Emancipation/Brown vs. Board of Education

Emancipation/Brown vs. Board of Education

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Literary Analysis: Comparing Tone 

The tone of a literary work is the author’s attitude toward his or her audience and subject.

• Tone can often be described by a single adjective, such as formal, informal, serious, playful, impersonal, or personal.

• Tone is conveyed through an author’s choice of words, sentence structure, and details. Tone may vary within a piece of writing.

Literary Analysis: Comparing Tone 

Both “Emancipation” and “Brown vs. Board of Education” are nonfiction works that describe and explain key figures and events in American history. Both works are serious and aim to make a piece of history interesting. However, these two pieces do have subtle differences in tone, partly because the authors’ purposes, or reasons for writing, are different. 

Multiple Choice

According to “Emancipation,” what did President Lincoln originally think was the purpose of the Civil War?

• to punish the traitors who had formed the Confederacy

• to restore the Union, making the United States one nation again

• to emancipate, or free, the slaves in the Southern and border states

• to keep the loyal slaveholding border states in the Union

Multiple Choice

According to “Emancipation,” how would freeing the slaves help the North’s war effort?

• Freed slaves could fight in the Union army.

• The slave owners in the Confederacy would allow the freed slaves to leave.

• Freeing the slaves would please the abolitionists.

• Freeing the slaves would guarantee victory for the North.

Multiple Choice

Which sentence from “Emancipation” suggests why President Lincoln became convinced of the necessity to free the slaves?

• “Emancipation in the cotton states is simply an absurdity.”

• The president must wait until the Union had won a decisive military victory in the East.

• Perhaps then the liberated slaves could be resettled in Africa or Central America.

• It was absurd, [Republican Senators] argued, to fight the war without destroying the institution that had caused it.

Multiple Choice

According to “Emancipation,” which argument convinced President Lincoln that he had the authority to abolish slavery, which was protected by law?

• The president must weaken the enemy. Ending slavery would reduce the enemy’s power.

• Abolishing slavery was a moral action. The president was the moral leader of the country.

• Laws protecting slavery predated the Confederacy, so they no longer applied.

• The president had the power to abolish laws that he did not agree with.

Multiple Choice

Which statement from “Emancipation” best summarizes Lincoln’s hopes in freeing the slaves?

• “We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree.”

• “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free....”

• “We didn’t go into the war to put down slavery, but to put the flag back.”

• The Emancipation Proclamation would be “the last shriek on our retreat.”

Multiple Choice

According to “Brown vs. Board of Education,” why did black and white students in the North usually go to separate schools from the end of the Civil War to the early 1950s?

• Laws forbade blacks to attend schools with whites.

• The students lived in different neighborhoods and attended schools near their homes.

• Northern schools were simply following the example set by Southern schools.

• Black and white children and their parents preferred for them to attend separate schools.

Multiple Choice

According to “Brown vs. Board of Education,” Thurgood Marshall’s father made sacrifices to send his sons to college. What does this action tell you about the father?

• He believed that education would help his sons achieve more than he was able to.

• He was bitter because there had been no opportunities for him when he was a boy.

• He hoped that people would admire him for having educated sons.

• He thought his sons were intelligent.

Multiple Choice

According to “Brown vs. Board of Education,” why did Charles Hamilton Houston want his students to have “absolute understanding of the law”?

• He did not want white lawyers to win cases against African American lawyers.

• He wanted his students to succeed in helping white Americans.

• He believed that the law was a strong weapon in the civil rights movement.

• He believed that African Americans could become great lawyers.

Multiple Choice

According to “Brown vs. Board of Education,” the Supreme Court’s ruling about schools in Topeka, Kansas, changed the struggle for civil rights by signaling that

• laws oppressing African Americans would have to fall.

• the struggle against racial prejudice was coming to an end.

• the “gap between law and custom” would soon close.

• African Americans would have no more legal battles.

Multiple Choice

What makes both “Emancipation” and “Brown vs. Board of Education” important essays?

• Both essays tell the life stories of significant African Americans.

• Both essays help young students easily understand presidential politics.

• Both essays are about how segregation harmed children.

• Both essays are about dramatic events that changed the nation.

Multiple Choice

The tone of a literary work is

• its author’s ability to hold readers’ interest.

• the general lesson that the work communicates.

• its author’s attitude toward the subject and audience.

• the point of view of the narrator.

Multiple Choice

The tone of all of “Emancipation” and much of “Brown vs. Board of Education” could be described as

• playful.

• preposterous.

• prejudiced.

• serious.

Multiple Choice

Which is least likely to contribute to the tone of a literary work?

• the author’s purpose for writing

• the author’s choice of words

• the author’s writing process

• the author’s sentence structure