Deck 29: A Time of Upheaval, 1961-1980

Question 1

What happened at Kent State University in May 1970?

A) Campus radicals ambushed National Guard Troop G, wounding eleven and killing four.
B) Ohio governor James Rhodes ordered the National Guard to shoot all campus radicals.
C) National Guard troops panicked and fired at a crowd of students, wounding eleven and killing four.
D) A distraught student stood in the window of the library tower and shot professors walking on the main quadrangle below.
E) Campus police fired at burglars in a dormitory, accidentally killing two students.

Answer 1

National Guard troops panicked and fired at a crowd of students, wounding eleven and killing four.

Question 2

Which of the following individuals would have been the least likely to advocate peace and nonviolence in the 1960s?

A) John Lennon
B) Charles Manson
C) Allen Ginsberg
D) Timothy Leary
E) a resident of Haight-Ashbury

Answer 2

Charles Manson

Question 3

What did the experiences of late 1960s communes demonstrate?

A) Attempting to go against the Establishment leads mainly to drugs, venereal disease, and crime.
B) Most Americans would have accepted the communal ethic if the news media had portrayed it favorably.
C) Countercultures in the United States never can succeed or gain much following because of the power of the American ideology of family and sharing.
D) Groups that try to live a life of sharing closer to nature on rural communes will inevitably turn an urban neighborhood into an overcrowded, over-commercialized slum.
E) They were, at best, short-lived.

Answer 3

They were, at best, short-lived.

Question 4

How did most Americans react to the campus convulsions of 1970?

A) They criticized campus protesters for undercutting the nation's foreign policy.
B) They blamed the Nixon administration for widening the war, and they applauded the goals of the campus demonstrators.
C) They retreated from traditional American policies and sought new answers in mystic cults, communes, or the ecology movement.
D) They became increasingly radicalized and in the November election voted for radical or left-wing Democratic candidates.
E) They launched counter protests against the students.

Question 5

How did Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward influence the American presidency?

A) Through their newspaper reports, they provided in-depth coverage of the Watergate scandal.
B) They worked together to establish Microsoft.
C) Through their connections with the Castro regime, they hired Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate President Kennedy.
D) They served as the independent prosecutors in the Watergate scandal.
E) They ran the Nixon re-election committee for the 1972 presidential election.

Question 6

The Camp David Accords were significant because they

A) settled disputes between the former Union and Confederate states over debts.
B) officially ended American participation in the Vietnam War.
C) set the foundation for peace negotiations between Israel and the Arab states.
D) limited the number of nuclear missiles that the United States and the Soviet Union could possess.
E) led to formal diplomatic relations between the United States and China.

Question 7

Which of the following did not contribute to the "sexual revolution" during the 1960s?

A) The elimination of all state laws infringing on a woman's right to an abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy.
B) The waning fear of unwanted pregnancy because of the availability of contraceptives, particularly the Pill.
C) Greater permissiveness and openness about sexual activity.
D) The counterculture's "do your own thing" attitude.
E) New attitudes toward cohabitation and open marriage.

Question 8

What were the goals of the Students for a Democratic Society?

A) a society in which democratic institutions were fully protected from subversion by the international communist conspiracy.
B) the Democratic party in control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
C) 100 percent participation from American colleges in the 1968 national Model Congress to be held in Chicago.
D) a society in which the votes of college-age Americans would be weighted more heavily than the votes of retirees.
E) the transformation of the United States into a "participatory democracy" in which citizens would have direct control over decision making.

Question 9

When he used "shuttle diplomacy," where was Henry Kissinger attempting to achieve a peace settlement?

A) Southeast Asia
B) Eastern Europe
C) Middle East
D) South America
E) Africa

Question 10

Which of the following was not one of the developments of the early and mid-1960s that tended to radicalize thousands of American students?

A) The American government refused to pursue total victory in Vietnam.
B) Students saw campus administrators as impersonal and rigid.
C) The Port Huron Statement galvanized many students
D) Students wanted more Americans included in the decision making process.
E) Students were concerned by the inability of mainstream liberalism to achieve swift, far-reaching change.

Question 11

Which of the following best describes American youth of the 1960s?

A) Most followed conventional paths and sought a secure place in the system.
B) They were radicals who were deeply involved in political action and espoused cultural and political revolution.
C) They generally preferred drugs to beer.
D) As their numbers dwindled, they developed increasing uncertainty about their own collective identity.
E) They longed to be back in the days of President Eisenhower, when things were simple and young people had no responsibilities.

Question 12

How did Gerald Ford become president?

A) He was elected in 1972.
B) He was nominated by Nixon as vice president, confirmed by Congress, and became president when Nixon resigned.
C) He was appointed by Congress after Nixon and his vice president resigned.
D) He bribed the Senate Judiciary Committee to approve his presidency.

Question 13

If you were in San Francisco in 1966, what would you have found if you went to Haight Street?

A) The army recruiting office.
B) The headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.
C) LSD and psychedelic music.
D) The headquarters of Young Americans for Freedom.
E) The headquarters of Dow Chemical.

Question 14

What event precipitated the 1979 seizure of over fifty American hostages in Iran?

A) The CIA helped return the Shah Reza Pahlavi to power.
B) Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose to power in Iran, and the United States allowed the shah to enter the United States for cancer treatment.
C) An American helicopter and a transport plane collided over the Iranian desert.
D) The Soviet Union invaded Iran.
E) The United States invaded Iran.

Question 15

Why was Apollo 11 significant to Americans at the time?

A) It provided hope to Americans in difficult times.
B) It showed the dangers of space flight.
C) It pointed to the close relationship between civilian and military space flights.
D) It captured the futility of the space race.
E) It marked the first successful launch of the space shuttle.

Question 16

The Gay Liberation movement became more publicly militant in reaction to

A) the Saturday Night Massacre.
B) police raid on the Stonewall Inn.
C) the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.
D) the refusal of the Nixon administration to appoint an openly gay jurist to the Supreme Court.
E) the torture of a gay youth in Montana.

Question 17

Which of the following was not a consequence of the actions of the New Left during the 1960s?

A) Increased opposition to the war in Vietnam.
B) A conservative reaction against radicals.
C) Permanent radicalization of a large portion of American workers and students.
D) Major reforms on American college campuses.
E) Energized campuses and made students a major voice in politics.

Question 18

Which of the following singers or musical groups is not representative of the trends in popular music during the 1960s?

A) Woody Guthrie
B) Bob Dylan
C) Grateful Dead
D) Rolling Stones
E) Janis Joplin

Question 19

Which of the following correctly accounts for the fate of the SALT II agreement?

A) It was approved by the Senate after President Carter personally traveled to Vienna to demonstrate United States support for arms control.
B) Support for the treaty dissolved after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
C) Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev refused to sign it as a protest against a series of anti-Soviet measures that President Carter adopted.
D) It was passed by the Senate and signed by President Carter, but President Reagan repealed it because it gave too much to the Evil Empire.
E) It became the cornerstone for future U.S.-Soviet arms negotiations.

Question 20

How well did the United States do in the 1980 Summer Olympics?

A) It won more medals than any other country.
B) It had its worst performance in modern Olympic history.
C) It did not participate.
D) It set 15 world records and won 25 gold metals.
E) Its hockey team won the gold medal in a surprise victory.

Question 21

What was the cause of the 1973-1974 oil embargo?

A) The United States was providing Israel with military equipment to repel the attack by Syria and Egypt.
B) Western Europe refused to agree to new OPEC price increases.
C) The Palestine Liberation Organization attempted to establish an independent Arab-Palestinian nation.
D) Egypt abandoned its alliance with Moscow and forge an alliance with Washington.
E) The United States refused to withdraw missiles from Turkey in exchange for Soviet withdrawal of missiles from Cuba

Question 22

Which of the following was not one of the approaches President Nixon took in an attempt to solve the nation's economic problems?

A) He expanded deficit spending.
B) He tried to reduce government expenditures.
C) He increased interest rates.
D) He imposed wage-and-price controls.
E) He implemented a huge corporate tax cut.

Question 23

What did the SALT I agreement do?

A) It arranged for the Soviet Union's purchase of at least $750 million in American grain over a three-year period.
B) It brought about the end of the OPEC oil embargo.
C) It called for a phased withdrawal of American missiles and troops in Europe, in exchange for a comparable Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
D) It banned all chemical and biological weapons.
E) It limited the number of offensive nuclear missiles of the United States and the Soviet Union.

Question 24

Why did the Nixon administration attempt to halt the publication of the Pentagon Papers?

A) They contained damaging revelations about the Nixon administration's policy in Vietnam.
B) They chronicled two decades of waste, mismanagement, and ineffective weapons systems, and the administration feared that public trust in the defense establishment would be undermined.
C) They revealed a long history of government lies that could further undermine public trust in government statements about the Vietnam War.
D) They contained embarrassing details of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatric therapy, and the administration feared that a national hero would be publicly discredited.
E) They were to be published in The New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which had long been on his "enemies list."

Question 25

Which of the following did Richard Nixon not do early in his presidency?

A) reduce the regulatory powers of the federal government.
B) institute wage and price controls.
C) inaugurate affirmative action policies.
D) approve the vote for 18 year olds.
E) begin the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.

Question 26

Which of the following statements accurately describes the "Yippies"?

A) They were second highest grossing band from Great Britain in the 1960s.
B) They were a group of hippies who lived in a commune in New Mexico that practiced free love.
C) They part of the counterculture movement that wished to disrupt the Democratic Convention in Chicago.
D) They were a group of Nixon supporters who attempted to infiltrate the anti-war protest movement.
E) They were the remnants of a once proud Native American tribe that called for their independence from the United States.

Question 27

Who would have most likely opposed the Alaska Lands Act?

A) Jimmy Carter
B) Oil companies
C) Greenpeace
D) Sierra Club
E) Teddy Kennedy

Question 28

Which music festival came to symbolize the 1960s counterculture?

A) Haight-Ashbury
B) Greenwich
C) Woodstock
D) Castle Rock
E) Carnegie Hall

Question 29

Which of the following statements correctly summarizes Richard Nixon's foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China?

A) He opened up new initiatives with the Soviet Union in an effort to isolate the People's Republic, capitalizing on the Sino-Soviet split.
B) He listened to his hard-line anticommunist advisers and initiated a new and more hostile era of the Cold War against both powers.
C) He capitalized on their widening split by playing one power off against the other.
D) He attempted to improve relations with each country by offering to pull out of Vietnam.
E) He had ICBM missile bases built around the globe, within striking range of both t he Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

Question 30

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique controversial because the book

A) argued that women were superior to men.
B) claimed that women should have more opportunities than simply being a housewife.
C) asserted that women should be able express their sexuality freely and openly.
D) proposed that marriage as a legal institution be abolished.
E) challenged the Supreme Court's ruling that the birth control pill should only be made available to married women.

Question 31

What economic problem plagued the American economy in the 1970s?

A) Deflation
B) Stagflation
C) Low interest rates
D) Declining world trade
E) Expanding gold supply

Question 32

In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that

A) busing should be used to desegregate schools.
B) racial quotas are only applicable under limited circumstances.
C) school-sponsored prayer is unconstitutional.
D) states could not restrict abortion in the first trimester of a pregnancy.
E) the death penalty was unconstitutional.

Question 33

Which of the following issues was not on the agenda of the National Organization for Women in the late 1960s and early 1970s?

A) Women should have equal employment opportunities.
B) Child care needed to be regulated and more readily available.
C) Abortion rights should be legalized.
D) The legal system should be modified to allow no-fault divorces.
E) All of these were part of NOW's agenda.

Question 34

Which of the following events did not occur in 1968?

A) The nomination of an antiwar Democratic candidate for president
B) The assassination of a prominent civil-rights leader
C) Violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago
D) A political comeback by a Republican politician
E) The assassination of a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination

Question 35

What happened at Three Mile Island?

A) The United States established a prison to hold terrorists.
B) A nuclear plant experienced a near-disastrous accident.
C) Pennsylvania built the first town to be powered solely by a nuclear reactor.
D) National Guard forces intervened in a coal mining strike.
E) The army tested the first components of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Question 36

What was détente?

A) a period in the 1960s when college students agreed to work with the government to create a better society.
B) a policy during the Nixon administration of reducing tensions with China and the Soviet Union.
C) the movement in the 1960s by musicians to incorporate different forms of music within their own.
D) a point in the 1970s when Republicans and Democrats set aside their differences to lead the country through the Watergate scandal.
E) the new tone set by Gerald Ford when he announced that the long national nightmare was over.

Question 37

John Mitchell, E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy arranged the break-in at the Watergate complex in order to

A) find information about Daniel Ellsberg that would discredit him in the eyes of the peace movement.
B) destroy the Democratic National Committee's files of potential campaign contributors.
C) wiretap the telephone of the Democratic National Committee.
D) play a harmless prank on their political rivals.
E) retrieve evidence that Spiro Agnew had had an affair with an intern.

Question 38

What percentage of the American population was under the age of 30 in the 1960s?

A) 10%
B) 20%
C) 30%
D) 40%
E) 50%

Question 39

Richard Nixon's foreign-policy accomplishments included all of the following except

A) stepping up the war in Vietnam.
B) checking Soviet expansionism.
C) limiting the nuclear-arms race.
D) overthrowing the communist government of Red China.
E) détente.

Question 40

Which of the following is true about Henry Kissinger?

A) He believed that human nature was basically good and that people would do the right thing if left alone.
B) He believed in Realpolitik.
C) He came to his foreign-policy post in Washington with little knowledge of international relations.
D) He served as the president's national security adviser but failed to become secretary of state because he lacked the willingness to act ruthlessly when opponents placed obstacles in his path.

Question 41

Which of the following conditions did the United States not face in the late 1970s?

A) Plummeting energy prices.
B) Americans being held hostage.
C) Unemployment.
D) Recession.
E) Inflation.

Question 42

What did the "White House tapes" reveal?

A) the burglary at Democratic headquarters was simply a third-rate caper, and no one on the White House staff had been involved.
B) President Nixon had ordered a cover-up in the Watergate affair.
C) President Nixon had been having an affair with his secretary for three years.
D) President Nixon had attempted to halt the "dirty tricks" of his supporters but had failed.
E) Nixon had tried to steal the 1960 presidential election.

Question 43

What characterized the American economy during the Carter presidency?

A) The worst depression since the 1930s
B) Rapid business expansion
C) Record low unemployment
D) Creeping inflation brought about by steady business growth
E) Business stagnation and skyrocketing inflation

Question 44

Which of the following was one of President Carter's high priorities in international affairs?

A) Reasserting American rights in the Panama Canal Zone
B) Increasing attention to human-rights violations
C) Isolating China from other nations
D) Ensuring open markets and free trade around the globe
E) None of these choices

Question 45

In the 1960s, what did the term "counterculture" refer to?

A) a conservative movement among American youth who were nostalgic for the simple habits of the 1950s.
B) an environmental movement dedicated to countering the polluting effects of American consumer culture.
C) a youth culture that was radically disaffiliated from the mainstream assumptions of American society.
D) an urban middle-class reform movement that opposed the growing use of "uppers" and "downers" throughout American society.
E) a movement to increase American consumerism in order to solve the nation's economic woes.

Question 46

What happened to President Richard Nixon?

A) Impeached by the House of Representatives for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.
B) Resigned to allow Vice President Spiro Agnew to take over the reins of power and end the nation's long nightmare.
C) Resigned from office before the House of Representatives could impeach him, which it was likely to do.
D) Died of a heart attack as impeachment proceedings began.
E) Committed suicide and was replaced by Gerald Ford.

Question 47

Which of the following was not one of the reasons that George McGovern overwhelmingly lost the 1972 presidential election?

A) His vice-presidential running mate had received electric-shock therapy for nervous depression.
B) He endorsed income redistribution and the decriminalization of marijuana.
C) The Nixon campaign kept information about the Watergate burglary contained.
D) There was a widely held perception that he was inept and radical.
E) Nixon supporters broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters and stole the election by falsifying ballots.

Question 48

Which of the following correctly summarizes the Carter administration's policy toward the area of the world with which it is paired?

A) Panama: treaties transferring full control over the canal to Panama by 2000.
B) Soviet Union: growing détente and continued expansion of economic and cultural relations
C) China: fortification of Taiwan with American Cruise Missiles.
D) Europe: reduction of stores of chemical weapons
E) Middle East: use of American troops to stop the Egyptian invasion of Israel

Question 49

What happened to Richard Nixon after he resigned from the presidency?

A) Convicted of obstruction of justice but received a suspended sentence.
B) Ran for the Republican nomination for governor of California but was defeated by Ronald Reagan.
C) Pardoned by President Ford for any and all crimes committed while in office.
D) Became American ambassador to China during the Ford administration.
E) Taught politics and government at Harvard University.

Question 50

Which of the following did not contribute to Jimmy Carter's election victory in 1976?

A) Clearly defined his economic and social programs.
B) Emphasized his status as an outsider to Washington politics.
C) Rejected the concept of the "imperial presidency."
D) Pledged never to lie to the American people.
E) Professed his faith as a "born-again" Christian.

Question 51

How did President Ford try to curb inflation?

A) Voluntary wage-and-price restraint
B) Increases in federal spending
C) Support for lowering the discount rate
D) All of these choices
E) None of these choices