Period 8: 1945–1980

"We must recognize that we have no more business in the political affairs of Eastern Europe than Russia has in the political affairs of Latin America, Western Europe, and the United States. . . . We have to recognize that the Balkans are close to Russia and that her interest there is as natural as ours is in Central America. . . . We should make it clear that we are not preparing for a war of encirclement against the Soviet Union."
— Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace, speech in New York, September 12, 1946

Which of the following post-World War II developments was the debate described in the excerpt a direct reaction to?

"Turn on, tune in, drop out. The words are clear. Turn on means go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment... Tune in means harness your internal energy to the beauty around you. Drop out means detachment from the secular, mechanical, robotic society... The only way to write a new script is to start from scratch."

— Timothy Leary, speech at the Human Be-In, San Francisco, 1967

Timothy Leary's call to "drop out" of the "secular, mechanical, robotic society" is best understood as a reaction against which of the following aspects of post-Second World War American life?

“We left the cities and the colleges not to destroy, but to rebuild our lives on a human scale. The competitive drive for material abundance, the obsession with careers in the corporate hierarchy, and the reliance on technological solutions for spiritual emptiness have alienated our generation from the natural world and from each other. In our communes, we seek to cultivate cooperative labor, shared resources, and a consciousness freed from the rigid discipline of the post-war corporate state.”
— Excerpt from a commune newsletter, *The New Earth*, 1969

The lifestyle described in the passage was most directly a reaction against which of the following aspects of post-World War II American society?

"The dramatic expansion of the West and South since the 1940s represents one of the most significant demographic shifts in our nation's history. While warm weather and the widespread adoption of air conditioning are often credited, the primary engine of this growth has been the federal government. The placement of military bases, aerospace facilities, and research laboratories during World War II established a foundation that has been reinforced during the Cold War by defense contracts, NASA installations, and the Interstate Highway System. Millions of families have followed these federal dollars, transforming sleepy towns into booming metropolitan suburbs and shifting the center of American gravity."

—Adapted from a sociological study of American migration, 1967

Which of the following was a major long-term political consequence of the demographic shifts described in the excerpt?

"The town coordinate, the city coordinate, the suburb coordinate—these are the maps of the new segregation... The suburbanites, who are the leaders of the economic and social life of the city, flee the city at the end of the day. They do not walk its streets, they do not see its slums, they do not know its problems. By moving to the suburbs, they have signed a treaty of peace with their own consciences, leaving the central city to decay."
— Michael Harrington, *The Other America*, 1962

Which of the following historical developments during the 1950s and 1960s most directly contributed to the social and economic isolation of the urban poor described in the excerpt?

Ronald Reagan, candidate for Governor of California, campaign speech excerpt, 1966:

"We have a right to expect that our state-supported universities will be places of learning, not platforms for political demagogues or staging areas for riots. A small minority of students, encouraged by a few faculty members, has disrupted the university, violated the law, and insulted the taxpayers who support them. It is time to stand up for the law-abiding majority and restore order and decency to our campuses."

Which of the following developments of the late 1960s is most directly reflected in the sentiments expressed in the excerpt?

"We are thus confronted with the question whether the Smith Act forbids advocacy and teaching of forcible overthrow as an abstract principle, divorced from any effort to instigate action to that end, so long as such advocacy or teaching is engaged in with evil intent. We hold that it does not. . . . The essential distinction is that those to whom the advocacy is addressed must be urged to do something, now or in the future, rather than merely to believe in something."
— Justice John Marshall Harlan II, majority opinion in Yates v. United States (1957)

The legal distinction established in the ruling was most directly a response to which of the following developments during the Second Red Scare?

"If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?"
— Fannie Lou Hamer, testimony before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention, 1964

Hamer’s testimony was delivered during a challenge to the seating of the official, all-white Mississippi delegation. Which of the following best describes a major consequence of the controversy surrounding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) at this convention?

"It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale."

—President Harry S. Truman, Executive Order 9981, July 26, 1948

Which of the following historical developments most directly contributed to the issuance of the executive order excerpted above?

"The young people gathering in places like San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district are not just protesting the war or fighting for civil rights; they are rejecting the very foundation of middle-class American life. They find the suburban promise of their parents' generation—the security of corporate jobs, television sets, and manicured lawns—to be sterile and unfulfilling. In its place, they advocate for a lifestyle centered on communal living, artistic expression, and a cooperative ethos."

— Journalist account of the youth movement, 1967

Which of the following historical developments of the 1960s is most directly reflected in the attitudes described in the excerpt?

Following the end of World War II, United States diplomat George F. Kennan proposed a foreign policy strategy known as containment to address relations with the Soviet Union.

Which of the following best describes the primary objective of this containment policy?

"We are in a period of grace. We have time—perhaps a generation—in which to save the environment from final, irreversible ruin. But this grace will be wasted if we fail to recognize that the environmental crisis is not a collection of separate problems... it is a single, systemic pathology of our technological civilization... We must rebuild our system of production so that it conforms to the laws of the ecosphere."

— Barry Commoner, biologist and environmental activist, *The Closing Circle*, 1971

Which of the following developments in the 1970s was most directly a response to the concerns expressed in the excerpt?

Source: House Committee on Education and Labor, Minority Report on the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964:

'This bill is not a program to help the poor. It is a program to expand the power of the federal government and to create a vast new bureaucracy. By establishing the Office of Economic Opportunity directly under the President, the administration bypasses the state and local governments that are best equipped to handle local poverty conditions. Instead of encouraging individual responsibility and private enterprise, this legislation creates federal dependency and will destroy the initiative of those it claims to help. We cannot solve the problems of poverty by throwing federal money at them and centralizing control in Washington.'

Which of the following historical developments did the arguments in the excerpt most directly foreshadow?

Excerpt from an underground leaflet, 1968:

"We are here to create a community of peace, away from the concrete towers of the cities and the suburban tracts of our parents. The culture of our elders is one of competition, corporate subservience, and the pursuit of endless consumer goods. We choose instead a lifestyle of cooperation, artistic expression, and harmony with nature. Our long hair and music are not just fashion; they are our rejection of their militaristic society."

Which of the following developments of the 1960s is most directly reflected in the ideas expressed in the excerpt?

"The technocracy’s strength lies in its capacity to convince us that its style of life is the only reasonable, indeed the only possible path of progress... The young, who are now rebelling, are reacting against this total integration of the individual into the industrial apparatus. They are seeking a lifestyle that restores spontaneous feeling and communal solidarity against the plastic, sterilized consensus of their parents' generation."
—Theodore Roszak, historian, *The Making of a Counter Culture*, 1969

The ideas expressed in the excerpt most clearly reflect which of the following developments of the 1960s?

Source: Henry A. Wallace, letter to President Harry S. Truman, July 23, 1946.

"How do American actions since V-J Day appear to other nations? I mean by actions the peacetime write-up of our navy... our tests of the atomic bomb, the plans for cooperating with the Chinese Nationalists... and the effort to secure airbases in all parts of the world... These actions must make it look to the rest of the world as if we were only paying lip service to peace at the conference table. They make it appear either that we are preparing ourselves to win the war which we regard as inevitable or that we are trying to build up a predominance of force to intimidate the rest of the world."

The perspective expressed in the excerpt most directly challenged which of the following assumptions of emerging United States foreign policy in the early postwar era?

Source: Secretary of State George C. Marshall, address at Harvard University, June 5, 1947:

"It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full co-operation, I am sure, on the part of the United States Government."

Which of the following best describes the primary foreign policy goal of the program proposed in the excerpt?

"We are the people of a new culture, growing inside the shell of the old. The old culture is obsessed with property, security, and conformity. It measures success by the size of a suburban house and the power of a corporate title. We choose instead to live in the present, to seek spiritual growth over material gain, and to build communities of sharing and love. Our rebellion is not just political; it is a total rejection of the technocratic lifestyle that has alienated the individual from their own humanity."

— Excerpt from an essay in *The Great Speckled Bird*, an underground newspaper, 1969

Which of the following developments of the 1960s is most directly reflected in the ideas expressed in the excerpt?

Postwar U.S. Metropolitan Population (in millions), 1950–1970:

Which of the following factors most directly contributed to the demographic shift illustrated in the table?

“Our nation’s moral decay is not accidental. It is the direct result of a secular humanist philosophy that has taken over our public classrooms, our courtrooms, and our halls of government. The traditional family is under siege by federal regulators and social engineers who wish to replace parental authority with state control. We can no longer afford to remain silent. We must organize the moral majority of this country to register to vote, elect leaders who respect traditional values, and rebuild the moral foundation of America.”
—Jerry Falwell, speech at a rally, 1979

The sentiments expressed in the excerpt reflect which of the following historical developments during the late 1970s?