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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. Many eugenicists took the hereditary theories of which scientist and then applied them to humans?

3. In what year was the "nation's first federal civil rights law" (6) enacted?

4. The Lost Cause myth developed by Edward A. Pollard was fundamentally based on what, according to Gates?

5. Who wrote a book in 1935 called Black Reconstruction in America?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. To what modern event does Gates connect the period of Redemption and why?

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

4. Describe the monogenecists' two different explanations for the dark color of African Americans' skin.

5. What two events does Gate use in order to mark the beginning and climax of the Redemption era?

6. How does Gates go about interweaving the two themes of healing and justice?

7. In Part Two: The Old Negro, Gates explores the way in which the ideology of white supremacy was transmitted using which four distinct discourses?

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

9. What were the qualities associated with the Old Negro, according to Gates?

10. How did the institution of slavery make contact with the western part of North America?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How does Gates, Jr. use sensory details in order to strengthen the text’s messages? Discuss at least two passages that include the use of sensory details and pull quotes from these passages to support your claim.

Essay Topic 2

How is the theme of invisibility portrayed in Stony the Road? Examine Gates, Jr.'s treatment of and messages regarding invisibility throughout the work.

Essay Topic 3

What ultimate message is Gates, Jr. sending about the mythical qualities of the United States?

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