AP African American Studies: Unit 3 Mixed Review: Practice of Freedom Connections (Drill 23)

Question 1. In the passage, Du Bois uses the concept of “double self” to describe

• A) the legal distinction between free Black Americans in the North and enslaved people in the South
• B) the conflict between integrationist and separatist political strategies within Black communities
• C) the tension African Americans experienced between their African identity and their American identity ✓
• D) the contradiction between the democratic ideals of the Constitution and the practice of racial segregation

Explanation: Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness” describes the internal experience of holding two identities simultaneously, being both Black and American in a society that treats those identities as incompatible. The passage makes this explicit: he wants to merge “his double self” without losing either side. (A) conflates a legal and geographic distinction with a psychological and cultural concept, these describe entirely different phenomena. (B) is a real tension within Black political thought but is not what this passage addresses; Du Bois is discussing identity, not strategy. (D) is a true observation about American society but is not what “double self” means in Du Bois’s framework; he is describing inner experience, not a legal contradiction. [Skill 2A, Identify and describe a claim or argument in a source]

Question 2. Which of the following best describes the purpose of Du Bois’s argument in the passage?

• A) To advocate for African American emigration to Africa as the solution to racial oppression in the United States
• B) To call for legal reform of Jim Crow segregation through litigation in federal courts
• C) To assert that African Americans should fully assimilate into white American culture to achieve social equality within this argument
• D) To argue that African Americans can and should preserve both their African heritage and their American identity simultaneously ✓

Explanation: Du Bois explicitly states that African Americans should not “Africanize America” but equally should not “bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism”; his purpose is to articulate a vision of dual identity where neither side is surrendered. (A) is the opposite of Du Bois’s argument in this passage; emigration to Africa was the position of Martin Delany and later Marcus Garvey, not Du Bois. (B) introduces legal strategy not mentioned in this passage; Du Bois did advocate for litigation through the NAACP, but that is not the subject here. (C) directly contradicts the passage, which rejects assimilation as identity erasure. (A) is the most tempting distractor because students sometimes conflate Du Bois’s Pan-African intellectual interests with Garvey’s back-to-Africa movement, but the passage gives no support for emigration. [Skill 2B, Source perspective and purpose]

Question 3. Which of the following best describes a continuity between the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) and the New Negro Movement of the 1920s?

• A) African Americans in both periods built institutions, newspapers, and organizations to assert political and cultural claims ✓
• B) Both periods saw the federal government actively expanding legal protections and enforcement mechanisms for African Americans
• C) Both movements relied primarily on armed self-defense as their central strategy for resisting white supremacist violence
• D) Both periods were characterized by a significant decline in lynching and racial terror across the American South

Explanation: Across both Reconstruction and the New Negro era, African Americans built newspapers, schools, churches, fraternal organizations, and political institutions as expressions of collective agency. During Reconstruction this included HBCUs, Black-run newspapers, and political officeholding; in the 1920s it included the Crisis, the Urban League, the NAACP, and Harlem’s cultural institutions. Institution-building is the continuous thread. (B) is false for the New Negro era, the federal government largely retreated from Black civil rights after Reconstruction and provided no comparable protections in the 1920s. (C) is inaccurate for both periods; armed self-defense was practiced by some individuals and communities but was not the primary or defining strategy of either era. (D) is factually wrong, lynching persisted through both periods and spiked dramatically during the Red Summer of 1919. [Skill 1C, Patterns of continuity and change over time]

Question 4. “Lifting as We Climb,” the motto of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), reflected which of the following ideologies central to the Practice of Freedom era?

• A) Pan-Africanism, which sought to connect African American struggles to anti-colonial movements in Africa and the Caribbean
• B) Racial uplift, which held that the collective advancement of the Black community required education, community service, and individual cultivation ✓
• C) Black separatism, which called for the creation of fully independent Black political and economic institutions separate from white society at that time
• D) Integrationism, which sought the immediate legal desegregation of all public institutions in the South through federal legislation

Explanation: Racial uplift ideology, central to the NACW, Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells, and other Black women leaders of the era, held that the collective elevation of the community through education, moral respectability, professional achievement, and service would advance the race as a whole. “Lifting as We Climb” captures this sense of collective responsibility: those who had achieved more bore a duty to lift others. (A) confuses uplift ideology with Pan-Africanism; they coexisted but are distinct frameworks with different emphases. (C) misidentifies the NACW’s orientation; it operated within American civic life, not as a separatist project. (D) is anachronistic; the legal desegregation campaign is associated with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s–60s, not with the 1890s–1920s context of the NACW. [Skill 1A, Applying disciplinary knowledge: ideology and key organizations]

Question 5. Which of the following best explains the distinctive contribution of the Harlem Renaissance to African American strategies for advancing freedom and equality?

• A) It extended the Reconstruction-era strategy of using federal legislation and constitutional amendments to secure formal citizenship rights
• B) It explicitly rejected collaboration with white Americans and white-owned cultural institutions as a form of compromise
• C) It was a Southern-based movement that engaged directly with the structures of Jim Crow segregation in the region where they were most entrenched
• D) It advanced the argument that Black artistic and intellectual excellence was itself a form of political assertion, a demonstration of Black humanity that challenged the intellectual foundations of white supremacy ✓

Explanation: The Harlem Renaissance’s distinctive contribution was its argument that cultural production, literature, music, visual art, theater, was not merely entertainment but a political act: proof of Black humanity and intellectual capacity that directly undermined the ideological basis of white supremacy. This set it apart from strategies centered on law, legislation, or armed resistance. (A) describes Reconstruction’s approach, not the Harlem Renaissance’s; the Renaissance emerged precisely during the era when federal legislative protection had collapsed, and it operated through culture rather than law. (B) is historically inaccurate, Harlem Renaissance figures actively engaged white publishers, patrons, and audiences, a practice that generated internal debate within the movement but was not rejected. (C) is factually wrong: the Harlem Renaissance was centered in Northern cities, primarily New York, not in the South. Students who know all four eras well may be tempted by (A), but that choice describes what Reconstruction did, not what the Harlem Renaissance contributed as its own distinctive strategy. [Skill 3A, Formulate and evaluate a claim about historical significance]