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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What poet inspired the author while at Howard University?
(a) Robert Hayden.
(b) Robert Frost.
(c) Maya Angelou.
(d) Jack Kerouac.

2. How does the author describe his experience in the Baltimore public schools?
(a) Pointless.
(b) Safe.
(c) Enlightening.
(d) Hopeful.

3. How does the author describe Malcolm X?
(a) Strong, ethical, and powerful.
(b) Rebellious, irrational, and impulsive.
(c) Controlled, intelligent, and beyond fear.
(d) Fierce, violent, and wild.

4. What advantages has the author's son had growing up?
(a) A safer neighborhood, better schools and more freedom.
(b) A black president, social networks, omnipresent media and black culture.
(c) Less racism, the Internet and a world culture.
(d) Wealth and private schools.

5. Who is Linda Heywood?
(a) An American poet.
(b) A protester from the Lawn.
(c) A musician the author met at The Mecca.
(d) A Howard professor specialized in Central Africa.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did the author's father collect?

2. Which writer inspired the author as a young man?

3. Whom does the author describe as "the God I never had"?

4. How are racism and race linked?

5. What is "The Mecca" that the author describes to his son?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did the author's son experience such extreme grief when Michael Brown's killer was set free?

2. What does the author mean when he says the school system and the streets are "two arms of the same beast"?

3. How does research and study affect the author as a young man?

4. Why did the author's mother encourage him to write?

5. How does the author use poetry to express his thoughts?

6. According to the author, how have American police departments been given the right to destroy black bodies without the fear of recrimination?

7. What influence did Malcom X have on the author as a young man?

8. What role did violence play in the author's childhood?

9. How did fear shape the author's childhood?

10. What revelation does the author have about the European perception of Africans during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

(see the answer keys)

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