Gates HL Yacovone D.

 The African Americans : Many Rivers to Cross. Carlsbad California:

SmileyBooks; 2013.

Discussion questions chapter 1-6

Instructions:
1. Pick one sentence from the text that serves as the best quote to support your answer
2. Write no more than two sentences supports and explains your answer (if you have more
than one question in your prompt, you may formulate up to three questions)
3. Do you need to reorder the 2-4 sentences (including quote) to create a cohesive
statement/answer? Put the best sentence first.
4. When answering, begin the quote with its page number. End the quote by saying
“unquote”
5. Read/speak slowly
6. Be ready to provide a short response to a follow-up question
7. You might be asked to revise, in which case you may get another turn

Gates & Yacavone, Chapter 1

1. Why is the history of the new world exploration and colonization not (or not just) a set of
experiences of conquest and progress? Why might this encounter of worlds not be
characterized as “inevitable acts of human progress and ‘elevation’”? (1-2)

2. Were all the first explorers and conquerors of the Americas Europeans? Were the non-
Europeans only enslaved? (3-5)

3. What one or two lessons might a student of African American history draw from
Esteban’s experience? (5-8)

4. What one or two lessons might a student of Native American history draw? (5-8)
Chapter 2: Questions for Review, Discussion, Knowledge
1. Support the claim that “many other Africans […], both free and enslaved, assisted in the
colonization of North America in the century or so between the landing of Columbus and
the Founding of the English settlement at Jamestown in Virginia in 1607” (pg. 9-11)
2. How was the arrival of enslaved people to Jamestown in 1619 the consequence of
Portuguese actions? (13-16)
3. What is event “exceptional”? Why have some historians considered it so? (16-17)
4. How did Africans and enslavement become synonymous? How did the British colonies
differ from the Portuguese and Spanish colonies in terms of numbers of enslaved and
Black people? (17-22)
5. What was the role of Africans in African slavery? (22-26)
6. What can Ayuba ibn Suleiman Diallo’s teach us? (26-29)
7. Did the English expand their role in the African slave trade? How? (30-31)
8. What can Priscilla teach us (32-36)

Chapter 3
1. How did Spanish and English rivalries affect their enslaved people between the Carolinas
and Florida? (38-40)
2. What began at the Stono River? (41-43)
3. How did slavery in New York encourage ghastly violence from both revolt and paranoia?
(43-47)
4. When it came to “freedom” which side of the American Revolution might have had more
to offer Black people? (47-51)
5. What can we learn from the relationship between Harry and George Washington? (52-53)
6. What is the significance of the Mum Bett case? (53-58)
7. What was extraordinary about the Haitian Revolution? How did it draw upon
revolutionary ideas, but stoke oppression? (58-60)
8. In the rebellions partially or greatly inspired by Haiti, what role did race place? (60-66)
9. What are the authors of this book trying to change about the way the American
Revolution and Haiti have been portrayed in history (historicized?) (67-68 and full
chapter)

Chapter 4
1. What can Richard Allan’s story teach us about the changing nation and its race relations?
(69-73)
2. How did Prince Hall demonstrate, through his own will and action, a small door opening
for some Black Americans? Did that door stay open? (74-76)
3. Why and how did the cotton and its gin change race relations in the United States?
4. Compare the Second Middle Passage of John Brown with Kate Drumgoold. (79-82)
 5. Compare the Second Middle Passage of William J. Anderson with Solomon Northup (82-
87)
6. What new ways was racism “proven” in the early nineteenth century? (87-88)
7. Was oppression against Black people worse in the US south than the north in the decades
before the Civil War? (88-89)
8. Compare Gabriel’s (60-64) and Turner’s aims in their rebellions (89-91)
9. Why did some Black Americans invest their hope and resources in colonizing Liberia,
Africa? Why did other reject that idea? (91-94)
10. In giving the stories of David Walker, Maria Stewart, and Frederick Douglass, what point
or points are the authors making about the abolitionist movement? (96-99)
11. Only a small fraction of enslaved people escaped via the Underground Railroad. Why do
the authors highlight several examples of escape? (102-106)
Chapter 5
1. Compare John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. Who gave African Americans more hope
in 1859 and 1860? Why? (108-112)
2. Were enslaved people called to fight for either the union or confederacy? (112-116)
3. What helped convinced Lincoln and other white power-holders to recruit Black troops?
(117-123)
4. Was there only one “Emancipation Proclamation” and did it free all enslaved people in
the United States?
5. What happened at Fort Pillow and who did it inspire? (123-124)
6. What did the American Missionary Association do after the war ended? (125)
7. What is important about “Special Field Order No. 15”? (126-129)
8. Hopes were raised, but promises not kept. What might have happened if the “Sherman
Land” had been upheld? (127, 130)
Chapter 6
1. “Now that the war had been won, what was to be done with the former slaves?” Why is
this the wrong question? (132-136)
2. What can we learn about reconstruction from Robert Smalls? (136-139)
3. What brought reconstruction to an end? (140-141)
4. How did an enslaved man named Benjamin Thornton Montgomery become one of the
wealthiest men in South Carolina? (142-146)
5. What does it mean to be an “accommodationist”? Is it a kind of resistance? (146-147)
6. What crucial elements or resources went missing and ultimately led Mount Bayou to
suffer the same fate as Davis Bend? (147-148)
7. What did Ida B. Well achieve? (148-149)
8. What is the origin of “color-blind”? Why was it crucial for Tourgée’s fight against Jim
Crow laws: (150-152)
9. Between 1896 and 1954, racial segregation was legal. What main reason did the
Supreme Court use to justify segregation? (151-152)