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Testing your IQ on black history
By Tom Ferrick Jr.
Beginning in September, the Philadelphia School District will become the nation's first district to require all its high school students to take a course on African American history.
In the brouhaha that ensued after that announcement was made in June, critics said they feared that the district would use the course to teach pseudo-history to its students - anti-white propaganda in the guise of historical fact.
Well, I can state categorically that is not true. How do I know? I just got done reading the textbook the district plans to use for the course.
It's all part of being a full-service columnist, folks.
As my colleague Martha Woodall reported earlier this month, the book is called The African-American Odyssey, written by historians Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine and Stanley Harrold.
Actually, this exact text won't be used in Philadelphia. The book, originally published in 1999, is a college textbook. It is being edited to produce a high school version, using language more accessible to 10th graders.
If you haven't read a history textbook lately, Odyssey is a revelation.
It is well-written, has great graphics, makes telling use of statistics, and intersperses its big-picture history with profiles of everyday folks. I particularly liked the one about the Forten family of Philadelphia.
But, above all, it is historical - dispassionate, factual and fair.
And I learned a lot reading it, which is the point, after all, of textbooks and history and education.
By the way, how's your grasp of African American history? My bet is that it's not as good as you may think.
Test it by taking this quiz, with questions drawn from the book. Answers are on page B2.
Questions
1. True or false: Most blacks who ended up in slavery were captured by European traders who raided the African coast.
2. It is estimated that between 1451 and 1870, nearly 9.3 million Africans were brought to the New World as slaves. Which area got the greatest number?
a) The 13 British colonies
b) Caribbean nations.
c) Brazil.
d) Spanish colonies.
3. True or false: One-third of the captured slaves died in passage to the New World.
4. True or false: After the Revolutionary War, while the South maintained slavery, it quickly disappeared in most northern states.
5. In 1860, there were nine million whites living in the Southern states. What percentage of them owned slaves?
a) 62
b) 32
c) 16
d) 4
6. True or false: Blacks enlisted and fought for the Union cause from the beginning of the Civil War.
7. Under the "separate but equal policy" condoned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, schools in the South became segregated after Reconstruction ended.
In 1915, in the 23 largest cities of the South, there were a total of 36 whites-only high schools. How many black high schools were there?
a) 36
b) 22
c) 8
d) 0
8. He ridiculed the NAACP as "the National Association for Certain People" and called W.E.B. DuBois a "lazy, dependent mulatto." Name this political leader of the 1920s.
9. True or false: After Pearl Harbor, African Americans volunteered for the armed services in such record numbers that the Pentagon ended its long-standing policy of segregating black and white troops.
10. True or false: The U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965 was very effective in empowering blacks to exercise their right to vote.
Contact Tom Ferrick at 215-854-2714 or tferrick@phillynews.com.
Answers to African American history quiz
Answers to the 10 questions about African American history in Tom Ferrick's column:
1. False. Most Africans were sold into slavery by tribal and regional leaders. Many were members of rival tribes.
2. B. Nearly 3.8 million slaves went to the West Indies. About 3.5 million went to Brazil. The British colonies in America got 339,000.
3.True. The ships were crowded and conditions were horrid. Many died of communicable diseases, such as smallpox.
4.False. The New England states were quick to abolish slavery, but others were not, often passing laws that granted freedom not to slaves but to their children - and only after they reached the age of 25. As late as 1830, there were still 403 slaves in Pennsylvania and 2,243 in New Jersey.
5. D, 4 percent. A total of 383,673 Southerners owned slaves. Almost half that number owned fewer than five slaves.
6. False. Most blacks were forbidden to join the Union Army at the start of the Civil War. They were allowed only after the Emancipation Proclamation. By 1865, a total of 185,000 African Americans had served in the Union military.
7.D. There were no black high schools in the urban South in 1915.
8. Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born black nationalist whose Universal Negro Improvement Association had a huge following in the 1920s. He frequently feuded with moderate civil rights leaders. They returned the fire. DuBois called Garvey "either a lunatic or a traitor."
9. False. Segregation remained in effect throughout World War II for the one million blacks who served in the military. It wasn't until 1948 that President Harry Truman, by executive order, ended segregation in the military.
10. True. In 1960, only a minority of blacks were registered to vote in the South. In Mississippi, for example, only 5 percent were registered in 1960. By 1971, six years after the federal law took effect, 55 percent of the state's eligible African Americans were registered to vote.
SOURCE: The African-American Odyssey
— Tom Ferrick Jr.
Philadelphia Inquirer
2005-07-31
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/education/12264924.htm
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