23. From New Era to Great Depression, 1920

Chapter Chronology

Quiz for Experiencing the American Promise: The Quest for Home Ownership in Segregated Detroit

Select the best answer for each question. Click the “submit” button for each question to turn in your work.

Question 23.11

1. Why did thousands of people, many of whom were African Americans from the South, move to Detroit in the 1920s?

To become involved with the city’s powerful labor unions

To take advantage of Detroit’s relatively mild climate

To escape the overcrowded conditions of eastern cities

To try to get a job in the Ford automobile factory

Question 23.12

2. Which of the following methods did white homeowners use to try to prevent black families from moving into their neighborhoods in the 1920s?

They made sure that all neighborhood schools were segregated, and taught only white students.

They signed restrictive covenants, which forbade owners from selling their homes to African Americans.

They worked to pass local laws that required housing to be segregated within the city limits.

They instituted literacy tests and grandfather clauses for anyone who wanted to buy a home in the neighborhood.

Question 23.13

3. Why did Dr. Ossian Sweet want to move his family into an all-white working-class Detroit neighborhood in 1925?

The white neighborhood was closer to the location of his medical practice than the neighborhood where most black Detroiters lived.

He was an activist with the NAACP who hoped to use his family as a test case in the legality of segregated housing.

The neighborhood where black Detroiters were forced to live was dirty, crowded, and infested with pests.

The Sweet family had close family friends who lived in the white neighborhood, and wanted to live nearer to them.

Question 23.14

4. When Dr. Ossian Sweet and his family arrived at their new home in a white Detroit neighborhood in 1925, members of the local community tried to prevent the Sweets from moving in by

using mob violence against them.

writing angry letters to the local paper.

getting the police to create a physical blockade.

boycotting the bank that gave them a home loan.

Question 23.15

5. On what grounds did lawyer Clarence Darrow argue that Dr. Sweet and his friends should be acquitted of the murder charge they had received after a white man was shot and killed in the mob outside the Sweets’ home in 1925?

The all-white jury that had been convened for the trial could not possibly render a legitimate verdict in this case.

Dr. Sweet did not personally fire the gun that killed the white man, so he should not be held responsible for the death.

All Americans should have the right to defend themselves, their family, and their home from violence.