History- Final Exam
Class Title- 20th Century US HIS since WWII.
You Must Answer All 5 Questions!
Teachers clarification:
For number 2 and 3, I’m talking about imaginary plaques. In number 2, I’m asking you to imagine that the plaque was created right away in 1968 and was written by congregants of the church. In number 3, I want you to think about how the information we get from the plaque would change if the words stayed the same, but the people who wrote them and the time they wrote them in shifted.
HIST 114 Final, Fall 2020
This final consists of two sets of questions you must answer all of them. Your writing is important:
focus on writing clearly, with strong topic sentences, and reread your work before you submit.
However, in terms of grading, your thinking is even more important: the best answers will draw on ideas
and examples from across the decades we studied and contain specific details. Dont just write one or
two vague paragraphs – make sure you give enough information to show me that you know what youre
talking about!
You may use your textbook, any primary sources we used in class, your notes, and the online lectures to
help you compose your answers, but your work must be your own things like discussing answers with
classmates or others outside the class and/or copying materials found on the web will be considered
academic dishonesty.
The final will be due on Moodle by 11:59pm Monday, December 21. Because of the deadline for
semester grades, I cannot grant any extensions.
** If you encounter problems or are confused about the questions, I will help you. Please contact me as
soon as possible so that I can help you get on the right track.
Short Answers (4 points each):
Read these descriptions of documents, and then evaluate their usefulness. What was the authors
purpose – why did they create the source? What kind of argument would this source be useful making?
Each answer should be 1-2 sentences.
0) Sample: A flyer written by the CIA about someone who had escaped to America that was
dropped from a plane over Communist Poland in the 1950s.
Answer: The authors of this source are trying to convince people in Poland that Communism is bad
and that they should make plans to try to come to America it would not be a good source about
what Communism was actually like. It would be helpful in an argument about how Americans
understood Communism or how the American government tried to fight Communism in Europe.
1) A speech by Joseph McCarthy in which he accuses members of the American military of being
secret Communists, given in 1954.
2) A memorial plaque outside of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King was pastor,
installed by the congregation in 1968.
3) The same memorial plaque installed by the Atlanta historical commission in the 1990s as part of
the campaign to make Atlanta a civil rights tourist destination.
Essays (44 points each):
1) The move from liberalism to conservativism is the big story of the 1960s-1980s. How can we
understand the shift between LBJs Great Society and Reagans revolution?
You should be imagining a 5 paragraph essay:
Write a paragraph that compares and contrasts the LBJ and Reagan eras. How did
Americans attitudes about the role of government change? About economics?
Then, identify and discuss THREE things (people, events, ideas) that moved the nation away
from LBJ-era liberalism toward Reagan-era conservatism.
Finally, choose the idea, event, or person that you consider to be the most important factor
and, in a paragraph, explain why. Please be sure to use specific examples, dates, and other
details from our course to support your answer.
2) How has something you learned in this class an idea, a perspective, a set of facts, a way of
learning challenged your beliefs about the story of America or changed the way you
understand whats happening in the world around us now?
In 1-2 double spaced pages, describe the process of learning about and understanding this new
idea and how your perspective has shifted. What is the most important thing that you will take
with you from our class?
Extra Credit:
In our class, we spent a lot of time examining primary sources from the past: documents, photos,
political cartoons, films, and even objects. What primary sources will historians in the future use to
understand whats happening right now? Pick a single document or item that you think represents the
current moment, describe it (or enclose a photo), and explain why you chose it. Avoid the obvious, like
masks!
