Movements and Debates

Read the following excerpt from Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s speech, "We Are All Bound Up Together," delivered at the Eleventh National Woman’s Rights Convention in 1866:

"We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand against every man, and every man's hand against me."

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best explains how Harper's argument differs from the primary focus of mainstream nineteenth-century white women’s rights activists?

In his 1962 book *Negroes with Guns*, civil rights activist Robert F. Williams argued:

'The law-abiding Negroes of Monroe, North Carolina, have met violence with self-defense... We have shown that self-defense can prevent violence and save lives, whereas passive submission to violence invites more violence and terror.'

Which of the following statements best describes the relationship between Robert F. Williams's advocacy of armed self-defense and the strategy of nonviolent direct action promoted by organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)?

Read the following excerpt from W.E.B. Du Bois's editorial "Marcus Garvey," published in *The Crisis* in December 1920:

'It is a monument to the work of a man who has a great, sweet, and simple idea. [...] He wants to enter into a commercial enterprise, which will build up a great merchant marine owned by Negroes and manned by Negroes [...] and he wants to coordinate this commercial enterprise with a political program which will result in the building up of a Black nation in Africa. [...] But is this program practical? [...] It is not practical because it is based on a series of colossal financial errors, and because it is based on a misunderstanding of the attitude of the white world toward the yellow and brown and black worlds.'

Based on the excerpt and your knowledge of early twentieth-century movements, which of the following statements best describes the core ideological or strategic difference between W.E.B. Du Bois's approach to Pan-Africanism and Marcus Garvey's Garveyism?

The following excerpt is from an oral history of a civil rights organizer in Mississippi during the early 1960s:

"We were committed to nonviolence in our demonstrations. But when we went home to the rural counties, the local people who housed us kept their shotguns loaded on the porch. They weren't participating in our sit-ins, but they made sure the Klan couldn't burn down the house while we slept. Without their protection, our nonviolent campaign would have been wiped out in weeks."

Which of the following statements best describes the relationship between civil rights strategies as illustrated in this excerpt?

Read the following excerpt from Mary Church Terrell’s speech, "The Progress of Colored Women" (1898):

> "A white woman has only one handicap to overcome—that of sex. A colored woman has two—sex and race. She is therefore twice as heavily burdened as her white sister, and her progress is correspondingly more difficult."

Based on this excerpt, which of the following statements best describes how Terrell’s analysis contributes to the foundation of Black feminist thought?

Read the following excerpt from a speech delivered by Marcus Garvey in 1919:

'We are striking now for historic empire. We are not looking for a piece of reform here and a piece of reform there. We want a country of our own; we want a government of our own; we want a constitution of our own.'

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes how Marcus Garvey's ideological approach to Black liberation differed from that of W.E.B. Du Bois and the Pan-African Congresses?

Read this 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:

'Let the world-wide justice of the law-loving nation defend the weak as well as the strong, and let not color or race be a feature of distinction between citizens.'

Which of the following best describes the primary goal of the Pan-African movement as expressed in this address?

Read the following excerpt from the "Address to the Nations of the World" drafted by W.E.B. Du Bois at the 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. ... The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea."

Which of the following best explains how the goal of this 1900 Pan-African Conference differed from the subsequent populism of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1920s?

Read the excerpt from legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw's 1989 essay:

'With White women as the starting point for feminist theory and Black men as the starting point for antiracist politics, Black women are frequently excluded from both. This exclusion is reinforced by the belief that the disadvantages of race and gender are mutually exclusive—that is, that they occur along single, non-overlapping axes.'

Which of the following concepts did Crenshaw introduce to address the exclusion described in the excerpt?

During the post-Reconstruction era, African American leaders debated the most effective path toward equality and civil rights. What was the central debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois regarding the educational advancement of Black Americans?

In *Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism* (1981), cultural critic and theorist bell hooks wrote:

"American women of all races are socialized to think of women as a category that is homogeneous, a group that is bound together by shared oppression. ... This assertion that all women are oppressed to the same degree or in the same way is a false assumption."

Which of the following statements best reflects the core argument hooks makes in this excerpt regarding the relationship between Black women and mainstream feminism?

During the civil rights movement in the rural South, local Black residents such as Hartman Turnbow in Mississippi defended their homes with firearms while hosting and supporting organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) who were conducting nonviolent voter registration campaigns.

Which of the following historical conclusions is best supported by this coexistence of tactics?

Read the excerpt from activist and writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s speech "We Are All Bound Up Together," delivered at the Eleventh National Woman’s Rights Convention in 1866:

"We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul. You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has outgrown her institutions, in which they have shrunk pathetically beside her."

Which of the following statements best describes the primary argument Harper makes in this excerpt regarding the struggle for women's rights?

Read the passage below:

"The civil rights laws of the 1960s did not—and could not—redistribute the wealth that had been systematically accumulated through centuries of unpaid Black labor. Non-discrimination policies assume a level playing field, but they ignore the compounding interest of historical disadvantage. To expect equal outcomes under rules of modern fairness, without addressing the structural deficit inherited from the past, is to perpetuate the economic legacy of slavery under a guise of procedural equality."

Based on the passage, which of the following assertions best aligns with the author's critique of post-1960s civil rights reforms?

In *The Souls of Black Folk* (1903), W.E.B. Du Bois critiques Booker T. Washington's strategy for African American advancement. Du Bois highlights a central contradiction in Washington’s insistence that Black Americans focus first on industrial education and property ownership before demanding civil equality and voting rights. Which of the following statements best summarizes Du Bois's critique regarding the relationship between economic progress and political rights?

Read the following excerpt from a speech by Marcus Garvey in 1921:

"We are organized for the absolute redemption of a new country, a country that once was ours, a country that is ours by right of heritage, and that is Africa. We are going to establish there a government so strong, so powerful, that it will command the respect of all other nations of the world."

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes the primary goal of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)?

Read the excerpt below:

"The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more, no less."
— Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet," 1964

The philosophy described in the excerpt most directly influenced which of the following aspects of the Black Power movement?

Read the following excerpt from activist and theorist Claudia Jones's 1949 essay, "An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!":

"The Negro woman as worker, as Negro, and as woman is the most oppressed stratum of the whole population. [...] The bourgeoisie is fearful of the militancy of the Negro woman, and for good reason. The capitalists know, far better than many progressives, that once Negro women begin to take action, the militancy of the whole Negro people, and thus of the entire working class, is greatly enhanced."

Which of the following concepts in Black feminist theory is best illustrated by Jones’s characterization of Black women's position?

Read the following excerpt from a pamphlet distributed by the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) in Alabama in 1966:

"We are not trying to integrate. We are trying to organize ourselves into our own political party, so we can control the sheriff's office, the tax assessor's office, and the school board. We do not want to beg for rights; we want to elect our own people to run our county."

Which of the following statements best describes the political strategy advocated in the excerpt and its relation to the broader Black Power movement?

Consider the following excerpt from Audre Lorde's 1984 essay, "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference":

> "By and large, within the women's movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class, and age. There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist."

Which of the following statements best describes the core critique of mainstream second-wave feminism expressed in the passage?