Unit 6 of 9
Decide Which Sources to Trust and How to Use Them
What you will learn
- Judge whether a source is useful for the exact claim you need to prove.
- Separate a writer’s point of view from factual error.
- Support a tone word with two visible patterns in the writing.
- Narrow or adjust a claim when the evidence has limits.
Learn it step by step
Ask 'reliable for what?'
A source can be strong for one question and weak for another. A witness may know what happened in one place but not how often it happened nationwide. Match the source’s access to the claim you are making.
Point of view is not automatically a flaw
Every writer has a position. Check how the writer knows, what evidence they give, what they may gain, and whether other sources agree. Do not dismiss a source just because the writer cares about the issue.
Prove the tone
Do not write only 'the tone is angry.' Point to at least two clues, such as repeated moral words, short commands, a pattern of examples, or a change from calm facts to direct accusation.
Make the claim fit the evidence
If a speech describes a pattern among some graduates, state that pattern as the writer’s observation rather than converting it into a statistic about every graduate. A careful limit makes the claim harder to disprove.
Try this five-step routine
- Read once to understand what is happening. Do not mark every sentence.
- Read again and underline the one sentence that best shows the unit’s main skill.
- Say the writer’s move in ordinary words: 'The writer compares [name both ideas]' or 'The writer admits [name the fair point].'
- Add the purpose: 'This helps the audience understand, believe, feel, or do [name the response].'
- Check your answer against the exact words in the passage and make it no broader than the evidence.
Annotated passage
The Requisites of True Leadership
Written by Ida B. Wells-BarnettPublished: 1891
The numbered highlights continue from the beginning to the end of this passage.
Their aspirations were high to do valiant work for the race; but they lacked the strength which comes from knowledge of the situation, and too often, like the seed which fell among thorns these aspirations are choked by worldly cares and disappointments, or wither away under the fierce sun of persecution.
They go forth armed with their diplomas, honestly believing that armour invincible and that their talents will batter down the walls of prejudice and secure individual recognition and employment. They find in reality that it does not lift them above general race conditions —that the race is not financially, politically nor intellectually able to help either itself or him and that he must battle with and for his people. Too often he fails to realize the promise of his young manhood, becomes discouraged, gives up the struggle in disgust and rusts away his life as a drone in the hive, or else confines himself to selfish pursuits caring naught save for his individual welfare. Neither his home nor school life prepared him for life in its reality — for the real leadership expected of him, and his ignorance of these things, however great his knowledge of classics and abstract sciences, causes him to fall by the wayside.
What the numbered highlights show
- Wells-Barnett begins by crediting graduates’ intentions before explaining why intention alone is insufficient.
- The agricultural image presents aspiration as living potential that can be choked by pressure and disappointment.
- The martial metaphor captures the graduates’ confidence that academic credentials will protect them in public life.
- Calling the diploma imagined armour exposes a mismatch between confidence and the conditions graduates encounter.
- The wall image makes structural resistance visible while showing why talent alone may not overcome it.
- The image of unused capacity warns that discouragement can turn public aspiration into passive withdrawal.
- The concluding standard shifts responsibility toward an education that joins academic study to realistic preparation for leadership.
Rhetorical techniques in this passage
Each technique points to the numbered highlight where it appears. Hover over or focus the technique name for a definition.
Moral metaphorHighlight 1: “aspirations were high”
Wells-Barnett begins by crediting graduates’ intentions before explaining why intention alone is insufficient.
System framingHighlight 2: “like the seed which fell among thorns”
The agricultural image presents aspiration as living potential that can be choked by pressure and disappointment.
Historical comparisonHighlight 3: “armed with their diplomas”
The martial metaphor captures the graduates’ confidence that academic credentials will protect them in public life.
Appeal to ethosHighlight 5: “batter down the walls of prejudice”
The wall image makes structural resistance visible while showing why talent alone may not overcome it.
ContrastHighlight 6: “rusts away his life as a drone in the hive”
The image of unused capacity warns that discouragement can turn public aspiration into passive withdrawal.
Appeal to logosHighlight 7: “prepared him for life in its reality”
The concluding standard shifts responsibility toward an education that joins academic study to realistic preparation for leadership.
Appeal to pathosHighlight 1: “aspirations were high”
Wells-Barnett begins by crediting graduates’ intentions before explaining why intention alone is insufficient.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, The Requisites of True Leadership (1891). View the source edition.
See how the analysis works
Wells-Barnett wants educators to prepare graduates for real leadership, but that purpose does not make the passage unusable as evidence. The address directly establishes the standards and warnings she presented to an educational audience. Its metaphors reveal how she interprets discouragement; broader claims about how often graduates had these experiences would need corroborating records.
Practice with five comparable passages
These public-domain speeches, essays, and arguments let you practise the same skill with a new passage. Each link opens the named source edition.
address to educators
The Requisites of True Leadership
Why read it: Separate the leadership standards Wells-Barnett directly advocates from broader historical claims that would require corroborating educational records.
Transcript and source citation supplied by the Archives of Women’s Political Communication from the 1891 educators’ association proceedings.
Open this public-domain sourcememoir and social analysis
Twenty Years at Hull-House
Why read it: Distinguish Addams’s firsthand observations from conclusions she draws about institutions and communities.
Project Gutenberg public-domain edition of Addams’s account of settlement work.
Open this public-domain sourceinvestigative reportage
How the Other Half Lives
Why read it: Ask which conditions Riis directly observes, which claims rely on cited reports, and which judgments require corroboration.
Project Gutenberg public-domain edition of Riis’s tenement investigation.
Open this public-domain sourcescholarly address
The Conservation of Races
Why read it: Distinguish a writer’s expert position and purpose from the evidence needed to support each historical claim.
Project Gutenberg public-domain edition of Du Bois’s scholarly address.
Open this public-domain sourcememoir and social criticism
American Indian Stories
Why read it: Consider what first-person experience can establish and what broader institutional claims need additional sources.
Project Gutenberg public-domain edition of Zitkála-Šá’s collected narratives and essays.
Open this public-domain sourceMultiple-choice skill check
Read the source excerpt or passage lines below. Keep them in view while you answer each question.
The address is strong evidence of the standards Wells-Barnett urged educators to teach, though broader claims about graduates’ experiences would require additional records.
Wells-Barnett speaks as a journalist, teacher, and public advocate addressing educators about how schooling should prepare young people for leadership.
The tone is admonitory because Wells-Barnett contrasts graduates’ high aspirations with discouragement and uses metaphors of failed growth to warn educators about inadequate preparation.
The images trace a movement from vulnerable aspiration to misplaced confidence and, finally, to withdrawal, reinforcing the need for preparation grounded in real conditions.
Wells-Barnett uses a sequence of cautionary metaphors to argue that academic achievement alone cannot prepare leaders for the social conditions they must confront.