The Inquirer's Tom Ferrick (a staunch supporter of mandatory African American history for all Philadelphia school children -- a subject I posted about here) is asking his readers to test their black history IQ.

Intrigued by this, I took the test, and received a perfect score of 100% correct. I'm not sure how to interpret these results. Does it mean that my education was sufficient? I never took an African American history course, and I have not read the proposed text -- "The African-American Odyssey, by Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine and Stanley Harrold."

In the interest of fairness, I thought I should share the test with my readers. (I'm wondering.... if I know this stuff without having taken any special courses, I'm wondering whether it might be treated part of American history, as opposed to a special, separate-but-equal, diversity-style history.)

Here's the test:

1. True or false: Most blacks who ended up in slavery were captured by European traders who raided the African coast.

2. It is estimated that between 1451 and 1870, nearly 9.3 million Africans were brought to the New World as slaves. Which area got the greatest number?

a) The 13 British colonies

b) Caribbean nations.

c) Brazil.

d) Spanish colonies.

3. True or false: One-third of the captured slaves died in passage to the New World.

4. True or false: After the Revolutionary War, while the South maintained slavery, it quickly disappeared in most northern states.

5. In 1860, there were nine million whites living in the Southern states. What percentage of them owned slaves?

a) 62

b) 32

c) 16

d) 4

6. True or false: Blacks enlisted and fought for the Union cause from the beginning of the Civil War.

7. Under the "separate but equal policy" condoned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, schools in the South became segregated after Reconstruction ended.

In 1915, in the 23 largest cities of the South, there were a total of 36 whites-only high schools. How many black high schools were there?

a) 36

b) 22

c) 8

d) 0

8. He ridiculed the NAACP as "the National Association for Certain People" and called W.E.B. DuBois a "lazy, dependent mulatto." Name this political leader of the 1920s.

9. True or false: After Pearl Harbor, African Americans volunteered for the armed services in such record numbers that the Pentagon ended its long-standing policy of segregating black and white troops.

10. True or false: The U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965 was very effective in empowering blacks to exercise their right to vote.

OK kids! If you took the test without peeking, you may then click below to score your answers.

(BTW, I sure hope they're going to grade the students who take the course; grades are going out of style these days.)