Reader response essay

This is an assignment for my comp II class.
The purpose of a reader response is to gather your thoughts about what you have just read. This will help you move from an enjoyable ‘passive’ reading of a text to a more critical ‘active’ reading. As you read, you should make annotations in your text. If you underline a passage, then you should record why you underlined it; this is active reading.
After you have read a text, the reader response will ask you to record your thoughts about the text. This will also help you start a rough draft for the essay, so you should consider writing down anything that stands out in the text that could become the focus of an essay. Consider these as safe areas where only your critical thought is evaluated.
You should provide 150-200 words to respond to a text of your choice. Consider what you liked, what you did not like, what the author was trying to say, and how the author expressed their message.

AN ONLINE JOURNAL OF THE LITERARY & VISUAL ARTS AT TULSA COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Emmett Till
by Killian Hanesworth

Dear Emmett Till,
I’m sorry for the way they treated you
Didn’t give your life a chance as if they never needed you
Took someone’s word as law with no value for your life.
They beat the breath out of your body and they didn’t think twice.
And your mother.
Your poor mother had to bury her young son
And live on for many moons as the sadness blocked the sun.
People marched to fight back, knowing the battle they had lost
As the girl naked with shame covered herself at any cost.
She waited till you were gone to admit that she had lied
But her tears were no match for the tears your momma cried
And for the pain you must have felt as they ignored your honest truth,
A boy soon to be a man yet they still chopped down your youth.
The only hope is the chance that we’ll see justice for you, kid,
And we believed you the whole time, Emmett, I promise you we did.
And even justice ain’t enough because it can’t bring you back,
But maybe it can shed some light on why our faith in justice lacks
So Emmett Till, sweet young king, surely we’ll back the correct horse
And we’ll fight with no holds bar until your justice is dispersed
And we’ll pray for your soul that it may finally rest in peace
And for the ones long gone who took your life their souls may never sleep
And that the system will improve because we should be trusted too
And our words hold the same value as the ones who put us through.
We can never go back and free the kids they took away,
But we’ll speak up and we’ll remember as we pray for brighter days.
We won’t give up or give in, even in weakness we’ll be strong,
Especially for our little black boys who did nothing wrong