Deck 12: The Color Line

Question 1

Which of the following contributed MOST to the Readjuster Party's fall from power in 1883?

A)a resurgence in economic prosperity
B)Democrats' concessions to black voters
C)blacks' demands for integrated schools
D)black voters' refusal to abandon the Republican Party

Answer 1

blacks' demands for integrated schools

Question 2

Which of the following statements about the case of Plessy v.Ferguson is LEAST accurate?

A)The case resulted from the arrest of Plessy,a man who was seven-eighths white,who refused to leave his seat in the whites-only section of a Louisiana train.
B)The case was instigated by black Louisianans who set up Plessy for arrest to test the state's new law segregating railroad cars.
C)Both a lower court judge,John H.Ferguson,and the Supreme Court of Louisiana,upheld Plessy's arrest.
D)Although the U.S.Supreme Court upheld the legality of "separate but equal" state facilities,it did so by a bare majority,with four justices writing heated dissents.

Answer 2

Although the U.S.Supreme Court upheld the legality of "separate but equal" state facilities,it did so by a bare majority,with four justices writing heated dissents.

Question 3

In 1891,which state initiated a trend toward the legal segregation of streetcars in cities throughout the South?

A)South Carolina
B)Mississippi
C)Georgia
D)Virginia

Answer 3

Georgia

Question 4

Which of the following statements about voting in the years following Reconstruction is LEAST accurate?

A)White Democrats sometimes courted black voters and even nominated black candidates.
B)White Democrats sometimes stuffed ballot boxes in order to defeat Republican majorities.
C)Democratic state governments enacted laws which explicitly denied black men their right to vote on the basis of their race.
D)Democratic state governments enacted laws which allowed the indirect disenfranchisement of black men without technically violating the Fifteenth Amendment.

Question 5

Which of the following statements about the radical agrarian movement of the late nineteenth century is LEAST accurate?

A)Although white leaders of the Southern Farmers' Alliance refused to permit black members,it did encourage black farmers to start their own parallel organization.
B)The Populist Party often reached out to black voters in order to expand its power base.
C)At the height of the agrarian movement,black voters in several southern states found some of their political rights restored to them.
D)Although many white southerners viewed the agrarian movement warily,they declined to respond to it with the sort of violence which they had earlier used against Republicans.

Question 6

The amendments to state constitutions which were passed in the 1890s and early 1900s to disenfranchise blacks generally included all of the following provisions EXCEPT

A)a poll tax levied on all voters.
B)a requirement that voters had to demonstrate the ability to read or understand the state constitution.
C)the denial of voting rights to convicts.
D)the explicit denial of voting rights to anyone whose father or grandfather had not been qualified to vote before the Civil War.

Question 7

Which of the following statements about the establishment of the South's color line in the late nineteenth century is LEAST accurate?

A)Jim Crow laws transformed public spaces into private ones in which only whites could move freely,and turned blacks into second-class citizens.
B)Jim Crow laws faced fierce opposition from rich white southerners who found themselves barred from bringing their servants into whites-only areas.
C)Jim Crow laws were challenged most notably in cases of segregated transportation facilities.
D)Black women played a prominent role in opposing Jim Crow laws,despite the physical dangers to which they exposed themselves by doing so.

Question 8

In what year did John Mercer Langston become the first black man to represent Virginia in the U.S.Congress?

A)1868
B)1878
C)1888
D)1978

Question 9

Which of the following statements about American interest in the Hawaiian Islands is LEAST accurate?

A)After its victory in the Spanish-American War in 1898,the United States forced Spain to sell it the Hawaiian Islands for a nominal cost.
B)The United States looked to the islands as a site for naval bases and coaling stations.
C)American investors had poured millions of dollars into sugar plantations well before the United States officially took possession of the islands.
D)The Hawaiian Islands were only a few of several islands which the United States had begun to acquire in the late nineteenth century.

Question 10

At a conference held in 1884-1885,European delegates carved up which region among themselves?

A)Africa
B)Asia
C)the Middle East
D)the South Seas islands

Question 11

The effective plan to disenfranchise southern blacks in the 1890s took its name from which state in which it first appeared?

A)South Carolina
B)Georgia
C)Mississippi
D)Louisiana

Question 12

The emergence of the Readjuster Party in the late 1870s revealed that

A)white southerners would vote against their own economic interests to prevent blacks from gaining political power.
B)attempts to disenfranchise black southerners had become almost completely successful within only a few years of the end of Reconstruction.
C)white southerners would sometimes ally with black southerners in opposition to policies which seemed to benefit only the rich.
D)although black southerners continued to enjoy some access to the ballot box after the end of Reconstruction,their votes were controlled by the white elite.

Question 13

In 1912 and 1913,the cities of Louisville and Baltimore passed laws which

A)divided the cities' residential section into black and white blocks,and barred members of one race from moving into the block designated for members of the other race.
B)effectively prohibited blacks from obtaining residences in the cities,resulting in a massive outmigration to the North and Lower South.
C)created public housing for poorer citizens in order to put an end to the congested,unsanitary tenements in which many residents,especially black ones,had previously lived.
D)stipulated that blacks could only live in certain designated areas of the city,whereas whites could live anywhere without restriction.

Question 14

The Conservative Democrats of the post-Reconstruction era were generally

A)wealthy white men in favor of railroads and industrial development.
B)poor to middling white men in favor of restoring the South's traditional racial hierarchy and agricultural character.
C)wealthy white men who sided with Republicans in a vain attempt to preserve black southerners' political and civil rights.
D)poor to middling white men who continued to agitate for the secession of the southern states from the Union.

Question 15

By the end of the 1890s the fortunes of the Populists in the South had revealed that

A)most white southerners,regardless of party,were committed to the disenfranchisement of blacks.
B)any party which could command the loyalty of black southern voters could gain effective control of the state.
C)although white Populists were willing to reach out to black voters,black voters were unwilling to break from the Republican Party and vote with the Populists.
D)although small farmers white and black,were willing to unite politically,they were too few in number to have a significant impact on southern politics.

Question 16

Which of the following statements about blacks in southern cities is LEAST accurate?

A)Blacks outnumbered whites in a number of major southern cities,including Montgomery and Charleston.
B)The number of blacks living in both Upper South cities like Baltimore and Louisville and Lowe South cities like New Orleans and Atlanta increased rapidly.
C)White workers,organized labor,and industrialists all often opposed the hiring of black workers.
D)While the numbers of black men in southern cities increased,the numbers of black women,for whom work was even harder to find,remained low.

Question 17

A riot in 1898 over the question of disenfranchisement left eleven blacks dead and twenty-five wounded in which city?

A)Wilmington,North Carolina
B)Beaufort,South Carolina
C)Mound Bayou,Mississippi
D)Dalton,Georgia

Question 18

What did the U.S.Supreme Court decide in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883?

A)State-mandated segregation was unconstitutional.
B)Only states,not the federal government,could pass laws requiring private businesses to provide equal access to black and white customers.
C)Private businesses could not deny service to black citizens,though they could require black customers to make use of separate rooms or facilities from the ones used by white customers.
D)State governments could enact laws which disenfranchised entire black communities as long as the laws were not explicitly based on race.

Question 19

By the end of the nineteenth century,the king of Belgium had taken control of

A)Togoland.
B)Cameroon.
C)the Congo.
D)East Africa.

Question 20

In the years following Reconstruction,southern state governments deprived black citizens of the right to vote by all of the following means EXCEPT

A)requiring prospective votes to pay poll taxes.
B)requiring prospective voters to pass literacy tests.
C)instituting deliberately complicated balloting processes.
D)amending state constitutions to explicitly reserve the vote exclusively to white men.

Question 21

In Statesboro,Georgia,in August,1904,two black men accused of killing a white family of five were

A)pulled from jail,tarred and feathered,and banished from the town before the courts could hear the case.
B)beaten to death in their cells by police before their case could go to trial.
C)dragged from their cells and burnt alive by a mob after having been sentenced to death.
D)hanged by an irate mob after a judge released them on a technicality.

Question 22

Which of the following statements about "lynch law" is LEAST accurate?

A)Although it was especially prevalent in the South,lynching was also a problem in the Midwest.
B)Most lynchings were justified on the ground that the murdered men had raped or threatened to rape white women.
C)Many more persons were lynched in the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century than in the first fifteen years of the twentieth century,but the tallies in both periods numbered more than a thousand.
D)Lynching was notably more common in the Deep South than it was in the Upper South or the Southwest.

Question 23

Before the Spanish-American War,the U.S.Army's four black units had been used primarily

A)in the occupation of Pacific islands.
B)as personal servants to high-ranking white officers.
C)to protect the civil rights of southern blacks from white supremacist terror.
D)in the Indian wars of the West.

Question 24

Over which of the following territories did the United States take official possession as a result of the Treaty of Paris which ended the Spanish-American War?

A)Cuba
B)Puerto Rico
C)Hawaii
D)the Virgin Islands

Question 25

Whose heavy-handed anti-insurgent policies earned him the nickname "the Butcher" in the American press?

A)Antonio Maceo
B)Quintin Bandera
C)Valeriano Weyler
D)Emilio Aguinaldo

Question 26

Which of the following statements about the August 1908 riot in Springfield,Illinois,is LEAST accurate?

A)Although it received more attention than other episodes,it was far from the only instance of antiblack mob violence in northern cities.
B)The riot stemmed from a false accusation of rape leveled against a black man by a white woman who retracted her statement before the riot occurred.
C)The riot resulted in the deaths of twice as many blacks as whites.
D)Order was only restored after the mustering of 5000 militiamen.

Question 27

How did President Theodore Roosevelt respond to reports that black soldiers of the Twenty-Fifth Regiment had "shot up" the town of Brownsville,Texas?

A)He insisted that no action should be taken against the soldiers until they had been tried in a fair and partial court of law.
B)He argued that the soldiers were liable to military law,and ordered courts martial which resulted in the execution of three alleged ringleaders.
C)He summarily dishonorably discharged the entire regiment,and temporarily banned them from all federal service,military or civil.
D)He praised the soldiers for defending their personal honor and the honor of their uniforms against gratuitous and provocative insults.

Question 28

Which of the following statements about American colonization of Puerto Rico is LEAST accurate?

A)American colonial officials enjoyed some success at improving the colony's standards of health and education.
B)Puerto Ricans gained American citizenship and male Puerto Ricans gained the right to vote,though the most important government officials were appointed by the U.S.president.
C)American colonization in Puerto Rico resulted in a broad-based prosperity which lifted the masses out of poverty.
D)The acquisition of Puerto Rico raised concerns among many American congressmen who worried that the enfranchisement of black Puerto Ricans would lead black Americans to agitate for their own rights.

Question 29

Tracing its history back to the American Revolution,which unit was the only all-black company mustered as an integral part of a white regiment during the Spanish-American War?

A)Company D of the Sixth Virginia Infantry
B)Company H of the Third North Carolina Infantry
C)Company L of the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry
D)Company C of the Third Connecticut Infantry of Volunteers

Question 30

In September 1906,which city experienced the most South's most sensational riot,one which resulted in the death of one white police officer and four prominent black citizens?

A)Atlanta
B)Charleston
C)New Orleans
D)Baltimore

Question 31

Which of the following statements about the U.S.war against Spain is LEAST accurate?

A)It stemmed from an ongoing rebellion within Spain's colony of Cuba.
B)It was largely inspired by Spanish imperial restrictions which had completely barred Americans from investing in Cuba's lucrative sugar industry.
C)It was encouraged by sensational accounts of Spanish atrocities in the American press.
D)It resulted in large part from the mysterious destruction of an American warship in Cuban waters.

Question 32

Which Afro-Cuban insurgent was known as "the Black Thunderbolt"?

A)Albion Tourgee
B)Quintin Bandera
C)Valeriano Weyler
D)Emilio Aguinaldo

Question 33

Theodore Roosevelt's public assessment of the performance of black soldiers in the Spanish-American War

A)was invariably positive,acknowledging that the war effort might have been lost without them.
B)varied according to time and place,but was generally positive,if sometimes qualified.
C)was invariably negative,contending that black soldiers almost lost the U.S.the war.
D)varied according to time and place,but was generally negative,alleging that black soldiers were incapable of properly following orders.

Question 34

From 1899 to 1902,an unusual number of black soldiers stationed in what region deserted from the U.S.Army in protest of its imperialist policies?

A)the Philippines
B)Cuba
C)Puerto Rico
D)Hawaii

Question 35

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,the United States pursued imperialistic policies most vigorously in

A)South America and the Caribbean.
B)western and southern Africa.
C)East Asia and the Pacific.
D)East Africa.

Question 36

From 1870 through 1914,the U.S.government usually sent black ministers to which two foreign countries?

A)Haiti and China
B)China and India
C)India and Liberia
D)Liberia and Haiti

Question 37

Which northern city experienced two riots within a few years,including one in 1904 in which a lynch mob killed a black prisoner before burning eight buildings in the black section of town?

A)Philadelphia,Pennsylvania
B)Springfield,Ohio
C)Christiana,Pennsylvania
D)Akron,Ohio

Question 38

The United States purchased the Virgin Islands from

A)Spain.
B)France.
C)Germany.
D)Denmark.

Question 39

Black soldiers of the Ninth and Tenth Cavalries provided crucial assistance to the Rough Riders on June 24,1898,at the Battle of

A)Las Guasimas.
B)San Juan Hill.
C)El Caney.
D)Guantanamo Bay.