HIST 157 OL1 – US History Since 1865

Summer 2015 Final Exam

Due as a Word attachment in LEO by 11:59 pm EST, Saturday, July 11, 2015

[PUT YOUR NAME HERE]

 

Please circle, highlight or darken your answers within the area of the uppercase letter in front of it.

 

Questions 1–4 refer to the excerpt below.

 

“Economic growth was indeed the most decisive force in the shaping of attitudes and expectations in the postwar era. The prosperity of the period broadened gradually in the late 1940s, accelerated in the 1950s, and soared to unimaginable heights in the 1960s. By then it was a boom that astonished observers. One economist, writing about the twenty-five years following World War II, put it simply by saying that this was a ‘quarter century of sustained growth at the highest rates in recorded history.’ Former Prime Minister Edward Heath of Great Britain agreed, observing that the United States at the time was enjoying ‘the greatestprosperity the world has ever known.’”

— James T. Patterson, historian, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974, published in 1996.

 

1. Which of the following factors most directly contributed to the economictrend that Patterson describes?

(A) A surge in the national birthrate

(B) The expansion of voting rights for African Americans

(C) Challenges to conformity raised by intellectuals and artists

(D) The gradual emergence of détente with the Soviet Union

 

2. One significant result of the economic trend described in the excerpt was the

(A) rise of the sexual revolution in the United States

(B) decrease in the number of immigrants seeking entry to the United States

(C) rise of the Sun Belt as a political and economic force

(D) decrease in the number of women in the workforce

 

3. Many of the federal policies and initiatives passed in the 1960s addresswhich of the following about the economic trend described in the excerpt?

(A) Affluence had effectively eliminated racial discrimination.

(B) Pockets of poverty persisted despite overall affluence.

(C) A rising standard of living encouraged unionization of industrial workers.

(D) Private industry boomed in spite of a declining rate of federal spending.

 

4. The increased culture of consumerism during the 1950s was most similar to developments in which of the following earlier periods?

(A) The 1840s

(B) The 1860s

(C) The 1910s

(D) The 1920s

 

5. During his presidency, Lyndon Baines Johnson did all of the following EXCEPT

(A) order the desegregation of the armed forces

(B) escalate American involvement in Vietnam

(C) facilitate the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

(D) create the Department of Health, Education and Welfare

 

6. The Interstate Highway System was constructed primarily for the purpose of

(A) demarcating the end of local roads and the beginning of federal roads

(B) providing rapid movement of military vehicles across state lines in the event of a nuclear attack

(C) opening the Southwest to commercial traffic

(E) relieving traffic congestion in and near major cities across the country

 

7. The policy of isolation and neutrality during the 1930s had which of the following effects on the United States?

(A) It left the armed forces better prepared for a war against Japan and Nazi Germany

(B) It delayed American involvement in the Second World War

(C) It enabled the American economy to fully recover from the Great Depression

(D) It delayed Nazi Germany’s plans for territorial expansion

 

8. All of the following social protests organizations were established during the 1960s EXCEPT

(A) The Black Panther Party

(B) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

(C) The Weather Underground

(D) Congress of Racial Equality

 

9. The rapid increase in immigration after 1965 is reflected by immigrants from the regions of

(A) Southern and Eastern Europe

(B) Scandinavia and Western Europe

(C) Russia and the Balkans

(D) Latin America and Southeast Asia

 

10. Which of these groups has experienced a decline in political representation since 1965?

(A) Women

(B) African Americans

(C) White males

(D) Latinos

 

11. Which of the following actions by the Clinton Administration best reflects its ideas about limiting the scope of government?

(A) The decision to pursue military peacekeeping interventions in theBalkans and Somalia

(B) The enactment of welfare reform to restrict benefits and encourage self-reliance

(C) The negotiation of new free trade agreements among North Americancountries

(D) The effort to enact universal health care legislation

 

12. Which of the following facilitated the success the US enjoyed during World War II?

(A) A philosophy of multicultural toleration in the armed forces

(B) New technologies such as the jet fighter and ballistic missile

(C) Large-scale industrial capacity that could be converted easily to wartime production

(D) The New Deal programs of the 1930s that prepared the United States for war

Questions 13 – 14 refer to the poster below.

 

 

 

13. The poster was intended to

(A) persuade women to enlist in the military

(B) promote the ideals of republican motherhood

(C) advocate for the elimination of sexdiscrimination in employment

(D) convince women that they had an essentialrole in the war effort

 

14. Which of the following represents a later example of the change highlighted in the poster?

(A) The increased number of women in the paid workforce by the 1970s

(B) The growing feminist protests againstUnited States military engagementsabroad in the 1970s

(C) The increasing inability of the manufacturing sector to create jobs forwomen in the 1970s and 1980s

(D) The growing popular consensus about appropriate women’s roles in the 1980sand 1990s

 

15. 15. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a Supreme Court decision that

(A) declared the “separate but equal” doctrine under Plessy v. Ferguson unconstitutional and unequal

(B) made public schooling a requirement for all children between the ages of five and 16

(C) provided for federal support of parochial and private charter schools

(D) was a prelude to urban riots in cities across the United States

 

16. Joseph McCarthy’s investigative tactics found support among many Americans because

(A) he correctly identified numerous communists working in the State Department

(B) there was widespread fear of communist infiltration of the United States

(C) both Truman and Eisenhower supported him

(D) he worked closely with the FBI

 

17. The two most significant innovations of the period between 1920 and 1960 were:

(A) the automobile and the personal computer

(B) the refrigerator and the television set

(C) the radio and the telegraph

(D) nylon and the atomic bomb

 

Questions 18 – 20 are based on the excerpt below.

 

“The system of quotas . . . was the first major pillar of the Immigration Act of 1924. The second provided for the exclusion of persons ineligible to citizenship…. Ineligibility to citizenship and exclusion applied to thepeoples of all the nations of East and South Asia. Nearly all Asians had already been excluded from immigration. … The exclusion of persons ineligible to citizenship in 1924… completed Asiatic exclusion . . . Moreover, it codified the principle of racial exclusion into the main body of American immigration andnaturalization law.”

— Mae M. Ngai, historian, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, 2004

 

18. The Immigration Act of 1924 produced highly discriminatory results because it

(A) created a guest worker program that encouraged temporary immigration butdenied citizenship

(B) relied on a series of literacy tests and physical examinations to manageimmigration

(C) placed restrictions on immigration by national origin, ethnicity, and race

(D) encouraged immigration of people with highly sought after skills or family in theUnited States

 

19. The Immigration Act of 1924 most directlyreflected

(A) cultural tensions between scientific modernism and religiousfundamentalism in the 1920s

(B) conflicts arising from the migration of African Americans to urban centers in theNorth

(C) the emergence of a national culture in the 1920s shaped by art,cinema, and mass media

(D) social tensions emerging from the First World War

 

20. Which of the following evidence would best support Ngai’s argument in the excerpt?

(A) Census data showing the changingpercentages of the foreign-bornpopulation from 1920 to 1930

(B) Narratives describing the challenges of immigrant family life in the 1920s

(C) Diplomatic correspondence reflecting the increasing isolationism of United Statesforeign policy in the 1920s and 1930s

(D) Census data showing African American migration to cities in theNorth and West in the 1920s

 

 

Short Answer Questions/Fill-in-the-Blank Statements (please provide a five-to-eight (5-8) sentence answer or fill in the blank for the following [worth five (5) points each]).

 

1. What were the two (2) key changes in the relationship between the federal government and ordinary American citizens under the FDR Administration in the 1930s? In an additional sentence or two, why were these two (2) changes so significant?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Name two (2) significant changes in US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War in 1989? Of these two significant changes, which one (1) has had the greater impact on ordinary Americans in the past 25 years, and why so?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. ___________________ is the 1965 Supreme Court decision that gave married women legal access to contraception.

 

Griswold v. Connecticut                                                                   Roe v. Wade

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg                                                    Gratz v. Bollinger

 

 

4. While the growth of smaller cities and towns near major cities since 1950 represents ____________________, the return of affluent younger adults to major cities since 2000 represents __________________________.

 

urbanization                                                                                    gentrification

de-industrialization                                                                       suburbanization