Final Exam Questions
• 1. Between 1945 and 2008 the United States conducted several military actions, open and covert,
aimed to bring democracy to various world nations. How successful were these democratization
projects? Discuss at least two military actions as examples.
•
• 2. Many historians consider the civil rights movement the most important social movement in the
twentieth century US history. What were its successes and failures? Compare and contrast Martin
Luther King's and Malcolm X's views of the civil rights movement as examples.
•
• 3. Historians have argued that the feminist movement may have been the most successful of the
new social movements of the 1960s. Describe how the women's movement between 1877 and
1960s led up to the rise of feminism, then analyze the achievements and losses of the feminist
movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
•
• 4. Historians believe that youth culture did not emerge as a major cultural phenomenon in the
United States until the post-World War II era. Using at least two examples, explain in what ways
youth culture was central to political and economic life in the U.S. in this period.
Counterculture and the New Left Chronology
• New Left - named in contrast to the “old left” of 1930s, rejected both Stalinism
and McCarthyism, believed in social democracy, influenced by the civil rights
movement
• Students for Democratic Society - broad democratic student movement,
concerned with poverty, civil rights, antiwar protest
• The Free Speech Movement - privileged students critiqued the hypocrisy of the
univeristy system, influenced by the Beats, civil rights
• The Antiwar Movement - against the war in Vietnam, initially students, but then
became broader, included working class and minorities
• Counterculture - cultural expression of the “New Left,” encompassed rock music,
sexual revolution, groups like hippies, Yippies
• Important events:
1962 Port Huron Statement by SDS
1964 Free Speech Movement at Berkeley
1967 Summer of Love at Haight-Ashbury, San Fransisco
1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago
1969 Woodstock
SDS self-destructs and fragments; the Weathermen formed as a splinter group
Port Huron Statement, Students for Democratic Society, 1962
As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to
dismiss. First, the permeating and victimizing fact of human degradation,
symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry, compelled most of
us from silence to activism. Second, the enclosing fact of the Cold War,
symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves,
and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because
of our common peril, might die at any time.
A new left must consist of younger people who matured in the postwar world,
and partially be directed to the recruitment of younger people. … A new left
must include liberals and socialists, the former for their relevance, the latter for
their sense of thoroughgoing reforms in the system. …A new left must start
controversy across the land, if national policies and national apathy are to be
reversed.
Mario Savio, Sproul Hall steps, December 2, 1964
Harvard 1969 strike (1969) and Paris School of Fine Arts (1968) posters
Hippies: Haight-Ashbury scene, San Francisco, 1960s
Jefferson Airplane, “White Rabbit,” at Woodstock, 1969
Beatles in New York, 1964
Columbia Records Ad, 1968 and Abbie Hoffman on cooptation
Abbie Hoffman interview: Corporations
“were taking the energy from the streets
and using it for a commercial value,
saying, „If you are in the revolution,
what you got to do is buy our records,‟
while we were saying, „You got to burn
your draft card, you can‟t go to Vietnam,
you have to come to the demonstrations
and the protests…‟ It was a conflict and
we called their process cooptation: …
They were able to turn a historic civil
clash in our society into a fad, then the
fad could be sold.”
Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool, on counterculture
“… the counterculture, as a mass movement distinct from the bohemias that
preceded it, was triggered at least as much by developments in mass culture
(particularly the arrival of The Beatles in 1964) as changes at the grass roots. Its
heroes were rock stars and rebel celebrities, millionaire performers and
employees of the culture industry; its greatest moments occurred on television, on
the radio, at rock concerts, and in movies. From a distance of thirty years, its
language and music seem anything but the authentic populist culture they yearned
so desperately to be: from contrived cursing to saintly communalism to the
embarrassingly faked Woody Guthrie accents of Bob Dylan and to the
astoundingly pretentious works of groups like Iron Butterfly and The Doors, the
relics of the counterculture reek of affectation and phoniness, the leisure-dreams
of white suburban children like those who made up so much of the Grateful
Dead's audience throughout the 1970s and 1980s.”
The Vientam War
• 1964 August The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution - authorized Johnson to use military
force in Vietnam
• 1968 January-June The Tet Offenstive - tactical defeat for the North Vietnamese
but moral defeat for the US
• 1973 The Paris Peace Accords - ended US military involvement
Hearts and Minds, 1974
Vietnam War map
McNamara on the Gulf of Tonkin, 1964
US News Reports of the Tet Offensive
Eddie Adams's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing
Nguyễn Văn Lém, a Viet Cong officer.
My Lai massacre, March 1968 news photo
US Soldier‟s testimony, Dellums Committee Hearings on War Crimes in
Vietnam
BARNES: I think that most of the high cmnd knew about the things that were
happening and the " reasons that they didn't say too much about it or nothing was
processed through about it was that the main thing was that the object was to go into
Vnam, and the object was to most of the high cmnd, it was to kill. That was the
thing. To come in and - I don't mean destroy in the sense of the word which is what
they did really, but if a couple of civilians got in the way, "Thats not a big matter.
Thats the price of war." Thats how they considered it. If they heard of mass murders
usually it was an overpass, and it didn't have too much effect, that type of thing.
They didn't care about it. They didn't have no feelings for the people at all.
AntiWar Protests in San Fransco - from pickets to violence
Kent State, May 4, 1970 - National Guard
John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, a fourteen-year-old runaway,
kneeling over the dead or dying body of Jeffrey Miller, shot in the mouth by an unknown Ohio National
Guardsman. 70 - Student Killed
San Jose State protest after the Kent State incident
Jane Fonda in North Vietnam in 1972
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho signing the Paris
Peace Accords in 1973
From the 1970s to the 2000s
• Watergate
• Recession and Oil Crisis
• New Conservatism
• End of the Cold War
• The Culture Wars
• Globalization
• “War on Terror”
Watergate Chronology
1964 Free Speech movement at Berkeley
Freedom Summer
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
1965 Malcolm X assasinated
1966 National Organization for Women organized
Black Panther Party Founded
1968 Tet offensive
Martin Luther King, Jr. assasinated
Democratic National Convention in Chicago
Richard Nixon elected president
Miss America Beauty Pageant protest
1969 Stonewall riot
“Indians of All Nations” occupy Alcatraz island
1970 The Ohio National Guard kills four students at Kent State
1972 Congress passes Equal Rights Amendment (not ratified by states)
Break-in at the National Democratic Convention
1973 Paris peace agreement ends war in Vietnam for America
1974 President Nixon resigns
National security blanket
Nixon’s “I’m not a crook speech”
speec
h
Washington Post, Sunday, November 18, 1973; Page A01
Orlando, Fla, Nov. 17 -- Declaring that "I am not a crook," President Nixon
vigorously defended his record in the Watergate case tonight and said he had
never profited from his public service.
"I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I have never
obstructed justice," Mr. Nixon said.
"People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not
a crook. I've earned everything I've got."
The Rose Mary Stretch
Not a crook
President Nixon Quits, 1974
Recession: "Remember--don't vote for anyone who would interfere with the way
we've been handling things," October 30, 1974
Support for Carter: "... One nation ... indivisible ...," February 22, 1977
Oil Crisis in the 1970s
US greatly dependent on non-remewable energy
1870, 90% of Us energy came from renewable sources--
water, wood.
1970 more than 90% came from non-renewable fossil fuels.
US uses more than 1/3 of the worlds energy resources
1973 - 1st oil crisis
OPEC, Oct. 1973--announces embargo of oil to nations
supporting Israel
Soon lines blocks long form at gas stations
1979 - 2nd oil crisis
By 1979, US importing 43% of its annual oil supply
Iran embargos US, won‟t ship oil, again long lines at the
pumps, fear of end to abundance
1973 News Report on the Oil Crisis
1973 BP Gas Commercial
Khomeini: Spiritual leader, April 8, 1979
Jimmy Carter: "It comes out fuzzy," May 21, 1978
Ronald Reagan Ad from the 1940s
[Cardboard Ronald Reagan], March 5, 1987
C.P.O. Graham Jackson mourning the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Warm Springs, Georgia, 1945
Ronald Reagan’s radio address, 1983
There's a very famous, very moving photo of Chief Petty Officer
Jackson, tears streaming down his face while he played "Going
Home" on his accordion as F. D. R.'s body was borne away by train
to Washington.
Mr. Jackson once said that as he began to play, "It seemed like every
nail and every pin in the world just stuck in me." Mr. Jackson
symbolized the grief of the Nation back in 1945, and I just wanted his
own family to know the Nation hasn't forgotten their personal grief
today, 38 years later.
As I'm sure Mr. Jackson's family would tell you, in times of sorrow the
warmth and support of a family's ties are especially important. I've
spoken a great deal about the strength and virtues of the American
family. I'd like to return to that topic today, because the family will
again be a top priority as we head into the new year—for the family is
still the basic unit of religious and moral values that hold our society
together.
Reaganomics: "The Gods are angry," April 12, 1981
Arms payoff for hostage release, November 11, 1986
"Speak softly and carry a big stick," December 21, 1986
The fall of Berlin Wall, 1989
Berlin Wall fragments, Potsdam Plaza
Reagan and the Berlin Wall
"Our bags are packed"--Weinberger on Star Wars program, January 25, 1987
"And we pray that you sinners out there will see the light," May 3, 1987
Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs collection
Early rap artist, Grandmaster Flash
Grandmaster Flash, “The Message” Lyrics
(e.fletcher, s.robinson, c.chase, m.glover -
Sugarhill records 82)
Broken glass everywhere
People pissing on the stairs, you know they just
Dont care
I cant take the smell, I cant take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away, but I couldnt get far
Cause the man with the tow-truck repossessed my car
Chorus:
Dont push me, cause Im close to the edge
Im trying not to loose my head
Its like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under
Grandmaster Flash, “The Message,”1982
2006 global hip hop poster
WTO members
Anti-World Bank demonstrator in Jakarta, Indonesia
WTO protests in Seattle, 1999
Pro-environmentalist cartoon
Anti-NAFTA Cartoon
Anti-NAFTA Cartoon - Canadian perspective
ENIAC, a 1,000 square feet computer, fastest in 1946
Internet users in 2007
New Yorker cartoon about identity on the Internet
Cartoon on post-Fordist computer economy
Google search for “Tiananmen” in France and China
“War on Terror” chronology
1988 Pan Am flight blown up over Scotland
1991 First Gulf War
1993 World Trade Center bombed
1998 US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania bombed
2001 Al Qaeda terrorists attach the US
Operation Enduring Freedom
USA Patriot Act
2002 Bush identifies “axis of evil”
2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom
Saddam Hussein Captured
2004 Supreme Court upholds the right of habeas corpus for Guantanamo
detainees
2006 Supreme Court refuses to hear appeals by 45 Guantanamo detainees
World Trade Center bombing aftermath, September 11, 2001
Slide from Powell’s presentation to the UN Security Council, February 2003
Fake Weapons of Mass Destruction Error Page
Dick Cheney interview from 1994 reintepreted by Jon Stewart
Iraq civilians killed
Cartoon about Patriot Act
U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba