Period 8: 1945–1980

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was 'well timed' in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!'... This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.' We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that 'justice too long delayed is justice denied.'"

— Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 1963

Which of the following best describes the author's main argument in the excerpt?

“The new migration is not a movement of single men or pioneer families seeking to conquer a wilderness, but a mass migration of young, middle-class families moving to the newly constructed developments of the suburban periphery. Guided by federal credit policies that favor new construction over urban renovation, developers have transformed farmland into vast residential tracts. While these developments offer modern conveniences and a promise of class mobility, they are also producing a highly segregated social geography. As the younger, wealthier tax base departs for the suburbs, the older municipal centers are left to grapple with declining revenues and an increasingly concentrated population of low-income minority residents.”
— *Harper’s Magazine*, 1957

Which of the following was a major consequence of the federal credit policies referenced in the excerpt during the 1950s and 1960s?

"I went to college under the GI Bill... Without it, I would have gone straight to work in the factory like my father. Instead, I got a degree in engineering and bought a new house in the suburbs with a government-backed loan."

— Post-World War II veteran, memoir excerpt

The personal account above best illustrates which of the following social and economic developments in the United States after World War II?

"In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace. The policy of the previous administration, consistent with its objectives, was to find the answers to many of these problems ourselves. Under the new policy, the primary mission of our troops is to enable the South Vietnamese forces to assume the full responsibility for the security of their country."

— President Richard Nixon, Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam, November 3, 1969

Which of the following best describes the primary foreign policy goal of the strategy outlined in the excerpt?

"The United States will keep all of its treaty commitments. We shall provide a shield if a nuclear power threatens the freedom of a nation allied with us or of a nation whose survival we consider vital to our security. In cases involving other types of aggression, we shall furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with our treaty commitments. But we shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility of providing the manpower for its defense."
—President Richard Nixon, Foreign Policy Report, 1970

Which of the following best explains how the policy outlined in this report altered the implementation of United States containment strategy during the Cold War?

"We support the Administration's civil rights bill, but we support it with great reservations. It is true that we support the administration’s civil rights bill, but this bill will not protect young children and old women from police brutality. ... The voting section of this bill will not help the thousands of black people who want to vote, but who cannot do so because of the literacy tests and other voting qualifications in the Deep South. ... We must have a legislation that will protect the Mississippi sharecropper who is being evicted because he wants to register to vote."

— John Lewis, Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), speech at the March on Washington, August 1963

The reservations about federal civil rights legislation expressed in the excerpt best reflect which of the following developments within the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s?

"I consider your crime worse than murder. . . . I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted they would perfect it has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resulting casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason."

— Judge Irving Kaufman, sentencing statement in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 1951

Which of the following developments in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s is most directly reflected in the sentiments expressed in the excerpt?

Senator Wayne Morse, Speech in the U.S. Senate on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, August 6, 1964:

"I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting the United Nations Charter by our unilateral military actions in Southeast Asia. We are in effect giving the President of the United States warmaking powers without a declaration of war... I do not know why we think that we can govern the world by military force. I am not going to support a resolution which I believe is a violation of the Constitution of the United States."

Which of the following developments during the Vietnam War era was most directly foreshadowed by the concerns expressed in the excerpt?

"The decade spanning 1954–1964 saw the first phase of the civil rights revolution. But this period is now at an end... [T]he civil rights movement is evolving from a protest movement into a political movement. For protest, the necessary stage, was concerned with public accommodations... The political stage, which we are now entering, must concern itself with the total society... We are challenging the fundamental economic and social relations of the country."

— Bayard Rustin, "From Protest to Politics," 1965

Which of the following developments in the mid-to-late 1960s best reflects the transition described in the excerpt?

"There is a conflict today within the youth movement between those who may be called the political radicals and those who are the cultural radicals. The political activist sees the necessity of organizing, of confrontations with the state, of seeking power to restructure society. To him, the cultural drop-out is self-indulgent, escaping the harsh realities of the struggle. Conversely, the cultural radical believes that political action merely replicates the authoritarian structures of the system. He seeks liberation not through political power, but through a total transformation of consciousness, lifestyle, and community. He views the political organizer as being as uptight and power-obsessed as the establishment itself."

— Julius Lester, activist and writer, 1968

The division described in the excerpt most directly challenges which of the following historical generalizations about the youth movements of the 1960s?

"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 was a direct consequence of the executive order excerpted above?

"The proposed Equal Rights Amendment would destroy the family, which is the basic unit of our society, and would take away the legal protections that women currently enjoy, such as the right to be supported by their husbands and the exemption from the military draft. The women's liberation movement is trying to make wives and mothers feel that their lives are wasted and useless, but the American homemaker is actually the most privileged member of our society, possessing status, security, and liberty made possible by the American free enterprise system."

—Phyllis Schlafly, "What's Wrong with 'Equal Rights' for Women?", 1972

Which of the following historical developments during the 1970s is best reflected by the sentiments expressed in the excerpt?

"As concern with the condition of our physical environment has intensified, it has become increasingly clear that we need to know more about the total environment—land, water and air. . . . The Government's environmentally-related activities have grown up piecemeal over the years. The time has come to organize them rationally and systematically."
— President Richard Nixon, message to Congress transmitting Reorganization Plan No. 3, July 1970

Which of the following historical developments in the 1970s most directly reflected the goals described in the excerpt?

"We have an autocracy which runs this university. It's run by a board of regents... There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

— Mario Savio, spokesperson for the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, 1964

The sentiments expressed in the excerpt most directly reflect which of the following developments of the 1960s?

"We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the United States had placed a wholly disingenuous concern on its own security. . . . We saw first-hand how money and lives were wasted on a conflict that could not be won by military means alone, while the social and economic needs of our own country were neglected."

— John Kerry, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 22, 1971

The critique of United States foreign policy goals expressed in the excerpt most directly challenged which of the following post-World War II assumptions?

Source: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Position Paper on Vietnam, 1966

"We believe that the United States government has been deceptive in its claim of concern for the freedom of other colored peoples, just as the government has been deceptive in securing the freedom of colored people in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and the rest of the United States. . . . We support those householders in Mississippi who are refusing to sign certificates of inspection on their houses because they will not support a government which cannot protect them from violence at home."

The ideas expressed in the excerpt most directly demonstrate which of the following developments within the civil rights movement of the 1960s?

"Vietnam is not a region of major military-industrial importance. It is difficult to believe that any decisive developments are going to take place there... A victory in Vietnam would not resolve the broader challenges of our relations with the Soviet Union or China. Indeed, our preoccupation with Vietnam has diverted our attention and resources from more critical areas, such as Europe and our own domestic problems... We must realize that there are limits to our national capabilities and that we cannot police the entire globe."

— George F. Kennan, Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1966

The perspective expressed in the excerpt most directly challenged which of the following dominant assumptions of United States foreign policy during the Cold War?

Source: Senator Joseph McCarthy, speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950

"Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and democratic Christianity... The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful, potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation... In my opinion the State Department, which is one of the most important departments of our government, is thoroughly infested with Communists."

The rhetoric in the excerpt is most closely associated with which of the following post-World War II developments?

"We, the native Americans, re-claim the land known as Alcatraz Island in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery... We feel that this so-called Alcatraz Island is more than suitable for an Indian Reservation, as determined by the white man's own standards. By this we mean that this place resembles most Indian reservations in that: it is isolated from modern facilities...; it has no fresh running water; it has inadequate sanitation facilities; there are no oil or mineral rights; there is no industry and so unemployment is very great; there are no health care facilities; and the soil is rocky and non-productive."

— Indians of All Tribes, "Proclamation to the Great White Father and All His People," 1969

Based on the excerpt, the tactics and rhetoric displayed by the activists most directly reflect which of the following developments of the late 1960s and 1970s?

"The hippie movement... is a red warning light for the American way of life... They have dropped out of a society that they feel is obsessed with material success, technological efficiency, and cold war geopolitics. In place of the traditional Protestant work ethic, they offer a philosophy of leisure, immediate gratification, and communal sharing. While mainstream critics view this as a dangerous retreat from civic responsibility, the youth themselves see it as a moral rejection of a society that napalms Vietnamese villages while ignoring poverty at home."
—Adapted from a contemporary sociological analysis of the counterculture, 1968

Based on the passage, which of the following best describes the fundamental tension between the counterculture and mainstream American society in the late 1960s?