Quiz 24

In 1955, what percentage of nonagricultural workers was unionized?

35 percent

A leading voice of the Beats was

Allen Ginsberg.

The name for the small group of poets and writers, including Allen Ginsberg, who railed against mainstream culture, was

Beats.

What was the landmark United States Supreme Court case decided on May 17, 1954, in which the Warren Court unanimously asserted that segregation in public education violated the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment?

Brown v. Board of Education

Dwight Eisenhower entered the presidency determined to dismantle the New Deal.

False

It is a myth that children in the 1950s and 1960s were trained to hide under their desks in the event of an atomic attack.

False

New York became the most prominent symbol of the postwar suburban boom; one-fifth of the population growth of the 1950s occurred there.

False

Orval Faubus was among the attorneys on the team hired by the NAACP to pursue the watershed case Brown v. Board of Education.

False

The suburban explosion of the 1950s did much to diminish racial divisions in America.

False

What did President Eisenhower call his domestic agenda, which embraced a "mixed economy," in which the government played a major role in planning economic activity, and by which Eisenhower consolidated and legitimized the New Deal?

Modern Republicanism

Which of the following was NOT a key premise of American foreign policy during the Eisenhower years? Question 4 options: Any Soviet attack on one of our allies will result in a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union. The United States will always respect the sovereignty of foreign democracies—even those whose policies we oppose. We must be prepared to negotiate with the Soviet Union. The United States will intervene in the Middle East—militarily, if necessary—to ward off the threats of communism or Arab nationalism in the region.

The United States will always respect the sovereignty of foreign democracies—even those whose policies we oppose.

Although it was a nationwide phenomenon, 1950s suburbanization gathered its greatest momentum in the West.

True

As part of the expansive and dynamic growth of the American economy, in the twenty years after 1950, about 7 million white Americans left cities for the suburbs, nearly 3 million blacks moved from the South to the North, and half a million Puerto Ricans moved to the mainland.

True

By 1960, almost 90 percent of American families owned television sets, average daily television viewing time was five hours, and television had proved itself the most effective advertising medium ever invented.

True

By the mid-1960s, 25 million Americans owned shares of stock.

True

In 1956, for the first time in American history, white-collar workers outnumbered blue-collar factory workers and manual laborers.

True

In 1960, women earned, on average, 60 percent of the income of men.

True

In many ways, the economy and culture of the 1950s pivoted on the automobile.

True

In the 1950s, the number of houses in the United States doubled; most were built in the suburbs.

True

In the post-World War II United States, Americans' daily lives were transformed by the widespread use of televisions, air conditioning, dishwashers, long-distance telephone calls, and jet travel.

True

One strand of social analysis in the 1950s asserted that Americans were psychologically and culturally discontent, lonely and anxious, and yearning not so much for freedom as for stability and authority.

True

One strand of social analysis in the 1950s criticized the monotony of modern work, the emptiness of suburban life, and the pervasive influence of advertising.

True

Richard Nixon's rise in politics was fueled in part by his ability to make free-market conservatism appealing to ordinary people.

True

The Brown decision encouraged an awakening of civil rights protest—and segregationist protest—in the South.

True

Which was NOT part of the new "social contract" between organized labor and management in leading industries during the 1950s? Question 14 options: Unions agreed to leave decisions regarding capital investment and plant location in management's hands. Employers ceased trying to eliminate existing unions. Employers granted benefits such as private pension plans, health insurance, and automatic cost-of-living pay adjustments to employees. Unions sponsored "wildcat" strikes in an effort to discipline management.

Unions sponsored "wildcat" strikes in an effort to discipline management.

In the 1950s, Richard Nixon pioneered efforts to transform the Republican Party's image from

defender of business to champion of the "forgotten man," for whom heavy taxation had become a burden.

Which was NOT one of the elements of the "power elite"—the interlocking directorate that dominated government and society in the 1950s—in the view of the sociologist C. Wright Mills? Question 20 options: corporate leaders politicians labor leaders military men

labor leaders

With the wave of decolonization that began in 1947 with the independence of India and creation of Pakistan, and by which, in the decades following World War II, Europe's centuries-old empires collapsed, the newly created Third World nations

resisting alignment with either major power bloc.

The principal organization in the Southwest—the equivalent of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)—that challenged restrictions on housing and employment, as well as the segregation of Latino students, was the

the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

What was the coalition of black ministers and civil rights activists that pressed for desegregation and was formed in 1955, and in whose organizing Martin Luther King Jr. took the lead?

the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Which of the following was NOT a philosophic feature of Martin Luther King Jr.? Question 11 options: Black Americans must not try for full racial equality too quickly; before they achieve that, they must first prove their worthiness to all America. Blacks and whites must work together to combat segregation. The civil rights movement should always fight racial injustice on a nonviolent basis. The civil rights movement is a crusade, not merely to improve the lot of blacks but, more broadly, to redeem the soul of America. Save

Black Americans must not try for full racial equality too quickly; before they achieve that, they must first prove their worthiness to all America.

Although Americans in the 1950s grew more intensely religious, fewer than ever were affiliated with religious institutions.

False

As president, Eisenhower sought to roll back the New Deal, abolish social security and unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs.

False

Before her arrest that led to the Montgomery bus boycott, Rosa Parks had never been involved in National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) activism.

False

In the aftermath of Rosa Parks's arrest for refusing to give her bus seat to a white rider, a yearlong bus boycott took place in what city?

Montgomery, Alabama

Cultural dissent was more conspicuous than political dissent during the 1950s.

True

During the 1950s, prominent psychologists insisted that women who were unhappy as housewives suffered from a failure to accept the "maternal instinct."

True

For all of America's successes, by 1960 more than one in five Americans lived in poverty.

True

World War II was followed in the United States by what has been called a "golden age" of capitalism; between 1946 and 1960, the nation's gross national product more than doubled.

True

Which of the following was NOT a significant trend in 1950s America? Question 6 options: the growing association of the automobile with individual freedom the emergence of TV as the nation's prevalent form of entertainment a surge of student radicalism on college campuses the rise of a youth culture that challenged the bland conformism of postwar America

a surge of student radicalism on college campuses

Which of the following was NOT a key cause of the economic prosperity of the 1950s? Question 34 options: large income tax reductions housing construction in the expanding suburbs Cold War-related military production the building of the interstate highway system

large income tax reductions

The National Defense Education Act, which offered direct federal funding for higher education for the first time, was passed into law by Congress in 1957 in response to

the Soviet launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik.

During the 1950s, the mass movement for civil rights found principal support among

the southern black church.