadly Jim Crow south. She points out that James Baldwin, Michelle Obama, Miles Davis, Toni Morrison, Spike Lee, and Denzel Washington were “all products of the Great Migration” and might not exist but for the fact that their parents fled for their lives. 

 

Four. Jim Crow celebrated the myth of The Lost Cause.

The Lost Cause is a re-imagining of slavery as “a good thing” in which slave owners and slaves were happy in a bucolic paradise where whites and blacks “knew their place” and were blessed by God. Such heinous chicanery was embraced by the United Daughters of the Confederacy who published propaganda books to brainwash children in the Jim Crow public schools. 

The myth of the Lost Cause is so strong that to this day the great military heroes of the North who brought an end to slavery--Ulysses Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, George Henry Thoms, David Farragut are to this day hated and reviled in the south. 

 

Five. Jim Crow is a stain on American History that America has tried to sweep under the carpet.

Wilkinson understood that you couldn’t really understand the hell of Jim Crow unless you saw how black people reacted to it: Fleeing for their lives in a mass migration. She was astonished that before her book virtually nothing was written about the mass escape from Jim Crow. It’s as if historians are too ashamed of this chapter or not interested in it. Wilkinson has remedied that by writing a 550-page masterpiece about the subject. 

Six. Jim Crow’s tentacles reached into the smallest areas of black lives to create daily humiliations. Here are some:

• Black children had to learn in separate schoolhouses, always rundown with no resources.
• Black people had to sit in filthy waiting rooms at doctors’ offices while whites enjoyed clean waiting rooms.
• When black people walked opposite direction a white person on the sidewalk, the black people had to step off the sidewalk and walk on the curb.
• Black people had to give all the good parking spaces to white people. Whites parked close to stores. Blacks parked far away.
• No matter how slowly a white driver was going in a car, a black driver was never allowed to pass the white person’s car. 
• When a white person was at fault for a car accident involving a black driver, the fault always was assigned to the black driver. “You’re black so it’s your fault.”
• Blacks and whites couldn’t play chess or checkers together because such a game suggested they were equal.

 

Seven. Jim Crow violated the Consitution.

As Wilkinson writes: “The South began acting in outright defiance of the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868, which granted the right to due process and equal protection to anyone born in the United States and it ignored the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870, which guaranteed all men the right to vote” (38). 

The North tried to grant rights to blacks in the south, but by the mid-1870s, Wilkinson observes, the North bailed on the south and stopped their oversight. 

Eight. Hostility towards blacks in the South was so acute that white politicians who fomented racism against blacks enjoyed popularity, which they leveraged for self-gain. 

When political leaders spoke of black people deserving violence, the white masses saw this as “open season” to commit any violence they wanted against blacks with impunity.

Nine. Lynchings of black people became an epidemic that was normalized and glorified by white southerners. 

In one of the most painful chapters to read in Wilkinson’s book, we read that a black man who was merely accused of looking at a white woman would be lynched. Petty crimes were always worthy of a lynching. 

These lynchings, which included beatings, hangings, and being burned alive, were watched by “festive crowds” who brought their children and let their toddlers sit on their shoulders to enjoy the spectacle. 

I’m reading this, and I’m thinking I’d be part of the Great Migration myself. I would be urgent to leave the south. 

How frequent were these lynchings?

Wilkinson writes: “Across the South, someone was hanged or burned alive every four days from 1889 to 1929, according to the 1933 book The Tragedy of Lynching.”

According to Dr. David Pilgrim, there were 4,730 lynchings that we know about but no doubt many more. 

Objectives of this lesson:

1. Integrate credible sources in your writing.
2. Avoid plagiarism. 
3. Make smooth transitions from your own writing to quoted, paraphrased, summarized, and quoted content. 
4. Use the same templates that professional writers use to make your essays more impressive and college-level.
5.  Apply what your signal phrase knowledge to your first building-block assignment, the first paragraph of your First Essay assignment. 

Learning Outcomes of Mastering the 6 Components of Signal Phrases

1. Vary your signal phrases so you're not only using "say" and "write."
2. Transition from your own writing to quoted or paraphrased material. 
3. Vary your location of the signal phrase, beginning, middle, or end.
4. Provide credentials of the person being cited in your signal phrase.
5. Return to what you just cited and analyze its significance to your argument.
6. Provide correct in-text citations for MLA format, as provided by Purdue Owl. Cite everything that you summarize, paraphrase, or quote. 

The Importance of Citing Your Sources in the Text of Your Essay

When we write essays for college instructors, we find that we are usually using text from credible sources to support our arguments, opinions, and analyses. But this is easier said than done. Students tell me integrating signal phrases and in-text citations is one of the most challenging requirements of a writing class. 

How are signal phrases like making a lane change?

Signal phrases are transitions that let you know you are about to “switch lanes” by turning from your own writing to another lane of someone else’s writing by summarizing, paraphrasing, or directly quoting their content. 

Having a list of signal phrases handy is helpful. The Claude J. Clark Learning Center has a PDF of common signal phrases. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with these. 

Common Signal Phrases (underlined):

Author Barry Schwartz makes the claim that . . .

Author Barry Schwartz observes the following:

Futurist and best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari contends that . . .

As best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari opines: 

Using the above and other signal phrases helps you avoid plagiarism, the stealing of others' content.

We use signal phrases to make a smooth transition

We use signal phrases to signal to the reader that we are going to cite research material in the form of direct quotes, paraphrase or summary.

You can also call a signal phrase a lead-in because it leads in the quotation or paraphrase. 

Grammarian Diana Hacker writes that signal phrases make smooth transitions from your own writing voice to the quoted material without making the reader feel a "jolt."

Signal Phrases Provide Context

Signal phrases not only establish authority and credibility. They provide context or explain why you're using the sourced material.

Here you are using a signal phrase to let the reader know you are setting up a counterargument paragraph:

As a counterpoint to Yuval Noah Harari's contention that Foragers lived superior lives to Farmers, we read in culture critic Will Day Brosnan: "Elsewhere, I wondered the extent to which Harari was projecting an idealistic (even Rousseauian) vision of a noble savage on pre-state peoples. . . ."

Here you are using a signal phrase to show that the author agrees with your point:

Concurring with my assertion that Harari is misguided in his Noble Savage mythology, we read in culture critic Will Day Brosnan: "Elsewhere, I wondered the extent to which Harari was projecting an idealistic (even Rousseauian) vision of a noble savage on pre-state peoples. . .."

Here you are using signal phrase to show you are giving additional support for your argument:

Further supporting my contention that not all calories are equal, we find in science writer Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories that there are statistics that show . . ."

Mastering Signal Phrases Part 2 

In Mastering Signal Phrases Part 2, we will cover a variety of signal phrases as templates to give you powerful sentence structures that will make your essays more sophisticated and professional and give more detailed instruction on following your signal phrases with in-text citations. 

 

Use signal phrases to explain your purpose for using them 

You will use signal phrases for supporting your argument mostly, but you may also want to show an opponent’s view. Notice how the templates below have signal phrases that show support or refutation of the author. 

Examples of Signal Phrase Templates

• As a counterpoint to X, 
• As a counterargument to my claim that X, 
• Giving support to my rebuttal that Writer A makes an erroneous contention, Writer B observes that . . .
• Concurring with my assertion that X, 
• Further supporting my contention that X, 
• Writer X chronicles in her book. . . . As she observes: 

Use the above templates and don't worry: you're not committing plagiarism.

Use Signal Phrases to Show Author’s Credentials

We often include credentials with the signal phrase to give more credibility for our sourced material. 

Examples

The acclaimed best-selling writer, history professor, and futurist Yuval Noah Harari excoriates the Agricultural Revolution as "the greatest crime against humanity." 

Lamenting that his students don't enjoy his music playlist in the writing lab, college English instructor Jeff McMahon observes in his blog Obsession Matters: "Two-thirds of my students in writing lab don't hear my chill playlist over classroom speakers because they are hermetically sealed in their private earbud universe content to be masters of their own musical domain."

You don't have to put the signal phrase at the beginning. You can put it at the end:

"The Agricultural Revolution is the greatest crime against humanity," claims celebrated author and futurist Yuval Noah Harari. 

You can also put the signal phrase in the middle of a sentence:

Racism, sexism, worker exploitation, and pestilence afflicted the human race during the Agricultural Revolution, claims celebrated futurist Yuval Noah Harari, who goes on to make the bold claim that "the Agricultural Revolution was the greatest crime perpetrated against humanity." 

"Covid-19 fears make me recall Don Delillo's novel White Noise," writes Jeff McMahon in his blog Obsession Matters, " especially the Airborne Toxic Event chapter in which pestilence affords us a rehearsal for our own mortality." 

Varying placement and types of signal phrases helps you avoid monotony, makes you a more impressive writer, and gives you more ethos. 

Partial List of Signal Phrases

acknowledges  adds admits affirms agrees answers argues asserts claims comments concedes confirms contends counters counterattacks declares defines denies disputes echoes endorses estimates finds grants illustrates implies insists mentions notes observes predicts proposes reasons recognizes recommends refutes rejects reports responds reveals speculates states suggests surmises warns writes

Examples of  signal phrases:

We are fools if we think we were put on Planet Earth to be happy. That is the fantasy of a four-year-old child. Ironically, this infantile pursuit of happiness makes us unhappy. In the words of John Mellencamp: “I don’t think we’re put on this earth to live happy lives. I think we’re put here to challenge ourselves physically, emotionally, intellectually.”

The idea of a meritocracy is that a healthy society allows people with merits, regardless of their economic privilege, to rise to the top of the power hierarchy. However, such a meritocracy does not exist as privilege, not merit, is the dominant force of acquiring power. As we read in Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits' essay "How Life Became an Endless Terrible Competition": "Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent. Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich applicants corrupt advantages. But the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000. Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s median. Meanwhile, the top banks and law firms, along with other high-paying employers, recruit almost exclusively from a few elite colleges."

Variation of the above:

The idea of a meritocracy is that a healthy society allows people with merits, regardless of their economic privilege, to rise to the top of the power hierarchy. However, such a meritocracy does not exist as privilege, not merit, is the dominant force of acquiring power. According to Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits in his essay "How Life Became an Endless Terrible Competition": "Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent. Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich applicants corrupt advantages. But the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000. Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s median. Meanwhile, the top banks and law firms, along with other high-paying employers, recruit almost exclusively from a few elite colleges."

Importance of Explaining Transitions

After you present the signal phrase and quoted, summarized, or paraphrased material, what do you write?

You explain what you just cited.

To do so, you need a toolbox of transitions:

• Writer X is essentially saying that 
• In other words, X is arguing that
• By using these statistics, X is making the point that 
• X is trying to make the point that 
• X makes the cogent observation that 
• X is essentially rebutting the philosophical movement that embraces the position that 
• X's main point is that
• The essence of X's claim is that 

Here is a good college link for in-text citations.

Here is a good Purdue Owl link for in-text citations. 

Review 6 Components of Mastering Signal Phrases

1. Vary your transitions so you're not only using "say" and "write."
2. Transition from your own writing to quoted or paraphrased material. 
3. Vary your location of the signal phrase, beginning, middle, or end.
4. Provide credentials of the person being cited in your signal phrase.
5. Provide correct in-text citations for MLA format, as provided by Purdue Owl. 
6. Return to what you just cited and analyze its significance to your argument. 

Partial List of Signal Phrases