AP African American Studies Practice Quiz: Black History Education and African American Studies
Written by AP Content Team, Verified for 2026 AP Exams, Last updated: May 2026
Test your understanding with short quizzes. This quiz has 16 questions to check your progress.
Question 1 of 16
All Questions (16)
A) To fulfill a new government mandate for inclusive curriculum.
B) To counter the narrative that Black people were inferior and lacked cultural contributions.
C) To prepare students for integration into predominantly white universities.
D) To focus exclusively on the history of the African continent.
Correct Answer: B
The text states that New Negro movement figures believed U.S. schools 'reinforced the idea that Black people had made no meaningful cultural contributions and were thus inferior,' and their work aimed to refute this idea.
A) W.E.B. Du Bois
B) Arturo Schomburg
C) Zora Neale Hurston
D) Carter Godwin Woodson
Correct Answer: D
The text explicitly mentions that 'The historian Carter Godwin Woodson founded what became Black History Month.'
A) It began at the same time in the late 1960s.
B) It began two centuries before the formal introduction of the field.
C) It emerged as a direct result of the formal field's creation.
D) It started in the mid-twentieth century, just before the formal field.
Correct Answer: B
The content states, 'The Black intellectual tradition in the United States began two centuries before the formal introduction of the field of African American Studies in the late 1960s.'
A) Carter G. Woodson
B) W.E.B. Du Bois
C) Arturo Schomburg
D) Zora Neale Hurston
Correct Answer: C
The text specifies that 'The Black Puerto Rican bibliophile Arturo Schomburg’s collection, donated to The New York Public Library, became the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.'
A) It provided a balanced and multicultural perspective on history.
B) It was mandated by federal law to include the history of all citizens.
C) It largely ignored or negated the historical and cultural contributions of African Americans.
D) It focused heavily on the sociological studies of minority groups.
Correct Answer: C
The text states that New Negro movement figures believed schools 'reinforced the idea that Black people had made no meaningful cultural contributions.' This implies that such contributions were absent from the curriculum.
A) Anthropology
B) Sociology
C) Linguistics
D) Archival Science
Correct Answer: B
The content mentions that 'The sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois’s research and writings produced some of the earliest sociological surveys of African Americans.'
A) It was the first integrated school in the United States.
B) It served as the model for the public school system.
C) It helped prepare early Black abolitionists for leadership.
D) It was founded by Carter G. Woodson to promote Black history.
Correct Answer: C
According to the text, 'The school helped prepare early Black abolitionists for leadership.'
A) To boycott public schools until the curriculum was changed.
B) To become agents of their own education by studying Black history and experiences.
C) To focus solely on vocational training for economic advancement.
D) To lobby Congress for the creation of a national university.
Correct Answer: B
The text states they 'urged African Americans to become agents of their own education and study the history and experiences of Black people to inform their future advancement.'
A) Political movements and activism
B) Economic data and sociological surveys
C) Military contributions in American wars
D) Culture and linguistic expression
Correct Answer: D
The text highlights that 'Anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston’s writings documented forms of African American culture and linguistic expression.'
A) The formal integration of African American Studies into universities.
B) The early development of the Black intellectual tradition through activism and scholarship.
C) The artistic and literary focus of the New Negro movement exclusively.
D) The establishment of the African Free School system across the nation.
Correct Answer: B
The text introduces the Black intellectual tradition as emerging 'through the work of Black activists, educators, writers, and archivists' and then provides Schomburg (archivist/bibliophile), Du Bois (sociologist/activist), and Woodson (historian) as key examples of this tradition.
A) That education was unnecessary for economic success.
B) That African Americans were a people without a history or culture.
C) That only classically trained artists could produce meaningful work.
D) That political activism was more important than cultural development.
Correct Answer: B
The text explicitly states that intellectuals of the New Negro movement 'refuted the idea that African Americans were people without history or culture and created a body of literature and educational resources to show otherwise.'
A) As a government-funded project to document national history.
B) As a movement confined to the curriculum of the African Free School.
C) As an informal tradition emerging from the work of activists, educators, and writers.
D) As a series of sociological studies led exclusively by W.E.B. Du Bois.
Correct Answer: C
The text describes this tradition as predating formal studies and states that 'It emerged through the work of Black activists, educators, writers, and archivists who documented Black experiences.'
A) Only the children of free Black people.
B) Only the children of recent immigrants.
C) The children of both enslaved and free Black people.
D) The children of white abolitionists.
Correct Answer: C
The text clearly states, 'the African Free School provided an education to the children of enslaved and free Black people in New York.'
A) was an entirely new idea with no historical precedent.
B) was built upon a long-standing intellectual tradition of Black self-documentation and scholarship.
C) was primarily the result of the efforts of a single historian, Carter G. Woodson.
D) failed to incorporate the cultural findings of anthropologists like Zora Neale Hurston.
Correct Answer: B
The text emphasizes that a 'Black intellectual tradition' predated the formal field by two centuries, laying a foundation through the work of activists, writers, and scholars. This suggests the formal field built upon this tradition.
A) It led to the immediate integration of all U.S. schools.
B) It caused a backlash that removed all minority history from textbooks.
C) It allowed the movement's contributions to reach Black students of all ages.
D) It resulted in the founding of The New York Public Library.
Correct Answer: C
The text concludes a point by stating, 'The early push to place Black history in schools allowed the contributions of the New Negro movement to reach Black students of all ages.'
A) collecting rare books and manuscripts for libraries.
B) conducting sociological surveys of urban populations.
C) documenting linguistic expression and folklore.
D) publishing works that chronicled Black experiences and perspectives.
Correct Answer: D
The text states that Carter G. Woodson, 'in addition to publishing many works chronicling Black experiences and perspectives in history,' also founded what became Black History Month. His primary role described is that of a historian publishing historical works.