This study investigates whether item characteristic curves are the same for black students as for white students in the United States. The data analyzed were the answer sheets of 2269 black students and 2285 white students taking the 85-item Verbal Section of the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test. The study of item characteristic curves is a feasible and fruitful way to investigate item biases. It has definite advantages over less sophisticated methods. More than a third of the 85 test items were found to have different characteristic curves for blacks and for whites at the 5% level of statistical significance. It is in many cases not clear from reading it why a particular item is biased in a particular way. (Author)