U.S. HistorySpring Final Exam Review
In addition to all the terms on your unit outlines, here are some more questions to review for the final. Questions are in the order of the units we studied.
1. Who supported US isolationism in the 1930s?
2. Who was surprised by the non-aggression pact and why?
3. What were effects of the wartime migration?
4.What were several examples of industrial mobilization during WWII?
6.What were the short and long term impacts of Japanese Internment?
7. Why were the Axis powers successful in the early years of the war?
8. What factors made the US response to the Holocaust controversial?
9. Describe two of the Allied military strategies of World War II once the US entered the war.
10. Describe civil rights for African Americans during the war.
11. In what ways did the U.S. government set up the Manhattan Project to be both effective and confidential?
12. Compare and contrast the conferences at Yalta and Potsdam.
13. What were the justifications for using the atomic bomb on Japan?
14. How did the Holocaust end?
15. Describe distinguishing elements of the war in the Pacific.
16. Explain the ways in which the U.S. relationship with the USSR declined in the 1940s.
17. Define containment and four actions or policies of the United States meant to achieve it.
18. Explain why the United Nations is more likely to keep peace than NATO.
19.Who were several of the groups of people that benefited from the postwar economic boom?
20. Explain the several causes and effects of suburbanization.
21. Explain how the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s divided American Society.
22. Compare and contrast the economic policies of Truman, Eisenhower and JF Kennedy.
23. Describe the effects of the Space Race on American society.
24. Compare and contrast the generation gap in the 1950s as compared with the 1960s.
25. Describe the new elements of “work” in the 1950s.
26. Explain how the Civil Rights Movement shifted from one led by government action then grass roots involvement and back to government actions. Why did it seem to end in chaos during the mid-1960s?
27. Compare and contrast de facto and de jure segregation with specifics.
28. Describe the nature of US involvement in Vietnam from 1948-1964.
29. What were several reasons the war in Vietnam was so divisive at various points between 1964 and 1975?
30. Explain the relevance of the Civil Rights Movement to the controversy over Vietnam.
31. Describe the causes and effects of the economic and political decline in the U.S. that characterized the 1970s.
32. How did Watergate continue to exacerbate the credibility gap?
33. Why was Watergate more than just a burglary?
34. Trace women’s rights from the 1950s to the 1980s. What role did economics play in the debate?
35. Describe the New Left.
36. How did neo-conservatism compare to Republicanism of the 1930s-1970s?
37. Why did some women feel threatened by the feminist movement?
38. Why did the Iranians take 52 Americans hostage in 1979? What was the significance of the event?
39. What were the effects of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979?
40. What was the significance of Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980?
41. How did the Christian Right become a threat to Roe V. Wade?
42. What was affirmative action and why was it controversial?
43. What were three negative effects of the economic policies of the 1980s?
44. Why did the Cold War end in the 1980s and what are two factors that brought about the end?
45. What were elements of Reagan’s personality that helped him in his role as president? How?
46. Why was 1981-1982 such a severe recession and how did Reagan help initiate the prolonged “boom” that followed?
47. What was the Strategic Defense Initiative and why were people so critical of it?
48. After making great strides in the 1970s, gays experienced significant setbacks during the 1980s. Tell what these were and why.
49. Why were gangs and gang violence prominent in the 1980s?
50. What was the Iran-Contra Scandal? Were Americans misguided in their lack of outrage?
U.S. HistorySpring Final Exam Review
Here is a list of terms and events, then people that you will be held accountable for. See the strategies that follow.
TERMS AND EVENTS
fascism
The Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, & 1937
nonaggression pact
Dust Bowl
NLRB
Japanese Internment
“Industrial Mobilization”
Sequence of Allied Offenses in WWII
U.S. response to the Holocaust?
Riveters
code-talkers
Manhattan Project
Conferences: Yalta and Potsdam
Atomic bomb
German concentration camps
WWII Pacific campaign
D-Day
Operation TORCH
Satellite nations
Berlin Air Lift
Marshall Plan
NATO
Korean War
Iron Curtain
United Nations
Iron Curtain
Sunbelt
Suburban migration
HUAC
Hollywood blacklist
Baby Boomers
Sputnik
role of television in the 1950s
planned obsolescence
consumerism
Interstate Highway Act
conformity of the 1950s
William Levitt
franchises
Dwight Eisenhower
Jim Crow Laws
Bay of Pigs
Cuban Missile Crisis
Brown v. Board of Education
"Black Power”
Nation of Islam.
“Freedom Summer”
Civil Rights Act.
Southern Manifesto
Affirmative Action
Civil disobedience
De jure segregation
De facto segregation
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Freedom Riders
SCLC
CORE
Little Rock High School
Kerner Commission
1968
Vietnam War
CIA
My Lai massacre
Tet Offensive
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
“Beatniks”
“Vietnamization”
“counter culture” of the 1960’s and 1970s
Richard Nixon
Election of 1968
Pentagon Papers
“Living Room War”
hyper-inflation
stagflation
National Organization for Women (NOW)
ERA (Equal Rights Amendment)
AIM
Cesar Chavez
United Farm Workers
National Grape Pickers Union
National Labor Front
“New Conservatism”
“Law and order” politics
EPA
Nixon’s foreign policies
Kent State
Roe v. Wade
Bakke vs. University of California
Watergate
Moral Majority
Jimmy Carter
OPEC
Iranian Hostage Crisis
Ronald Reagan
supply-side economics
deregulation
AIDS epidemic
New Right
Camp David Accords
Affirmative Action
Rustbelt
Sunbelt
Perestroika
Glasnost
INF
Iran-Contra
End of the Cold War
PEOPLE
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Huey Long
Harry Truman
Winston Churchill
Joseph McCarthy
Hollywood Ten
Ethel & Julius Rosenberg
Dwight Eisenhower
Nikita Khruschev
Rosa Parks
Fidel Castro
John F. Kennedy
Stokley Carmichael
Martin Luther King, Jr.
James Meredith
Malcolm X
Lyndon Johnson
Walter Cronkite
Robert F. Kennedy
George Wallace
Richard Nixon
Bob Woodward
Carl Bernstein
Gloria Steinem
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
Mikhail Gorbachev
Using this Sheet…
Ways to Organize these details:
-create a timeline
-group the people, events and terms by era
-identify causes and effects of events and terms
-identify the importance of the people listed. How are they related to the unit(s) that we studied?
Using your text…
Skim all the chapters we have studied by reading headings and subheadings as well as the captions to pictures, images and charts.
Take notes that respond to the questions on the unit overview for each unit (6)
Using your notes…
Label all notes with unit title and era
Make notations (questions or commentary) in the margin as you review the notes
Pacing your studying…
-focus on just one era at a time until you have re-examined all 5 (World War II, Early Cold War, Civil Rights, Vietnam, 1970s/1980s) dedicate 30-45 minutes each day to this
-The day before the final, review the essential questions for all 5 units
Unit One: World War II
oHow did WWII change the domestic role of the Federal government?
oWhat was the shift in US foreign policy as a result of WWII?
oHow did the war affect the lives of Americans living at home and fighting abroad?
Unit Two: America and the Cold War
oHow did the fear of Communism shape US society and policy between 1945 and 1962?
oHow did the growth of conformity and consumerism during the 1950’s and early 60’s mask an era of widespread domestic anxiety within the United States?
Unit Three: African American Civil Rights Movement
oWhy was a widespread movement for African-American civil rights both necessary and inevitable by the middle of the 20th Century?
oHow did the goals, tactics and public support for the American Civil Rights Movement evolve?
Unit Four: Activism in the 1960s
oCan a nation build a great society and wage war at the same time? What was the proper response to the Vietnam War?
Unit Five: The 1970s and 1980s—An Age of Limits
oHow did the political and cultural tensions of the ‘60s and ‘70s result in disillusionment with the American political system?
How and why did conservative values gain broad political, economic and social support in the United States between 1970 and 2000?
There will be a review during SMART period in my room Monday, June 8th.
GOOD LUCK!
Essay Questions
- Choose one of the following two questions to examine in a detailed, well-organized essay with a specific argument and clearly stated facts.
1. Why were the 1970’s a period “malaise” for many in the US? Comment on how TWO of the following contributed or reflected the “malaise” of the period:
domestic political trendsdomestic cultural trends
domestic economic trendsforeign policy trends
2. Why were the 1980’s a period of growing conservatism in the US? Comment on how TWO of the following contributed or reflected the growing conservatism of the period:
domestic political trendsdomestic cultural trends
domestic economic trendsforeign policy trends
Modified 5/2015 LPK
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