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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Benjamin Franklin Perry claimed in an 1866 newspaper article that all Africans rightfully inhabited one of which two roles?
(a) Slave or lecher.
(b) Poet or murderer.
(c) Rapist or dolt.
(d) Slave or savage.

2. Which institution of higher learning hired the polygenesis proponent named Louis Agassiz in 1846?
(a) Harvard.
(b) William and Mary.
(c) Yale.
(d) Cornell.

3. Gates states in the preface that the title of Stony the Road is taken from what type of artistic work?
(a) A poem.
(b) A short story.
(c) A novel.
(d) A song.

4. What role did Gates serve in the creation of the PBS series about the period of Reconstruction?
(a) Guest speaker.
(b) Producer.
(c) Writer.
(d) Host.

5. When William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution, what other object did he burn as well?
(a) A copy of the Fugitive Slave Law.
(b) A copy of the Declaration of Independence.
(c) A yoke for oxen.
(d) A set of stocks.

6. In what year did Frederick Douglass publish his first autobiography?
(a) 1870.
(b) 1853,
(c) 1845.
(d) 1834,

7. Many eugenicists took the hereditary theories of which scientist and then applied them to humans?
(a) Maslow.
(b) Mendel.
(c) Curie.
(d) Darwin.

8. The Dunning School of thinkers believed that what element had been the cause of Reconstruction's failure?
(a) The effects of slavery.
(b) The innate differences of black people.
(c) The effects of malnutrition.
(d) The constant stream of negative propaganda.

9. From which two Greek words did the term eugenics spring?
(a) Best and brightest.
(b) Power and grace.
(c) Just and true.
(d) Well and born.

10. How many African Americans attended the parade and mock funeral for slavery held in a particular city in 1865?
(a) 3,000.
(b) 1,000.
(c) 4,000.
(d) 9,000.

11. What was the main premise behind the theory of polygenesis?
(a) The notion that every race had had its own creator.
(b) The notion that black people were a separate race from white people.
(c) The notion that there was an inherent hierarchy within each racial group.
(d) The notion that each race of people on earth should have its own leader.

12. What is another name for the Harlem Renaissance, according to Gates and other scholars?
(a) The New Negro
(b) The New Negro Rebirth.
(c) The New Negro Renaissance.
(d) The New Negro Manifesto.

13. In what year was the Fourteenth Amendment ratified?
(a) 1868.
(b) 1888.
(c) 1900.
(d) 1878.

14. In what year did the Plessy vs. Ferguson case lead to widespread segregation?
(a) 1866.
(b) 1932.
(c) 1896.
(d) 1854.

15. Gates asserts that in the two years directly following the Civil War, African Americans became keenly aware of the link between economic advancement and what?
(a) Skilled labor.
(b) Respect.
(c) Education.
(d) Politics.

Short Answer Questions

1. The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison famously burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution in what year?

2. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed voters in what part of the United States to choose to permit slavery through a popular vote?

3. For how many years has Gates considered Harvard to be his "home" (76)?

4. At what university did W.E.B. Du Bois secure a temporary appointment while writing The Philadelphia Negro?

5. When the Civil War ended, the South exchanged slavery for what practice?

(see the answer keys)

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