Day of Tears

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key plot points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Chapters 1-4

Reading Check

1. What happened to the Butler girls’ mother?

2. What happened to the auctioneer George Weems after the auction?

3. What reason does Pierce give for not leaving his daughter Sarah at home?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why is Mattie taken aback by Pierce Butler’s decision to take his daughters to the auction?

2. Why does the auctioneer George Weems suggest that Pierce Butler “doesn’t deserve to own slaves”?

3. Why does Frances begin to act so callously the day her father takes her to the auction?

Paired Resource

“To Nurture” from NMAAHC’s searchable museum

• This page uses words and pictures to describe some of the roles African American women played in the lives of their enslavers.
• Which aspects of this museum exhibit are present in the lives of Emma and her mother?

“Fanny Kemble and Pierce Butler” from PBS’s Resource Bank for Africans in America

• A biography of Pierce Butler and Fanny Kemble
• How did Kemble and Butler’s differences first come to light?

“William Dunsinberre on the Weeping Time” from PBS’s Resource Bank for Africans in America

• In a direct quote from the show, history professor William Dunsinberre explains how much the Butler family was worth, how much Pierce Butler lost, and how much was at stake.
• How would you describe the Butler family’s wealth? Does knowing what’s at stake financially (as well as knowing how that wealth was accumulated) make you feel more or less empathetic toward the Butlers? Explain.

Chapters 5-7

Reading Check

1. Where does the auction take place? Where are the people being sold kept?

2. What happened to Dorcas and Jeffrey?

3. What does Emma say to Sarah as she’s being taken away?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why does Sarah’s reaction to her father’s selling Emma upset him so much?

2. Aside from breaking his promise not to sell Emma, their only child, why do Will and Mattie feel betrayed by Pierce when he makes the sale?

3. Explain one example of irony in the details about the auction revealed in Chapter 6.

Paired Resource

“Writer Catherine Clinton on the Weeping Time” from PBS’s Resource Bank for Africans in America

• Historian and writer Catherine Clinton answers the question “How did the threat of being sold affect enslaved people?”
• Cornelia Bailey, a folklorist and direct descendant of the Gullah-Geechee people, who were enslaved in the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia, answers the same question.
• What aspects of family making were relatively unique to the enslaved people on the Butler plantation?

“Butler Island” from PBS’s Resource Bank for Africans in America

• Describes conditions on Butler Island, using excerpts from Fanny Kemble’s Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, which is an account of her experiences and conversations with the enslaved people living on the Butler plantation.
• People trading in enslaved human beings in this section of the novel talk about how well the enslaved people on the Butler plantation were treated. How does this firsthand account from Fanny Butler contradict their statements?

Excerpts from “What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation” by Q. K. Philander Doesticks

• Writing under a pseudonym, Mortimer Thomson describes the sights and sounds of the auction. His words were later printed in the New York Tribune, then repackaged and published as the follow-up to Fanny Kemble’s journal. Both were used to further the cause of abolition.
• Compare Thomson’s account with these passages in the novel. How do they differ? How are they the same? How do Thomson’s and Kemble’s writing together make an effective argument for the abolition of slavery?

Chapters 8-11

Reading Check

1. Why does Emma refuse Joe’s marriage proposal?

2. Whom does Joe want to bring along on his and Emma’s escape to Cincinnati?

3. Why did Sampson try to run away when he was young and enslaved in Alabama?

4. When does Mistress Henfield realize that Emma, Joe, and the others have escaped?

5. Who helps Emma, Joe, and Charles’s family escape?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Why does Mr. Henry begin to teach Joe how to read?

2. What makes Sampson suspect that his son Charles, Joe, and Mr. Henry are up to something?

3. How did Charles and Winnie’s baby die?

Paired Resource

“The Underground Railroad” from National Geographic

“Network to Freedom” from National Park Service

• These maps show popular underground railroad routes and provide other facts about the United States during this period in history.
• What role did geography play in African Americans’ self-liberation efforts? Namely, what geographical (political/state boundaries) and topographical features may have made certain escape routes either easier or more difficult for enslaved African Americans?

“Fugitive Slave Acts” from The History Channel

• This page describes the multiple Fugitive Slave Acts that were encoded into United States law.
• How did the United States government reinforce The Vulnerability of Enslaved People?

“African Nova Scotians in the Age of Slavery and Abolition”

• The Nova Scotia Archives shares a brief history of how people of African descent ended up in Nova Scotia from the earliest days of the colony to the mid-20th century. This page features an overview and related primary sources from the same era as The Weeping Time. (Note to read carefully: “Black Loyalists” is a bit of misnomer, since swearing to be loyal to the British crown was a condition of freedom, and often not a marker of true political affiliation.)
• What role did Canada play in African Americans’ self-liberation efforts?

Chapters 12-13

Reading Check

1. After escaping across the Ohio River, where do Emma and Joe settle down first?

2. Why do Emma and Joe eventually make their way to Canada?

3. Whom does Emma address in the novel’s final chapter?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What do Emma’s and Sarah’s daughters’ names reveal about them?

2. Why do Emma and Joe choose the last name Henry?

Recommended Next Reads

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis

• This middle-grade historical fiction novel focuses on Elijah Freeman, the first child born into freedom in Buxton, Canada. When a charlatan arrives in town and steals money that Elijah’s friend was saving to buy his family’s freedom, Elijah joins the journey back to America to track down the thief. The lyrical, sometimes humorous novel does not shy away from the realities of slavery but ends on a hopeful note.
• Elijah of Buxton on SuperSummary

Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson

• This lyrically written middle-grade historical fiction novel follows Homer and his little sister on their escape from slavery to a maroon community called Freewater, where self-liberated African Americans live secretly in a Virginia swamp. The story is loosely based on actual maroon communities that existed throughout the South.