For too many years scholars of African American history focused on the harm done by slaveholders and by the institution of slavery, rather than on what Africans in the United States were able to accomplish despite the effects of that institution. In Myne Owne Ground, T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes contribute free African Americans of Northampton County held their own in the rough-hewn world of Chesapeake Bay.
The authors emphasize that in this early period, when the percentage of African Americans in any given Chesapeake county was still no more than 10 percent of the population, very little was predetermined so far as racial status or race relations were concerned. By schooling themselves in the local legal process and that the institution of slavery was threatening their descendants’ chances for freedom and success in Virginia.
What this question is testing
Your task
Identify why the author included the referenced detail at that point in the passage — its function, not its content.
Common trap
Answers that merely repeat or summarize the topic of the detail instead of describing the role it plays.
Winning move
Ask what job the detail does for the paragraph, then for the passage's broader point.
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