US HISTORY EXAM

HISTORY EXAM 14th Amendment - - Incorporates the Bill of Rights (1-9) down to the state level, meaning that neither the national nor state governments can abridge basic rights of citizenship. - Sometimes called the Civil Rights amendment. - Equal protection under the law for all citizens. Explain how the mid-20th century black Civil Rights movement incorporated strategies pioneered by early civil rights leaders. - - Using the Constitution and promoting education! - W.E.B. Du Bois wanted to use the courts to beef up the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, to secure basic rights of citizenship and voting. NIAGRA MOVEMENT, NAACP + PAN-AFRICANISM. - Booker T. Washington argued for a more GRADUALIST APPROACH advocating that Blacks get up to speed in segregated vocational colleges before pushing for full equality. ATLANTA COMPROMISE. - Marcus Garvey shared Du Bois' belief in Pan-Africanism and promoted black business ownership. Summarize the ways that World War II helped trigger the modern (mid-20th c.) Civil Rights Movement. - - Not only did minority troops fight in combat (nothing new), but Americans also looked hard-core racism in the eye when fighting Japan and Germany and didn't like what they saw. - Minority soldiers who fought in the war were also less likely to accept America's apartheid-like system when they returned. - Mixed-race relationships - Integration of the military and pro sports in 1946-48 also helped lay the foundation for a brewing civil rights movement. - KKK came in for criticism after the war. - White supremacist groups no longer revered. Summarize the importance of the Emmett Till case. What does it tell us about the importance of jury duty, media coverage, and sectional relations between North and South? - - The Court ruled jury duty as fundamental to equal protection under the law. Ethnic groups lacking that fundamental right were unlikely to experience anything approximating justice. - The Emmett Till case gave the TV-watching part of the American public an up-close reminder that, despite being a relative beacon of hope in a hostile world, the United States had some skeletons of its own in the closet. - The perpetrators admitted to kidnapping, torturing, and killing the boy but knew they were in no danger of being indicted since the jury was all white. - Moreover, it testified to the lingering regional resentment from the Civil War and Reconstruction. Explain the ways that Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi influenced the philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. - - For inspiration, Gandhi preached reliance on satyagraha, loosely translated as the "truth force." American writer Henry David Thoreau advocated a similar approach a century earlier in Civil Disobedience. King distinguished his message from Gandhi's passive resistance. - Like Gandhi, King transferred the moral burden of violence onto his oppressors for all to see. - Like Thoreau and Gandhi, Reverend King argued that some laws were worth breaking on behalf of a higher moral cause. Describe how the Civil Rights movement connected to public education, both K-12 and colleges. - - In 1954, the Court integrated all U.S. public schools in the Brown v. Board case. - Ike took a stand against the Arkansas National Guard being used to keep black students out of Little Rock's Central High School in 1957. - Similar resistance at Ole' Miss and the University of Alabama allowed Whites to demonstrate their frustration, this time in higher education. - At the University of Alabama, similar rioting ensued and Governor George Wallace (D) took advantage of the media exposure. - Public schools that allowed Blacks too much access incurred the wrath of politicians. Describe how violence and protests in Alabama and the 1963 March on Washington impacted civil rights legislation. - - Kennedy was an incrementalist that didn't want to push too fast, fearing that would endanger the movement. - LBJ (Kennedy's VP) refused to sign the aforementioned Southern Manifesto to resist school integration in 1956. - When JFK died, President Johnson pressured the FBI to crack down on the KKK rather than King. - LBJ was committed to promoting civil rights for all minorities. - Led to the two acts passed later Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Beefed up the Fourteenth Amendment considerably to outlaw formal racism anywhere in any state, not just state-sanctioned racism as it had been interpreted since 1883. The 1964 Act also reaffirmed Kennedy's 1963 Equal Pay Act for women. Voting Rights Act of 1965 - Beefed up the Fifteenth Amendment, outlawing all the various excuses states used to keep Blacks and Hispanics from voting like literacy tests and poll taxes. Describe how, including the 24th Amendment, 1965 Immigration Act, Loving vs. Virginia (1967) case, and Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Civil Rights Movement changed the legal landscape regarding race in America. - 24th amendment: outlaws poll tax Immigration: welcomed people from around the world by abolishing national origins quota system Lovings v Virginia: outlawed banning interracial couples Fair Housing: banning discriminatory practice in real estate - OVERCAME EPIC FILIBUSTERS IN SENATE Explain how voting rights legislation affected the Houston Astrodome bond issue. - - Blacks could vote and wanted astrodome, ALLOWED BLACKS TO ATTEND EVENTS THERE - Judy Garland and Supremes double billing Evaluate and critique the successes and failures of the Great Society's war on poverty and racism. - Under President Johnson! - It lowered the rate of black poverty and malnutrition for pennies on the dollar (despite taxpayer's complaints), creating a black middle class and empowering millions through the 1964-68 legislation. Overall poverty rates dropped. - But most African Americans remained mired in poverty, with underfunded public schools and poor municipal sanitation. Explain how the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson trials in Los Angeles exemplified and/or caused racial tension in America circa 1990s. Why does the textbook describe them as "bookends?" - - In 1991, a passerby videotaped white cops beating up black, unarmed drunk driver Rodney King.. The police claimed they thought King was on PCP though subsequent toxicology reports showed he wasn't. An all-white jury acquitted the police after the city moved the trial to the lily-white suburb of Simi Valley. - When the city tried to rectify their image by keeping ex-football star O.J. Simpson's murder trial downtown in 1994-95, a mostly-black jury acquitted "the Juice" despite DNA evidence implicating him in the death of his wife, Nicole, and Ron Goldman (both white). - BOOKENDS because the jury in O.J.'s trial didn't really think he was innocent, they were just balancing out the scale of justice, in their view, for years of racism on the part of the LAPD. Identify policies the textbook mentions as helping cities cope with race-based police brutality. - - Some cities improved things by putting more black police on the streets in inner-city neighborhoods. - One constructive step forward is police wearing body cameras. Contrast the civil rights strategies of the early Southern, Christian-led movement and the Northern, Nation of Islam-oriented Black Power movement. - - Black PANTHERS: trained militarily, vowing to defend themselves if attacked by white police, keep black drug dealers off the streets. - NATION OF ISLAM: endorsed same segregationist policies as white oppressors, turned traditional racism around - Embraced African culture and ethnic pride - Never resulted in substantive political changes of non-violent movement led by MLK (partially bc low hanging fruit already plucked) - Impacted society and popular culture. Who were the primary leaders of the Black Power movement? - Elijah Muhammad, Muhammad Ali, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael Evaluate the ways that the techniques and concerns of the black Civil Rights Movement carried over, or were shared, by HISPANICS. - - Dr. Hector P. Garcia formed the American GI Forum - Hispanics were effective in using the vote to gain control over local councils and school boards. - Like the black civil rights movement, Hispanic leaders didn't follow a common script. CHICANO MOVEMENT - Other Hispanics borrowed from Gandhi's idea of non-violent protest. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta used boycotts.