Sample Final: Fall 91

Stanley K. Schultz, Professor of History
William P. Tishler, Producer
Shane Hamilton, Web Editor

Final Exam Review Materials

Below is a sample final examination, given during the Fall 1991 semester.

Identifications
"Conspicuous consumption"
The Man Nobody Knows (1925) by Bruce Barton
"The American Way"
Red Scare - A. Mitchell Palmer
Invisible Empire
Scopes Trial ("Monkey Trial")
"The First Hundred Days"
Keynesian Economics
NIRA 1933
The Corporate State
Neutrality Acts 1935-37
"Military-Industrial Complex"
The "Fair Deal"
Taft-Hartley Act - 1947
Containment
Truman Doctrine
McCarthyism - Second Red Scare
Automation
"Dynamic Conservatism"
"New Frontier"
"New Economics"
Marcus Garvey
Brown v. Board of Education - 1954
Civil Rights Act of 1964
"Black Power" - Stokely Carmichael
"War on Poverty" - Economic Opportunity Act 1964
"The Great Society"
"Fabulous Eighty-Ninth"
Domino Theory
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution - 1964
War Powers Act - 1973
"The Social Issue"
The "New Majority"
Detente
Watergate

Please answer ONE question from Part I and one question from part II. Be sure to answer all parts of the question, drawing on the READINGS as well as lectures and discussion sections.

1. What factors led to the onset and continuation of the Great Depression and in what specific ways did the Depression affect the lives of various Americans? In turn, how did Roosevelt's "New Deal" policies try to treat the symptoms and/or cure the causes of the Depression? Using specific examples, assess the strengths and weaknesses of the New Deal.

2. "An American living in the 1920s, if suddenly projected into the 1950s, would have found the political, economic, and social climate very familiar." Evaluate this statement by discussing similarities and differences between the two periods. Although you do not have to, you may wish to consider how your answer would vary depending on who this time-traveler was (i.e., his or her race, ethnicity, sex, occupation, region, or other circumstance).

1. Some historians have referred to the modern Civil Rights Movement as the "Second Reconstruction." Do you think the comparison between the first era of reconstruction (post-Civil War years to the early twentieth century) and the so-called second era of reconstruction (World War II to the 1970s) is accurate? Compare and contrast these two periods in regard to
attempts to create and safeguard African American civil rights. Your answer should consider government policies, African American strategies, and whites' responses.

2. The Jungle, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Autobiography of Malcom X all explore the inequitable distribution of economic, social, and political power in the United States. Discuss the inequalities described in each book and the solutions proposed by each author, comparing and/or contrasting these as much as possible. To what extent do these inequalities persist today?