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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What happened on December 2, 1955?

2. Why was Claudette kicked out of school?

3. What did city officials continue to do in the summer of 1956?

4. What organization helped to create an alternative transport system?

5. How did Claudette feel about being an unwed mother?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Gray do as a second front for the bus boycott?

2. How did Gray begin his arguments, what did the prosecutor accuse the plaintiffs of and what did they say to his accusations?

3. Why did Claudette leave school and why did she feel left out of the bus boycott movement?

4. What did the Mayor of Montgomery say about the segregation and what was Judge Rives response?

5. How did the boycott protesters feel about the court's decision and why? What did the court begin to receive?

6. How does Claudette get to the court, how many days had the boycott been going when she went to court and how did blacks feel about the court case?

7. What did Martin Luther King see on December 5th? What was held to commemorate it?

8. What did Claudette do about the celebration?

9. What did vow to do when the Supreme Court upheld the court's decision and what happened finally? Where was Claudette on the first day the blacks began to ride the bus again?

10. Why was Claudette considered a bad choice to be the "poster person" for a bus boycott? What did she say about her problem?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Claudette felt alone and hurt by Rosa Parks' accomplishments and the way the black community rallied around her. But she had to worry about other things, like being ostracized and kicked out of school and about how she would take care of her baby.

1. Why do you think Claudette felt alone and hurt? Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

2. Do you think unwed pregnant teenagers should be kicked out of school? Why or why not? Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

3. Do you think people didn't help Claudette with the baby because they thought it was wrong for her to get pregnant or because they just didn't think about it? Why or why not? Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss the following:

1. Why do you think it is important that this book was written? Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

2. Do you think this book did what the author set out to do? Why or why not? Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

3. Explain why you might or might not read another book by this author about another real life person. Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

Essay Topic 3

Claudette was four years old when she found out what happened when blacks acted up against whites. Some white boys came up to her and wanted to see her hands. They touched each other's hands and the boys laughed. When Claudette's mother saw them, she came up to Claudette and slapped her across the face and told her that she's not supposed to touch white people. The white boy's mother agreed. She learned to never touch white people again.

1. Discuss how you think the above incident could affect someone's self-esteem. Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

2. Many southern white women used black women as "nannies" or for child care. Discuss what might be contradictory about allowing black women to care for white children, which would include holding them, bathing them, etc. and black children being told they could not touch white children. Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

3. In the 1960's Grace Haskell dyed her skin and traveled America as a black woman. She was the exact same person under the black skin and yet simply because she was dark her experience of the country and people became different. In view of the incident with Claudette above, discuss the insanity of prejudice on the basis of skin color. You might want to start your discussion about how a white woman who becomes black all of a sudden was not good enough to touch another white person. Use examples from the text and your own life to support your answer.

(see the answer keys)

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