Movements and Debates
327 questions
Read the excerpt below and answer the question that follows.
"There is a difference between defending one's home and one's person against attack and using violence as a collective strategy for social change. When the Negro uses force in self-defense, he does not invoke the nonviolent method... But the strength of the nonviolent method lies in its ability to dramatize a moral issue and mobilize the conscience of the nation, whereas collective violence simply alienates the uncommitted majority and invites overwhelming state repression."
— Martin Luther King Jr., "The Social Organization of Nonviolence," 1959
Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes King’s distinction between personal self-defense and nonviolent direct action as political strategies?
Read the following excerpt from the Combahee River Collective Statement (1977):
"Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as Black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism."
Based on this excerpt, which of the following statements best analyzes the Combahee River Collective's perspective on the relationship between Black feminists and Black men?
The table below contrasts two major political strategies advocated by Black abolitionists in the mid-nineteenth century:
| Position | Primary Strategy for Black Self-Determination | View on United States Citizenship |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy 1 | Remaining in the United States to fight for immediate emancipation and constitutional rights. | Asserts that Black Americans are rightful citizens entitled to full equality under United States law. |
| Strategy 2 | Emigrating to establish independent Black-led communities or nations (such as in Canada, the Caribbean, or West Africa). | Argues that deep-seated racism in the United States prevents Black people from ever achieving true equality or citizenship. |
Based on the table, which of the following pairs of historical figures best represents the advocates of Strategy 1 and Strategy 2 respectively?
In his 1926 essay 'Criteria of Negro Art,' W.E.B. Du Bois wrote:
'Thus all Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy.'
Which of the following best summarizes Du Bois's argument in this excerpt?
In the 1906 Address to the Country, the Niagara Movement declared:
'We will not be satisfied to take one jot or tittle less than our full manhood rights. We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America.'
How does this declaration's emphasis on achieving equality compare to the methods proposed by Booker T. Washington?
Although Booker T. Washington publicly urged African Americans to "cast down your bucket where you are" and prioritize economic self-reliance over political agitation, historical records reveal that he secretly used his personal wealth and influence to fund legal challenges against disenfranchisement (such as Giles v. Harris in 1903) and segregated transportation. Which of the following statements best explains how this evidence refutes a common misconception about the debate between Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois?
Read the statement below:
"It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations."
— Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, *Black Power: The Politics of Liberation*, 1967
Based on this statement, which of the following best describes a primary goal of the Black Power movement?
Read the following excerpt from the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, adopted at the first convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in August 1920:
'We believe in the freedom of Africa for the Negro people of the world, and by the principle of Europe for the Europeans, and Asia for the Asiatics, we also demand Africa for the Africans... We believe that the Negro should adopt every means to protect himself against the oppression of other races.'
Which of the following best explains how this declaration reflects the distinct philosophy of Garveyism compared to mainstream Pan-Africanism of the era?
Writer Alice Walker introduced the term "womanism" in 1983. Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of this concept?
Read the excerpt below from a petition written by Paul Cuffe in 1814:
'He has for many years past been deeply impressed with the desire of making himself useful to his fellow men, particularly to those of the African race... [to] promote the emigration of such free people of color from the United States as might wish to settle there [Sierra Leone], under the prospect of being more useful to themselves and to the community.'
Based on this excerpt and your knowledge of nineteenth-century African American history, which of the following best describes how Cuffe’s vision of emigration differed from the efforts of the white-led American Colonization Society?
Read the passage below:
'The call for reparations cannot be satisfied by a mere transfer of capital, for a check cannot cure the ontological displacement of a people. True redress requires a reclamation of center—a cognitive shift that moves African people from the margins of European historical narratives to the center of their own lived experiences. Until the structural critique of wealth distribution is coupled with an epistemological centering that restores African agency, material compensation remains a form of containment rather than liberation.'
Based on the passage, which of the following statements best explains how the author connects the concept of Afrocentricity to the debate over reparations?
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois offered distinct guidance to Black workers navigating the rise of industrial capitalism and trade unions. Washington frequently advised Black laborers to avoid union agitation and cultivate direct relationships with white employers, while Du Bois argued that Black workers must ultimately organize to prevent being used as tools to depress wages.
Which of the following historical explanations best accounts for this strategic division?
Read the following excerpt from a speech delivered by Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, in 1970:
"We say that the world today is not a world of nations... The United States is no longer a nation; it is an empire. Its power is global, and it dominates all the oppressed communities of the world... Therefore, we must move beyond the concept of simple black nationalism to a philosophy of revolutionary intercommunalism. We must recognize that we are part of a global network of oppressed communities that must cooperate to dismantle this imperialist structure from within."
Based on the excerpt, which of the following best explains how this shift in the Black Panther Party's ideology reflects the broader evolution of the Black Power movement?
Read the excerpt below from W.E.B. Du Bois's 1928 review of Claude McKay's novel *Home to Harlem* in *The Crisis* magazine and answer the question that follows.
"[The novel] for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath... [The author] has set out to cater to that craving of the white public for the 'nigger-heaven' type of book. He has used every art of description to make it seem that the Harlem Negro is nothing but a creature of raw lust, animalism, and lack of restraint."
Which of the following central debates of the New Negro Movement does Du Bois's critique best illustrate?
In a 1903 essay, Booker T. Washington wrote the following:
"I do not advocate that the Negro should be restricted to industrial education alone. I believe in the university and the college, and that a portion of the race should receive the highest possible mental culture... But for the great masses of the race, industrial education, which teaches how to work and how to make a living, must precede or accompany higher academic training."
Which of the following statements best explains how the educational philosophy expressed in the passage compares to the strategy advocated by W.E.B. Du Bois?
Read the following excerpt from the preface of bell hooks's *Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center* (1984):
"To be in the margin is to be part of the whole, but outside the main body. For us, this marginality was much more than a site of deprivation; in fact, it was the site of radical possibility, a space of resistance. It was this site of marginality that nurtured our capacity to see the world from both the outside in and the inside out... we understood both."
Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes hooks's conceptualization of "marginality" and its function in Black feminist thought?
In his 1903 collection *The Souls of Black Folk*, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote:
"Mr. Washington distinctly advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the low-grade nor the high-grade industrial schools can keep up their work of years without a constant supply of teachers for them; and who would teach these teachers? It is the college-bred man, and him alone, that has slowly and toilsomely to be helper-in-law, provider of systematically taught schools, and detector of ability in the family."
Based on this excerpt, which of the following best explains Du Bois’s critique of Booker T. Washington’s educational priorities?
Read the following excerpt from the address "To the Nations of the World," drafted by W.E.B. Du Bois at the First Pan-African Conference in London in 1900:
"In the metropolis of the modern world, in this closing year of the nineteenth century, there has been assembled a congress of men and women of African blood, to deliberate solemnly upon the present situation and outlook of the darker races of mankind... Let not color or race be a feature of distinction between brothers."
Based on this excerpt and your knowledge of historical movements, which of the following describes a key ideological difference between the Pan-Africanism represented by this conference and the Garveyism that emerged in the 1910s and 1920s?
In the 1922 preface to *The Book of American Negro Poetry*, James Weldon Johnson wrote:
> "The Negro poet in the United States is finding that the standard Negro dialect is an instrument with but two full stops, humor and pathos. [...] He needs to find a form of expression that has a local color, a Negro flavor, but which is also capable of voicing the deepest and highest emotions and aspirations, and allowing of the widest range of subjects. He needs a form of expression that is larger than dialect and which will still have its power."
Based on this excerpt, which of the following debates within the New Negro Movement is most directly reflected in Johnson's argument?
During the civil rights movement, critics sometimes characterized nonviolent direct action as a form of passive submission to racial injustice. How did proponents of nonviolence, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), counter this criticism?