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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Part Two, The Old Negro: Race, Science, Literature, and the Birth of Jim Crow.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was the main premise behind the theory of polygenesis?
(a) The notion that every race had had its own creator.
(b) The notion that each race of people on earth should have its own leader.
(c) The notion that there was an inherent hierarchy within each racial group.
(d) The notion that black people were a separate race from white people.

2. Gates states in the preface that the title of Stony the Road is taken from what type of artistic work?
(a) A song.
(b) A poem.
(c) A novel.
(d) A short story.

3. Gates asserts in Part Two that monogenesis "found its basis" (57) in what element of society?
(a) Science.
(b) Religion.
(c) Folklore.
(d) Astrology.

4. Who was the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard?
(a) Frederick Hoffman.
(b) Ralph Ellison.
(c) W.E.B. Du Bois.
(d) Langston Hughes.

5. In what year was the Voting Rights Act passed?
(a) 1904.
(b) 1932.
(c) 1965.
(d) 1873.

Short Answer Questions

1. In what year did African American men gain the right to register and vote?

2. Gates asserts in Part Two that "adherents to polygenesis" (57) turned to what element of society?

3. Gates names which university as the place where the "kernel of the idea" (xv) for Stony the Road formed?

4. Which writer's extreme optimism after Barack Obama's election is cited by Gates as an example?

5. In what capacity was Louis Agassiz hired by a particular institution of higher learning in 1846?

(see the answer key)

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