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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why did Hughes disembark from the boat trip up the Saguenay River to see the northern lights?
(a) The captain refused to let him aboard the ship because he was black.
(b) The captain refused to allow him to stay in his paid-for accomodations.
(c) The steward insisted he take his dinner in the kitchen.
(d) The steward refused to seat him for dinner until the white passengers had eaten.

2. How long did Hughes live in Washington D.C.?
(a) Five years.
(b) Two years.
(c) One year.
(d) Three years.

3. How did Hughes describe the Saturday night rent parties he attended?
(a) Boring evenings with too many people packed in too small a space.
(b) Cigar smoking, whiskey drinking womanizing.
(c) Well known musicians performing for poor blacks to raise rent money.
(d) Spontaneous music, laughter, good fried fish, and bootlegged whiskey.

4. Who was A'Lelia Walker?
(a) A singer in a Harlem nightclub.
(b) The wife of an important politician.
(c) A patron of the arts who hired Hughes to write for her.
(d) A society woman who gave frequent and grand parties.

5. Why did Hughes never go to the Cotton Club in Harlem?
(a) He did not know big name musicians were playing there.
(b) It was not open when he not working.
(c) The club closed in 1923.
(d) It was Jim Crow club for gangsters and rich whites.

6. When Hughes entered Lincoln, what was the racial make-up of the Board of Trustees?
(a) The Board was 20% black.
(b) The Board was all white.
(c) The Board was all black.
(d) The Board was 50% black.

7. What did people do on Seventh Street in Washington in 1924?
(a) Played the blues, shoveled coal into furnaces, and grumbled.
(b) Played the blued, talked about the whites, and complained.
(c) Played the blues, huddled around fire cans, and argued.
(d) Played the blues, ate barbeque, and laughed a lot.

8. Why did Hughes take the summer off from the Grand Duc to go to Italy in the summer?
(a) Hughes was fired from his job.
(b) Hughes met a woman and followed her to England.
(c) Dr. Locke invited Hughes to spend the summer with him in Rome.
(d) The Grand Duc closed for the summer until September.

9. Who did Countee Cullen marry?
(a) Yolande Becton, daughter of the Reverend Becton.
(b) Yolande Lincoln, granddaughter of Abraham Lincoln.
(c) Yolande DuBois, daughter of W.E.B. DuBois.
(d) Yolanda Mills, daughter of Florence Mills.

10. Who was singing "everybody loves my baby, but my baby don't love no one but me" at the NAACP fundraiser Hughes attended?
(a) Bricktop Annie.
(b) Bessie Smith.
(c) Josephine Baker.
(d) Alberta Hunter.

11. In his anecdote about the strawberry greens at dinner, what had the other diners done with the green stems?
(a) Others had eaten the stems with their ice cream.
(b) No one else had teh green stems on their strawberries.
(c) Others had simply left the stems on their plates.
(d) No one else had strawberries except Hughes.

12. Where did Hughes meet Vachel Lindsay?
(a) At a NAACP function.
(b) On Seventh Street.
(c) At a formal reception for a local black poet.
(d) At the Wardman Park Hotel.

13. What was Troutbeck?
(a) The last name of Hughes' wife.
(b) The kind of fish Hughes caught on his summer vacations.
(c) The name of the new college for black students in Memphis.
(d) The old farm of John Burroughs the naturalist.

14. When and why was Hughes invited to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee?
(a) To give a speech at commencement in 1926.
(b) To give an address in 1928.
(c) To read his poems at commencement in 1927.
(d) To read his poems in 1929.

15. Where did Zora Neale Hurston attend college?
(a) New York University.
(b) Newcomb.
(c) Barnard.
(d) Smith.

Short Answer Questions

1. How did Hughes meet Bricktop Ada Smith?

2. What new hotel opened in New York, did not allow Negroes to work or to stay as guests, that inspired Hughes to write a poem about it?

3. Why did Hughes decide to move from his apartment to an attic room up the hill?

4. Who did Hughes bump into in New Orleans from his days in Harlem?

5. Who wrote the play "The Mule Bone?"

(see the answer keys)

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