Short answer: visual source
A portrait of Harriet Tubman, 1868–1869
- Unit 2
- 3 points
- About 13 minutes
You look at an image, artwork, photograph, map or chart (described in words here) and answer three or four short parts about what it shows, the developments behind it and connections across the course. On the exam: Section II, short-answer question 2 of 3 (required); the three short-answer questions share a suggested 40 minutes and are 18% of the score. In 2025 and 2026 this question had 3 parts (A–C).
The question and its sources
This source is an image, described here in words. Study the description, then answer parts A, B and C in a few complete sentences each; you don't need a thesis.
Source (image described in words)
This small studio photograph, called a carte de visite, shows Harriet Tubman in her mid-forties, a few years after the Civil War. She sits in a studio in front of a plain, light backdrop, on a floor covered with a patterned carpet. She looks straight at the camera with a calm, steady, serious expression.
Her right arm rests on the back of a wooden chair and her left hand lies in her lap. She wears a dark, fitted bodice that buttons down the front, with a white collar and full, gathered sleeves, over a wide, light-colored checked (gingham) skirt that fills the lower half of the picture. Her name is handwritten across the bottom of the card.
The photograph was kept in the album of Emily Howland, a white Quaker teacher and abolitionist who lived near Tubman in upstate New York.
Source: Carte-de-visite portrait of Harriet Tubman by Benjamin F. Powelson, Auburn, New York, 1868–1869 (National Museum of African American History and Culture and Library of Congress)
Suggested time: 13 minutes
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Part (A)
1 pointDescribe one way the photograph presents Tubman to viewers.
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Part (B)
1 pointDescribe one way Tubman resisted slavery or helped others gain freedom.
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Part (C)
1 pointExplain how nineteenth-century African Americans used photography to challenge racist ideas.
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