The Practice of Freedom

Read the following excerpt from an editorial published in the late nineteenth century:

'The colored man who acquires property and becomes self-supporting is the one who is most frequently marked for destruction. The charge of criminal assault is merely a threadbare excuse to mask the real intent: to crush the spirit of independence and keep the race in economic subjection.'

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best explains the author's analysis of the relationship between lynching and the economic status of African Americans?

Read the following excerpt from Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin's address to the National Conference of Colored Women in 1895:

"We need to talk over not only those things which are of vital importance to us as women, but also the things that are of especial interest to us as colored women, the elements of a whole race whose opportunities have been limited, but whose responsibilities are unlimited and take in the whole range of human interests."

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes the primary goal of the Black women's club movement as articulated by Ruffin?

Read the following excerpt from Mary McLeod Bethune's reflections on the founding of the Daytona Educational and Industrial School:

'I did not want our girls to be merely trained as servants. I wanted them to be leaders, thinkers, and builders. Yet, we began with sewing, cooking, and poultry-raising, alongside history, literature, and science. We sought to train the head, the hand, and the heart together, believing that self-reliance is the foundation of true freedom.'

Based on this excerpt, which of the following statements best describes Bethune's position within the broader debate over Black education at the turn of the twentieth century?

Read the following excerpt from Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s pamphlet *A Red Record* (1895):

"We demand a fair trial by law for those accused of crime, and punishment by law after honest conviction. No country, state or territory in this Union has any right to govern itself, which cannot or will not protect the lives of its citizens. When it fails to do this, it should be deprived of representation in the National Congress until it is able to perform the first duties of a government."

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes the strategy Wells-Barnett advocates to combat racial terror?

Read the following testimony from Henry Adams, a formerly enslaved man and political organizer in Louisiana, given before a Senate committee in 1880:

"In 1870 we organized a committee... to look into our condition... We wanted to see if there was any state in the South where we could get our constitutional rights... We found that we could not live under the laws and the treatment we were receiving from the white people. They would not allow us to vote as we wanted to... They told us we must vote the Democratic ticket or they would drive us off their land."

Which of the following historical developments is best illustrated by Adams's testimony?

In her 1892 pamphlet *Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases*, Ida B. Wells-Barnett analyzed the economic dynamics surrounding racial terror in the American South. She argued:

> "The Negro can do two things: save his money and leave the town; or if he stays, he can refuse to support the businesses of those who do not respect him. ... By doing so, he will strike a blow at the white man’s pocketbook, which is the only place the white man feels."

Based on this excerpt, which of the following strategies did Wells-Barnett advocate as an effective response to the threat of lynching?

Read the following excerpt from a speech delivered by educator John Hope in 1896:

"If we are not to fly, but are to walk, let us walk on two feet in a road that leads to a very high place. If we are to be equal, let us be equal to the white man, not in the future, but now. . . . I am tired of hearing about 'industries' and 'hand-training.' . . . We want the Negro to be a man, not a working machine."

Which of the following historical debates from the post-emancipation era is best illustrated by this excerpt?

The table below shows demographic data for the African American population in four major northern cities between 1910 and 1920:

Which of the following statements best explains the primary driver behind the demographic shifts shown in the table?

Read the excerpt below:

"Discrimination? Why, that is precisely what we propose; that, exactly, is what this Convention was elected for—to discriminate to the very extremity of permissible action under the limitations of the Federal Constitution, with a view to the elimination of every Negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate."
— Carter Glass, Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1901–1902

Based on this excerpt, which of the following best explains how Southern state constitutional conventions during this era achieved the goals described by Glass?

Read the following excerpt from a speech delivered by U.S. Representative Joseph Rainey of South Carolina in the House of Representatives in 1871:

"We want peace; we want to build up our waste places; we want to educate our children... but we cannot do it when we are hunted down like wild beasts. We ask of this Congress, we ask of the administration, that protection which we, as citizens of this republic, have a right to demand under the Constitution."

Which of the following constitutional provisions did Reconstruction-era Black politicians like the speaker primarily rely upon to justify federal intervention against the violence and political suppression they faced in the South?

Read the excerpt below from Anna Julia Cooper’s *A Voice from the South* (1892):

"Only the BLACK WOMAN can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.'"

Which of the following best describes how the perspective in this excerpt shaped the goals of the Black women's club movement?

Consider this excerpt from the constitution of a nineteenth-century African American benevolent society:

"Whereas, we find it necessary to unite for our mutual benefit, to support one another in times of sickness, to ensure a decent burial for our members, and to promote education and moral growth, so that we may be better prepared to claim our rightful place as citizens of this nation."

Based on the excerpt, which of the following statements best describes the broader historical role of Black fraternal and mutual aid societies?

The following is an excerpt from a report by the Board of Inspectors of the Alabama Penitentiary in 1898:

"The hiring of convicts to coal companies has proven highly advantageous. Under our agreement, the state is relieved of the burden of maintaining these prisoners, while the companies receive a reliable supply of labor for their mines. The revenue generated from this leasing system has contributed significantly to our state treasury, allowing us to fund public services without raising taxes on our citizens."

Which of the following best explains how the labor system described in the report was legally justified in the United States during the late nineteenth century?

Read the following excerpt from Alain Locke's 1925 essay, "The New Negro":

> "Harlem is not merely the largest Negro community in the world, but the laboratory of a great race-welding. Here the representatives of the Caribbean, Africa, and different sections of the American South mingle and react upon one another. They have their separate heritages and different levels of culture, but they share a common consciousness and are developing a new group solidarity."

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes how the demographic shifts of the Great Migration and immigration shaped the Harlem Renaissance?

Read the following excerpt from the U.S. Supreme Court decision in *United States v. Reese* (1876):

"The Fifteenth Amendment does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one. It prevents the States, or the United States, from giving preference, in this particular, to one citizen of the United States over another on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. . . . It has invested the citizens of the United States with a new constitutional right which is exemption from discrimination in the exercise of the elective franchise on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes how the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Fifteenth Amendment affected Black political empowerment?

Read the following excerpt from an address delivered by educator Alexander Crummell at the founding of the American Negro Academy in 1897:

'The demand of the hour is for the highest training of the best minds of the race, for the purposes of leadership, of guidance, and of defense... We need men of scholarly culture, who can stand before the world as champions of our cause, who can expose the sophistries of our detractors, and who can lead the masses into the paths of light and knowledge.'

Which of the following educational philosophies from the late nineteenth century is most closely aligned with the perspective expressed in Crummell's address?

Read the following excerpt from an address delivered by educator Lucy Craft Laney at the Hampton Negro Conference in 1899:

'To the teacher is committed the care of the child. . . . [But] the teacher must have the cooperation of the home, and the home must be reached by the educated woman. She must be the light in the dark places, the leader in all that is good. . . . If the educated colored woman can reach the teachers of our public schools, she will have accomplished a great work. The teacher must be more than a mere instructor; she must be a missionary of culture and character.'

Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes Laney's perspective on the role of Black women's education in the post-emancipation era?

Read the excerpt below and answer the following question:

"[The Niagara Movement] had no deep roots in the masses... and it had no white support... The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded four years later, was a different kind of organization. It was biracial, it was well-financed, and it had a program of legal defense."
— W.E.B. Du Bois, reflecting on early civil rights organizing

Which of the following best describes the strategic shift that occurred in the early civil rights movement as it transitioned from the Niagara Movement to the NAACP?

Read the following excerpt from Claude McKay’s poem 'If We Must Die' (1919):

> 'If we must die, let it not be like hogs
> Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
> While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
> Making their mock at our accursed lot.
> If we must die, O let us nobly die,
> So that our precious blood may not be shed
> In vain...'

Which of the following best describes how this poem reflects the transition from the older generation of Black leadership to the 'New Negro' mentality of the post-World War I era?

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States..."

— Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 1865

Which of the following historical practices most directly exploited the exception clause in this constitutional amendment?