LSAT 110 | Section 4 | Reading Comprehension: Q24

RC Question 24 Explanation

DISCUSSION: After slavery, there was no money to be made growing small amounts of rice. The rice couldn’t be sold. And African Americans preferred to eat corn. Vernon suggests that they grew rice either out of a nurturing habit, or as a protest against a lack of land grants.

They felt the land was their own. They wanted to do something meaningful with it and show ownership.

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1. This talks about planting flowers on land the neighbors did not own. They planted on neighboring common land. But the African Americans planted on their own plots of land, land they felt they owned. 
2. African Americans didn’t sell rice, so this is off base. The rice had little market value, as far as we know. 
3. The African Americans didn’t want to block government action. They wanted the government to take action, and give them the land they had been promised. 
4. CORRECT. The African Americans felt they owned the land, even if they were just tenants. They had been promised the former plantation land. Planting rice demonstrated a sense of ownership and protested the legal situation. 
5. There is no parallel between the daycare center closing and rice planting. The fact that there once was a daycare means the past was better. But before the tenant farming period, African Americans were slaves. That seems worse…