Android action bar not showing up when extending a class that extends the activity class

Question

I have an abstract class GenericConfiguration:

public abstract class GenericConfiguration extends Activity{
    //Overrides onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) and
    //public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) 
}

Then I have two subclasses TemperatureConfiguration and LightingConfiguration which look like this:

public class TemperatureConfiguration extends GenericConfiguration{
    //Overrides onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
}

When I run the subclass activities they do not display the menu defined in the GenericConfiguration. I would think that since they inherit the onOptionsItemSelected and onCreateOptionsMenu methods that they should no? What am I doing wrong? This is my first time ever writing an and abstract class and subclassing.