Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

1. Who do the authors identify as “the world’s first racist”?

A) Cotton Mather

B) Gomes Eanes de Zurara

C) Leo Africanus

D) John Pory

2. In what year were the first enslaved Africans brought to what would become the United States?

A) 1492

B) 1553

C) 1619

D) 1689

3. According to the authors, why did Virginia lawmakers pass white supremacist laws in the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676?

A) because they believed Black people were the cursed offspring of Ham

B) to prevent Black people and Indigenous people from uniting against white people

C) to prevent Black and white workers from uniting against the wealthy

D) because the colonies were already fully reliant on slave labor

4. Cotton Mather is most associated with what event in American history?

A) the Salem Witch Trials

B) the arrival of the first enslaved people to the American colonies

C) Bacon’s Rebellion

D) The 1688 Germantown Petition Against Slavery

5. According to the authors, who produced the first organized antiracist literature in colonial America? (short answer)

6. Who do the authors refer to as “the world’s first person to say, ‘I have Black friends’”?

A) Benjamin Franklin

B) George Washington

C) Benjamin Rush

D) Thomas Jefferson

7. In 1791, where did enslaved people mount a successful rebellion in which they gained their freedom from French colonizers?

A) Bermuda

B) Haiti

C) Brazil

D) Barbados

8. Which option best describes “uplift suasion”?

A) Enslaved people are responsible for freeing themselves through armed rebellion.

B) Black enslaved people should be sent away from America to recolonize Africa.

C) Black people can best achieve equality by living “respectable lives” and defying racist stereotypes.

D) Black and white lower-class laborers should unite against wealthy elites.

9. According to the authors, why did early antislavery efforts to deport Black people back to Africa fail?

A) Black people did not want to go “back” to a continent they’d never known.

B) It was too expensive for the U.S. government.

C) African countries refused to accept them.

D) President Thomas Jefferson opposed the idea.

10. What are two racist theories spread by colonial white supremacists to justify their belief that Black people were “savages”? (short answer)

11. In 1833, which abolitionist newspaper publisher founded the American Anti-Slavery Society?

A) William Lloyd Garrison

B) Susan B. Anthony

C) Harriet Beecher Stowe

D) Frederick Douglass

12. What 1852 hit book supported the abolitionist cause by appealing to the Christian beliefs of white women in the North?

A) The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

B) Uncle Tom’s Cabin

C) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

D) Twelve Years a Slave

13.  According to the authors, why did Abraham Lincoln first enter the antislavery mindset?

A) He believed in Black equality.

B) He was shocked by the horror of slavery.

C) He believed the expansion of slavery would make jobs harder to find for white workers.

D) He wanted to dismantle Southern slavery.

14. During the Civil War, how did enslaved people “emancipat[e] themselves,” according to the authors?

A) They joined the Union Army.

B) They bought back their freedom from slaveholders.

C) They enrolled at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

D) They voted for abolitionist political candidates.

15. Which 1870 amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted Black men the right to vote? (short answer)

16. Who wrote a landmark 1892 report on lynching showing that white men lied about Black men raping white women while hiding their own sexual assaults against Black women?

A) W.E.B. Du Bois

B) Ida B. Wells-Barnett

C) Booker T. Washington

D) Phillis Wheatley

17. What best describes how white supremacists viewed the boxer Jack Johnson?

A) He was an exception to their belief that white people are more athletically-gifted than Black people.

B) He was a symbol exposing the lies behind white supremacy.

C) He was an example of “uplift suasion” showing how talented Black people can assimilate into white culture.

D) He was a “Black aggressor” who embodied the natural savagery of Black men.

18. Which U.S. President screened the deeply racist film Birth of a Nation in the White House?

A) Andrew Johnson

B) Franklin D. Roosevelt

C) Woodrow Wilson

D) Calvin Coolidge

19. According to the authors, what event caused W.E.B. Du Bois to move away from assimilation as a strategy for Black liberation?

A) Black soldiers’ treatment in Europe during World War I

B) The Red Summer of 1919

C) the founding of the NAACP

D) The Harlem Renaissance

20. Which 1954 Supreme Court decision ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional? (short answer)

21. What do the authors view as the problem with the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

A) The legislation was nearly impossible to enforce.

B) It went too far it securing equal rights for Black Americans.

C) It was never actually passed and therefore never took effect.

D) The backlash caused Lyndon Johnson not to run for another term.

22. Which law do the authors call “the most effective piece of antiracist legislation ever passed by the Congress of the United States of America”?

A) The Civil Rights Act of 1964

B) The Fair Housing Act of 1968

C) The Voting Rights Act of 1965

D) The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964

23. Who assassinated Malcolm X?

A) the FBI

B) the Ku Klux Klan

C) a lone white racist

D) individuals associated with the Nation of Islam

24. According to the authors, what part of the Black Power movement most resonated with Martin Luther King, Jr.?

A) its focus on armed Black self-defense.

B) helping all Black people, not just middle- and upper-class Black people

C) efforts to operate outside of white social and political systems

D) efforts to monitor the police in Black communities

25. Who coined the phrase “Black Power”?

A) Angela Davis

B) Bobby Seale

C) Malcolm X

D) Stokely Carmichael

26. How do the authors characterize Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign?

A) a veiled segregationist campaign

B) an explicitly racist campaign

C) an antiracist campaign

D) a political power play to gain Black votes

27. Which politician had the Black activist and academic Angela Davis fired from her job at UCLA?

A) Richard Nixon

B) George Wallace

C) Bill Clinton

D) Ronald Reagan

28. Why do the authors believe the War on Drugs was a war on Black people?

A) Black people use and sell drugs at higher rates than white people.

B) The War on Drugs disproportionately targeted drugs used in Black communities.

C) The War on Drugs was primarily championed by Republican presidents.

D) Politicians explicitly said the War on Drugs was a war on Black people.

29. According to the authors, why did doctors coin the phrase “crack babies”?

A) To build sympathy for drug addicts in Black communities.

B) To shine a light on a legitimate medical issue.

C) To demonize a new generation of Black youths.

D) To get more funding for medical research on drug-addicted pregnant women.

30. What is a reason cited by the authors that President George H.W. Bush appointed a Black man to the Supreme Court?

A) because Clarence Thomas was a donor to Bush’s campaign

B) to correct systemic racial imbalances in the justice system

C) to pacify an angry and hurt Black community in the wake of the Rodney King beating

D) as retaliation against Anita Hill

31. When Angela Davis discusses a “new abolitionism,” what does she hope to abolish?

A) mass incarceration

B) military intervention on foreign soil

C) hip-hop music

D) the welfare state

32. Why do the authors take issue with the phenomenon of “color blindness”?

A) It puts too much emphasis on multiculturalism instead of on white Western civilization.

B) It allows people to excuse racial prejudice by pretending it doesn’t exist.

C) Racists will never embrace the concept of color blindness.

D) There are no laws to enforce color blindness.

33. According to the authors, where did the antiracism momentum shift during the George W. Bush presidency?

A) toward more affirmative action endeavors

B) toward making standardized tests less racially biased

C) toward abolishing the police

D) toward defending those of Middle Eastern descent against anti-Islamic and anti-Arab sentiments

34. Which of these public figures do the authors refer to as a modern Black assimilationist?

A) Bill Cosby

B) Queen Latifah

C) Alicia Garza

D) Chuck D

35. Which 2005 disaster do the authors believe is the moment when America’s “post-racial make-believe” came crashing down? (short answer)