Essay Questions

1. What was the impact of FDR's New Deal on American society? Explain the New Deal's Social Security Act. How did it work? Why was it designed that way? How it fall short of helping specific groups of people? Who wanted to go further than the New Deal, and how? How did World War II function as a kind of extension of the New Deal? How did the war mark the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement that bloomed after the Second World War?

2. The early Cold War period (1946-1964) is often described as a time of "affluence and anxiety." How did the United States respond to the challenge of the Soviet Union after the Second World War? Describe the Truman administration's key decisions and policies regarding perceived Soviet expansionism. How did the U.S. respond domestically to what American leaders regarded as the threat of communism? If Americans stood shoulder-to-shoulder againstCommunism, what was the consensus on what they were for? How did our assumptions about communism lead to our involvement in Vietnam?

3. Write an expansive history of "the sixties" from around 1958 through 1979. What demographic changes caused the 1960s? Start with the Civil Rights movement in the mid-1950s and describe its key events and victories through the 1960s. How did this movement influence and shape the decade of the 1960s? How did it influence student activism, the second wave feminist movement, Chicano activism, and/or other movements you see as significant? Describe each of these movements and their main contributions (obviously your answer should take this chronology into the 1970s). Why do you think the sixties ended?