Chapter 14

Quiz for Document 14-2: Betty Powers, Federal Writers’ Project Interview (c. 1936)

Reader Quiz

Chapter 14b

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Question 1

In what way was Betty Powers’s family’s experience of Reconstruction an exception to that of most freed slaves in the 1860s and 1870s?A. The Powers family stayed on the plantation to work as sharecroppers for a few years.
B. Betty and her family explicitly welcomed their freedom from punishment and abuse.
C. The Powers family was able to buy and farm its own plot of land soon after the war.
D. The family elected to stay together in the South after the end of slavery.

Question 2

Powers describes marital relations between enslaved persons on the Perry plantation asA. civil unions sanctioned by state law.
B. formal relations based on love and commitment.
C. informal relations dictated by the slave owner.
D. religious sacraments sanctioned by the church.

Question 3

According to Powers, after emancipation some freed people stayed on the plantation to do wage labor and some stayed on to doA. school teaching.
B. share cropping.
C. slave labor.
D. volunteer work.

Question 4

Powers’s story of her inheritance from her first husband, Boss Powers, illustrates what aspect of emancipation?A. African Americans had the ability to legally control property.
B. Freed African Americans still had difficulty in building wealth.
C. Marital relations among freed peoples were not legally recognized.
D. State courts denied African Americans’ liberty of contract.