The Practice of Freedom

Read the following excerpt from testimony given by a Black agricultural laborer in Mississippi before a congressional committee in 1880:

"When we make our crops, the landlord takes it all to pay for the advance of meat and meal we had during the year. He charges us double price for everything, and at the end of the year, he says we are still in debt two or three hundred dollars. If we try to leave the land to find work elsewhere, we are arrested for debt or for leaving our contract, and we are either sent to the convict camps or forced back to the land."

Based on this testimony, which of the following best describes the relationship between the post-Reconstruction labor systems of sharecropping, debt peonage, and convict leasing?

Read the following excerpt from Elise Johnson McDougald’s essay 'The Task of Negro Womanhood,' published in Alain Locke's anthology *The New Negro* (1925):

'She is facing a double task—that of sex and race emancipation. A survey of the groups of Negro women will show how they are coping with these twin difficulties... [T]he Negro woman is locked in a struggle on two fronts: one against the limitations imposed by race, and the other against those imposed by sex.'

Based on this excerpt, which of the following statements best analyzes McDougald’s contribution to the intellectual debates of the Harlem Renaissance?

The table below displays demographic data from the 1920 United States Census regarding the birthplaces of Black residents living in Chicago, Illinois:

Based on the table and your knowledge of the Great Migration, which of the following statements best analyzes how the demographic patterns shown relate to the push and pull factors of the movement?

The following is an excerpt from the proceedings of a National Convention of Colored Citizens held in the 1840s:

"Our churches, our press, and our mutual aid societies are the primary engines of our elevation. Let it not be said that these associations exist merely for the solace of the soul or the temporary relief of the sick. Rather, they are the fortresses from which we wage our peaceful struggle for political franchise, educational equity, and the total eradication of chattel slavery."

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes how early Black institutions, such as churches and mutual aid societies, conceived of their role in antebellum America?

Read the following excerpt from 'The Convict Lease System in the Southern States' by George Washington Cable, published in 1886:

'The lease system... is a system of public economy which is not only a disgrace to civilization, but is also a source of large revenue to the states that practice it. It is a system by which the state abdicate its most sacred duty—the custody and reformation of its criminals—and rents them out to private contractors to be worked for private gain.'

Which of the following statements best explains how the convict lease system functioned to replicate the economic subjugation of chattel slavery in the post-Reconstruction South?

Read the following excerpt from a report published by the United States Department of Labor in 1919:

'The economic pull of the North, made active by the war, is the immediate cause of the migration. The labor shortage in the North, created by the cessation of European immigration, met a labor surplus in the South, created by the boll weevil and agricultural depression. But behind this immediate economic cause lies a secondary cause, which is the Negro's desire to escape the social and political limitations of the South, such as the denial of the franchise, unequal educational opportunities, and the constant threat of racial violence.'

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best analyzes how the demographic shifts of the Great Migration reflected the interaction of southern 'push' factors and northern 'pull' factors?

The following is an excerpt from an 1879 labor agreement between a landowner and tenant farmers in Georgia:

"The said tenant agrees to work the land under the direction of the landlord... No crop shall be removed from the plantation until the landlord is paid in full for all advances of provisions, clothing, and farming tools. The landlord shall have the right to sell all crops and deduct whatever is owed him before paying the tenant."

Which of the following best describes the primary economic consequence of contract terms such as those in the excerpt?

Read the following excerpt from a report adopted at the Georgia Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in 1868:

"Resolved, That while our primary mission is to preach the gospel of Christ, we also recognize the Church as a vehicle for the advancement of our people in all their interests. We must therefore encourage our congregations to establish schools, form mutual aid societies, and take an active interest in the political affairs of our state, for our spiritual freedom is incomplete without civil liberty."

Which of the following best describes the historical role of independent Black churches during Reconstruction, as reflected in the excerpt?

In the late nineteenth century, journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett investigated numerous lynchings across the American South. Her findings challenged the prevailing white narrative that lynchings were spontaneous community responses to criminal acts, particularly sexual assault. Instead, Wells-Barnett demonstrated that racial terror was primarily used to achieve which of the following outcomes?

Read the following description of an agricultural arrangement in the late nineteenth-century United States:

"At the end of the harvest, the landowner calculated the value of the sharecropper's crop and subtracted the cost of food, clothing, and seed purchased on credit. Because the costs exceeded the crop's value, the sharecropper was legally forbidden from leaving the land until the balance was paid off."

This arrangement is an example of which of the following practices?

During the Jim Crow era, racial separation was maintained through both legal mandates and customary practices. Which of the following is the best example of de jure segregation?

In 1827, Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm founded *Freedom's Journal*, the first African American newspaper in the United States. In their first editorial, they wrote: 'We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.'

Which of the following best describes the primary objective of early Black press publications like *Freedom's Journal*?

Following the Great Migration, African Americans who moved to Northern cities encountered different patterns of racial separation than those they had left behind in the South. Which of the following best illustrates the distinction between the de jure segregation of the Jim Crow South and the de facto segregation of the North during the early to mid-twentieth century?

Read the following excerpt from Emmett J. Scott's study, *Negro Migration during the War* (1920):

"The labor agents did not create the migration; they merely pointed the way. The fundamental cause was the economic and social condition of the South: low wages, the boll weevil, and the oppression of the tenant system, coupled with the sudden demand for industrial labor in the North caused by the cessation of European immigration during the World War."

Based on the excerpt, which of the following statements best analyzes the relationship between the 'push' and 'pull' factors driving the Great Migration?

Read the following excerpt from Ida B. Wells's 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors:

"To many minds the conviction is growing that the white people of the South who lynch, drown, and burn Negroes... are not so much concerned about protecting their women as they are about keeping the Negro down and preventing him from becoming a successful business competitor."

According to this excerpt, which of the following best describes the primary motivation for racial terror in the South?

In her 1892 pamphlet *Southern Horrors*, Ida B. Wells-Barnett challenged the prevalent justifications for racial terror in the American South. According to her research, which of the following was the primary underlying motivation for lynchings?

Section 244 of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 stated:

"On and after the first day of January, A. D. 1892, every elector shall, in addition to the foregoing qualifications, be able to read any section of the constitution of this State; or he shall be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof."

How did the implementation of this constitutional provision contribute to the establishment of de jure disenfranchisement while maintaining a facade of constitutional compliance?

In 1870, when Hiram Revels of Mississippi was elected as the first African American to serve in the United States Senate, opponents formally challenged his credentials. They argued that Revels did not meet the constitutional requirement of nine years of citizenship, citing the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Which of the following best explains how supporters of Revels successfully countered this argument to secure his seating?

Read the following excerpt from a petition sent to Congress by the National Convention of Colored People in December 1869:

"We are citizens of the United States, and we find ourselves, notwithstanding the late amendments to the Constitution, practically disenfranchised in many of the Southern States, and denied the equal protection of the laws... We ask you to secure to us, by appropriate legislation, the full enjoyment of those rights which the nation has guaranteed to us on paper."

Which of the following legislative measures was a direct congressional response to the concerns raised in this petition?

During the nineteenth century, independent Black churches, fraternal orders, and the Black press emerged as vital institutions in African American communities. In addition to their primary spiritual, social, or editorial functions, how did these institutions contribute to the broader practice of freedom for African Americans?