UNIT 13: CONTEMPORARY AMERICA STUDY GUIDE
CHAPTER 41: THE STORMY SIXTIES
Kennedy's "New Frontier" Spirit
Know: John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Robert McNamara, Peace Corps
1. What was new about the New Frontier?
The New Frontier at Home
2. Assess the effectiveness of New Frontier domestic policies.
Rumblings in Europe
Know: Berlin Wall, Common Market, Trade Expansion Act, Charles de Gaulle
3. Describe Kennedy's relationship with Western Europe.
Foreign Flare-ups and "Flexible Response"
Know: Congo, Laos, Robert McNamara, Flexible Response
4. Why did Kennedy believe that a policy of flexible response could better meet the foreign problems of the 1960s?
Stepping into the Vietnam Quagmire
Know: Ngo Dinh Diem, Viet Cong
5. Why was it difficult to use flexible response to deal with the situation in South Vietnam?
Cuban Confrontations
Know: Alliance for Progress, Fidel Castro, Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, Nikita Khrushchev, Quarantine, Hot Line
6. How could Cuba be considered the low and the high of Kennedy's foreign policy?
The Struggle for Civil Rights
Know: Freedom Riders, Martin Luther King Jr., SNCC, James Meredith, Birmingham, March on Washington, "I Have a Dream," Medgar Evers
7. Were Kennedy's civil rights actions more the cause of events or a reaction to events in the civil rights movement?
The Killing of Kennedy
Know: Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, Warren Commission
8. What was the reaction to Kennedy's assassination? Why?
The LBJ Brand on the Presidency
Know: Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Johnson Treatment, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Affirmative Action, War on Poverty, Great Society, The Other America
9. Did Johnson provide good leadership to the country in his first term? Explain.
Johnson Battles Goldwater in 1964
Know: Barry Goldwater, Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
10. Your book says that the 1964 election was a contest between distinctly different political philosophies. Explain this idea?
The Great Society Congress
Know: Department of Housing and Urban Development, Medicare, Medicaid, Entitlements, Immigration and Nationality Act, Head Start
11. In what ways could it be said that 1964-68 marked some of the most liberal years for government in American history?
The Black Revolution Explodes
Know: Voting Rights Act of 1965, The Twenty-fourth Amendment, Freedom Summer, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Selma
12. What forward steps toward voting for African-Americans were made in the mid-1960s?
Black Power
Know: Watts, Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammed, Black Panthers, Stokely Carmichael
13. Why did African-Americans turn from non-violence in the late 1960s?
Combatting Communism in Two Hemispheres
Know: Operation Rolling Thunder, Guerrilla Warfare
14. Why did President Johnson increase America's military presence in Vietnam?
Vietnam Vexations
Know: Six-Day War, Teach-ins, William Fulbright, Credibility Gap, Cointelpro
15. Describe the negative consequences of the Vietnam War.
Vietnam Topples Johnson
Know: Tet Offensive, Eugene McCarthy
16. Why did President Johnson decide not to run for re-election in 1968?
The Presidential Sweepstakes of 1968
Know: Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, Democratic Convention, Richard Nixon, George Wallace
17. Why was the 1968 presidential election an interesting one?
Victory for Nixon
18. "Nixon had received no clear mandate to do anything [in the 1968 election]." Explain.
The Obituary of Lyndon Johnson
19. It could be said that few presidents were as great a success or as great a failure as Lyndon Johnson. Assess.
The Cultural Upheaval of the 1960s
Know: Berkeley, Sexual Revolution, Stonewall Inn, Students for a Democratic Society, LSD
20. Why did a 1960s counterculture develop and how was it expressed?
Varying Viewpoints: The Sixties: Constructive or Destructive?
21. How do you answer the question in the title of this section? Explain.
CHAPTER 42: THE STALEMATED SEVENTIES
The Economy Stagnates in the 1970s
Know: Productivity, Inflation
22. Describe the economic problems faced by the United States in the 1970s.
Nixon "Vietnamizes" the War
Know: Liberal Establishment, Vietnamization, Silent Majority, Nattering Nabobs of Negativism, My Lai
23. What was President Nixon’s plan for getting the US out of Vietnam?
Cambodianizing the Vietnam War
Know: Cambodia, Kent State University, Twenty-sixth Amendment, Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg
24. What developments caused many people to become even more critical of the war in 1970 and 1971?
Nixon's Detente with Beijing (Peking) and Moscow
Know: Henry Kissinger, Détente, ABM Treaty, SALT Treaty, MIRVs
25. What was the “China Card,” and how did Nixon use it?
A New Team on the Supreme Bench
Know: Judicial Activism, Miranda, Engel v. Vitale, Warren Berger, Roe v. Wade
26. Why was Nixon unhappy with the Supreme Court?
Nixon on the Home Front
Know: Aid the Families with Dependent Children, Reverse Discrimination, Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Health and Safety Administration, Silent Spring, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, Southern Strategy
27. How conservative was President Nixon? Explain.
The Nixon Landslide of 1972
Know: George McGovern
28. How did the situation in Vietnam help Nixon win a landslide in the 1972 election?
Bombing North Vietnam to the Peace Table
29. "The shaky `peace' was in reality little more than a thinly disguised American retreat." Explain.
Watergate Woes
Know: Watergate, CREEP, Enemies List, Plumbers, John Dean
30. Of what wrongdoing was the Nixon administration guilty?
The Great Tape Controversy
Know: Executive Privilege, Spiro Agnew, Gerald Ford, Saturday Night Massacre
31. Why were the Watergate tapes important?
The Secret Bombing of Cambodia and the War Powers Act
Know: Pol Pot, War Powers Act
32. What did Cambodia have to do with the War Powers Act?
The Arab Oil Embargo and the Energy Crisis
Know: OPEC
33. Explain the cause and effects of the Arab Oil Embargo.
The Unmaking of a President
34. Why did Nixon resign when he did?
The First Unelected President
35. Did President do the right thing when he pardoned Nixon? Explain.
Defeat in Vietnam
36. What was the cost (not in just money) of the Vietnam War?
The Bicentennial Campaign and the Carter Victory
Know: Jimmy Carter
37. Why did Jimmy Carter win the presidency in 1976?
Carter's Humanitarian Diplomacy
Know: Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, Camp David Accords
38. Describe Carter's foreign policy achievements.
Makers of America: The Vietnamese
39. What difficulties did Vietnamese immigrants experience when they came to America?
Carter Tackles the Ailing Economy
40. What was wrong with the economy in the late 1970s?
Carter's Energy Woes
Know: Shah of Iran
41. How did Carter react to the renewed energy crisis?
Foreign Affairs and the Iranian Imbroglio
Know: Leonid Brezhnev, SALT II, Ayatollah Khomeini, Afghanistan
42. What foreign policy problems plagued the second half of Carter's presidency?
The Iranian Hostage Humiliation
Know: Hostage Crisis
43. What steps did President Carter take to try and bring the hostages home?
CHAPTER 43 & 44: THE RESURGENCE OF CONSERVATISM & THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FACE A NEW CENTURY
It is unlikely that there will be more than 1 or 2 questions on the AP exam from the time period in these chapters. It is not necessary that you read them thoroughly. However you should be aware of the basic trends. For each of 5 of the 7 topics listed below, write a paragraph (75-100 words) explaining any trends from 1980-1999. Your observations will be the basis of our class discussion on the day we cover these decades.
1) Business and the economy
2) Politics and government (who has power and how they get and use it)
3) Foreign policy
4) Domestic policy
5) Demographics (what the American people look like and where they live)
6) Culture and daily life
7) Minorities and women