Identify the title: “You weren’t being smart, were you, boy?” he said, not unkindly. “No, sir!” “You sure that about ‘equality’ was a mistake?” “Oh, yes, sir,” I said, “I was swallowing blood.” “Well, you had better speak more slowly so we can understand. We want to do right by you, but you’ve got to know your place at all times. All right, now, go on with your speech.”

Identify the speaker: “Now, this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience . . .We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications . . .In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarrented influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist . . .Together we must learn how to compose difference–not with arms but with intellect and decent purpose.”

Identify the author: Most prolific Black American author of the twentieth century. First Black author to make a living from writing in America. His poetry has Black tone and Black language. Also he wrote stories, essays, and plays. He conveyed the frustration of people who constantly find the American Dream impossible to reach because of system discrimination for any reason.

Age at which Lucinda Matlock dies before she speaks from the grave with her wisdom to the youth of 1915 and by extension to all youth regarding their life view after she lived an ordinary life with all that means, good and bad.

Title where the following passage can be found: “As Reverend Deal moved into his sermon, the hands of the women unfolded like pairs of raven’s wings and flew high above their hats in the air. They did not hear all of what he said; they heard the one word, or phrase, or inflection that was for them the connection between the event and themselves. For some it was the term “Sweet Jesus.” And they saw the Lamb’s eye and the truly innocent victim: themselves. They acknowledged the innocent child hiding in the corner of their hearts, holding a sugar-and-butter sandwich. That one. The one who lodged deep in their fat, thin, old, young skin, and was the one the world had hurt. . . . Then they left their pews. For with some emotions one has to stand. They spoke, for they were full and needed to say. They swayed, for the rivulets of grief or of ecstasy must be rocked. And when they thought of all that life and death locked into that little closed coffin they danced and screamed, not to protest God’s will but to acknowledge it and confirm once more their conviction that the only way to avoid the Hand of God is to get in it.”  

Identify the title: And then she began to dance, a slow sensuous movement; the smoke of a hundred cigars clinging to her like the thinnest of veils. She seemed like a fair bird-girl girdled in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and threatening sea. I was transported. . .And all the while the blonde continued dancing, smiling faintly at the big shots who watched her with fascination, and faintly smiling at our fear. . . . As the dancer flung herself about with a detached expression on her face, the men began reaching out to touch her . . .and above her red, fixed-smiling lips I saw the terror and disgust in her eyes, almost like my own terror and that which I saw in some of the other boys.

Identify the author: Still alive and writing, this Vietnam veteran wrote about the Vietnam conflict as a surrealistic experience in his National Book Award- winning novel. He received a Purple Heart in action at My Lai and presents the absurdity of war through the experiences of the soldier on the ground.

Identify the title: You that never done nothin’ But build to destroy You play with my world Like it’s your little toy You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly. You’ve thrown the worst fear That can ever be hurled Fear to bring children Into the world For threatening my baby Unborn and unnamed  You ain’t worth the blood That runs in your veins.

Why does Frost’s traveler stop to look at the woods during a snowfall?

Identify the character: This young man is harassed by his white employer and other white men until he is forced to fight another young Black man with whom he has no conflict, causing him to feel anger and shame at his loss of dignity.