Assessing the Civil Rights Movement: History and Historiography

(Please print the reading.)

For the first reading, "Major Events and Legacies," please go through the history of the movement and take notes on what you see as the most effective moments, and determine who played the biggest role: the government, the media, local and regional figures, or national figures and organizations, like King. Also, please take notes on why the movement fell apart.

For the second reading, "Different Perspectives," please identify all of the arguments that historians have made about the history of the movement. Who started it, how it succeeded and failed, etc.

Note: Please continue to think about a subject you would be interested in pursuing for a paper.

Civil Rights, II (895-898, 903-906 and Southern Manifesto

FYC:

1. What was the goal of the Freedom Riders? What happened to the first group near Anniston, Alabama?
2. Who was James Meredith?
3. What effect did the Birmingham campaign, and the news coverage of it in particular, have on the nation?
4. Define: The Civil Rights act of 1964 (898-900)
5. Define: The Voting Rights act of 1965
6. What happened to the Civil Rights Movement after 1965? (Long question.)

Southern Manifesto:

1. How do the Southern politicians frame their argument against Brown? Where have you seen this type of language before? 
2. What are they worried about?
3. How do they defend segregation?
4. What historical claims do they make?

Civil Rights, I

FYC:

(NO Open Notes)

1. What role did the Second World War play in the Civil Rights Movement?
2. ID:
1. Montgomery Bus Boycott
2. Sweatt v. Painter
3. Brown v. Board
4. "Massive Resistance"
5. Little Rock Central High Crisis
6. SCLC
7. "Sit-Ins"
8. SNCC

The Second World War, III

FYC:

(Open Note)

1. Where did the Russians stall, and then defeat, the Germans on the Eastern Front in late 1942?
2. Why did the Americans invade North Africa and not Western Europe in late 1942?
3. After Africa, where were U.S. troops sent on the Western Front?
4. Describe, in detail, the planning and execution of the allied invasion of France.
5. Describe the end of the war in the Pacific, including why the decision was made to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
6. Make a note of the "turning points" that are mentioned in your reading.
7. What was the most interesting part of the reading to you?
8. If someone asked you to give a quick overview of the war (how it went, who was winning and where, etc.,) could you do it, with dates?

The Second World War, II (798-808)

(Open Note Quiz)

1. "Time, in a sense, was the most needed munition." Explain this quote and put it into the context of the US role in WWII.
2. What was the executive order for the internment of Japanese-Americans called, and what are its causes?
3. Explain the effect that the war had on America's economy, using details from the reading. (Including "Holding the Home Front.")
4. What was the bracero program?
5. the "war's...impact on women's lives has frequently been exaggerated." Whaaaaaat?
6. Define CORE.
7. What effect did the war have on southern African-Americans? Details.
8. What was the Bataan Death March?

The Second World War, I

If we have a quiz on this reading, it will be an open-note quiz. Here are the parameters:

• If you copy directly from the text, you must put the text's language in quotes.
• You must use quotation marks on your quizzes if you intend to quote from the text.
• Your notes must be your own. I will check to make sure no one is copying from classmates. 
• Your answers must be specific and provide context. They will be longer than normal.

FYC:

1. What did Hitler gain from the Hitler-Stalin pact? (Also, define the term).
2. What was the point of the "cash and carry" amendment to neutrality legislation in 1939?
3. Create a narrative of German military actions from the invasion of Poland to the fall of France. Use dates.
4. How did the United States respond to the fall of France? (details.)
5. What was the "historic decision" that FDR faced as Britain fought for survival in the summer and fall of 1940? Why was it such a difficult decision? What were the two sides?
6. "In a sense, his opponent was Adolf Hitler, not Willkie." Explain.
7. Define the Lend Lease Bill. Why is it described as "one of the most momentous laws ever to pass Congress?"
8. What was the Atlantic Charter?
9. Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?
10. How did Pearl Harbor change U.S. public opinion of the war?

The New Deal, II

FYC:

1. What was the Dust Bowl? (The disaster, the region, the whole thing; read the whole section.)
2. What is the Securities and Exchange Commission?
3. What is the TVA?
4. Define the FHA and Social Security.
5. Define the Wagner Act.
6. What powerful coalition had Roosevelt forged in his first term that helped him win in 1936?
7. What was FDR's court-packing plan?
8. Carefully read pages 773-775 and make an assessment of the successes and failures of the New Deal. Pay attention to what it did (long term and short), and what it did not do. What are the most important legacies? Etc.

The New Deal, I

FYC:

1. What were the Hundred Days?
2. What were FDR's three R's, and can you give an example of legislation for each? (Hint: use the charts in the book!)
3. What did the Glass-Stegall Banking Reform Act do?
4. What was the CCC?
5. Who was Huey Long?
6. What was the National Recovery Administration?
7. What did the Agricultural Adjustment Administration do?
8. Would say that the New Deal was a well-planned, well-thought out policy program, or more of a "let's see what works" approach?

Questions: 738-747

H-Squared

FYC:

1. Describe Herbert Hoover's strengths and Al Smith's weaknesses as candidates in the 1928 presidential election.
2. How did Hoover deal with the ongoing depression in America's farmland? 
3. Define: Hawley-Smoot Tariff
4. Define: Black Tuesday
5. What caused the Great Depression?
6. How might Hoover's political philosophy have hindered his efforts at combating the Great Depression?
7. Define: Reconstruction Finance Corporation

Questions: "F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Age of Excess"

For this reading, please print out the text and take notes in the margins so that we can have a discussion. If you want to go green, take computer reading notes.

Questions: Pivotal Decades

Hello, ladies. Please read the entire excerpt from Pivotal Decades (link under Assignments), and be prepared to write about what made 1919 such a significant year in American History.

Review Sheet

Click here and get it while it's hot!

Begin Test Review

Girls,

I've decided to take out the last assignment. So we finish content with the reading on the Progressive Era. Please begin reviewing, and also consider the meaning of this phrase:

"Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian Ends."

Questions: 638-650

FYC:

1. What is Progressivism? Where did it come from? What are the major ideas behind the Progressive movement?
2. Who were the muckrakers? Give some examples.
3. From the section "Political Progressivism," what were some of the things that reformers pushed for in politics?
4. What was Teddy Roosevelt's Square Deal?
5. What were the Elkins and Hepburn Acts?
6. What were the Meat Inspection and Food and Drug Acts?

Reading: 494-497, 554-555

Your reading over the weekend is very short, so I will not post specific reading questions. That does not, however, imply that I won't quiz you. Do your reading, plain and simple.

Questions: 545-551

FYC:

1. What did the federal government do to help assimilate the new immigrants into American society?
2. How did city politicians benefit from the new wave of immigrants?
3. What is the "social gospel"?
4. Who was Jane Addams, and what were settlement houses?
5. What did the nativists blame the new immigrants for, and what other ways did they discriminate against the immigrants?

Questions: 539-545

The Brooklyn Bridge, 1903 (Shorpy)

FYC:

1. What American cities in 1890 had populations of more than a million?
2. What technologies allowed cities to grow "up and out" in the Industrial Era?
3. What drew people to the big city? Details, please.
4. Describe a typical dumbbell tenement.
5. Describe the New Immigrants of the Gilded Age.
6. What were the contributing factors behind the New Immigration? What "pushed" and what "pulled" the stream of immigration? ("Southern Europe Uprooted" to "Reactions...")

Questions: 528-537

FYC:

1. From pages 528-530: How was America changed, politically and socially, by rising industrialization?
2. What is a labor union? Why did they increase after the Civil War?
3. How did corporations combat and resist labor unions?
4. Name two labor unions and their similarities and differences?
5. What was the Haymarket Square episode?

Questions: 520-528

FYC:

1. In addition to the rise of railroads, what other factors fueled postwar economic growth in the US?
2. What is vertical integration? What is horizontal integration?
3. What is the Bessemer process?
4. Who was Andrew Carnegie?
5. Who was J.P. Morgan?
6. Who was John D. Rockefeller?
7. What is Social Darwinism?
8. What was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?

Richard White on the Railroads

Have a listen:

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/11/137497772/how-trains-railroaded-the-american-economy

The Rise of Railroads

Girls, make sure to keep your Frederick Jackson Turner handouts, and bring them with you to class. We will cover it first thing. Now, on to your reading questions:

1. Approximately how many miles of railway had been laid in the United States by 1900? (Round up.)
2. Describe the relationship between the railroads and the US Government. Was it mutually beneficial? How?
3. How did US Congress use wartime arguments to lay the foundation for a transcontinental railroad?
4. When did the Central and Union Pacific railways meet in Ogden, Utah, marking the completion of the Transcontinental railroad?
5. ID: Cornelius Vanderbilt
6. What does it mean to say that the railroads were the first "big-business" in the US? Provide details.
7. What affect did the railroads have on time zones?
8. Describe the negative aspects of the railroad

STOP AT "MIRACLES OF MECHANIZATION"

The West, II

Pay attention to mining, the cattle industry, and farming in the West. And now, some questions, FYC:

1. Describe important features of the mining industry in the West.
2. What was the "Long Drive," and what factors determined if it was successful or not?
3. Define: The Homestead Act
4. What role did railroads play in the development of the "agricultural West"?
5. What is "dry farming"?
6. Why was 1890 a "watershed" date in the history of the American West?
7. Who was Frederick Jackson Turner, and what did he famously argue in his paper "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"

The West, I

Western Iconography

Here are some questions from pages 575-584, on the American West:

1. About how many Native Americans lived in the Great West (which your book describes as the area between the Pacific settlements and, in the east, a jagged North-South axis stretching from Texas to Canada) in 1860?
2. What affect did the horse have on tribes like the Cheyenne and the Sioux?
3. Describe the "fateful cycle" of contact between Indians and whites in the section "The Clash of Cultures on the Plains."
4. Define the reservation system.
5. Describe some of the patterns of the Indian Wars.
6. Define: the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
7. Why were the Apaches so difficult to Subdue?
8. List the factors involved in the "taming" of the Indians.
9. Define: Battle of Wounded Knee
10. Define: the Dawes Severalty Act 

"An Introduction to the WPA Narratives"

Use this article for background on the Slave Narratives in your introduction, if you'd like.

Slave Narratives Assignment

You can access an electronic copy of the assignment (with embedded links), here.