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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. The anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan first earned a reputation as an authority on race in what decade?

2. Gates states that the beginning of the Redemption era occurred in what year?

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

4. Which comedian's great-great-grandfather served in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What is the origin of the title Stony the Road?

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

4. What two events led to the shift in Agassiz's worldview?

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

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

7. Discuss one disease identified within Samuel Cartwright's 1851 publication entitled "Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race" within De Bow's Review.

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In what way does Gates, Jr. utilize irony within the text? Discuss at least three uses of irony within Stony the Road and explore each instance's connection to larger themes contained within the piece.

Essay Topic 2

What is the ultimate purpose behind Gates, Jr.’s inclusion of visual images within Stony the Road?

Essay Topic 3

Examine how Gates, Jr. goes about connecting personal experience with the arguments put forth within Stony the Road. How does Gates, Jr. accomplish this goal and how does this goal relate to the overarching themes of the text?

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