The questions in this group are based on the content of a passage. After reading the passage, choose the best answer to each question. Answer all questions following the passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Historians sometimes forget that history is continually being made and experienced before it is studied, interpreted, and read. These latter activities have their own history, of course, which may impinge in unexpected ways on public events. It is difficult to predict when “new pasts” will overturn established historical interpretations and change the course of history.
In the fall of 1954, for example, C. Vann Woodward delivered a lecture series at the University of Virginia which challenged the prevailing dogma concerning the history, continuity, and uniformity of racial segregation in the South. He argued that the Jim Crow laws of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries not only codified traditional practice but also were a determined effort to erase the considerable progress made by Black people during and after Reconstruction in the 1870’s. This revisionist view of Jim Crow legislation grew in part from the research that Woodward had done for the NAACP legal campaign during its preparation for Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court had issued its ruling in this epochal desegregation case a few months before Woodward’s lectures.
The lectures were soon published as a book—The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Ten years later, in a preface to the second revised edition, Woodward confessed with ironic modesty that the first edition “had begun to suffer under some of the handicaps that might be expected in a history of the American Revolution published in 1776.” That was a bit like hearing Thomas Paine apologize for the timing of his pamphlet Common Sense, which had a comparable impact. Although Common Sense also had a mass readership, Paine had intended to reach and inspire: he was not a historian, and thus not concerned with accuracy or the dangers of historical anachronism. Yet, like Paine, Woodward had an unerring sense of the revolutionary moment, and of how historical evidence could undermine the mythological tradition that was crushing the dreams of new social possibilities. Martin Luther King, Jr. testified to the profound effect of The Strange Career of Jim Crow on the civil rights movement by praising the book and quoting it frequently.
The “new pasts” mentioned in line 3 can best be described as the ______.
指代题。通过文章内容可知“new past”指代前文提到的“These latter activities have their own history, of course, which may impinge in unexpected ways on public events”即由于近来的新历史写作而使公众对过去事件的理解有变化，故本题应选C项。
It can be inferred from the passage that the “prevailing dogma” (line 6) held that ______.
推断题。第二段第二句中提到：Jim Crow laws…not only codified traditional practice but also were a determined effort to erase the considerab…，所以可知Woodward认为Jim Crow法律是维护种族隔离制度的，他的观点与“普遍观点”相反。所以可以推断“普遍观点”认为Jim Crow法打断了南方的种族隔离制的延续，故本题应选D项。
Which of the following is the best example of writing that is likely to be subject to the kinds of “handicaps” referred to in line 14?
推断题。根据第三段第二句可知，第一版有一些失误，就好像是在1776年出版预期美国大革命历史的书，所以可以推测这种缺陷是：在某一历史事件出现前对其做的一些历史总结性的描述，因此而出现的一些难免的史实错误，因此本题应选C项。
The passage suggests that C. Vann Woodward and Thomas Paine were similar in all of the following ways EXCEPT ______.
文章最后一段中提到；Paine不担心对历史年代等事实进行错误陈述，而Woodward是担心这一点的，故本题选择E项。
The attitude of the author of the passage toward the work of C. Vann Woodward is best described as one of ______.
态度题。通过文章内容可知，作者对Woodward作品中的史实记述有疑问，但是对其历史作用是给予肯定的，故B项是正确的。