Separating fact from fiction is the goal of this paper consisting of five pages in which the OK Corral shootout and Wyatt Earp's legendary life are discussed. Five sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_MTwyearp.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
famous town that housed law enforcer and businessman Wyatt Earp. It was in Tombstone that he ran afoul of the Clanton gang. It was in Tombstone that he, his brother
Virgil and his friend Doc Holliday, participated in the now legendary shootout at the O.K. Corral, which has been converted into a number of books and a greater number of
movies. And it was in Tombstone where Earp earned his calling as a cold-blooded killer who shot an innocent, unarmed man. Was this designation true? Was Earp an unfeeling murderer
or was he a lawman who was trying, with his brother Virgil, to clean up the town of Tombstone? The truth his, historians are still trying to decide. Even such
"obvious" things as where the actual gunfight took place arent obvious - the location wasnt actually the OK Corral, but rather, in a lot just a block away.
There are some historians who, to this day, paint Earp as the innocent victim who simply got caught in the crossfire of the Clanton
and McLaury gangs, cow rustlers who did illegal activities. Still other scholars note that Wyatt Earp was a cold-blooded killer, who put bullets into the back of an unarmed man
for no good reason except he was afraid of them and what they might do to him. The truth is that the
reality is likely somewhere in between. The eventual shoot-out between the Earps and the Cowboys was more than good versus evil (Tombstone). The Clantons and McLaurys were not evil people,
despite their jobs as cattle thieves; nor were the Earps "honest" businessmen forced into law enforcement because of their desire to preserve peace by striking down the lawless elements in