Chapter 12 Quiz: Emancipation in the Mountains — Black Appalachians from Slavery to Freedom

1. How did the Black population in most Appalachian mountain counties compare to that in Deep South plantation counties?

A) Mountain counties typically had larger Black populations B) Mountain counties had roughly equal Black populations C) Mountain counties typically had much smaller Black populations (5-15% vs. 30-60%) D) Mountain counties had no Black residents at all

2. What was the Freedmen's Bureau?

A) A Confederate agency that managed the transition from slavery to sharecropping B) A federal agency established to assist formerly enslaved people in the transition to freedom C) A Northern missionary organization that built schools in the South D) A Black-led organization that purchased land for freed people

3. What was the first and most important institution that Black Appalachians built after emancipation?

A) Schools B) Political parties C) Churches D) Hospitals

4. The chapter identifies "heirs' property" as a mechanism of Black land dispossession. What is heirs' property?

A) Land that was confiscated from Confederate officers and given to freed people B) Land owned jointly by all descendants when the original owner died without a formal will C) Property that could only be inherited by the eldest male heir under Virginia law D) Land held in trust by the Freedmen's Bureau for distribution to freed families

5. What were "sundown towns"?

A) Towns that had curfews for all residents after dark B) Towns that were economically dependent on sunset industries like mining C) Communities that excluded Black residents by formal ordinance or informal threat D) Towns established specifically as refuges for freed people after the war

6. The chapter argues that the myth of "white Appalachia" was:

A) An accurate description of the region's demographics before the coal boom B) Actively constructed through deliberate processes of erasure, not a natural absence C) Created entirely by Northern journalists who had never visited the region D) A product of the twentieth century with no roots in the Reconstruction era

7. Which Northern organization played a particularly important role in establishing Black churches in the Appalachian mountains?

A) The American Red Cross B) The Freedmen's Aid Society C) The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church D) The Quaker Friends Service Committee

8. According to the chapter, what role did local color writers play in the erasure of Black Appalachian history?

A) They deliberately falsified census records to reduce Black population counts B) They constructed an image of Appalachia as purely Anglo-Saxon, making Black residents invisible C) They campaigned for the removal of Black residents from mountain communities D) They had no significant effect on how Appalachia was perceived

9. What was the broken promise of "forty acres and a mule"?

A) A Freedmen's Bureau program that was never funded by Congress B) A land redistribution plan originating in Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15, reversed by President Andrew Johnson C) A Kentucky state law providing land to freed people that was struck down by the Supreme Court D) A missionary society pledge to purchase land for freed families in the mountains

10. The chapter argues that the deepest consequence of the Reconstruction era in the mountains was:

A) The economic collapse of the mountain farming economy B) The beginning of the systematic erasure of Black Appalachian history and the construction of the "white Appalachia" myth C) The establishment of the Jim Crow legal system D) The migration of all Black residents to Northern cities

Answer key is available in Appendix: Answers to Selected Exercises.