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135 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
- 3rd side (hint)
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The Southern states that had formed new governments by December 1865 had done all of the following EXCEPT
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a. banned slavery.
b. banned wealthy Southerners from holding public office. c. granted the vote to African American men. d. renounced their secession laws. e. agreed not to repay Confederate war debts |
The correct answer is C. Neither Abraham Lincoln nor his successor thought the South should be punished or that African American men should be granted the right to vote. As a result, neither man made that a stipulation of rejoining the Union nor did any Southern legislature think it necessary to grant the right on its own. This lack of suffrage was one of the reasons that the Radical Republicans seized control of Reconstruction. TIP: In a reverse answer question—NOT, LEAST, EXCEPT—you want to find the answer that is not true or does not fit with the others.
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The most significant problem that Ulysses S. Grant faced in office was
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a. the unraveling of Presidential Reconstruction.
b. the hostility of Radical Republicans. c. the rapid progress of unregulated industrialization. d. his lack of understanding of the nation's problems and his lack of political experience. e. corruption in public office. |
The correct answer is D. Ulysses S. Grant was himself an honest man, but he had little understanding of the duties of the president, how the government worked, and what difficulties the nation faced. As a result, answers C and E became even greater problems during his two terms in office, but it was his own shortcomings that made them worse. Answer A is illogical; Presidential Reconstruction had already unraveled under Andrew Johnson, his predecessor. Answer B is incorrect. TIP: When you are looking for an answer to a question that asks about significance, look for a big picture answer.
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All of the following were considered women's work in the latter half of the 1800s EXCEPT
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a. teaching.
b. sales clerking. c. nursing. d. practicing law. e. secretarial work. |
The correct answer is D. Although there were some women who were lawyers, it was not a typical occupation for women. While being a nurse C was considered respectable, being a doctor was not. Nevertheless, there were a few women, such as sisters Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Blackwell, who did practice medicine.
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The first labor union to accept African Americans, women, and immigrants was
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a. Industrial Workers of the World.
b. International Ladies Garment Workers. c. American Federation of Labor. d. Congress of Industrial Organizations. e. Knights of Labor. |
The correct answer is E. The Knights of Labor was an industrial union, rather than a craft union, and as such it was open to both skilled and unskilled workers within an industry. The latter were often African Americans, women, and immigrants. The American Federation of Labor C was a craft union, which meant its members were skilled workers. It did not accept women, immigrants, and African Americans until 1890. The Congress of Industrial Organizations D was founded by members who broke away from the AFL to establish a new labor organization for unskilled and semiskilled workers. The two unions joined in 1955 to form the AFL-CIO. Industrial Workers of the World A, or Wobblies, founded in 1905, was never very large and appealed to radicals who wanted to revolutionize the labor-management system. International Ladies Garment Workers B was founded in 1900 as part of the AFL
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Industrial development in the second half of the 1800s occurred for all of the following reasons EXCEPT
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a. a stable economy.
b. the rise of a middle class of managers who replaced business owners in the day-to-day management of businesses. c. the continuing consolidation of multiple operations within one business. d. the growth of the railroad system. e. the availability of large amounts of investment capital. |
The correct answer is A. The nation experienced six economic depressions between 1870 and 1899. However, answers B through E plus a protective tariff, sympathetic legislators in many states and on the national level, a huge labor force, technological innovations, and the sheer momentum of American industrialism contributed to its the continuing growth. TIP: For reverse answer questions like this one, remember you are looking for the answer that doesn't fit.
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Crédit Mobilier was an elaborate scheme
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a. to give Native Americans on reservations less than their government allotments and pocket the difference.
b. to defraud the stockholders of the Union Pacific Railroad. c. to overcharge farmers for shipping. d. to swindle the federal government of taxes on whiskey. e. to swindle New York City of millions of dollars for tax revenue |
The correct answer is B. Answer A was less a single swindle than a long-term policy of some BIA agents. Answer C was a regular practice of railroads and grain storage facilities. Answer D was the Whiskey Ring. Answer E was the Tweed Ring.
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The tariff controversy over the Tariff Act of 1883 was significant because
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a. tariffs were raised to all-time highs.
b. the act harmed American farmers more than it helped American manufacturers. c. the balance of payments for foreign trade tipped for the first time against the United States. d. for the first time the two political parties differed sharply on tariff rates. e. the tariffs pushed the nation into an economic depression. |
The correct answer is D. Don't be confused by earlier tariffs fights between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans or Whigs. This was the first sharp difference between Republicans and Democrats. After this until the mid-twentieth century, the Republican Party became known as the party of high tariffs
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Which of the following is a representative statement about what Social Darwinists believed?
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a. Some societies are more fit to survive than others.
b. The government should intervene to help the less fortunate. c. Government should be based on scientific principles. d. Ruthless competition will winnow out weaker businesses to the benefit of society. e. A laissez-faire government attitude is amoral. |
The correct answer is D. Answer A is incorrect; some segments of society were more fit to survive. Answers B is the opposite of what Social Darwinists believed. Answer C is a good distracter, but is not true. Answer E is irrelevant.
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In this anti-business cartoon, what does the club represent?
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a. Big business
b. Republican support for government c. Regulatory laws d. The Populist Party e. The power of the electorate |
The correct answer is C. The cartoonist evidently believed that the only way to stop the monster was to club it into submission with laws. Big business A is represented by the hydra, a many-headed monster. Answer B is illogical, because big business was overwhelmingly Republican, so it can’t be both the club and the monster. Answers D and E are good distracters, but incorrect. TIP: To answer a cartoon question, read the cartoon first. Be sure to read all the labels and type on a cartoon. Then read the question and go back to the cartoon to see if you can answer the question on your own. Then read the multiple-choice answers and make your choice.
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"If the church members were all doing as Jesus would do, could it remain true that armies of men would walk the streets for jobs, and hundreds of them curse the church, and thousands of them find in the saloon their best friend?"
The speaker of this quotation was most likely a supporter of which of the following? |
a. Temperance movement
b. Urban reform c. Gospel of Wealth d. Social gospel e. Settlement house staff |
The correct answer is D. Because of its alliance with organized religion, answer A is a good distracter, but incorrect. Answers C and D fit with the mention of church and Jesus also, but the Gospel of Wealth was the name given to Andrew Carnegie's view that the rich had a duty to give away their excess wealth to the less fortunate. That theme is not present in the quotation, so choose answer D The social gospel reform movement began within traditional Protestant churches to rid society of poverty and cure social ills.
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Which of the following statements is NOT true about the policy of revenue sharing?
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a. Revenue sharing was the hallmark of President Nixon's program called New Federalism.
b. Revenue sharing was a way to return directly to states and municipalities a portion of income tax revenue. c. Programs that were funded through revenue sharing could not engage in discriminatory practices. d. States and municipalities could generally fund any kind of program they wished. e. Revenue sharing took the form of block grants. |
The correct answer is E. An emphasis on block grants as a way to return money to the states occurred under President Ronald Reagan, not Richard Nixon. Under Nixon, answer D was true and is the opposite of returning money in the form of block grants. The latter are given for specific programs.
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During whose administration was the term détente first used to describe United States foreign policy?
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John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B Johnson Richard M. Nixon Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan |
The correct answer is C. Nixon and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger developed this policy to deal with the Soviet Union and applied it to the People's Republic of China as well. It means a relaxation of tensions between governments.
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All of the following were true of the women's movement EXCEPT the
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a. passage of Title IX.
b. founding of the National Organization for Women. c. passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. d. founding of Ms. magazine. e. establishment of sexual harassment as abusive behavior. |
The correct answer is C. An Equal Rights Amendment had been proposed in the nineteenth century during the first women's movement. In 1972, Congress passed and sent to the states the ERA, but opponents put up bitter fights in some states and the amendment failed by three states. Answer A was an amendment to the Civil Rights Act and provided for the loss of federal funding to any educational program that discriminated on the basis of sex. Title IX has gone a long way in equalizing opportunities for women athletes in high school and college.
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A woman's place is in the home was the major cultural message for women
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a. up to World War I.
b. until the 1920s. c. in the years immediately after World War II. d. up to the 1960s. e. throughout the twentieth century. |
The correct answer is E. Working outside the home had become more acceptable by the end of the century. Attitudes had changed because of the women's movement and of the need to earn a living—not only for single, unmarried women and single mothers, but also for women in two-parent households who were having trouble making ends meet. However, the ideal remained being a wife and stay-at home mother.
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Which of the following cases approved the consideration of race as one factor in an affirmative action policy?
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a. Batson v. Kentucky
b. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education c. Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S. d. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke e. Miller v. Johnson |
The correct answer is D. Opponents of affirmative action continue to test it in court, but at this point, Bakke is still the landmark case by which other cases are evaluated. Answer A ruled that in criminal trials prospective jurors can't be excluded on the basis of race. Answer B held that busing can be a tool in the state-mandated desegregation of schools. Answer C upheld the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and prohibited discrimination in public accommodations. Answer E held that in redistricting race may be a factor in determining boundaries but not the predominant factor
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The War Powers Act contains all of the following provisions EXCEPT a/an
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a. 48-hour notification period if the President sends troops to an overseas conflict.
b. immediate withdrawal under a concurrent resolution of both Houses. c. withdrawal of troops if Congress does not approve their deployment in 60 days. d. exemption from the act if troops are sent at the request of the UN. e. deadline extension of 30 days if it would be unsafe to withdraw troops sooner |
The correct answer is D. The only exemption may occur if Congress votes the president special power to use the troops as he sees fit. This was the situation in 2002 when Congress voted broad powers to President George W. Bush to send troops to Iraq, which power he used to start the Iraq War.
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This cartoon would most likely have appeared in a paper during which of the following?
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a. Army-McCarthy hearings
b. Senate Watergate hearings c. Iran-Contra hearings d. Impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton e. Investigation into intelligence failures surrounding 9/11 |
The correct answer is B. The fact that President Richard Nixon taped all conversations and meetings in the Oval Office came out in testimony during the Senate investigation into the break-in at the Democratic National Party headquarters in the Watergate and the subsequent cover-up. Nixon refused to turn over the tapes until forced to by the Supreme Court. They revealed Nixon had ordered the cover-up, and he was forced to resign.
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President Gerald Ford gave which of the following as his reason for pardoning former President Richard Nixon?
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a. To save the nation the expense of a trial
b. To avoid the bad publicity in the eyes of the world that a trial would bring c. To avoid the divisiveness that a trial would cause in the nation d. To spare the Nixon family the embarrassment of a trial e. To avoid tying up Congress for months in the impeachment process |
The correct answer is C. Ford said in his message to the nation announcing the pardon, "our long national nightmare is over." Unfortunately, much of the nation thought this was part of a deal and lost confidence in Ford barely a month into his administration
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Stagflation in the mid-1970s was characterized by
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a. a rise in prices accompanied by a decrease in purchasing power.
b. a drop in prices. c. inflation accompanied by a rise in unemployment and flat economic growth. d. stable prices and flat unemployment and economic growth rates. e. slow business activity |
The correct answer is C. Stagflation was a new economic phenomenon in the 1970s. Answer A is incorrect; this is the definition of inflation. Answer B is deflation. Answer D may seem logical, but it's incorrect. Answer E is a recession
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"[Our] decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this nation. This difficult decision will be the 'moral equivalent of war'—except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy."
The speaker of these words was which of the following presidents? |
a. Lyndon B Johnson
b. Richard M. Nixon c. Gerald R. Ford d. Jimmy Carter e. Ronald Reagan |
The correct answer is D. President Jimmy Carter spoke these words in a plea to Americans to conserve energy. "Moral equivalent of war" has become a catchphrase for Carter—along with the cardigan sweater he wore during the speech.
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The settlement house movement moved beyond its initial work
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a. by attempting to acclimate immigrants to their new country.
b. by educating women on health care issues. c. by providing kindergartens and other classes for immigrants. d. by lobbying local government to improve the conditions in which urban immigrants lived and worked. e. by encouraging immigrants to adopt middle-class values and move out of the slum. |
The correct answer is D. Confused by the question? Did you notice the phrase moved beyond its initial work? Answers A, B, C, and E are what the women who established and staffed settlement houses set out to do. They realized that the slums the immigrants lived in and the sweatshops and unsafe factories they worked in were the causes of their poverty, not some personal moral failing. As a result, settlement workers began to lobby government for protection for workers through laws and for improvements in housing and the urban environment. TIP: Be sure you read the question carefully and pick out the key words.
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The Camp David Accords were brokered between Egypt and Israel by which of the following presidents?
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a. Richard M. Nixon
b. Gerald Ford c. Jimmy Carter d. Ronald Reagan e. Bill Clinton |
The correct answer is C. The Camp David Accords brought an end to some of the conflict in the Middle East. Egypt recognized the existence of Israel, and Israel promised to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula
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The major goal of the deregulation of industry was
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a. to provide better service to consumers.
b. to decrease competition among businesses. c. to cut the amount of paperwork industries had to fill out for the government. d. to decrease prices. e. to remove wage and price controls. |
The correct answer is D. Deregulation began under President Carter and continued in the Reagan administration. Answer A may have occurred because competition was increased, but that was not a goal. Answer B is the opposite of one purpose of deregulation. Answer C was not a goal, although cutting the cost of enforcement was. Answer E was a policy of several administrations because of inflation, but was not part of deregulation.
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Reagan Democrats were most likely to come from which of the following group of voters?
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a. Working-class white men
b. Working-class white women c. Middle-class white men d. Upper-class white women e. Middle-class professionals, men and women |
The correct answer is A. Disaffected by affirmative action, the policies of the Great Society, and its price, working-class white men, long a mainstay of the Democratic Party, moved to the Republican Party under Reagan.
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"It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment. . . . All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government."
This quotation is representative of the policies of which of the following presidents? |
a. Theodore Roosevelt
b. Franklin Roosevelt c. John F. Kennedy d. Lyndon Johnson e. Ronald Reagan |
The correct answer is E. Did you recognize this as the signature approach of the Republican Party—smaller government? There are only two Republicans in the list, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Roosevelt, answer A, was a reformer and was interested in using government for that purpose. There is no mention of reform in this statement, so answer E, Ronald Reagan, is a better choice. This quotation is taken from Reagan's first presidential inaugural address. Even if you didn't recognize the Republican Party line, you could determine that under answers B, C, and D government programs increased, not decreased.
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President Ronald Reagan gained unexpected support in Congress for his economic program of spending cuts from
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a. moderate Midwestern Republicans.
b. conservative Midwestern Republicans. c. conservative Northeastern Republicans. d. conservative Southern Democrats. e. moderate Western Democrats. |
The correct answer is D. Ronald Reagan was the first conservative elected to the presidency since Calvin Coolidge. "Boll weevils," conservative Southern Democrats, found a philosophy underlying Reagan's economic program similar to their own and broke ranks with fellow Democrats to support Reagan. Answers B and C do not answer the question, which asks about unexpected support. That conservative Republicans would vote for Reagan is not surprising, nor that moderate Republicans would vote for his programs, answer A, given party discipline in Congress. TIP: Be sure you focus on the key words in the question.
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When the Iran-Contra scandal broke, Ronald Reagan contended
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a. that it was legal.
b. that he know nothing about it. c. that it was necessary in order to gain the release of U.S. hostages being held in Lebanon. d. that the project was self-financing so that it did not affect U.S. taxpayers. e. that it was undertaken so that Middle Eastern oil was not cut off. |
The correct answer is B. Answer C was Reagan's rationale for the sale of arms to Iran through Israel, but he never applied this rationale to weapons for the Contras. He claimed that he knew nothing about that part of the arms deal, answer B Critics claimed that either answer B was a lie, or if true, showed how much Reagan was disengaged from what went on in his administration. Answer D is true in that the weapons for the Contras were financed by the sale of arms to Iran. Answer E was the overriding concern of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
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The largest number of immigrants to come to the United States between 1980 and 1989 came from which nation?
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a. Germany
b. United Kingdom c. Soviet Union d. Mexico e. Philippines |
The correct answer is D. Some 1.6 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States in this 10-year period. The next largest number were Filipinos, answer E In terms of regions, more people came from Asia to the United States than from North America (Canada and Mexico), which had the second highest number of immigrants to the United States.
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Popular culture of the 1980s was characterized by all of the following EXCEPT
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a. violence in movies and on television.
b. MTV and music videos. c. emphasis on money and status. d. decline in the influence of marketing. e. rap music. |
The correct answer is D. Marketing reached new heights of sophistication as it began to use market research not only to survey consumers about sponsors' products, but to ask voters about preferences in issues and candidates. Marketing drove multi-million dollar ad campaigns for soap, lines of clothing, computers, and politicians. The emphasis on money and status, answer C, was in large part an outcome of marketing; products were marketed in terms of conferring status and one needed money to buy them.
The purpose of the Persian Gulf War was |
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The purpose of the Persian Gulf War was
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a. to end Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq.
b. to take over Iraqi oil fields to maintain a steady supply of oil to the West. c. to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait. d. to close terrorist havens in Iraq. e. to enforce the embargo against Iraq |
The correct answer is C. In August 1990, Iraq had invaded and seized a large area of Kuwait. President George H. W. Bush put together a coalition of nations to drive the Iraqis from Kuwait. This was the goal of the Persian Gulf War. Bush expected that after the war, internal enemies would oust Hussein, answer A, but that did not occur. Answer D was one of the stated goals of the invasion of Iraq under President George W. Bush in 2003.
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The War Powers Act contains all of the following provisions EXCEPT a/an
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a. 48-hour notification period if the President sends troops to an overseas conflict.
b. immediate withdrawal under a concurrent resolution of both Houses. c. withdrawal of troops if Congress does not approve their deployment in 60 days. d. exemption from the act if troops are sent at the request of the UN. e. deadline extension of 30 days if it would be unsafe to withdraw troops sooner |
The correct answer is D. The only exemption may occur if Congress votes the president special power to use the troops as he sees fit. This was the situation in 2002 when Congress voted broad powers to President George W. Bush to send troops to Iraq, which power he used to start the Iraq War.
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This cartoon would most likely have appeared in a paper during which of the following?
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a. Army-McCarthy hearings
b. Senate Watergate hearings c. Iran-Contra hearings d. Impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton e. Investigation into intelligence failures surrounding 9/11 |
The correct answer is B. The fact that President Richard Nixon taped all conversations and meetings in the Oval Office came out in testimony during the Senate investigation into the break-in at the Democratic National Party headquarters in the Watergate and the subsequent cover-up. Nixon refused to turn over the tapes until forced to by the Supreme Court. They revealed Nixon had ordered the cover-up, and he was forced to resign.
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President Gerald Ford gave which of the following as his reason for pardoning former President Richard Nixon?
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a. To save the nation the expense of a trial
b. To avoid the bad publicity in the eyes of the world that a trial would bring c. To avoid the divisiveness that a trial would cause in the nation d. To spare the Nixon family the embarrassment of a trial e. To avoid tying up Congress for months in the impeachment process |
The correct answer is C. Ford said in his message to the nation announcing the pardon, "our long national nightmare is over." Unfortunately, much of the nation thought this was part of a deal and lost confidence in Ford barely a month into his administration
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Stagflation in the mid-1970s was characterized by
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a. a rise in prices accompanied by a decrease in purchasing power.
b. a drop in prices. c. inflation accompanied by a rise in unemployment and flat economic growth. d. stable prices and flat unemployment and economic growth rates. e. slow business activity |
The correct answer is C. Stagflation was a new economic phenomenon in the 1970s. Answer A is incorrect; this is the definition of inflation. Answer B is deflation. Answer D may seem logical, but it's incorrect. Answer E is a recession
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"[Our] decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this nation. This difficult decision will be the 'moral equivalent of war'—except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy."
The speaker of these words was which of the following presidents? |
a. Lyndon B Johnson
b. Richard M. Nixon c. Gerald R. Ford d. Jimmy Carter e. Ronald Reagan |
The correct answer is D. President Jimmy Carter spoke these words in a plea to Americans to conserve energy. "Moral equivalent of war" has become a catchphrase for Carter—along with the cardigan sweater he wore during the speech.
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The settlement house movement moved beyond its initial work
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d. by lobbying local government to improve the conditions in which urban immigrants lived and worked.
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The correct answer is D. Confused by the question? Did you notice the phrase moved beyond its initial work? Answers A, B, C, and E are what the women who established and staffed settlement houses set out to do. They realized that the slums the immigrants lived in and the sweatshops and unsafe factories they worked in were the causes of their poverty, not some personal moral failing. As a result, settlement workers began to lobby government for protection for workers through laws and for improvements in housing and the urban environment. TIP: Be sure you read the question carefully and pick out the key words.
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The Camp David Accords were brokered between Egypt and Israel by which of the following presidents?
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a. Richard M. Nixon
b. Gerald Ford c. Jimmy Carter d. Ronald Reagan e. Bill Clinton |
The correct answer is C. The Camp David Accords brought an end to some of the conflict in the Middle East. Egypt recognized the existence of Israel, and Israel promised to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula
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The major goal of the deregulation of industry was
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a. to provide better service to consumers.
b. to decrease competition among businesses. c. to cut the amount of paperwork industries had to fill out for the government. d. to decrease prices. e. to remove wage and price controls. |
The correct answer is D. Deregulation began under President Carter and continued in the Reagan administration. Answer A may have occurred because competition was increased, but that was not a goal. Answer B is the opposite of one purpose of deregulation. Answer C was not a goal, although cutting the cost of enforcement was. Answer E was a policy of several administrations because of inflation, but was not part of deregulation.
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Reagan Democrats were most likely to come from which of the following group of voters?
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a. Working-class white men
b. Working-class white women c. Middle-class white men d. Upper-class white women e. Middle-class professionals, men and women |
The correct answer is A. Disaffected by affirmative action, the policies of the Great Society, and its price, working-class white men, long a mainstay of the Democratic Party, moved to the Republican Party under Reagan.
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"It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment. . . . All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government."
This quotation is representative of the policies of which of the following presidents? |
a. Theodore Roosevelt
b. Franklin Roosevelt c. John F. Kennedy d. Lyndon Johnson e. Ronald Reagan |
The correct answer is E. Did you recognize this as the signature approach of the Republican Party—smaller government? There are only two Republicans in the list, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Roosevelt, answer A, was a reformer and was interested in using government for that purpose. There is no mention of reform in this statement, so answer E, Ronald Reagan, is a better choice. This quotation is taken from Reagan's first presidential inaugural address. Even if you didn't recognize the Republican Party line, you could determine that under answers B, C, and D government programs increased, not decreased.
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President Ronald Reagan gained unexpected support in Congress for his economic program of spending cuts from
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a. moderate Midwestern Republicans.
b. conservative Midwestern Republicans. c. conservative Northeastern Republicans. d. conservative Southern Democrats. e. moderate Western Democrats. |
The correct answer is D. Ronald Reagan was the first conservative elected to the presidency since Calvin Coolidge. "Boll weevils," conservative Southern Democrats, found a philosophy underlying Reagan's economic program similar to their own and broke ranks with fellow Democrats to support Reagan. Answers B and C do not answer the question, which asks about unexpected support. That conservative Republicans would vote for Reagan is not surprising, nor that moderate Republicans would vote for his programs, answer A, given party discipline in Congress. TIP: Be sure you focus on the key words in the question.
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When the Iran-Contra scandal broke, Ronald Reagan contended
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a. that it was legal.
b. that he know nothing about it. c. that it was necessary in order to gain the release of U.S. hostages being held in Lebanon. d. that the project was self-financing so that it did not affect U.S. taxpayers. e. that it was undertaken so that Middle Eastern oil was not cut off. |
The correct answer is B. Answer C was Reagan's rationale for the sale of arms to Iran through Israel, but he never applied this rationale to weapons for the Contras. He claimed that he knew nothing about that part of the arms deal, answer B Critics claimed that either answer B was a lie, or if true, showed how much Reagan was disengaged from what went on in his administration. Answer D is true in that the weapons for the Contras were financed by the sale of arms to Iran. Answer E was the overriding concern of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
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The largest number of immigrants to come to the United States between 1980 and 1989 came from which nation?
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a. Germany
b. United Kingdom c. Soviet Union d. Mexico e. Philippines |
The correct answer is D. Some 1.6 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States in this 10-year period. The next largest number were Filipinos, answer E In terms of regions, more people came from Asia to the United States than from North America (Canada and Mexico), which had the second highest number of immigrants to the United States.
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Popular culture of the 1980s was characterized by all of the following EXCEPT
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a. violence in movies and on television.
b. MTV and music videos. c. emphasis on money and status. d. decline in the influence of marketing. e. rap music. |
The correct answer is D. Marketing reached new heights of sophistication as it began to use market research not only to survey consumers about sponsors' products, but to ask voters about preferences in issues and candidates. Marketing drove multi-million dollar ad campaigns for soap, lines of clothing, computers, and politicians. The emphasis on money and status, answer C, was in large part an outcome of marketing; products were marketed in terms of conferring status and one needed money to buy them.
The purpose of the Persian Gulf War was |
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The purpose of the Persian Gulf War was
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a. to end Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq.
b. to take over Iraqi oil fields to maintain a steady supply of oil to the West. c. to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait. d. to close terrorist havens in Iraq. e. to enforce the embargo against Iraq |
The correct answer is C. In August 1990, Iraq had invaded and seized a large area of Kuwait. President George H. W. Bush put together a coalition of nations to drive the Iraqis from Kuwait. This was the goal of the Persian Gulf War. Bush expected that after the war, internal enemies would oust Hussein, answer A, but that did not occur. Answer D was one of the stated goals of the invasion of Iraq under President George W. Bush in 2003.
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The major issue that dogged President George H.W. Bush throughout his administration was
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a. the nation's problems with illicit drugs.
b. the quality of the nation's schools. c. the Iranian hostage crisis. d. the economy. e. the nation's deteriorating relations with Europe. |
The correct answer is D. As Bill Clinton said in winning the 1992 election against Bush, it was the economy. Although Bush had plans to do with answers A and B, the budget deficit left little money to fund his proposals. Answer C helped to end Jimmy Carter's political career. Answer E is a problem for President George W. Bush.
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The increasingly urban nature of the United States was caused primarily by
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a. the pull of the city on the rural population.
b. natural increase of native-born Americans. c. combination of natural increase and immigration. d. steady wave of immigrants. e. rapid industrialization of the United States. |
The correct answer is E. Answer E is the reason that answers A and D occurred, not the other way around. Because the nation was industrializing rapidly, it needed workers and drew them both from the rural population lured by the excitement of city life and the hope of higher wages and from the waves of immigrants also hoping for a better life. Answer B doesn't answer the question about why the United States became urbanized, just why the population grew. The same is true for answer C and answer D TIP: Don't confuse causes and effects.
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Those most likely to be living in poverty as defined by the federal government are
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a. Asian.
b. Midwesterners. c. children under the age of 18. d. white adults, male or female, ages 19–25. e. white single men. |
The correct answer is C. The 13 percent of the population who live below the poverty line are most likely to be (1) single women, (2) children under the age of 18, (3) city dwellers, (4) Southerners, and/or (5) Hispanics or African Americans.
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Immigrants from which nation were the first targets of specific immigration legislation?
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a. Ireland
b. Germany c. Italy d. Russia e. China |
The correct answer is E. The first law aimed at restricting legislation was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Restrictions against the general class of immigrants were not passed until 1921.
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Which of the following was used against labor unions?
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a. Interstate Commerce Act
b. Sherman Antitrust Act c. Hepburn Act d. Clayton Antitrust Act e. Pacific Railway Acts |
The correct answer is B. The law was enacted to regulate big business, but its wording was very vague and was used against labor unions. Union members who were planning a strike were found to be conspiring in restraint of trade. Answer A established the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the first government agency with regulatory authority. Answer C gave the ICC the authority to set maximum railroad rates. Answer D was passed in 1914 in an effort to clarify what constituted monopolies and to legalize unions. Answer E subsidized the construction of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads
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The Supreme Court ruled that the state had the right to regulate publicly owned services that affected the public interest in which of the following cases?
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a. Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad v. Iowa
b. Muller v. Oregon c. Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co. d. United States v. EC Knight e. Munn v. Illinois |
The correct answer is E. Answer A dealt with the setting of maximum passenger and freight rates; the decision held that states could set such rates. Answer B was the first decision by the Supreme Court in the area of social reform. It ruled that an Oregon state law setting a 10-hour workday for women was constitutional. Answer C held that the federal income tax was unconstitutional. Answer D held that owning sugar refining and controlling the sugar refining process didn't constitute restraint of interstate commerce. |
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The Dawes Act marked a change in policy toward Native Americans
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a. by encouraging the preservation of their customs.
b. by allowing Native Americans to work part of the year for whites off the reservations. C. by ending the practice of negotiating treaties with Native American nations. d. by forcing all Native Americans onto reservations. e. by opening the Indian Territory to white settlement. |
The correct answer is C. The Dawes Act ended treaty-making and the status of Native American groups as nations, carved up reservations into individual farm plots and encouraged assimilation, the opposite of answer A Answer B is illogical. The Army was still forcing Native Americans onto reservations when the Dawes Act was passed in 1887. This was not a new policy, so answer D is incorrect. Answer E is a true statement, but it was not related to the Dawes Act.
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What is the significance of the Battle of Wounded Knee?
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a. For the first time there was solid evidence of an army massacre of unarmed women and children.
b. It marked the closing of the frontier. c. It marked the end of the Plains wars. d. It ended Native American resistance to white settlement in the Black Hills. e. It opened the way for the building of the transcontinental railroad. |
The correct answer is C. An army unit and a band of Teton-Sioux clashed in 1890 in this last battle of the Plains war. It was more correctly a massacre of Native Americans by the army, but certainly not the first, answer A Answer B is known as the frontier thesis and was first proposed by the historian Frederick Jackson Turner. Using the 1890 Census as support, he said that there was no longer a large identifiable region of unsettled land. Answer D is incorrect; the battle at Little Big Horn and the ensuing pursuit of Sioux and Cheyenne effectively ended any resistance to white settlement. Answer E is incorrect; the first transcontinental railroad was built in 1869
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All of the following planks of the Populist platform of 1890 became law over time EXCEPT
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a. direct election of United States senators.
b. secret ballot. c. restrictions on undesirable immigrants. d. national sales tax. e. adoption of the initiative and referendum processes |
The correct answer is D. What the Populists asked for and got in the Sixteenth Amendment was a graduate income tax, not a sales tax. The Seventeenth Amendment established the direct election of United States senators. Various state and federal laws accomplished a secret ballot B, restrictions on undesirable immigrants C, and the adoption of the initiative and referendum processes E
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Which of the following was the author of popular dime novels about young men who rose from rags to riches?
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a. Mark Twain
b. Bret Harte c. Hamlin Garland d. Stephen Crane e. Horatio Alger |
The correct answer is E. Horatio Alger E wrote over 100 novels describing the fruits of hard work and perseverance. These books provided a role model and an inspiration for achieving the American dream to countless numbers of boys. Mark Twain A, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, was the consummate American storyteller—in short stories, novels, essays, and lectures. He employed humor, satire, and realism to move beyond any single literary genre. Bret Harte B wrote about the U.S. West and helped to create the Western myth. Hamlin Garland C wrote stories about the hard scrabble life of pioneers settling the Middle West. Stephen Crane D wrote novels, short stories, and poems that focused on the grim aspects of American life in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
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The major area of disagreement between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois centered on
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a. the means to attain civil rights for African Americans.
b. the belief that segregation was not harmful to African Americans. c. the usefulness of education. d. whether African Americans should serve in the United States Army in the Spanish American War. e. government aid to former African American slaves. |
The correct answer is A. Answer B is incorrect. Du Bois wanted African Americans to actively oppose segregation and seek their rights, especially the right to vote. Washington, on the other hand, believed that African Americans could work within segregation to get their rights, but he never condoned it. Answer C isn't true. They didn't disagree over the importance of education, but on what the nature of education should be—technical/industrial or professional. Even if you didn't know that answer D is an incorrect statement, you could eliminate it. It's too specific; you need a big picture answer. Answer E is in the wrong time frame to be correct.
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Plessy v. Ferguson established the principle of
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a. one man, one vote.
b. separate but equal. c. judicial review. d. equal protection. e. right to privacy. |
The correct answer is B. This case heard in 1896 established the concept that as long as facilities for African Americans were equal to those for whites, they were legal. In reality, they were not, but this case provided the legal basis for segregation. Answer A is the principle established by a series of redistricting cases heard by the Supreme Court in the second half of the twentieth century. Answer C was established in Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Answer D was established by Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka. The decision in this case overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. Answer E is the principle established in cases like Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade, both of which ruled in favor of a person’s right to privacy against government interference when it comes to reproduction.
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The theory of conspicuous consumption was developed and applied to the rich in American society by which of the following?
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a. Mark Twain
b. Karl Marx c. Friedrich Engels d. Thorstein Veblen e. Jacob Riis |
The correct answer is D. Thorstein Veblen was an American economist and social theorist who coined this term to describe the acquisition of goods for their status value rather than for their utility, or usefulness. Mark Twain, answer A, is a good distracter, because he took a satirical view of American society. Karl Marx, answer B, and Friedrich Engels, answer C, formulated the theory of communism. Jacob Riis, answer E, was a muckraker and photographer
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"You come to tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country."
This speech was most likely in response to the argument |
a. for dumping gold on the market.
b. that the nation's gold reserves should be increased. c. against the free and unlimited coinage of silver. d. for the replacement of the silver standard with the gold standard. e. against passage of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. |
The correct answer is C. This quotation is from William Jennings Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" speech to the Democratic presidential nominating convention in 1896 in which he argued for the free and unlimited coinage of silver and against the gold standard. Answer A is incorrect; it doesn't have anything to do with the historical situation. Answer B is incorrect; the speech was against using the gold standard as the sole backing for United States currency. Answer D is incorrect, because the issue was not replacing a silver standard with a gold standard, but bimetalism, the use of both as monetary standards. The nation already was the gold standard. Answer E is incorrect, because the Sherman Silver Purchase Act had been enacted and later repealed. Farmers and silver miners were furious at its repeal.
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Queen Liluokalani was deposed
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a. on orders of President Grover Cleveland.
b. by Hawaiian sugar planters. c. by her own subjects who considered her weak. d. by Americans eager to extend the Monroe Doctrine. e. as part of the Spanish American War. |
The correct answer is B. Answer A is incorrect. President Cleveland came into office after sugar planters B had seized the islands. He refused to accept annexation, because he believed the planters had acted unlawfully and that creating an empire went against the United States' principles. Answer C is incorrect, because Liluokalani had replaced a weak despotic king and sought to remove American influence. Answer D makes no sense since there was no European country involved. Answer E is incorrect; there was no involvement of the Spanish in the overthrow and annexation.
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The primary purpose of the Open Door Policy was
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a. to carve up China into spheres of influence.
b. to embarrass European nations into agreeing to its terms. c. to follow up on the gains of the Spanish American War and enhance McKinley's re-election chances. d. to ensure trading rights in China for the major European nations. e. to ensure equal access to the China trade for the United States. |
The correct answer is E. Secretary of State John Hay was responsible for this supposed agreement among European nations that had spheres of influence in China. Answer A is incorrect, because the European powers had assigned themselves Chinese ports earlier in the 1890s. Answer B would have occurred had the European nations objected to Hay's memorandum of agreement, but they did not, in order to save themselves embarrassment. Whereas the first half of the answer could possibly be considered true, the second half is not, so eliminate it. Answer D is incorrect; the major European nations such as Great Britain and Russia already had access to the China trade. |
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Yellow journalism, the de Lôme letter, and the Maine all contributed to which of the following?
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a. Creation of the Pan-American Union
b. Autonomy for Puerto Rico c. Formal protest against Spanish rule in the Philippines d. The Spanish American War e. The sending of 50,000 U.S. troops to the U.S-Mexican border |
The correct answer is D. Yellow journalism inflamed the American public with lurid tales of Spanish atrocities, including the blowing of the USS Maine. Dupuy de Lôme, the Spanish minister to the United States, wrote a private letter in which he described President William McKinley as a weak leader, which outraged the American public when it was printed. Answer A was established in 1890 to bring about political and economic cooperation among the nations of the Americas. Answer B was actually achieved by Puerto Ricans for a short time in 1898 before the United States seized the island in the Spanish American War. Answer C is a distracter; the United States did lodge a protest with Spain against Spanish treatment of Cubans. Answer E relates to an episode in 1867 when President Andrew Johnson sent troops to enforce the Monroe Doctrine. Napoleon III had installed the Austrian Archduke Maximilian as emperor of Mexico. The threat of American force and the inability of Maximiliam to retain his throne without French troops ended the brief episode.
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". . . the Pacific is the ocean of the commerce of the future. Most future wars will be conflicts for commerce. The power that rules the Pacific, therefore, is the power that rules the world. And, with the Philippines, that power is and will forever be the American Republic. . . ."
This quotation could be considered the rationale for which of the following? |
a. U.S. industrialization
b. Manifest destiny c. Low tariffs d. U.S. imperialism e. U.S. isolationism |
The correct answer is D. The quotation is taken from a speech by Republican Senator Albert Beveridge, who vigorously rejected the idea of allowing the Philippines to become an independent nation and sacrificing the United States' interests.
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Between 1877 and 1897, the presidency was characterized
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a. by a lack of leadership.
b. by mostly strong presidents. c. by a tug of war between president and Congress. d. by an inability to gets things done because of Congressional obstructionism. e. by the use of the veto to block legislation. |
The correct answer is A. The five presidents who served between 1876 and 1897 (Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison) gave up a great deal of presidential authority to Congress and the states. Amiable men, they failed to grasp the possibilities of the presidency |
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Which of the following would be an appropriate title for this cartoon?
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a. "Uncle Sam, the Reluctant Schoolmaster"
b. "Uncle Sam Teaches the Art of Self-Government" c. "Uncle Sam and the Big Stick" d. "Uncle Sam and the Spanish American War" e. "The Childish Nations Need Supervision" |
The correct answer is B. Answer B is the title given the cartoon by the cartoonist. Answer A is incorrect; there is nothing reluctant about the Uncle Sam in the cartoon. Answer C is a good distracter, but the teacher's pointer isn't very big, so this is an unlikely answer. Answer D is incorrect. There is no indication of war, only the spoils of war. Answer E doesn't explain the character of Uncle Sam as the teacher as clearly as either answers A or B
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The primary reason for United States' interest in the Russo–Japanese War was
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a. concern over the balance of power in East Asia.
b. concern over any interest Japan had in the Philippines. c. the safety of the U.S. fleet Port Arthur. d. Japan's invasion of Manchuria. e. the future of the Gentlemen's Agreement. |
The correct answer is B. Answer A was always a concern, but not the primary reason for Roosevelt's intervention as a mediator in the Russo–Japanese War. Answer C is incorrect. Port Arthur was a Russian naval port, which the Japanese captured. Answer D is incorrect for the same reason answer A is. Answer E is the wrong time frame. The war ended in 1905, and the Gentlemen's Agreement was not signed until 1907.
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All of the following were muckrakers EXCEPT
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a. Ida Tarbell.
b. Ray Stannard Baker. c. Upton Sinclair. d. William Dean Howells. e. Lincoln Steffens. |
The correct answer is D. William Dean Howells was one of the first U.S. novelists to write fiction reflecting social ills. Ida Tarbell A wrote a scathing indictment of the corrupt business practices of Standard Oil. Ray Stannard Baker B wrote about discrimination against African Americans in the North and the South. Upton Sinclair C wrote about the unsafe and unsanitary working conditions in the meat-packing industry. Lincoln Steffens E wrote about corruption in city governments. TIP: In a reverse answer question—NOT, LEAST, EXCEPT—you want to find the answer that is not true or does not fit with the others.
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Which of the following statements is NOT true about progressives?
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a. Progressives tended to be middle class and well educated.
b. The umbrella term progressive covered often contradictory ideas. c. Women were an integral part of the progressive movement and often took the lead. d. In the guise of election reform, Southern progressives disenfranchised African American voters. e. Progressives tended to be engaged in political reform rather than in efforts to reform social and economic abuses. |
The correct answer is E. Progressives engaged in political, economic, and social reform. That's what made the movement so diffuse. Answer D is an example of why answer B is true.
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Which of the following was a decidedly American school of painting?
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a. Impressionism
b. Post Impressionism c. Ash Can d. Surrealism e. Pointillism |
The correct answer is C. The Ash Can art movement began in New York City in 1908 and took urban scenes as its subject matter. Impressionism (answer A), Post Impressionism (answer B), Surrealism (answer D), and Pointillism (answer E) all began in France |
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This photo is an example of
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a. the use of photography as a new art form in the early 1900s.
b. the use of photography as a tool for the new discipline of sociology. c. the use of photography as a tool of muckrakers. d. the photos used by steamship companies to recruit new immigrants. e. the photos immigrants sent to their families in the old country |
The correct answer is C. Photographs like these taken by Jacob Riis and Lewis Hines showed the overcrowding, unhealthy living conditions, and unsafe working conditions that immigrants endured in the cities.
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William Howard Taft's administration compares favorably with the programs of Theodore Roosevelt in all the following areas EXCEPT
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a. child labor and safety.
b. increased authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission. c. tariff reduction. d. conservation. e. antitrust prosecution. |
The correct answer is C. The Payne-Aldrich Tariff was Taft's downfall. He had promised to reduce the tariff, but was caught between Republican conservatives and Republican progressives, and the resulting tariff, which he felt he had to sign, raised the tariff on many items.
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The Federal Reserve System was established in 1913 in an effort
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a. to force private banks to lend more of their money reserves.
b. to replace the national bank. c. to stop runs on banks. d. to control the amount of money in circulation. e. to dilute the authority of the secretary of the treasury. |
The correct answer is D. There were additional reasons for setting up the Federal Reserve System, such as establishing a central control over the banking system similar to the Bank of England and creating a more flexible process for lending money. Answer A is the opposite of the situation; banks lent too much, so they didn't always have enough money on hand. Answer B is incorrect, because there was no national bank in 1913. Andrew Jackson had killed the Second National Bank with his veto of its rechartering in 1832, and no similar institution had been established. The lack of a central bank was the problem. A run on a bank, answer C, means many people demanding all at once to remove their money from a bank. This was probably an outcome of the system, but not an intended purpose. Answer E was not the intention of the act establishing the Federal Reserve System, but over time in practice, the Federal Reserve chairman has become more important than the secretary of the treasury in terms of monetary and fiscal policy.
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Reaction to British disregard of U.S. neutrality at the beginning of the war was muted primarily because
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a. of the large number of Germans who voted for Wilson in 1912.
b. Great Britain and the United States had a shared heritage. c. Wilson did not want to go to war with Great Britain. d. any end to trade with Great Britain would have damaged the U.S. economy. e. Wilson did not want the Germans to win. |
The correct answer is E. Answers C and D are true, but the question asks for the primary reason. That is answer E Wilson feared that if the United States protested too strongly, and Great Britain ceased its raids on neutral shipping in its efforts to seize contraband, the Allies would be at a disadvantage. Answer A and answer B are distracters. TIP: The key word here is primarily.
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Germany's purpose in sending the Zimmerman Telegram was
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a. to notify the United States that it was resuming unrestricted submarine warfare.
b. to apologize for the sinking of the Lusitania. c. to inform its minister in Mexico to seek an alliance with Mexico. d. to protest the United States' policy of neutrality. e. to state formally its Sussex pledge. |
The correct answer is C. The telegram went on to say that should Germany and Mexico win, the former Mexican territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona would be returned to Mexico. Answer B is unlikely to be true; Germany considered the sinking of the ocean liner self-defense.
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All of the following characterized the home front during World War I EXCEPT
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a. a campaign to sell Liberty Bonds to finance the war.
b. rationing of consumer goods. c. a virulent anti-German campaign. d. passage of an excess profits tax on corporations. e. hiring of African Americans in war industries. |
The correct answer is B. Herbert Hoover who headed the Food Administration relied on Americans' patriotism to make sacrifices and enlist in the campaign to save food and gasoline for the troops. His program of gasless days, meatless Mondays, and daylight saving time was hugely successful. Answer A raised $20 billion. Answer D was meant to return to the government the profits businesses made on the war. Answer E helped fuel the Great Migration of African Americans north
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The first large-scale black nationalist movement was
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a. Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Compromise.
b. W.E.B. Du Bois's Talented Tenth. c. the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. d. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. e. Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. |
The correct answer is D. The first large-scale black nationalist movement was the product of Marcus Garvey's work in Harlem in the 1920s. It was the precursor to the black nationalist movement of the 1960s. Answer A is incorrect; Washington wasn't a black nationalist. Answer B appealed to the small segment of upper-class African Americans, whereas Garvey appealed to a broader cross-section of African Americans. Answer C also had a limited audience among African Americans. Answer E came after Garvey; it wasn't founded until the 1930s.
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President Woodrow Wilson's major mistake in the handling of the Treaty of Versailles was
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a. his instructions to Democrats to veto it.
b. his unwillingness to include any high-ranking Republicans on the negotiating team. c. his insistence on including the League of Nations in the treaty. d. his resistance to including reparations for the Allies. e. his forwarding it to the Senate to ratify. |
The correct answer is B. Had Woodrow Wilson been able to overcome his dislike of Henry Cabot Lodge to include him or to include any Republican in the group that went to Versailles to negotiate the treaty, the treaty and the United States' entrance into the League of Nations might have succeeded. As it was, the Republicans had no reason to support either. Answer A was an outcome of Wilson's actions, not the cause. Answer C is incorrect in that he won over European leaders and a large part of the nation to the purpose of the League. Answer D is a true statement, but he lost that argument at Versailles. Answer E is illogical; according to the Constitution, it is the duty of the Senate to ratify treaties.
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All of the following are reasons why African Americans moved North in the Great Migration EXCEPT
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a. early migrants encouraged those still in the South to come.
b. there were more economic opportunities in the North. c. the sharecropping system had given way to large commercial farms in the South. d. boll weevils attacked and destroyed much of the cotton crop several years in a row. e. white mobs still practiced lynch law. |
The correct answer is C. The sharecropping system had not changed since the Freedmen's Bureau had established it in the 1860s. Both World I and World War II made jobs in factories available to African Americans, answer B Although not always well paying by Northern standards, they were better than sharecropping.
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In 1920, women finally gained the right to vote primarily because
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a. women could already vote in state and local elections in most Western states.
b. after 100 years women had worn down their opponents. c. women could already vote in state and local elections in most Eastern states. d. it was difficult to deny women the vote after their service in World War I. e. hunger strikes and forced feedings of suffragists had turned public opinion in their favor. |
The correct answer is D. Answer A is a true statement, but not the primary reason. Answer B may well be true, but it is not the primary reason either. Answer E refers to tactics of some women suffragists and may have influenced some people, but it is not the primary reason.
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All of the following fueled the Red Scare EXCEPT
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a. the violence of the strikes that swept the nation in 1919 and 1920.
b. a series of bombs delivered to business leaders and public officials. c. the evidence of a Bolshevist conspiracy to take over the United States. d. the presence of radicals from Eastern Europe in the labor movement. e. workers' calls for nationalization of industries. |
The correct answer is C. The conspiracy was in the minds of anxious Americans—fueled by at least one public official. Attorney General A Mitchell Palmer rounded up 6,000 supposed subversives, many of them citizens, and detained them illegally. Most were released by the courts for lack of evidence. Only 556 were deported. Palmer had hoped to ride his fervent defense of the nation into the White House. However, when little came of the arrests or his prediction that the anarchists would strike on May Day, 1920, he lost influence.
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A "return to normalcy" was the promise of which presidential candidate?
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a. Woodrow Wilson
b. Warren C Harding c. Calvin Coolidge d. Herbert Hoover e. Franklin D Roosevelt |
The correct answer is B. After the turbulence of the war years, the fight over the League of Nations, the Red Scare, the sagging economy, and Wilson's unyielding idealism, Harding promised a less contentious presidency.
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Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, and James Weldon Johnson were all members of the
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a. Niagara Movement
b. American Renaissance c. Hudson River School d. Harlem Renaissance e. Lost Generation |
The correct answer is D. Jessie Fauset was a novelist and teacher as well as the editor of the NAACP magazine Crisis. Langston Hughes was a prolific writer of poems, plays, essays, stories, and histories, and is probably the best known of the Harlem Renaissance poets. A lawyer and civil rights activist as well as a poet, James Weldon Johnson, wrote "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," considered to be the unofficial African American national anthem.
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The Scopes trial was significant because
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a. it tested the legality of state-mandated curriculum.
b. it gave fundamentalists a wider audience for their views. c. it brought Darwin's theory of evolution to the attention of more people. d. it proved that some states refused to allow evolution to be taught in their schools. e. it highlighted the tensions between older established value systems and new theories of science. |
The correct answer is E. Whether Tennessee had the right to mandate what could be taught was not the issue, answer A The issue was specifically about the teaching of evolution. Answers B and C cancel each other out. If fundamentalists got a wider audience, so did Darwin's theory. Answer D was already known. TIP: When you have to answer a question that asks about significance, look for the big picture answer. Often it will be the correct answer.
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The major foreign policy issue in the 1920s was
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a. disarmament.
b. forcing Germany and Italy to pay their reparations. c. ending the Anglo-Japanese defense treaty. d. entering into agreements to safeguard U.S. possessions in the Pacific. e. achieving peace |
The correct answer is E. The overwhelming issue was how to avoid war and ensure peace. After World I, many people considered disarming nations the only way to ensure peace, answer A As a result, nations entered into various pacts to limit the production of new naval vessels and to withdraw from various territories. These pacts were signed as part of the Washington Conference in 1921–1922—at the strong insistence of the United States. Answer B was an issue more for European nations than the United States. The Four-Power Treaty accomplished answer C The Four-Power Treaty and the Nine-Power Treaty moved in the direction of accomplishing answer D These plus the Five-Power Treaty were signed during the Washington Conference.
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The major theme of serious literature in the 1920s was
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a. existentialism.
b. World War I. c. disillusionment with U.S. society. d. the prejudice of small towns. e. the Jazz Age. |
The correct answer is C. If you didn't know this, you could figure it out. Remember the "lost generation" of writers in the 1920s. They personified that disillusionment with U.S. society by becoming expatriates in Europe. Answer A was a philosophy that developed after World War II in Europe. Answer B is a good distracter, but not the answer. Answer D is true for the work of small number of writers, but this prejudice was one aspect of U. S. society that fed writers' disillusionment. Answer E appeared in some writers' works, but it was not a major theme.
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Which of the following is NOT a true statement about the popular culture of the 1920s?
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a. The cult of celebrity made stars of such disparate people as movie actors, baseball players, and Charles A Lindbergh.
b. Advertising became important as a way to pay for radio broadcasts. c. Popular culture created an image of what the good life had to offer Americans. d. Popular culture promoted the consumption of goods. e. One of the less important mediums for reaching Americans was the radio. |
The correct answer is E. As one historian has stated it, "Radio created a community of listeners." Radio was the greatest homogenizer of American culture in the period. It reached millions of listeners by 1930. Modern advertising B developed in this period based on market research and the use of psychology to sell radio sponsors' products
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Which of the following statements is true about world trade in the 1920s?
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a. A combination of Germany's default on reparations and the stock market crash adversely affected world trade.
b. By insisting on immediate repayment of war debts, the United States held down growth in world trade. c. Tariff rates in major nations were at levels that had little effect on world trade. d. The United States lowered its tariffs in an effort to stimulate world trade. e. The stock market crash did not affect world trade. |
The correct answer is B. Both the United States and the Allies insisted on having their money immediately. The United States wanted the Allies to repay their wartime debts, and the Allies needed the reparations from Germany to do this. The money flowed in a cycle from bankers in the United States to Germany. Germany then paid reparations to the Allies who, in turn, paid the United States. Answer A is incorrect; Germany repaid its reparations. The question uses the phrase in the 1920s, and the stock market crash didn't happen until 1929, so beware of this answer and answer E for the same reason. Also, common sense will tell you that the stock market crash was so enormous that it had to have affected world trade in some way by constricting the amount of money for purchases. Answer C is incorrect and is connected to answer D Both the United States and other major trading partners had high tariff rates, and in retaliation, other nations raised their rates as well.
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The major flaw in the Kellogg-Briand Pact was
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a. that not all nations signed it.
b. that nations could still defend themselves if attacked. c. that outlawing war was a practical impossibility. d. that popular opinion was against it. e. that no provision was made for punishing nations that violated the pact. |
The correct answer is E. The only way to stop a nation from waging an aggressive war was the opinion of its populace, and that would vary, as the world would see when Germany began its aggressive campaign against its neighbors. Answer A was a problem, but not the major flaw. Answer B was only sensible. Answer C may or may not be objectively true, but given popular support in many nations at the time, ending war seemed possible. Answer D is the opposite of what was true at the time.
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All of the following were popular entertainers of the 1920s EXCEPT
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a. Al Jolson.
b. Amelia Earhart. c. Duke Ellington. d. Charlie Chaplin. e. Bessie Smith. |
The correct answer is B. Amelia Earhart was a popular hero of the 1930s. In 1932 she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. She disappeared in the Pacific while attempting to fly around the world. In 1927, Al Jolson A was the star of the first movie with sound The Jazz Singer. Duke Ellington C was a jazz pianist, band leader, and composer. Charlie Chaplin D was a star of silent movies. Bessie Smith E was a jazz singer. Both Ellington and Smith were part of the Harlem Renaissance.
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Which of the following is NOT a true statement about how people viewed consumption in the 1920s?
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a. Advertising blurred the difference between what people needed and what they wanted.
b. Buying on credit became respectable. c. Whereas young people were the major users of credit, the average middle-class family did not buy on credit. d. The installment plan was introduced as a way to buy things people could not afford to pay for all at once. e. Consumers tended to ignore the high interest rates charged on installment plans. |
The correct answer is C. It was the average middle-class family that bought everything from cars to washing machines on credit
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Which of the following statements best describes the significance of the election of 1928?
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a. Al Smith picked up the votes of women, immigrants, urban workers, and small farmers.
b. A shift in the voter base of the two parties was apparent. c. Anti-Catholic prejudice played a role in Al Smith's defeat. d. Al Smith lost several traditionally Democratic states in the South. e. Although Smith did not win any farm states, small farmers voted heavily for him. |
The correct answer is B. All the answers are true, but the one with the greatest long-term consequences is answer B Previously, the Democratic Party had had its base in rural, small-town America. With this election it was able to capture the votes of women and urban workers, both native-born and immigrant. Answer B covers answer A, so it fits the key phrase of best describes. Answer C is true, but ask yourself how significant this is. Anti-Catholic prejudice had been part of U.S. politics since the 1840s. Answers D and E, too, are covered in answer B
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Which of the following was NOT a direct consequence of the advent of the automobile age in the 1920s?
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a. Development of the assembly line
b. The family vacation c. Establishment of ancillary businesses such as gas stations and motels d. The development boom in Florida e. The development of a system of paved roads |
The correct answer is A. Development of the assembly line predated Henry Ford's use of it to manufacture his Model T's beginning in 1914.
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The primary cause of the stock market crash of 1929 was
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a. overproduction of goods.
b. bank failures. c. underconsumption by consumers. d. speculation. e. inflation. |
The correct answer is D. Answers A, B, and C are all causes of the Great Depression, not the stock market crash.
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The primary reason that Prohibition did not succeed was because
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a. the coastline was too long to patrol effectively against smugglers.
b. the enforcement agency, the Prohibition Bureau, was underfunded. c. amateurs and gangsters alike turned to the manufacture and sale of alcohol. d. prohibition was the crusade of rural areas only. e. many Americans did not believe in prohibition. |
The correct answer is E. Answers A, B, and C are true statements, but the primary reason that Prohibition failed was the number of Americans, including politicians, who flaunted the law. Answer D is a simplification. Prohibition had advocates in cities as well, although there was a very strong rural component to its supporters.
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The flapper has become a stereotype of which of the following?
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a. The suffragist movement
b. 1920s c. 1940s d. 1960s e. The women's liberation movement |
The correct answer is B. Although few women in the 1920s were actually flappers, flappers influenced women's fashions and hair styles. Skirt lengths went from the floor to just below the knee on most women. Women abandoned wearing their hair in buns for the flapper's bob or a little longer style. The freedom that flappers enjoyed in part because they worked outside the home helped to broaden the horizon of other women.
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Which of the following statements best describes why President Herbert Hoover rejected any federal intervention to help individuals during the Depression?
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a. The federal government would run up huge deficits that would in the long run harm the economy.
b. Help to individuals was unconstitutional. c. The business cycle would adjust itself over time. d. "Prosperity was just around the corner" if people were patient. e. Federal assistance would sap people's initiative and self-respect |
The correct answer is E. Herbert Hoover, a successful businessman and staunch Republican, believed strongly in the individual. He believed the way to fight the Depression was through aid to businesses. Answer A sounds good from a Republican, but is untrue in this case. Answer B is also incorrect. Answer C was his Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon's philosophy, which Hoover rejected. Answer D was Hoover's feel-good campaign theme in 1932, but it didn't drive his policy.
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The Bodies of Liberty, the first law code in the English colonies, was passed by the
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a. Virginia House of Burgesses.
b. Massachusetts General Court. c. First Continental Congress. d. Proprietors of Georgia. e. Maryland General Assembly. |
The correct answer is B. You should have been able immediately to cross off choices C and D. Common sense would tell you that the First Continental Congress was too late in the history of the colonies. Proprietors, choice D, didn't have to pass laws; they decreed what needed to be done. Answer A may have stopped you for a minute because the House of Burgesses established in 1619 was the first representative lawmaking body in the English colonies, but it doesn't have anything to do with passage of the first law code in the English colonies. Answer E is important because it passed the Act of Toleration, granting religious freedom to most faiths
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John Maynard Keynes would agree with which of the following statements?
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a. Cutting taxes is the way to stimulate the economy.
b. Cutting taxes and lowering interest rates will stimulate the economy. c. Cutting taxes, lowering interest rates, and increasing government spending will stimulate the economy. d. Increased government spending alone will stimulate the economy. e. Only the natural forces of the free market can stimulate the economy. |
The correct answer is C. John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, proposed to President Franklin Roosevelt that cutting taxes, lowering interest rates, and increasing government spending would result in increased spending and investment by the general public and businesses. The fact that this would create a federal budget deficit was an unavoidable byproduct. Roosevelt never totally agreed, although many of his policies to alleviate the Depression followed Keynesian principles.
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"I hope that we will continue to be able to look upon art and artists as one of the factors which can be used to draw nations together. . . . We need emotional outlets in this country and the more artistic people we can develop the better it will be for us as a nation."
Eleanor Roosevelt spoke these words in behalf of the cultural programs of which New Deal agency? |
a. Works Progress Administration
b. Civilian Conservation Corps c. Federal Emergency Relief Administration d. National Recovery Administration e. National Youth Administration |
The correct answer is A. The WPA funded the Federal Writers' Project, Federal Theater Project, and Federal Art Project. The first created separate guides for each state, the second funded theater productions all around the country, and the last underwrote the painting of murals in federal buildings like post offices. The CCC B provided work related to conservation. The FERA C provided jobs building schools, airports, parks, and similar public buildings. The NRA D established minimum wage, child labor laws, and similar work-related standards. The NYA E offered jobs to young people so they could afford to remain in school.
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All of the following are true about the National Recovery Administration EXCEPT
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a. it recognized the right of labor to bargain collectively.
b. it established production quotas. c. it encouraged construction of new factories. d. it restricted business competition. e. it prohibited unfair business practices |
The correct answer is C. The goal of the NRA was to restrict business competition and hold down production. This would create demand among consumers and drive prices and wages up, which occurred for a short period. Answer C is the opposite of the NRA's purpose and its codes. |
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The least likely to benefit from Social Security when it was established were African Americans because
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a. they did not have supporters in Congress.
b. employers skirted the law and did not report African Americans' earnings. c. many lacked radios and newspapers and did not know they were eligible. d. the law did not cover domestics and tenant farmers. e. the earning level was higher than most African Americans made. |
The correct answer is D. Although answers A, B, and C may be true by conjecture, the fact is that domestics and tenant farmers were not covered by the SSA and this amounted to 60 percent of African Americans in the workforce. Answer E is illogical when you read it carefully.
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The Indian Reorganization Act was controversial for all of the following reasons EXCEPT
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a. the act attempted to restore tribal government.
b. it granted citizenship to Native Americans. c. the act effectively ended the policy of assimilation. d. individuals would have to return to the tribes their land allotments. e. money was authorized for economic development on reservations. |
The correct answer is B. Native Americans received citizenship in 1924. Answer A recognizes tribal governments as representative of semisovereign nations, and as such, they do not pay taxes.
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The cartoonist of this cartoon probably believed that
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a. Roosevelt was unaware of how the nation was reacting to his court-packing scheme.
b. Roosevelt's court-packing scheme was a bad idea. c. the Democrats were fast disassociating themselves from Roosevelt and his idea. d. even the donkeys were running away from Roosevelt's idea. e. Roosevelt's court-packing scheme was creating an uproar. |
The correct answer is C. The donkey is the symbol of the Democratic Party. So while answer D may seem correct, it's not precise enough. It's not just donkeys that are running away from Roosevelt's idea but his fellow Democrats. Answer A is incorrect. If Roosevelt were unaware, he wouldn't be saying what he is. Answer B may or may not be true; the cartoonist is representing what the Democrats are doing. In this case, the cartoonist's opinion is irrelevant. Answer E is a true statement, but not the best, most precise answer. TIP: Read the cartoon and see if you can identify any obvious symbols. Next read the question, and then go back to the cartoon and try to answer the question yourself. The last step is to read the answer choices and choose one.
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The New Deal did little to help African Americans because
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a. Roosevelt was not concerned about the African American vote.
b. Roosevelt was unaware of the problems African Americans faced. c. his closest advisors kept African American concerns from him in favor of white ethnics' issues. d. moderates in Congress from the South and West blocked his legislative proposals to aid African Americans. e. Roosevelt found it difficult to get around conservative Southern Democrats in Congress. |
The correct answer is E. Answers A, B, and C are not true statements. Eleanor Roosevelt, his closest advisor, and others like Harry Hopkins of the WPA provided information on the problems facing African Americans. Mary McLeod Bethune, the unofficial head of the unofficial Black Cabinet, provided information. Answer D is illogical; moderates would not be likely to block such legislation.
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The Nye Commission determined that
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a. a total embargo would interfere with the nation's recovery from the Depression.
b. the munitions industry and banking interests had propelled the United States into World War I. c. embargoes lead to war. d. Lend-Lease was a step down the road to war and should not be enacted. e. only a policy of cash-and-carry for sales to belligerents would keep the nation out of war. |
The correct answer is B. The Senator Gerald Nye chaired the committee and came up with this unfounded conclusion, which fueled isolationists' concerns and arguments. Answer A was the conclusion of some people when the first Neutrality Act in 1935 was being written. Certain items that could be used to support war such as food, medical supplies, and scrap metal were omitted from the embargo. Answers C, D, and E were all concerns of isolationists, but they do not apply to the Nye Commission's conclusion.
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Which of the following novels is a compassionate and empathetic portrayal of people caught in the Depression?
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a. The Age of Innocence
b. O Pioneers! c. The Sound and the Fury d. You Can't Go Home Again e. Grapes of Wrath |
The correct answer is E. John Steinbeck's novel Grapes of Wrath portrays the Joad family caught between the Dust Bowl of the Plains and the migrant labor camps of California. Answer A by Edith Wharton is set in New York high society in the late nineteenth century. Answer B by Willa Cather is about settlers on the Plains in the late nineteenth century. Answer C was written by William Faulkner in 1929 and is set in his imaginary Yoknapatawpha County untouched by the Depression. Answer D was written by Thomas Wolfe and is an autobiographical voyage from a small Southern town to New York and Germany in the 1930s. The Depression is background to the character's striving for self.
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Which of the following was not achieved during the New Deal?
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a. Insuring bank deposits
b. Establishment of a minimum workweek and minimum wage c. Funding farm mortgages d. Funding home mortgages e. Providing for medical insurance for the poor |
The correct answer is E. Answer E did not happen until the passage of Medicaid in 1965. Answer A was achieved through the Federal Deposit Insurance Company. Answer B was accomplished through the Fair Labor Standards Act. Answer C was the Farm Credit Administration. Answer D was the Home Owners Loan Corporation.
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The major goal of Huey Long was
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a. the redistribution of wealth among Americans.
b. the establishment of old-age pensions. c. the complete overhaul of the economic system. d. the nationalization of railroads and public utilities. e. the nationalization of banks |
The correct answer is A. Huey Long established the Share-Our-Wealth Society to push for his program of social reforms. A demagogue, he had been ruthless and autocratic in gaining power in Louisiana and modernizing the state. Historians speculate that had Long not been assassinated, he might have split the vote in 1936 and Roosevelt might have lost. Answer B was part of Long's program, but not its overall goal. Answer C was the view of Upton Sinclair and his fellow socialists. Answer E was a sometime demand of Father Charles Coughlin, a somewhat erratic opponent of the New Deal. These men did not think the New Deal went far enough in righting the nation's problems. Answer D is incorrect.
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The New Deal changed U.S. society in all of the following ways EXCEPT
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a. by providing old-age pensions for the elderly.
b. by providing income benefits for the unemployed. c. by ensuring collective bargaining for labor unions. d. by providing crop subsidies to farmers to protect against market fluctuations. e. by offering loans to students for college. |
The correct answer is E. Student loans had to wait until 1958 when the National Defense Education Act was passed.
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In Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the right
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a. of the government to take over the property of Japanese American detainees.
b. of the government to deport Japanese and Japanese American citizens for national security. c. of the government to detain, relocate, and inter Japanese American citizens as a national security measure. d. of Japanese Americans to qualify for conscientious objector status. e. of Japanese Americans to enlist and fight in the armed forces. |
The correct answer is C. Answer A is only a partial answer. Answer B is incorrect; citizens of the United States can't be deported. Answers D and E are illogical; these rights belong to citizens as citizens. By virtue of their birth in the United States, Japanese Americans were citizens.
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Which of the following is NOT a correct statement about the U.S.'s economy in World War II?
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a. Workers observed the no-strike policy and kept working as a patriotic duty.
b. Mexican workers entered the United States legally as part of the bracero program. c. Industrial production grew rapidly in both the West and the South. d. Women were actively recruited into the workforce. e. Rural populations declined as people left farming for better-paying jobs in factories. |
The correct answer is A. The major union leaders agreed to a no-strike policy, but members still staged wildcat strikes. One of the largest strikes was actually called by a union leader, John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers. Answer B brought some 250,000 legal Mexican workers to work in agriculture. California became a center of aircraft manufacture and shipbuilding and Southern textile mills turned out hundreds of thousands of uniforms, answer C "Rosie the Riveter" became a symbol of the war effort and of women's participation, answer D Even if you didn't know that answer E is correct, common sense would tell that it was true, and therefore, not the correct answer. TIP: In a reverse answer question—NOT, LEAST, EXCEPT—you want to find the answer that is not true or does not fit with the others.
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Franklin Roosevelt signed an Executive Order to end discrimination in wartime industries, because
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a. production was falling behind for lack of workers.
b. it was the way to get around opponents. c. the Black Cabinet persuaded him that he would lose African American voters if he did not do something. d. A Philip Randolph threatened a huge march on Washington to protest discriminatory hiring practices. e. employers refused to hire African Americans even though they lacked workers. |
The correct answer is D. Answers A and C are distracters; they sound reasonable, but are not true. Answers B and E are true statements, but not the reason for Roosevelt's action.
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The experience of women who joined the labor force in World War I and in World II was the same in which of the following ways?
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a. Women were accepted only grudgingly into the workforce.
b. Women were given shorter work schedules than men worked. c. Women with children were not accepted into the work force. d. Women were given light jobs that were considered "women's work." e. When the war was over, women lost their jobs to returning servicemen. |
The correct answer is E. Answer A is incorrect; women were actively recruited to take the place of men who entered the services. Answer B is incorrect; to produce the quantity of materials needed, war plants worked 24 hours a day 7 days a week and women worked regular shifts. Answers C and D are incorrect for the same reason that answer A is. The war effort needed women workers.
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A major problem that occurred with reconversion that Truman turned to his benefit in the election of 1948 was
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a. voter frustration at the lack of consumer goods now that the war was over.
b. inflation and price controls. c. high unemployment. d. lack of Congressional approval for foreign aid. e. the inability of the economy to absorb the shock of decreased government spending. |
The correct answer is B. During the 1948 campaign, Truman made use of a special session to force Republicans to pass an anti-inflation bill, which did little to alleviate the problem. Truman then finished the election season by campaigning on the Republicans' ineffectiveness to help the average voter. Answer A is a true statement, but does not address the central issue. Answer C is the opposite of what occurred after the war; unemployment was extremely low. Answers D and E are connected, and both are incorrect. Think of the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and the Point Four Program. These programs involved not just money but money for goods manufactured and food grown in the United States.
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Which of the following was enacted as a direct result of the labor strikes in 1947?
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a. Taft-Hartley Act
b. Wagner Act c. National Labor Relations Board d. Fair Labor Standards ACt e. Voluntary ban on strikes by the AFL and CIO |
The correct answer is A. Opponents claimed the act undid all the pro-union provisions of the Wagner Act, answer B Answer C was established by the Wagner Act to hold union elections, arbitrate grievances, and force employers to stop antiunion activities. Answer D established the first federal minimum wage. Answers B, C, and D were New Deal legislation. Answer E is incorrect. Any ban was agreed upon during the war only, and even then did not work.
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Industrial development in Western Europe after World War II grew dramatically primarily as a result of which of the following?
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a. Truman Doctrine
b. Marshall Plan c. North Atlantic Treaty Organization d. Point Four Program e. Potsdam Conference |
The correct answer is B. Known as the European Recovery Program, the Marshall Plan poured more than $9 billion into Western Europe between 1948 and 1952. Answer A, Truman Doctrine, was issued in response to Communist activities in Europe after World War II. It stated that the United States would come to the assistance of any nation whose freedom was endangered and applied specifically to Greece and Turkey. Answer C, known as NATO, is a defense organization and unlikely to aid industrial development, so eliminate it quickly. Answer D, Point Four Program, was an aid program for developing nations. Answer E, Potsdam Conference, took place at the end of World War II to determine how to deal with Germany after the war.
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The Korean and Vietnam Wars were similar in that
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a. the United States faced Communist China in both wars.
b. American support for the war shifted as the wars dragged on. c. the United States entered both wars at the request of the United Nations. d. the United States lost both wars. e. Americans did not support U.S. presence in either war. |
The correct answer is B. Answer A is true for Korea, but not for Vietnam. China entered the war on the side of North Korea, and supported the Vietnamese but did not send troops to fight with the Viet Cong. Answer C is true for Korea, but incorrect for Vietnam. Answer D is incorrect. Technically, Korea was not a war, but a police action. The North Koreans fought the UN forces including the United States to a stalemate. Answer E is incorrect. The American public supported both wars at their outset.
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Americans' fear that Communists and fellow travelers were infiltrating the U.S. government was a direct consequence of which of the following?
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a. Implication of former General George Marshall in the Communist plot
b. Blackballing of writers and actors by Hollywood movie studios c. Evidence of Communists in the State Department d. The report of the Tydings Senate subcommittee on Foreign Relations e. Allegations of Senator Joseph McCarthy |
The correct answer is E. The hounding of innocent people, the false accusations, and the manufactured evidence all in the name of patriotism have come to be known as McCarthyism. Answer A was one of McCarthy's groundless accusations. Answer B was a result of the fear, not a cause. Answer C was one of McCarthy's manufactured charges, Answer D stated that there was no basis to McCarthy's charges. Senator Millard Tydings lost his reelection campaign for opposing McCarthy.
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Which of the following statements is NOT true about Puerto Ricans on the mainland in the 1950s and early 1960s?
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a. Many Puerto Ricans did not accept the help offered by federal, state, and local agencies.
b. Puerto Ricans who spoke no English found it difficult to adapt. c. Even though Puerto Ricans were American citizens, mainland politicians did not court their votes. d. Puerto Ricans were surprised by the racism they encountered because many had African ancestors. e. Unemployment among Puerto Ricans was higher than it was among non-Latino white workers. |
The correct answer is A. In the 1950s and early 1960s there was little help available from governmental agencies. Puerto Ricans like other ethnic groups in the 1960s began to organize to help themselves and to protest government inaction in a number of areas such as education and housing and job discrimination. Answer C is true. Puerto Ricans were granted citizenship in 1917 through the Jones Act.
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All of the following fueled the growth of suburbs EXCEPT
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a. the baby boom.
b. new techniques for mass producing and building homes. c. construction of new highways. d. the decay of cities. e. development of mass transit |
The correct answer is E. The 1950s saw the development of the car culture. Every family in the suburbs needed a car, and within a decade it was two cars. In 1956, the federal government passed the Interstate Highway Act authoring the building of 40,000 miles of highway. Development of mass transit—buses, railroads, rapid transit—was not similarly funded. Answer B refers to William J. Levitt's development of tract housing, the Levittowns of the East Coast
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The leading proponent of abstract expressionism was
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a. Andy Warhol.
b. Jackson Pollock. c. Andrew Wyeth. d. Romare Bearden. e. Jasper Johns. |
The correct answer is B. Andy Warhol A painted in the style of pop art. Andrew Wyeth C was a realist. Romare Bearden D created large montages of paint and paper. Jasper Johns E was also a member of the pop art movement.
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The Beat poets took some of their inspiration from which of the following?
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a. Counterculture
b. Jazz c. Rhythm and blues d. Techno music e. Rock 'n roll |
The correct answer is B. The Beats were influenced by a number of things. Some they embraced such as African American music, especially jazz, and culture, and others they rejected such as their families, the military-industrial complex, conformity—in other words, middle-class American life as they perceived it. Answer A developed in the 1960s, after the Beats, not before. Answer D is also anachronistic. Answers C and E were around in the 1950s, but were not influences on the Beats.
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Which of the following began the drive to end segregation in the South?
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a. The March on Washington, DC
b. Freedom Summer c. Birmingham marches d. The Montgomery Bus Boycott e. The march from Selma to Montgomery |
The correct answer is D. In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on a city bus to a white man and was arrested. This began a 381-day boycott of Montgomery buses that did not end until the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama's segregated buses were unconstitutional. Answer A brought 250,000 people to the streets of Washington and the steps of the Lincoln Monument in 1963 to hear Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders exhort the nation to end segregation. Voter registration teams fanned out across the South in the summer of 1964 to register African Americans to vote, answer B In 1963, the Birmingham marches, answer C, were led by Martin Luther King in an effort to desegregate Birmingham. Answer E was staged in 1965 in an effort to force the issue on voting rights
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A direct consequence of the Russian launching of Sputnik was
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a. the adoption of the "duck and cover" program in schools.
b. a new emphasis on science teaching. c. a new emphasis on academic achievement and quality education. d. the establishment of Head Start. e. adoption of a national program of academic testing in elementary and high school. |
The correct answer is C. U.S. education had been greatly influenced by psychology and by the 1930s was placing an emphasis on social adjustment rather than academic excellence. The Russian space program changed that. Answer A occurred as a result of the Cold War and the Russians' possession of the atomic bomb. Answer B is a distracter. Foreign languages, math, technology, and teacher training as well as the sciences were upgraded and supported with federal funding. Answer D was a Great Society program of Lyndon Johnson's presidency. Answer E was a program of George W. Bush's presidency, the No Child Left Behind Act.
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"It was TV more than anything else that turned the tide."
This quotation was probably said about the election of |
a. 1948.
b. 1960. c. 1968. d. 1980. e. 1992. |
The correct answer is B. John F. Kennedy spoke these words. The poised, youthful, and attractive John Kennedy came across much better on television than Richard Nixon, who always had a five o'clock shadow and sweat under the hot TV studio lights. While the election of 1948 between Harry Truman and Thomas E Dewey was very close, 1948 was too early for television to have had a great influence on the electorate. Answer C, 1968, was the election in which President Lyndon Johnson declined to run, and his Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey ran against Richard Nixon. While the television newscasts of the war in Vietnam helped to move the country away from Johnson's policies, it didn't have the same direct effect on the campaign that TV had had in the 1960 election. Answer D, 1980, was the election that saw Jimmy Carter defeated by Ronald Reagan. Carter was no match for Ronald Reagan in the personality department, but Carter's presidency had so many problems that any negative impression from watching the two of them debate was the least of Carter's problems. Answer E, 1992, was the three-way race between George H.W. Bush, Ross Perot, and Bill Clinton. Clinton by far was the most telegenic of the three, but the issues and the presence of Perot as a viable third-party candidate had more effect on the campaign
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The Bay of Pigs fiasco led to all of the following EXCEPT
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a. criticism of President Kennedy for not supporting the invaders with air support.
b. criticism of President Kennedy for agreeing to the plan. c. charges of Yankee interference from other Latin American nations. d. closer relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. e. removal of Kennedy's staff from decisions involving the Central Intelligence Agency. |
The correct answer is E. Critics agreed that Kennedy should have never agreed to the plan, but once he did, he should have made sure it succeeded. Answers C and D were natural consequences. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy involved his own staff more in decisions regarding the intelligence agency and the military. As an inexperienced administration, they had been slow to question the expertise of both.
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The Feminine Mystique was significant because it
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a. gave younger women a glimpse into their mothers' lives.
b. gave voice to middle-class women's discontent with their lives. c. became the authority on the women's liberation movement. d. recorded oral histories of working-class women. e. provided a blueprint for radicalizing the women's movement. |
The correct answer is B. Answer C is incorrect; the book predates the women's liberation movement. Answer E is also incorrect.
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The election of 1964 was significant, because voters
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a. repudiated the war in Vietnam.
b. gave Johnson a mandate for the Great Society. c. rejected Goldwater's call for less spending on national defense. d. showed a weariness with the civil rights struggle. e. showed little interest in the election. |
The correct answer is B. Answer A is incorrect, because in 1964 few resources were committed to Vietnam. Answer C is incorrect, because Barry Goldwater was a conservative Republican and a cold warrior and would have called for more defense spending, not less. Answer D is incorrect; the nation supported civil rights. Answer E is incorrect; 70 million voters went to the polls, which was more than had voted in the previous three presidential elections. It was a lively and enthusiastic campaign
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A direct consequence of the Immigration Act of 1965 was
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a. a tightening of national immigration quotas.
b. a decrease in the number of immigrants from Africa. c. ended the preferential system for immigrants with relatives already in the United States. d. a sharp rise in the number of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. e. an amnesty period for immigrants in the United States illegally. |
The correct answer is D. Answer A is incorrect; the law replaced national quotas with global quotas. Answer B is the opposite of what occurred. Answer C is incorrect. The preferential system was set up by this law. Also included in it were immigrants who already had family members in the United States. Answer E refers to the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.
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"Black Power recognizes—it must recognize—the ethnic basis of American politics as well as the power-oriented nature of American politics. Black Power therefore calls for black people to consolidate behind their own, so that they can bargain from a position of strength."
The writer of this quotation is most likely |
a. Ralph Ellison.
b. James Baldwin. c. Malcolm X. d. Stokely Carmichael. e. Ralph Abernathy. |
The correct answer is D. This quotation is from Black Power by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton. Carmichael first used the term during the 1966 "Meredith March Against Fear" through Mississippi. Ralph Ellison A was the author of Invisible Man. James Baldwin B wrote novels, plays, and essay about black identity. Malcolm X C had been a radical Black Muslim and left to follow a more moderate path to improved race relations. Ralph Abernathy E a civil rights leader, became head of the Southern Leadership Conference after Martin Luther King's assassination.
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What pulled the plug on President Johnson's Great Society?
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a. The electorate
b. The disaffection of African American leaders c. The Vietnam War d. Johnson's own inability to work with Congress e. Johnson's inarticulateness |
The correct answer is C. The Vietnam War is a classic case of "guns or butter." The nation could not afford to both fight the escalating war and fund the social programs of the Great Society. This inability to solve domestic problems, many of which affected African Americans, turned many moderate African Americans and their leaders against Johnson, answer B Johnson withdrew from the 1968 election, so the electorate A never got to vote their opinions. Answer D is incorrect. A former member of the House and former majority leader of the Senate, Johnson worked effectively with Congress to get his programs enacted. Answer E is incorrect.
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The person most likely to join the counterculture was a
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a. white soldier from the working class, age 18–22.
b. middle-class white person of college age. c. middle-class African American of college age. d. working-class African American, age 18–22. e. working-class, white American, age 18–22 |
The correct answer is B. For the most part, the counterculture was made up of middle-class white people of college age. African American activists tended to focus on civil rights and local academic issues.
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All of the following were demands of the American Indian Movement EXCEPT
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a. a review of broken treaties.
b. an investigation of the activities of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. c. greater control over tribal affairs. d. greater economic opportunities on reservations. e. the right to vote. |
The correct answer is E. Native Americans are American citizens and have the right to vote. If you didn't know the answer, you could use common sense to eliminate at least some of the answers as being wrong. Answer A is probably true, because the federal government has a long string of broken promises to Native Americans. Answer B is also probably true since the BIA has a long history of corruption. BIA has long had control over Native American affairs, so answer C is probably true. Few opportunities for employment exist on reservations, so answer D is probably true.
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Richard Nixon owed his 1968 election primarily to which of the following?
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a. The good showing that George Wallace had in traditionally Democratic states
b. Nixon's recognition of the presence of a large group of disaffected white middle-class Americans c. President Johnson's late withdrawal from the campaign d. Hubert Humphrey's identification with Johnson's domestic policies e. The Vietnam War |
The correct answer is B. Nixon called this group of disaffected white Americans the silent majority, and they gave him the presidency. Answer A is incorrect. Although Wallace won 46 electoral votes and 9.9 million popular votes, these electoral votes would not have given Humphrey the presidency. Humphrey won only 191 electoral votes to Nixon's 301. Answer E is an indirect cause of Nixon's election. It was the war and the antiwar movement that created the backlash of the silent majority.
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Which of the following was an important part of Nixon's plan to attract white Southern voters into the Republican Party?
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a. Opposition to voting rights
b. Opposition to school desegregation through busing c. The appointment of a Southerner to his Cabinet d. Pork barrel spending in Southern districts e. Repeated campaign visits to the South on behalf of Republican candidates |
The correct answer is B. Appointing a Southern judge to the Supreme Court, opposing school busing, and continuing payments to school boards delaying desegregation were all elements of Nixon's so-called Southern strategy. Answer A is incorrect. Answer C was part of the deal between Democrats and Republicans to end Reconstruction in 1877. Answer D is incorrect; pork barrel spending is the prerogative of Congress. While Nixon may have campaigned in the South, answer E, that was no different than any president might do.
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