AP U.S. History · Free-response skill

Short answers on a primary source

The move. Answer each part of a short-answer question on a primary source with a specific piece of evidence and a sentence that explains it.

How to do it

  1. A short-answer question asks for exact, limited things. Read each part's task word (name, explain, say), answer only that part in one to three sentences, and label it with its letter.
  2. Use specific evidence: a named law, event, group or person, placed in time. A general phrase such as 'people worked hard for it' earns little; a named group or action earns the point.
  3. When a part asks how one thing helped cause another, write the link. Use 'because' or 'which led to' and name the step in between, not just the starting event.
  4. When a part asks about limits, look past the words of the source to how it worked in practice: who it reached, who it missed, and what stood in the way.
  5. Stay inside the time frame a part gives you. Evidence from the wrong decade does not count, even when it is true.
  6. On the exam, short-answer questions can come from any period, and College Board revised them starting with the May 2027 exam, so read the current directions before test day.

Practice prompt Try it

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

From the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified 1920 (public domain)

Read the amendment. Then answer each part.

  1. The amendment bars denying the vote 'on account of sex.' Name one organization that campaigned for it.
  2. Women's service in World War I strengthened the case for this amendment. Name one way women served or worked for the war effort.
  3. The amendment barred denying the vote on account of sex, but other barriers remained. Name one barrier that kept most Black women in the South from voting after 1920.

Write each part, then check yourself against the checklist. Nothing you type here is saved or graded.

Check yourself and see a model answer

Checklist

Our own checklist of what a full answer does, one line per point. Tick each one your response earns.

0 of 3 points

Model answer, annotated

(a) The National American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, campaigned for the amendment.

  • Point 1 Names an organization that campaigned for women's suffrage.

(b) Thousands of women served as nurses in the Army Nurse Corps, and many others took jobs in munitions factories.

  • Point 2 Names real forms of wartime service: Army nursing and munitions work.

(c) Literacy tests: white registrars gave Black women, like Black men, reading and 'understanding' tests that they judged unfairly, keeping them off the voter rolls.

  • Point 3 Names a real barrier, literacy tests, and how registrars used it.