Literature of the Black American

LITERATURE of the BLACK AMERICAN I ENGL 235.401 Spring 2026 MIDTERM EXAM Quote Identification & Explication Completed exam is to be submitted to the Turnitin link in the BlackBoard Contents Weekly Assignments Midterm Exam materials folder on Wednesday 3/11/26 by 11:59 PM. The exam contains ELEVEN quotes that have been chosen by the instructor; you choose your SIX quotes from those ELEVEN. Label your responses with the letter of the quote. Type your answers in a word document. Do not type answers on to this question sheet. DO NOT REWRITE THE PASSAGE! Reminder: This is an English course; your responses will also be graded in terms of quality written English. Plagiarism. A word of warning! These questions are about things that are unique to this course, such as the assigned readings, your interpretations, your group discussions, the PowerPoints, and my lectures. DO NOT include any information or material from any outside sources, including Internet searches. And if you copy information from an Internet source, such as Sparknotes, etc., Turnitin will tell me, and you will fail the exam for plagiarism. Do not use AI. You will fail the exam for plagiarism. For SIX (6) of ELEVEN (11) passages write a unified paragraph of five or six sentences. In your paragraph: 1. Identify the author and title of the passage 2. Identify the historical era and/or literary period in the African American literary tradition when the passage was written. 3. Explain the content (whats going on) and context (how does it fit into the larger work from which it is excerpted) 4. Comment on a theme or subject of the work as illustrated by this passage. (Do not paraphrase.) 5. Make sure that your responses take all aspects of the passage, including literary forms or techniques, into account. Questions A) Some view our sable race with scornful eye, Their colour is a diabolic die. Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refind, and join thangelic train. B) It seems less degrading to give ones self, than to submit to compulsion. There is something akin to freedom in having a lover who has no control over you, except that which he gains by kindness and attachment, A master may treat you as rudely as he pleases, and you dare not speak; moreover, the wrong does not seem so great with an unmarried man, as with one who has a wife to be made unhappy. C) PREAMBLE. My dearly beloved Brethren and Fellow Citizens. HAVING travelled over a considerable portion of these United States, and having, in the course of my travels, taken the most accurate observations of things as they exist–the result of my observations has warranted the full and unshaken conviction, that we, (coloured people of these United States,) are the most degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began; and I pray God that none like us ever may live again until time shall be no more. They tell us of the Israelites in Egypt, the Helots in Sparta, and of the Roman Slaves, which last were made up from almost every nation under heaven, whose sufferings under those ancient and heathen nations, were, in comparison with ours, under this enlightened and Christian nation, no more than a cypher–or, in other words, those heathen nations of antiquity, had but little more among them than the name and form of slavery; while wretchedness and endless miseries were reserved, apparently in a phial, to be poured out upon our fathers, ourselves and our children, by Christian Americans! D) His trial is still going on and I can scarcely think of anything else; read again to-day as most suitable to my feelings and times. The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point, by Elizabeth B. Browning; how powerfully is written! How earnestly and touchingly does the writer portray the bitter anguish of the poor fugitive as she thinks over the wrongs and sufferings that she has endured, and of the sin to which the tyrants have driven her but which they alone must answer for! It seems as if no one could read this poem without having his sympathies roused to the utmost in behalf of the oppressed. E) This was a Southern auction, at which the bones, muscles, sinews, blood, and nerves of a young lady of sixteen were sold for five hundred dollars; her moral character for two hundred; her improved intellect for one hundred; her Christianity for three hundred; and her chastity and virtue for four hundred dollars more. And this too, in a city thronged with churches, whose tall spires look like so many signals pointing to heaven, and whose ministers preach that slavery is a God-ordained institution! F) Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. G) I have taken the liberty to direct a copy to you, which I humbly request you will favourably receive; and although you may have the opportunity of perusing it after its publication, yet I desire to send it to you in manuscript previous thereto, that thereby you might not only have an earlier inspection, but that you might view it in my own handwriting. H) When Israel was in Egypt land Let My people go Oppressed so hard they could not stand Let My people go I) The free operatives of Britain are, in reality, brought into almost personal relations with slaves during their daily toil. They manufacture the material which the slaves have produced, and although three thousand miles of ocean roll between the producer and the manufacturer and the operatives, they should call to mind the fact, that the cause of all the present internal struggle, now going on between the northern states and the south, the civil war and its attendant evils, have resulted from the attempt to perpetuate negro slavery. J) He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was a glorious resurrection from the tomb of slavery to the heaven of freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and now I am resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I would be a slave in fact. K) They tear him from her circling arms, Her last and fond embrace. Oh! never more may her sad eyes Gaze on his mournful face. One quote each will be appear from each of the following sources: Oral tradition Phillis Wheatley David Walker Benjamin Banneker Frederick Douglass Sarah Parker Remond Sojourner Truth Harriet Jacobs Frances E.W. Harper Charlotte L. Forten Grimke William Wells Brown Be sure to label your responses with the letter of the quote. Completed Exam must be posted to Turnitin by Wednesday 3/11/26 @ 11:59 PM. DO NOT INCLUDE ANY MATERIAL FROM THE INERNET SEARCHES OR AI IN YOUR EXAM ANSWERS!