Sample Midterm: Spring 1983

1. Evaluate the following interpretation by an American historian of the experiment in Southern Reconstruction. Analyze the reasons why, in your estimation, Radical Reconstruction failed to reconstruct southern society, and describe what changed and what remained the same in southern race relations between 1865 aned 1920. Use examples from the assigned books where appropriate.

   "Radical reconstruction was doomed to fail. With a crass materialistic design, it was cloaked in a garb of high idealistic justice, but its rulers were inexperienced, ignorant and corrupt. They forgot what the world had learned and experienced during the preceding two thousand years. Millenniums and Utopias might be written about, but intelligent people knew that they were never to be realized in this life."

2. Some historians believe that change in American between the 1870s and World War I can best be explained as a series of responses to an economic-technological stimulus: that is, industrialization. Assess the adequacy of this explanation with reference to one of the following aspects of American life in this period:
   • foreign relations
   • domestic politics
   • the working class
   • reform movements
   Within the area you select, what was the nature of the American experience during this period? What had changed by 1920? To what extent can industrialization ultimately explain those changes? Should other factors be considered? If so, what factors, and how is their influence apparent? Give examples from the relevant books assigned so far.

Sample Final: Spring 1996

1. (40%)

   "Social change in American history has not come from the top down, nor from the bottom up, but from both directions at once. No major social reforms would have occurred without the actions of both government and popular ("grassroots") movements, each playing a crucial role.

   Evaluate this statement, using three examples from different time periods, one example drawn from the nineteenth century (1865-1900), one example from the first half of the twentieth century (1900-1950), and one example from the second half of the twentieth century (1950-1996). You may agree with the quoted statement, disagree with it, or agree with parts of it, but you should present your response as an argument. Support your point of view with evidence drawn from the lectures, the readings, and the films.
2. (20%) The United States has grown steadily more engaged with the rest of the world during the last one hundred years. At the same time, international affairs have come to have an important effect in the domestic arena, tranforming the lives of Americans in far-reaching ways. Discuss this phenomenon, as it applies to either World War II or the Cold War (including Vietnam). You might wish to consider how foreign affairs have affected politics, culture, social movements and ethnic relations, labor and/or dissent in the United States during the period you analyze.
3. (40%) Write brief essays on four (4) of the following quotations, placing the quotation in its proper historical context and discussing its significance for understanding the history of race relations and ethnic conflict in the United States.

   A. "Chicago went wild. It started people to thinking. . . . The people of Chicago saw more in The Birth of a Nation than a tremendous dramatic spectacle. They saw in it a new conception of southern problems." -- Chicago Film Reviewer

   B. "I stand with the State of California in opposition to mixed schools. [Applause] I stand with Californians in favor of the proposition that we want a homogeneous and assimilable population of white people in the Republic. [Applause]" -- Mississippi Congressman

   C. "It is not within the province of human nature, that the man who is intelligent and virtuous, and owns and cultivates the best farm in his county, shall very long be denied the proper respect and consideration. . . . The Negro merchant who owns the largest store in town will not be lynched. -- Booker T. Washington

   D. "On one side is beer, bolshevism, unassimilating settlements and perhaps many flags--on the other side is constitutional government, one flag, stars and stripes." --Kansas Congressman during the debate on the 1924 National Origins Act

   E. "We have got a real friend in John Collier. He really likes Indians. In past times, we had Commissioners against us who tried to stop our ceremony dances and our dances-religious. They nearly destroy us; call our ways bad or immoral or something. . . . But John Collier fights for us . . . and he saves us." -- Antonio Luhan, 1934

   F. "You saw people with relatively low levels of education, very little money, beginning to stretch themselves, beginning to see themselves as worthwhile, to overcome the years of deprivation. To see people grow out of that deprivation, to begin to believe in themselves, and to believe in the possibility of their future, was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. . . . I won't look for it to be that way again." --Volunteer Harry Bowie on the Mississippi Freedom Summer

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