Deck 27: America at Midcentury, 1945-1961

Question 1

Why did President Eisenhower eventually support the desegregation of public schools?

A) He believed that the only way Americans would accept desegregation is if the Supreme Court ruled on the matter.
B) He realized from World War II that if there was another war the races would have to learn to cooperate.
C) He was forced to defend the law of land after seeing the defiance of Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus.
D) He knew that if he did not support the Supreme Court's decision then many Americans would not accept it.
E) He wanted to stop Strom Thurmond's attempt to create a third party in the South.

Answer 1

He was forced to defend the law of land after seeing the defiance of Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus.

Question 2

How did Southern states respond to the Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregation in schools?

A) They resentfully complied.
B) They refused to comply whenever possible.
C) They welcomed the ruling as a step forward for social progress.
D) They established separate but equal schools for African Americans.
E) They burned down the schools.

Answer 2

They refused to comply whenever possible.

Question 3

What is the importance of ENIAC?

A) It was the first American satellite launched into space.
B) It was the first computer ever built.
C) It was the name of the atomic bomb used by the United States in Vietnam.
D) It was the earliest version of the television.
E) It was the name of the highest grossing robot movie of all time.

Answer 3

It was the first computer ever built.

Question 4

In the 1956 Southern Manifesto, what did approximately 100 senators and congressmen argue?

A) Congress needed to abolish the Supreme Court.
B) the United States had to spend more on national defense.
C) segregation of schools should be permitted.
D) they had an obligation to support Supreme Court decisions.
E) states have the right to nullify laws.

Question 5

What did the Bretton Woods Agreement do?

A) It established international oil policy for the major powers of Europe.
B) It valued other currencies in relation to the American dollar.
C) It was an agreement between the United States and Great Britain over the protection of British colonies in Asia.
D) It proposed a system of financial assistance for the beleaguered economies of Western Europe.
E) It outlined the structure of the new United Nations organization.

Question 6

What was the objective of the 1961 Freedom Rides?

A) to test whether court orders to desegregate public transportation were being upheld.
B) to show that northern cities were just as racist as those in the south.
C) to celebrate the end of segregation in the south.
D) to reveal that women faced as much mistreatment as blacks.
E) to see if blacks in the south would support the integration of transportation.

Question 7

Why did the United States demobilize so rapidly at the end of World War II?

A) Americans demanded a quick return.
B) President Roosevelt wanted to cut defense spending by 50 percent.
C) The nation's business leaders pressured Congress to solve a crippling labor shortage.
D) European nations threatened United Nations action if American troops weren't off their soil immediately.
E) Congress was worried that if the servicemen stayed in Europe any longer they would develop a lust for killing.

Question 8

Jackie Robinson was a significant figure in the civil rights movement because he

A) led the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
B) became the first black baseball player to play in the modern Major Leagues.
C) was president of the NAACP when schools were desegregated.
D) created the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.
E) wrote The Invisible Man.

Question 9

Which of these statements about literature in the 1950s is correct?

A) Novelists were primarily concerned with societal problems such as poverty, racism, and labor exploitation.
B) Almost no literature of lasting value was written during this complacent, conformist decade.
C) Most 1950s literature celebrated America's good life of cars, televisions, and suburban homes.
D) Southern, black, and Jewish writers produced much of the decade's most outstanding literature.
E) The decade saw the emergence of lesbian and gay fiction as an acceptable and commercially successful genre.

Question 10

What did the GI Bill do?

A) provided healthcare to wounded veterans of World War II.
B) allowed American veterans of World War II to go to college free and to obtain low interest mortgages
C) gave American veterans a pension so that they would not have to work.
D) permitted the families of servicemen killed in the war to receive compensation.
E) made all veterans exempt from taxation.

Question 11

Which of the following was not one of the reasons that the Interstate Highway Act was significant?

A) It was the largest and most expensive public-works program in American history.
B) It heightened Americans' dependence on cars and trucks.
C) It accelerated suburban growth.
D) It helped to homogenize the nation.
E) It reinvigorated central cities by making it easier for people to drive in to them.

Question 12

Which of the following statements concerning the Civil Rights Act of 1957 is true?

A) Eisenhower opposed it because he believed one could not change the hearts of men with laws.
B) It established a permanent commission on civil rights with broad investigatory powers.
C) It empowered federal officials to register blacks to vote.
D) It overturned the doctrine of "separate but equal" in education.
E) The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.

Question 13

In Brown v. Board of Education the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation in ____ was unconstitutional.

A) public schools
B) public restaurants
C) public hotels
D) the military
E) Housing

Question 14

Which of the following was not a factor in the complacency of organized labor in the 1950s?

A) Labor received decent wages and benefit packages.
B) The work week averaged fewer than forty hours.
C) Many unionized workers saw themselves as comfortable members of the middle class
D) The number of blue-collar workers decreased.
E) More white-collar workers joined unions.

Question 15

Which of the following most accurately characterizes television programming in the 1950s?

A) controversial political drama
B) dominated by rock-and-roll and rap music
C) ethnic comedies focusing on street life in Cuba
D) perfectly coiffed moms, frisky yet obedient kids, and all-knowing dads
E) cooking competitions and reality shows

Question 16

The Beats were a group of

A) boxers, led by Muhammad Ali, who boycotted service in the Vietnam War.
B) supporters of Joseph McCarthy who looked for communists in the government.
C) black intellectuals who called for the abandonment of civil disobedience.
D) writers who challenged the conformity of the 1950s.
E) musicians who sought to integrate the beat of folk and gospel music.

Question 17

Which book described the United States' economy during the postwar era?

A) Progress and Poverty
B) Looking Backward
C) The Affluent Society
D) The Theory of the Leisure Class
E) The Blackboard Jungle

Question 18

Which of the following was a major Supreme Court civil-rights case of the 1950s?

A) Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
B) Jencks v. United States
C) Yates v. United States
D) Plessy v. Ferguson
E) all of these choices

Question 19

Whose music revolutionized the music industry in the late 1950s and early 1960s?

A) Glenn Miller.
B) Elvis Presley.
C) The Beatles.
D) George Gershwin.
E) AC/DC.

Question 20

As President, Dwight D. Eisenhower

A) returned the nation to New Deal and Fair Deal philosophies.
B) initiated the largest and most expensive public-works scheme in American history.
C) exemplified the social protest and rebellion of the 1950s.
D) cut military spending from $76 billion in 1952 to under $20 billion in 1959.
E) implemented a major bank deregulation program that plunged the nation into its worst depression since 1929.

Question 21

What did "progressive" educators of the 1950s promote?

A) "back to basics"-science, math, and history.
B) student political activism.
C) sociability, health education, and self-expression to develop well-rounded students.
D) a rejection of traditional sex roles.
E) equal academic achievement for both boys and girls.

Question 22

Martin Luther King's philosophy is best captured by which of the following phrases?

A) Burn baby burn
B) Compromise and accommodation
C) nonviolent resistance
D) Back to Africa
E) Black is Beautiful

Question 23

Which of the following was not one of the innovations that stimulated homeownership in Levittown in the 1950s?

A) mass production techniques applied to construction.
B) Extensive car ownership.
C) Low-cost mortgages from the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration.
D) improved mass transportation to the suburbs.
E) income tax deductions for home mortgage interest payments.

Question 24

What was the most significant cause of the increase in federal aid to education and the shift to greater emphasis on basic disciplines in the late 1950s?

A) influx of non-English-speaking Hispanics into the United States.
B) alarm over the popularity of the nonconformist Beats on college campuses.
C) "war on poverty" that was declared when it became apparent that high-school drop-outs were swelling the welfare rolls
D) discovery that there were more private schools in the suburbs than public schools in the cities.
E) launch of Sputnik, which gave Americans reason to fear that they were intellectually and technologically backward.

Question 25

Silent Spring

A) was Beat poet Allen Ginsberg's denunciation of American materialism.
B) described the lack of political involvement of most Americans during the 1950s.
C) argued that the use of DDT was dangerous to the entire food chain.
D) predicted the consequences of a nuclear power plant "melt-down."
E) depicted the travels of a young boy along the interstate highway system as he searched for the Midwest farm on which he had been born.

Question 26

Which was a cause of the baby boom after World War II?

A) Couples began marrying at an earlier age.
B) Congress banned birth control.
C) Women withdrew from the work force.
D) Americans became more accepting of sexual activity outside of marriage.
E) All of these choices

Question 27

Which of the following demographic shifts did not occur in the 1950s?

A) Around 40 million Americans moved from cities to suburbs.
B) Millions of rural blacks moved to cities.
C) Millions of Americans moved from the North and East to the South and West.
D) Total United States population grew less than in any previous decade of the twentieth century.
E) Millions of Puerto Ricans moved to cities.

Question 28

Puerto Ricans experienced which of the following when they migrated to the United States from Puerto Rico in the 1950s?

A) Deportation as "undocumented aliens"
B) Family friction and a reversal in traditional sex roles
C) A middle-class lifestyle in the barrio
D) Downward social mobility from middle class respectability to grinding poverty
E) All of these choices

Question 29

What did television in the 1950s do?

A) It helped to demolish old gender and racial stereotypes.
B) It exposed American viewers to the harsh realities of the "other America."
C) It reinforced consumerism and conformity.
D) It decreased the cost of political campaigning while increasing the content level of political discussion.
E) It was still too primitive to have much impact on American politics.

Question 30

Federal policies toward Native Americans during the 1950s

A) called for the end of the reservation system and encouraged Indians to leave reservations.
B) recognized the importance of Native American culture.
C) helped maintain tribal life.
D) gave preferential treatment to Native Americans over other minority groups and elevated their relative economic status.
E) thwarted agricultural, lumber, and mining interests in their desire for Native American land by establishing the reservation system.

Question 31

The League of United Latin American Citizens

A) wanted to help Mexicans swim across the Rio Grande into the United States.
B) advocated a "Back to Mexico" movement.
C) sought to stop abuses against aliens and violations of the rights of Mexican-Americans.
D) supported the secession of parts of the southwestern United States that were heavily populated by Mexicans.
E) emphasized the importance of all immigrants learning English.

Question 32

The 1955-1956 African-American boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama eventually led to

A) Supreme Court affirming a lower-court decision outlawing segregation of public transportation.
B) election of a black mayor in Montgomery.
C) defeat of Democratic incumbents throughout the south in the 1956 election.
D) voluntary concession by white leaders in Montgomery to integrate buses.
E) collapse of the civil-rights movement when African-American leaders were unable to deliver on their promises of social change.

Question 33

Which group benefited the most from the population shift to the Sunbelt?

A) The Democratic party.
B) The Republican party.
C) Fringe third parties.
D) Migrant workers.
E) Organized labor.

Question 34

About what portion of the American people lived in poverty by 1960?

A) One-third
B) One-fifth
C) One-half
D) One-tenth
E) Two thirds

Question 35

Which of the following is not part of the evidence of a renewed interest in religion in the 1950s?

A) Congress added the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance.
B) "In God We Trust" became mandatory on U.S. currency.
C) Religious popularizers such as Billy Graham and Fulton J. Sheen achieved wide success.
D) Among Hollywood's biggest hits were religious epics.
E) The intensity of faith increased for many people, as mainstream churches increasingly emphasized sin and evil.

Question 36

Which of the following statements about American women in the 1950s is correct?

A) Women generally married later and had fewer children than they had in the 1930s and 1940s.
B) Almost two-thirds of women college students dropped out before graduating.
C) The proportion of married women who were employed declined.
D) A greater proportion of women became involved in the feminist movement than ever before.
E) Women were urged to study science and math to help America compete with the Soviet Union.

Question 37

Which of the following was a leading religious popularizer in the 1950s?

A) Rachel Carson
B) Norman Vincent Peale
C) James Baldwin
D) Aimee Semple McPherson
E) Billy Sunday

Question 38

Which of the following stimuli to consumerism was introduced in the 1950s?

A) Credit cards
B) Installment buying
C) Celebrities' advertising products
D) Mail-order catalogs
E) Discount buyers' clubs

Question 39

Dr. Benjamin Spock advocated that

A) babies should be fed on a strict schedule to instill orderly habits.
B) bottle feeding should be used instead of breast feeding because fathers could participate more fully in parenting.
C) mothers should comfort crying babies to instill feelings of security and intimacy.
D) children should be treated like little adults.
E) children should be strictly disciplined to prepare them for the realities of modern life.