North Carolina
Who did North Carolina replace the slaves with?
Answer: Europeans, mostly Irish and German immigrants
Who takes accountability for tipping off the slave catchers, allowing them to find Cora?
Answer:Fiona
What excuse did Martin devise to be able to dismiss Fiona and ensure there was no suspicion of the family hiding a runaway slave?
Answer: He told Ethel to say that he had come down with "Venezuelan Pox" and needed to be quarantined.
What was the smell of the knocked over chamber pot attributed to when the regulators inspected the house?
Answer: Racoons
Bonus 100 points if you can tell me what a chamber pot is.
What did Henrietta Lacks die of?
Answer: she died of cervical cancer
The people of North Carolina celebrated the execution of individuals they had never seen before. What did they feel when they saw Cora being taken?
Answer: They felt uneasy
How fluent was Cora's reading and what was her favorite reading material?
Answer: She stumbled over words, and her favorite reading was last year's farmer's almanacs.
How many slaves did Martin's father smuggle out of the south through the Underground Railroad?
Answer: 12 slaves
Why did Cora get pulled out of the nook and put into the white bedroom? Be specific.
Answer: Because she had fallen ill during the night and was puking and losing control of her bowels, making loud noises that could've potentially drawn attention to the house. They moved her to the bedroom to take better care of her.
What Rebellion led to southern slaveholders fearing resistance from their slaves?
Answer: Southampton or Nat Turner's Rebellion
Why was it so easy for North Carolina to get rid of the African Americans?
Answer: The Whites outnumbered the African Americans by a factor of 2:1
In retrospect, what were Cora's thoughts about her tiny garden that she "owned" on the Randall Plantation?
Answer: She thought it was a joke that had convinced her that she owned something.
How did Martin help to keep Cora entertained and sane during her stay at his house?
Answer: Martin would come up to the attic to bring Cora food and let her stretch out, telling her stories, showing him to be a kind empathetic man.
What did Cora do when the Friday Festival was held?
Answer: She turned away from the peep hole, and retreated to the opposite side of the nook.
Why are HeLa cells so important?
Answer: the cells have been used for many important discoveries including cancer, immunology, and infectious disease.
Why does Cora think that it is odd that the Whites give up a part of their freedom by allowing random inspections of their houses to search for fugitives?
Answer: Cora thinks this as she doesn't see the point of giving up freedoms in order to deprive others of freedom and increase their security.
Why did Cora's feelings about Ethel change?
Answer: Though she had thought the woman cold at first, while she was taking care of her, Cora enjoyed Ethel's company because she was so compassionate towards Cora.
How did ethels upbringing lead to her views of the Africans as “savages” and “in need of enlightenment”
Answer: Her father taught her that the races were "unequal" to the whites in many ways, telling her that they were cursed. This in turn made her think that, since they were cursed, they needed the word of God more than anyone else. Overall, her upbringing by her father imbued racial prejudices into her that influenced her desires and aspirations.
How bad were the conditions in the nook? Give at least three examples.
Answer: They were really bad. Some examples were the extreme heat, limited water, the space was cramped, etc.
What hospital did Henrietta Lacks go to receive radium therapy
Answer: John Hopkins Hospital
How many slaves were in North Coralina?
Answer: almost 300,000
Why did Cora seem to feel less free in North Carolina than she did on the Randall Plantation?
Answer: She felt less free as she was kept in a small, three foot by three foot cubby, while in Georgia on the plantation she was free to roam around the land she was on, saying the plantation felt "big in it's smallness"(page 183).
It is stated that Martin helps Cora because of a selfish purpose. What is this purpose?
Answer: he wanted to make his father proud, honor his promise he made to his father on his death bed, and continue his father's legacy, it didn’t matter that he was helping the slaves, and was scared to do so.
What were the three bad omens that occurred while Cora was in the Nook? (100 points per correct answer)
The three bad omens were:
Cora knocking over the chamber pot, the regulators visiting the house, Ethel fainting after being told of the couple and the colored boys being hung.
Who was the woman who had cancer cells harvested from her without her consent that have been used for anatomical research for years, called HeLa cells, as they are immortal.
Answer: Henrieta Lacks