1. Why do white Americans tend to live longer than black Americans? How has the black community dealt with the problems of HIV/AIDS?
2. How did the visions and ideals, successes and failures of Martin Luther King Jr. compare with those of Lyndon B. Johnson? Why were these men at odds with each other?
3. What key issues and events led the federal government to intervene in the civil rights movement? What were the major pieces of legislations enacted, and how did they dismantle legalized segregation?
4. How did black women participate in the campaign to desegregate the U.S. military and in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade? How did Mabel Staupers win acceptance of black women into the military nurses' corps?
5. How did black artists, musicians, filmmakers, and writers negotiate the dilemma
of dual consciousness as articulated but W.E.B. Du Bois? Which parts of black art did white corporate executives find easiest to appropriate and shape for white consumption?
6. How did black radicalism influence Roosevelt's New Deal policies and programs?
7. How did black people respond to and survive the Great Depression? How did the experience of black women during the Depression reflect their race, class, and gender status in American society?
8. What examples of progress could leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, A. Philip Randolph, and Marcus Garvey point to in the 1920s?
9. On which issues did Washington and Du Bois agree and disagree?
10. How compatible was the educational philosophy of the late nineteenth century with the racial ideology of that era?
11. What legal and ethical arguments did white Americans use to justify segregation?
12. What did black political leaders accomplish and fail to accomplish during Reconstruction? What contributed to their successes and failures?