AP African American Studies: White Supremacist Violence and the Red Summer (Drill 18)

Question 1. What is Ida B. Wells’s primary argument in the passage above?

• A) Lynching was carried out anonymously by unknown individuals who could never be identified or prosecuted
• B) Southern state courts were the appropriate institutions to investigate and prosecute lynching cases
• C) The international reputation of the United States was the most important reason to oppose lynching
• D) The federal government had both the authority and the obligation to prosecute lynchers, and its failure to act was a moral and civic disgrace ✓

Explanation: Wells makes two linked claims: the federal government uniquely has the legal power to act (“the only government that can”), and its inaction disgraces the nation morally and internationally. (A) directly contradicts the source, Wells argues perpetrators are known “prominent citizens,” which was a central finding of her investigative journalism and a key rhetorical move: these are not anonymous criminals but community pillars shielded by local power. (B) contradicts her central argument; she explicitly frames federal action as the necessary remedy. (C) names a real element of the passage, international disgrace, but it is a supporting argument rather than her primary claim; the core claim is about federal authority and obligation. Students who pick (C) have identified something true in the passage but missed its argumentative center, which is a common AP reading error. [Skill 2A, Identifying the central claim and distinguishing it from supporting arguments]

Question 2. Wells’s campaign for federal anti-lynching legislation is most significant historically because it

• A) succeeded in securing passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill through both houses of Congress by 1922
• B) exemplified the broader African American political strategy of appealing to federal authority and international opinion when state governments refused to protect Black lives ✓
• C) directly caused the founding of the NAACP, which was established specifically to advance Wells’s anti-lynching agenda
• D) persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to use sweeping executive authority to formally suspend all lynching across the Southern states.

Explanation: Wells’s campaign is historically significant not primarily for its legislative outcome but for the strategic model it represents: when state and local governments perpetrate or ignore racial violence, Black activists turned to federal power and world opinion. This pattern, appealing to Washington and the international community, recurs throughout African American political history, from Reconstruction through the Cold War era. (A) reflects a common chronological misconception: students who know the Dyer Bill existed sometimes assume it passed. It actually passed the House in 1922 but was killed by a Senate filibuster and never became law, this reflects a broader error of placing Progressive Era reform successes too early or assuming that House passage meant enacted law. (C) overstates the connection, the NAACP was founded in 1909 for broad civil rights purposes; Wells was involved in its founding but it was not created specifically for her campaign. (D) is false; Roosevelt did not use executive authority against lynching. [Skill 1C, Patterns and connections in African American political strategy]

Question 3. The term “Red Summer” refers to

• A) the period in 1919 during which white mobs carried out violent attacks on Black communities in more than two dozen American cities and towns, including Chicago, Washington D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas ✓
• B) the congressional investigations launched in the early 1920s into alleged communist influence within African American civil rights organizations
• C) the wave of coordinated interracial labor strikes during 1919 that briefly unified Black and white industrial workers before racial tensions resurfaced and ended them.
• D) a series of race riots in 1919 that began as conflicts between Black workers and white union members competing for industrial jobs in Northern cities

Explanation: The Red Summer, a term coined by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson, refers to the period of 1919 in which white mobs attacked Black neighborhoods across the country, resulting in hundreds of Black deaths and the destruction of entire communities. The violence reflected multiple pressures: resentment over Black migration to Northern cities, labor competition, and the reality of Black veterans returning from World War I with changed expectations of rights. (B) conflates the Red Summer with McCarthyism-era red-baiting of the NAACP, which occurred in the late 1940s and 1950s, a chronological confusion of “Red Summer” (racial violence) with “Red Scare” (anti-communism). (C) misidentifies the nature of 1919 unrest; while it was a significant year for labor strikes, the Red Summer refers specifically to anti-Black racial violence. (D) is the most dangerous distractor; it is partially rooted in fact (labor competition was a contributing tension in cities like Chicago) but mischaracterizes the Red Summer as a labor conflict rather than a campaign of white supremacist violence. Students who know migration and labor history sometimes impose that framework incorrectly. [Skill 1A, Applying disciplinary knowledge of the Red Summer]

Question 4. Which of the following best supports the argument that Black communities responded to white supremacist violence in the early twentieth century through armed self-defense as well as through legal and political channels?

• A) During Red Summer conflicts, Black residents avoided self-defense and relied entirely on white city officials to stop the mob violence.
• B) Ida B. Wells’s investigative journalism documenting lynching statistics generated significant attention in the British press and from members of Parliament, creating diplomatic pressure on the United States
• C) During the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 and other Red Summer conflicts, Black residents, including World War I veterans with combat training and a heightened consciousness of their rights, organized armed defense of their neighborhoods against white mob attacks ✓
• D) Marcus Garvey’s UNIA promoted Black military preparedness and armed self-sufficiency through its paramilitary African Legion, arguing that Black communities must be capable of defending themselves against racial terror

Explanation: The question asks specifically for evidence of armed self-defense, a distinct form of resistance from legal challenges or journalism. During the Chicago Race Riot and other 1919 conflicts, Black residents actively fought back; returning veterans brought military training and a transformed post-war consciousness that contributed to organized armed resistance in their neighborhoods. (A) is historically accurate, the NAACP did successfully challenge the Elaine convictions in Moore v. Dempsey (1923), but this describes legal advocacy, not armed self-defense. (B) is accurate but describes Wells’s international lobbying strategy, not armed resistance. (D) is the most carefully constructed distractor: the UNIA’s African Legion did exist and promoted Black self-defense readiness, which is historically true, but it represents ideological promotion of armed preparedness, not documented instances of community armed self-defense during the Red Summer riots specifically. Students must distinguish between advocating for armed defense and carrying it out. All three wrong answers are historically accurate statements that do not answer what the question asks. [Skill 3B, Supporting a specific historical claim with targeted evidence]

Question 5. Which of the following best explains an important difference between Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan terrorism and the white mob violence of the Red Summer of 1919?

• A) Reconstruction-era Klan violence was extralegal and vigilante in nature, while Red Summer violence was legally sanctioned by Southern state governments
• B) While Reconstruction-era Klan terrorism was directed primarily at suppressing Black political leadership and voting, Red Summer violence targeted entire Black urban communities and neighborhoods that had grown through the Great Migration ✓
• C) Red Summer violence was far less geographically widespread than Reconstruction-era Klan activity, which had erupted in every Southern state at the same moment.
• D) Unlike Reconstruction-era violence, which had lasting political effects, Red Summer violence failed to produce any significant changes in Black political or social life

Explanation: This comparison requires precision about the target, context, and geography of each wave of violence. Reconstruction-era Klan terrorism was strategically aimed at Black political leaders, Republican officeholders, and Black voters; its explicit goal was to suppress Black political power and restore Democratic control of the South. Red Summer violence in 1919 targeted Black neighborhoods as such, entire communities of Black urban migrants, and was concentrated in Northern and border cities like Chicago, Washington D.C., and Omaha, reflecting the new geography of Black life after the Great Migration. (A) is misleading, both forms of violence involved extralegal mobs, and both sometimes had local law enforcement complicity or direct participation; the Klan did not operate with formal legal sanction either. (C) is the opposite of the historical pattern, Red Summer violence was more geographically dispersed, penetrating Northern cities for the first time, while Reconstruction Klan activity was concentrated in the South. (D) is false on both counts and contains a particularly important trap: Reconstruction-era violence did have lasting effects (it ended Reconstruction), but Red Summer violence also had lasting significance; it accelerated Black migration, galvanized the NAACP, and shaped the New Negro consciousness. [Skill 1C, Comparing patterns of racial violence across time]