Which statement from “John Redding Goes to Sea” best supports the idea that the author, Zora Neale Hurston, was an independent woman who longed to escape her small hometown?
In Langston Hughes’s poem “I Dream a World,” the repetition of the word “dream” emphasizes
Read the excerpt from “I Dream a World” by Langston Hughes.A world I dream where black or white,Whatever race you be,Will share the bounties of the earthAnd every man is free,Where wretchedness will hang its headAnd joy, like a pearl,Attends the needs of all mankind—Of such I dream, my world!Based on the dreams that the speaker describes, it is reasonable to infer that the speaker
The speaker in Hughes’s poem “Democracy” encourages people to
Langston Hughes yearns for equality in the poem “I Dream A World,” while in the poem “Democracy” he
Read the sentence.Astronomers are able to map the trajectory of the moon as it travels in a curved trail around the earth.Which word is closest in meaning to the underlined word?
Read the excerpt from "The Weary Blues."He made that poor piano moan with melody. O Blues!Swaying to and fro on his rickety stoolHe played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. Sweet Blues!Coming from a black man's soul. O Blues! In a deep song voice with a melancholy toneI heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan— "Ain't got nobody in all this world, Ain't got nobody but ma self.I’s gwine to quit ma frownin' And put ma troubles on the shelf."What is the effect of repeating the phrase “piano moan” in the poem?
Read the excerpt from Black Boy.My mother fell ill and the problem of food became an acute, daily agony. Hunger was with us always. Sometimes the neighbors would feed us or a dollar bill would come in the mail from my grandmother. It was winter and I would buy a dime’s worth of coal each morning from the corner coalyard and lug it home in paper bags. For a time I remained out of school to wait upon my mother, then Granny came to visit us and I returned to school.Through his personal experience, which social issue is Wright emphasizing?
But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
Read the passage from Black Boy.From the white landowners above him there had not been handed to him a chance to learn the meaning of loyalty, of sentiment, of tradition. Joy was as unknown to him as was despair. As a creature of the earth, he endured, hearty, whole, seemingly indestructible, with no regrets and no hope. He asked easy, drawling questions about me, his other son, his wife, and he laughed, amused, when I informed him of their destinies. I forgave him, and pitied him as my eyes looked past him to the unpainted wooden shack.What does this excerpt suggest?
Read the excerpt from Black Boy.We left. I had the feeling that I had had to do with something unclean. Many times in the years after that the image of my father and the strange woman, their faces lit by the dancing flames, would surge up in my imagination so vivid and strong that I felt I could reach out and touch it; I would stare at it, feeling that it possessed some vital meaning which always eluded me.Based on this excerpt, how did Wright feel about his final boyhood encounter with his father?
Read the excerpt from Brown v. Board of Education.We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation.Why does the Supreme Court make this distinction?
Read the passage from Black Boy.“It’s not for me,” my mother was saying. “It’s for your children that I’m asking you for money.”“I ain’t got nothing,” my father said, laughing.“Come here, boy,” the strange woman called to me.I looked at her and did not move.“Give him a nickel,” the woman said. “He’s cute.”Wright most likely included this anecdote in order to
Read the excerpt from “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Why does King use this allusion?
Read the excerpt from Black Boy.A quarter of a century was to elapse between the time when I saw my father sitting with the strange woman and the time when I was to see him again, standing alone upon the red clay of a Mississippi plantation, a sharecropper, clad in ragged overalls, holding a muddy hoe in his gnarled, veined hands—a quarter of a century during which my mind and consciousness had become so greatly and violently altered that when I tried to talk to him I realized that, though ties of blood made us kin, though I could see a shadow of my face in his face, though there was an echo of my voice in his voice, we were forever strangers, speaking a different language, living on vastly distant planes of reality. Which best explains Wright’s assertion that he and his father “were forever strangers”?
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