MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY
PROF. FRIEDHEIM
| HISTORY
250/ FALL 1999
MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY PROF. FRIEDHEIM |
|
Silent March, Harlem, 1917 to Protest Race Murders in East St. Louis (NYPL-Schomburg)
OVERVIEW | ASSIGNMENTS | READING GUIDE
COMPUTER LAB | LINKS | EXAMS AND PAPERS
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READING GUIDE |
Go To:
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 - "The Trans-Mississippi West", Chapter 17 in The Enduring Vision.
Discussion questions
On page 222 the authors argue that "Reeducation represented as determined an assault on the Native American World as the slaughter of the buffalo, the seizure of hunting land and military repression". Explain. Do you agree?
On page 224, the authors assert that "the building and financing of the railroads had enormous consequences for the U.S." What were the consequences?
What were the changing patterns of land use and ownership in the Trans-Mississippi West during this period? What prompted the changes?
What was the Grange's political, economic and social program? What factors led to the formation of the Grange at this time and place?
Who were the winners and losers on the West's mining, ranching and farming frontiers? Explain.
On page 237 the authors claim that "the frontier myth obscured the complex links between the settlement of the frontier and the emergence of the U.S. as a major industrial nation." What were those "complex links" and how were they "obscured"?
After the Civil War, why and how did the U.S. government remove Indians from their traditional lands in the trans-Mississippi West? What were the range of responses by different tribes to the government's attempts to remove them?
What do you consider the most important changes in the trans-Mississippi West during this period?
Quiz Identifications/questions:
You will have a ten question multiple choice quiz based on the following questions and identifications:
IDENTIFY: Little Big Horn, George Armstrong Custer, Carlisle School, Richard H. Pratt, Ghost Dance, Wovoka, Wounded Knee, Homestead Act of 1862, The Grange, Dawes Act, William F. " Buffalo Bill" Cody, Munn v. Illinois. Promontory Point.
Why did Plains Indians traditionally follow buffalo migration?
What was Custer's real purpose in moving his troops into the Black Hills?
What did Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlyle School, mean when he said "kill the Indian, save the man"?
What ethnic and racial groups of laborers built the transcontinental railroads?
Who was the biggest landholder in the West (e.g. railroads, bankers, gold miners, cattle barons, etc.)?
What was the relationship of most farmers in the trans-Mississippi West to the market economy? Did they produce cash crops? Or were they independent, self sufficient pioneers mainly growing food for their own consumption? Or were they owners of big plantations?
What was the attitude of most western state governments to women's suffrage?
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 - "The Rise of industrial America", Chapter 18 in the Enduring Vision
Discussion questions
On page 234, the authors assert that "railroad development...reflected an enormous paradox" between their bigness, on the one hand, and their instability, on the other. Explain why the railroads tended toward both bigness and instability.
How did railroad expansion spur the tremendous surge in industrialization?
Why did industrialization develop much more slowly in the South than the North? What factors explain the development of the southern mill economy?
How did the emerging corporate economy change the relationship of workers to one another, to their bosses, to the products they created, and to the tools and machines they used? What was the impact of the new factory system on the skill, organization and pace of labor? On the culture of work?
What was the impact of the late nineteenth century industrial market economy on skilled, child, female and immigrant labor? On social mobility? How do you explain the impact on labor and mobility?
What was the impact of the Sherman Anti Trust Act on business? On organized labor? Explain.
How did laboring people organize in response to the changing market economy and corporate power? What kinds of organizations did they form? Analyze the different approaches of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor.
Why do you think there were so many strikes and incidents of class violence in the late nineteenth century? Which side did government generally take in these labor-management confrontations? Give specific examples.
List what you think were the main benefits of late nineteenth century industrialization? The main costs.
Which late nineteenth century inventions do you think changed everyday life the most? Explain.
Quiz Identifications
You will have a ten question multiple choice quiz based on the following identifications:
Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, vertical and horizontal integration, Standard Oil Trust, Sherman Anti-Trust Act, Knights of Labor, American Federation of Labor, Terrence Powderly, Samuel Gompers, Haymarket Bombing, Pullman Strike, Eugene Debs, Social Darwinism.
TUESDAY,
SEPTEMBER 21 – “The
Transformation of Urban America”, Chapter
19 in the Enduring Vision
What
led to the rise of political machines and bosses in American cities in the late
19th century? How did
these machines change the political face of cities?
Who supported them? Opposed
them?
Describe
the patterns of residential mobility and segregation in late 19th
century cities. How did issues of
class, race and nationality affect these patterns?
How did changes in transportation affect the residential and commercial
face of cities?
Describe
the changing pattern of immigration to the U.S. between 1890-1920? From where did most immigrants come? Where in the U.S. did they settle? How did they negotiate the conflicting pulls of the immigrant
culture they brought here and the U.S. culture they found?
Describe
rural-urban patterns of population movement in the late 19th century.
Who came to the cities? Why?
How did they adjust to urban life?
Who
were the urban poverty reformers? What
motivated them? What assumptions
did they have about poverty and the poor? What
were their different approaches to and strategies for fighting poverty? What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of these
urban reformers?
You will have a ten
question multiple-choice quiz based on the following identifications and those
for chapter 20.
Tammany
Hall, Jacob Riis, Ellis Island, Jane Addams, Louis Sullivan, dumbbell tenements
TUESDAY,
SEPTEMBER 21 – “Daily
Life, Popular Culture and the Arts, 1860-1900”, Chapter
20 in the Enduring Vision
On
page 256, the authors write: “patterns of consumption, culture and everyday
life are a reflection of society’s class structure, and in late-nineteenth
century America this structure underwent important modification.”
What were the changing patterns of consumption (e.g. new products, new
forms of marketing and advertising, new retail chains and department stores)
during this period? What were the
modifications in class structure at this time?
What do you see as the connections between changing consumer patterns and
the shifting class structure?
How
did family life change in the latter nineteenth century?
Look at issues of family size, gender and family roles, patterns of
family consumption) and break down. Break
down your assessment of the changing family by class, race and region (e.g.
southern African-American families, mid-western farm families, urban working
class families, rural poor white families, middle class families, etc).
What
were the main changes in education during this period?
How would you explain these changes (cause and effect)? How – and why -- did public education become an arena of
class conflict?
Assess
changing patterns of working class and immigrant leisure in 19th
century urban America. How would
you explain these changes (cause and effect)?
What
was meant by the term “new woman”? Assess
the debate in this period about the changing role of women?
What groups/classes of people were the main actors in this debate?
Look
at what the authors characterize as “tension between genteel, middle- and
upper-class culture and the noisy popular culture of the urban working class”
(p 261). What forms did these
tensions take? What caused the
tensions?
You will
have a ten question multiple-choice quiz based on the following identifications
and those for chapter 19.
Victorian
morality, “new woman”, “cult of domesticity”, Aaron Montgomery War,
Richard Warren Sears, F.W. Woolworth, Roland Macy, Marshall Field, Coney Island,
Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser.
MONDAY,
SEPTEMBER 27 – “Politics
and Expansion in an Industrializing Age”, Chapter
21 in the Enduring Vision
What
factors shaped the changing issues and electoral base of the two-party system in
Gilded Age America? Who were the
main political actors? Why was 1896
such a watershed election?
What
was at stake in the gold versus silver money wars?
What was the self-interest and motivation of the different the players?
What were the stakes? What
was at issue?
What
– and how – did western and southern farmers organize during this period? What were the issues triggering their discontent?
What were the organizational strategies and demands of farmers?
How
– and why – did race relations in the South worsen so dramatically after
Reconstruction? How were these
changing race relations reflected in southern and national political and social
relationships? How were they
reflected in the strategies and responses of key black leaders?
Why didn’t the federal government intervene to stop lynchings and other
forms of racial violence?
Why
do you think U.S. expansion overseas accelerated so rapidly and explosively in
the 1890s? What factors spurred the
Spanish-American War? Who were its
main supporters? Opponents?
Why?
Quiz Identifications. Farmers Alliance, Populist Party, sub-treasury system, free silver, William Jennings Bryan, “solid South”, Plessy v. Ferguson, Teller and Platt Amendments, “Open Door”, The Maine, Anti-Imperialist League, Emilio Aguinaldo, Yellow Journalism, William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, Booker T. Washington.
MONDAY,
OCTOBER 4 – “The
Progressive Era”, Chapter 21 in the Enduring Vision
Who were the Progressive
reformers? What were their goals?
What kinds of issues and conditions were they responding to?
What were their responses to corporate domination? To factory conditions?
To urban problems? To immigration? To
women’s rights? To racism?
Why do the authors argue that
Progressivism, despite its many extensive and positive reforms, had a negative,
“repressive and strongly moralistic edge”?
Give examples of what they mean?
Compare the approaches of
Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson to Progressive reforms?
How were these approaches reflected in their policies and legislative
programs?
How did the African-American
community organize in response to segregation and racist oppression during the
Progressive era? Compare the
approaches of Washington and DuBois?
What were the goals,
strategies and constituencies of the suffrage movement?
What was the impact of the suffrage movement on “entrenched” cultural
assumptions about “women’s sphere.”
MONDAY,
OCTOBER 18 – “World
War One”, Chapter 23 in the Enduring Vision
What
was the Roosevelt Corollary? Do you
think it was justified?
Why
did Japanese-American relations deteriorate so rapidly after 1900?
Where
– and why – did the Wilson administration intervene in Latin America?
Do you feel that the intervention was justified?
How
– and why – did U.S. World War One policy move from neutrality to a
Declaration of War?
How
did the U.S. government organize the economy for war? What consequences did this government economic activism and
management have for big corporations? For
labor? For African Americans?
For women? For farmers?
On
the home front, what forms did propaganda, ideological conformity, thought
control and repression take? Why
were these repressive measures instituted?
Were they justified?
What
factors turned the military tide in favor of the allies?
What
were Wilson’s goals in fighting the war?
Did he achieve his Fourteen Points?
Why, or why not? Why was the
establishment of a League of Nations so central to his vision of post war peace?
Why didn’t the U.S. join the League?
Quiz identifications. Roosevelt Corollary, “Yellow Peril”, “White Peril”, Ozawa v. U.S., Lusitania, Zimmerman telegram, War Industries Board, George Creel, Committee on Public Information, Espionage Act of 1917, East St. Louis and Chicago race riots, Fourteen Points, League of Nations, Versailles Treaty, Henry Cabot Lodge, A. Mitchell Palmer, Red Scare.
MONDAY,
OCTOBER 25 –“The 1920s”,
Chapter 24 in The Enduring Vision
What factors powered economic growth in the 1920s?
What role did the automobile play? What
was the role of “new modes of producing, marketing and selling”?
Who prospered during in this economy?
Who did not?
What factors triggered the anti-urban,
anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic and racist backlash in the 1920s?
What did the new mass culture look like?
What factors shaped it? What
was the relationship of leisure to work in this new mass culture?
What similarities/ differences do you see between mass culture then and
now?
Compare the Garvey movement and the Harlem
Renaissance in terms of impact, reach, constituency, and ideas?
What happened to the women’s movement in the decade
after Nineteenth Amendment? Were
women in the 1920s “emancipated”? (Break
this down by class, race, etc.).
MONDAY,
NOVEMBER 1 –“Crash, Depression and New Deal”,
Chapter 25 in The Enduring Vision
What
factors led to the Great Depression? How
did the stock market crash impact on the general economy and, in particular,
business, working people and consumers?
What
was Roosevelt’s initial approach to the depression crisis when he took office?
What key legislation did he push between 1933 and 1935?
In what sense was his approach different from Hoover’s?
Were there any similarities between his policies and Hoover’s?
What
was the second New Deal? In what ways did it mark a departure from FDR’s initial
approach to the depression? What
was the key legislation of the second New Deal?
Assess
the impact of the New Deal on African Americans, women, farmers, agricultural
workers and organized labor. How
did the New Deal fashion a new political coalition?
Who was in the coalition?
How
did the New Deal change the role of government?
What was its impact on U.S. capitalism?
How would you characterize the New Deal – as reformist or
revolutionary?
Assess the New Deal’s opponents.
Quiz Identifications. Black Thursday, Bonus March, Fireside Chat, Hoovervilles, Hundred Days, Bank Holiday, National Industrial Recovery Act, Section 7a, Agricultural Adjustment Act, Tennessee Valley Authority, Social Security Act, Second New Deal, Francis E. Townsend, Huey Long, Works Progress Administration, Harry Hopkins, National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act),
MONDAY,
NOVEMBER 8 –“American Life and Culture in a Decade of Crisis at Home and
Abroad”, Chapter 25 in The
Enduring Vision
Quiz
Identifications. Walter
Reuther, John L. Lewis, Harry Bennett, Congress of Industrial Organizations,
Flint Strike, Scottsboro Boys, John Collier, Indian Reorganization Act, The Good
Neighbor Policy, Mein Kampf, Anschluss, Neville Chamberlain, Munich Pact,
Neutrality Acts, Nye Committee, Kristallnacht, the vessel St.Louis.
What
factors prompted the surge of industrial unionism from barely 3 million in 1933
to over 8 million by 1941? Who were
the key players? Who was and was not
organized?
What
did Senator Robert Wagner mean when he said that “women were the first orphan
in the storm?” Assess how the depression and the New Deal impacted on
the women’s movement, employment, unionism and family roles and life.
How
did the New Deal and the depression impact on the lives of African-Americans,
Hispanics and Native Americans?
Assess
mass culture (movies, radio, music) and literature during the depression as a
form of escapism and as a vehicle for social awareness.
What
were American attitudes, 1938-1941, toward (1) war and crisis precipitated by
the fascist powers and (2) toward the plight of the Jews in Europe?
MONDAY,
NOVEMBER 15 –“Waging Global War, 1939 - 1945”,
Chapter 27 in The Enduring Vision
Quiz identifications. Cash-and-carry, Committee to Defend America First, Wendell Willkie, Lend Lease, Atlantic Charter, Tripartite Pact, Pearl Harbor, Manhattan Project, Office of War Information, Rosie Riveter, Congress of Racial Equality, A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Operation Torch, Operation Overload, Battle of the Atlantic, Battle of the Bulge, Yalta Agreements, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
How
did the war impact on the home front, particularly the following:
The powers of the federal government, the “military-industrial
complex,” economic concentration, income distribution, farmers, workers and
the labor movement, racial minorities, women?
What
was the official U.S. reaction to the holocaust?
How do you explain the reaction?
Could
armed conflict between the U.S. and Japan have been avoided?
What were the issues dividing the nations in the 1930s and leading to
war?
Was
the U.S. justified in dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
Analyze the Grand Alliance. What factors bound it together? What were the tensions between its members? How, and why, did differences between Alliance members grow as the war progressed?
MONDAY,
NOVEMBER 22 –“Cold War America, 1945-1952”,
Chapter 28 in The Enduring Vision
Quiz
Identifications.
George Kennan, containment policy,
Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, Taft-Hartley Act, Henry Wallace, HUAC,
Alger Hiss, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Joseph R. McCarthy, McCarran Internal
Security Act, McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act.
Assess
the roots of the Cold War?
How would you characterize Truman’s foreign policy in Europe and Asia?
What was policy of containment?
What were the causes of the Korean War?
Assess
the conversion from a war to a post-war economy.
Assess
the causes, impact and legacy of domestic anti-communism.
Who were the main actors?
Who were the main winners and losers?
“America
at Midcentury”, Chapter 29 in The
Enduring Vision
Quiz
identifications.
HUAC,
Brown v. Board of Education, Earl Warren, Ho Chi Minh, Ngo Diem, Benjamin
Spock, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Little Rock Central High School,
Montgomery Bus Boycott, Army-McCarthy hearings.
What
were the origins and legacy of McCarthyism?
Assess
the status and progress of minorities and women in the 1950s.
What factors spurred the Civil Rights struggle?
Assess
the foreign policy of the Eisenhower administration, particularly the Mid-East
& SE Asia.
MONDAY,
NOVEMBER 29 –“The Turbulent Sixties”,
Chapter 30 in The Enduring Vision.
Also the handout from Who Built America.
The quiz will be based on the list
of events and key actors in the African-American struggle for freedom, equality
and power, 1945-1975
The
main discussion will be on your rankings of events and key actors in the
African-American struggle for freedom, equality and power, 1945-1975 (see list
)
Other
discussion questions:
What
was the impact of the African-American Civil Rights movement on the women’s,
national and reform movements of the 1960s?
Assess the origins and development of the Kennedy and Johnson foreign policy in Cuba, the Soviet Union and Southeast Asia (particularly Vietnam)
MONDAY,
DECEMBER 6 –“A Troubled Journey: From Port Huron to Watergate”,
Chapter 31 in The Enduring Vision.
Quiz Identifications: Port Huron, Students for a Democratic Society, Kent State,
Jackson State, Woodstock, Roe v. Wade, Tet Offensive, Henry Kissinger, Nixon
Doctrine, Eugene McCarthy, My Lai, Détente, SALT I, OPEC, Salvador Allende,
Pentagon Papers, Southern Strategy, George McGovern, CREEP, Bernstein and
Woodward, “Saturday Night Massacre.
Discussion:
Assess: