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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What word from "Down at the Cross" describes a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one?
(a) Metamorphosis.
(b) Exaltation.
(c) Delineation.
(d) Propagation.

2. What does the word "assuage" from "Down at the Cross" mean?
(a) To satisfy.
(b) To reassure.
(c) To placate.
(d) To deter.

3. The author writes in "Down at the Cross," "It was absolutely clear that the police would whip you and take you in as long as" what?
(a) "You were hiding something."
(b) "You were guilty."
(c) "You were not one of them."
(d) "They could get away with it."

4. How does the author respond when asked by the female pastor, "Whose little boy are you?"
(a) "David Baldwin's."
(b) "Allah's."
(c) "Why, yours."
(d) "God's."

5. When did the Tunisians rise up against the French, according to the author in "Down at the Cross"?
(a) 1956.
(b) 1919.
(c) 1962.
(d) 1969.

Short Answer Questions

1. The author claims that we owe the ministry of Elijah Muhammad to the fact that he witnessed what when he was five or six years old?

2. Of the girls in Harlem going through adolescence, the author says in "Down at the Cross," "They understood that they must act as God's" what?

3. When did Rudyard Kipling live?

4. For how long did the author remain on the pulpit as a Young Minister?

5. What does the author claim is the only thing to "cause any of those people to treat you as they presumably wanted to be treated" in "Down at the Cross"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the source of the author's anger and resentment toward his father?

2. How would you describe the author's sense of anger in the beginning of "Down at the Cross"?

3. What hypocrisies in Christianity and the Nation of Islam does Baldwin point out in "Down at the Cross"?

4. How would you describe the tone in the second section of "Down at the Cross"? How has the author's perspective changed?

5. What parallels does the author draw between his father and Elijah Muhammad in "Down at the Cross"?

6. What differences does the author point out between Christianity and Islam in the second section of "Down at the Cross"?

7. What does the author point out as the failings of Christianity and Islam in "Down at the Cross"?

8. How does the author compare his involvement in ministry with the thugs on the Avenue in "Down at the Cross"?

9. How would you describe the central subject and structure of the first part of "Down at the Cross"?

10. How does the author describe the racial perspectives in the Nation of Islam's belief system?

(see the answer keys)

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