Question

main ideas and details in historical texts — quiz — level e
brick building, and it still stands there today. i found out
later that it was built with public money, including taxes
paid by both whites and blacks. black people had to build
and heat their own schools without the help of the town or
county or state.

another difference between our school and the white
school was that we went for only five months while they
went for nine months. many of the black children were
needed by their families to plow and plant in the spring
and harvest in the fall. their families were sharecroppers,
like my grandparents neighbors. sharecroppers worked
land owned by plantation owners, and they got to keep a
portion of the crop they grew. the rest they had to give to
the owner of the plantation. so they needed their children
to help. at the time i started school, we went only from late
fall to early spring. ...

what is the main idea of the underlined paragraph?
black children were likely to grow up and become sharecroppers like their parents.
black sharecroppers worked throughout the spring, summer, and fall months.
black sharecroppers were unable to make much money from the crops they grew.
black children had less school time because many had to help their parents farm.

Explanation:

The underlined paragraph's core point is the contrast in school length (5 months for Black students vs. 9 for White students), with the key reason being that Black children from sharecropper families needed to assist with farming tasks (planting, harvesting) which cut into their school time. This matches the final option, while the other options only focus on secondary details about sharecropping rather than the main idea about school time and its cause.

Answer:

D. Black children had less school time because many had to help their parents farm.