View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the term for the "rock-bottom lowest point in American race relations" (9) during a particular era?
(a) A nadir.
(b) A fakir.
(c) A fatwa.
(d) A fadir.

2. In what year was the Voting Rights Act passed?
(a) 1932.
(b) 1873.
(c) 1904.
(d) 1965.

3. The pseudoscience of phrenology was founded by a physiologist from what country?
(a) Belgium.
(b) Denmark.
(c) Germany.
(d) The United States.

4. What adjective was added to the term eugenics in order to signify "the use of selective breeding to create a genetically superior race and to eliminate 'inferior' people" (74)?
(a) Designed.
(b) Race.
(c) Positive.
(d) Modern.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. In what capacity was Louis Agassiz hired by a particular institution of higher learning in 1846?

2. Benjamin Franklin Perry claimed in an 1866 newspaper article that all Africans rightfully inhabited one of which two roles?

3. What role did Gates serve in the creation of the PBS series about the period of Reconstruction?

4. Gates states that the phenomenon of the New Negro movement culminated in "the birth of" (xv) what?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. Discuss a time when Gates used of the second person point of view and the effect this use has on the reader.

2. How did Frederick Douglass respond to the explosion in popularity around so-called race theory?

3. Who was Louis Agassiz?

4. Explain the significance of Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton.

5. Describe the experience Gates had in college that served as the impetus for writing Stony the Road.

6. To what source did proponents of monogenesis turn for justification for their theory?

7. In what way did Charles Carroll equate evolution with atheism?

8. Which experiences of Abraham Lincoln's does Gates cite as causing his ideas about race to evolve?

9. What is the significance of the years 1865 through 1877?

10. How did Louis Agassiz's views change over time and why is that change significant?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,131 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample