During the first half of the nineteenth century, free black americans: a. could not, under federal law, obtain public land. b. rose in economic status but more slowly than whites. c. found, as whites did, that the west offered the best opportunities for economic advancement. d. joined with white artisans in biracial unions that successfully struck for higher wages. e. formed predominantly upper-middle class communities in the north.

a. could not, under federal law, obtain public land.

Explanation:

The institution of slavery in the United States deprived multiple generations of the opportunity to own land. Legally, slaves could not own anything, but in practice they did acquire capital, and generally saw themselves as the lowest-ranking members of the capitalist system. As legal slavery came to an end, many freed people fully expected to gain ownership of the land they had worked, as some abolitionists had led them to expect.