1. Runyon v. McCrary, 1976: Private schools may not discriminate on the basis of race.

The Court decided that the 1871 Civil Rights Act gave the federal government power to override private as well as state-supported racial discrimination.

2. Epperson v. Arkansas, 1968: Prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools is unconstitutional.

The Court took on the case despite the fact that the state of Arkansas had never attempted to enforce its statute against teaching evolution.

3. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954: Racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

State laws that had set up "separate but equal" schools for black students and white students were overturned, because such schools were "inherently unequal," and so violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

4. Meyer v. Nebraska, 1923: Prohibiting the teaching of foreign languages in grade schools is unconstitutional.

A Nebraska law had prohibited the teaching (before high school) of any subject to any child in any language other than English. The plaintiff was a parochial school teacher who had taught German to one of his students.

5. Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963: Requiring the reading of Bible verses in public school classrooms is unconstitutional.

A Pennsylvania State law had required public schools to open each day with a reading, without comment, of 10 Bible verses.

6. Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, 1925: Parents may send their children to private schools rather than public schools.

The State of Oregon had been on the verge of forcing all children to attend public schools in order to encourage immigrants' assimilation.

7. Engel v. Vitale, 1962: Requiring the recitation in public schools of an official school prayer is unconstitutional.

A Hyde Park, New York, school had opened each school day with a prayer addressed "Almighty God," which the Court held violated the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment (extended to the individual states by the 14th Amendment).

8. United States v. Virginia, 1996: Excluding either gender from any public school is unconstitutional.

The Court ruled that the Virginia Military Institute had not demonstrated a persuasive reason for excluding women, and so violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

9. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1972: Parents may refuse to send their children to school after 8th grade if it violates their religious beliefs.

Amish parents had taken their children out of school after 8th grade, for religious reasons, and state authorities had attempted to force them to attend high school.

10. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 1969: Student protest is protected by 1st Amendment freedom of speech.

The protest in question was students' wearing of black armbands with peace symbols during the Vietnam War.

1. Rubella
Rubella, otherwise known as German measles, causes only very mild symptoms in most people with healthy immune systems (largely a rash and swollen glands in the neck), but can be fatal or crippling to unborn children. If a woman contracts rubella while pregnant, there is, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "an 80% chance that her baby will be born deaf or blind, with a damaged heart or small brain, or mentally retarded." Miscarriage is also possible.

This 1970 image promotes vaccination against the disease, which became available in 1969. In 1964-1965, during a major rubella outbreak, more than 20,000 children were born with disorders from the disease.

2. Diphtheria
Diphtheria, a highly-contagious bacterial disease, causes flu-like symptoms—but, left untreated, the CDC says that it "produces a toxin that can cause serious complications such as heart failure or paralysis" and kills one out of 10 of its victims.

In the 1920s, diphtheria killed approximately 15,000 victims a year, many of them children. With widespread use of the vaccine, the disease is now very rare in the U.S.. This poster dates from 1941.

3. Smallpox
The highly contagious smallpox virus causes fever, headache, vomiting, and a severe skin rash, killing many of its victims and scarring survivors. Today, smallpox cases are virtually unknown, due to a global vaccination campaign that has its roots centuries ago—the English physician Edward Jenner first vaccinated against smallpox at the end of the 18th century.

In 1809, Massachusetts became the first state to require vaccination. Vaccinations for smallpox in the U.S. continued until 1972. This image is from 1941, eight years before the last recorded case in the country.

4. Polio
The polio virus can cause symptoms ranging from those of the common cold to severe muscle pain followed by partial paralysis (often in the legs, but sometimes in other muscles). According to the CDC, a 1916 outbreak killed 6,000 people and paralyzed 27,000 others, while the National Network for Immunization Information reports that an epidemic in 1952 affected 21,000 people.

Vaccines for polio came out in 1955 and 1961; the last U.S.-originating case occurred in 1979, and the disease no longer exists in the western hemisphere. This poster is from 1963, and features "Wellbee," a CDC mascot used to promote vaccination and public health.

1. What U.S. census data does this map portray?

a. The 1930 relative concentration of "totally unemployed persons registered" in each state.
b. The 1870 relative amount of "total capital invested (in dollars) in manufacturing" in each state.
c. The 1920 relative concentration of "manufacturing establishments" in each state.
d. The 1950 relative concentration of "employed females" in each state.

By 1920, industry had established itself as a fixture of the American economy and way of life, though its hubs remained in the Mid-Atlantic. New York continued to be a center of industry, and Illinois, with the continuing rise of Chicago as an urban industrial center, had become one, as well.

2. On May 4, 1886, a peaceful workers' rally in Chicago's Haymarket Square ended in death and confusion when a dynamite bomb was thrown into a line of approaching police officers. The Haymarket Affair received nationwide media attention and the trials of the alleged guilty parties went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Four of the accused were hung and a fifth committed suicide.

What reform was the rally supporting?

a. The removal of hazardous parts-manufacturing machinery from a McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant.
b. The passing of a minimum-wage law in the state of Illinois.
c. The paying of compensation to workers who suffered debilitating injuries from repetitive factory work.
d. The institution of the eight-hour workday.

The speakers at the Haymarket Affair supported strikers who had engaged in a May 1 nationwide walkout to support an eight-hour workday. On May 3, the first workday after the walkout, police killed two workers outside a McCormick plant during a confrontation between scabs (temporary workers hired to replace strikers) and strikers. This event provided an impetus for the Haymarket rally.

3. On February 6, 1919, more than 60,000 Seattle workers refused to work, marking the high point of a series of strikes and unrest that started in January 1919. The first labor action to effectively shut down an entire city, this strike hoped to secure what result?

a. The reinstatement of workers ousted by returning soldiers.
b. A pay raise for the city's shipyard workers.
c. The cessation of all U.S. hostilities against the Bolshevik Red Army in Russia and of any support for forces opposing the Red Army.
d. A stop to the installation of new machinery that would reduce the work force necessary in the shipyards.

During World War I, the government imposed wage controls, keeping the wages of Seattle shipyard workers down even as the shipyards expanded through war production contracts. Following the war, the workers expected a raise in their wages; when denied, approximately 25,000 members of the Metal Trades Council union alliance went on strike. A general citywide strike followed, with about 35,000 other workers striking in support of the shipyard protest. The strike officially ended on February 11—though not before touching off a widespread "Red Scare."

4. On December 30, 1936, the workers at Flint, Michigan's General Motors automobile plant began a six-week long strike to press for better working conditions. Organized by the United Auto Workers, the strike used what relatively unusual technique to make its point?

a. Strikers not only stopped working during the strike, but left town entirely, taking their families with them.
b. Strikers remained entirely silent during the strike.
c. Strikers, instead of picketing outside of the factory, occupied the factory, preventing upper management and law enforcement from entering.
d. Strikers sabotaged the factory's power supply, re-sabotaging it whenever plant management repaired it.

Known as the Flint Sit-down Strike, this strike used techniques later adapted by the civil rights movement. On December 30, workers sat down at their places and refused to leave the factory for six weeks. Provided food and supplies by supporters, the workers repelled attempts by the police to drive them out and even initiated the surprise takeover of another plant in the last two weeks of the strike.

1. 1790
families with 11 or more members
families holding 2-4 slaves
avg. slaves per slaveholding family
free colored slaveholding families
persons of Scotch nationality
persons of Hebrew nationality

2. 1840
white persons 20 years of age and over who cannot read and write
scholars in primary and common schools
female slaves 55-99 years of age
free colored females under 10 years of age
men employed in newspaper production
persons employed in navigation of canals

3. 1870
male citizens 21 years of age and over
persons born in Africa
persons 10 and over who cannot read
total state taxation
public debt of the county
youths employed in manufacturing

4. 1880
persons born in China
Indians
colored persons
farms 500-999 acres rented for fixed money rental
average hours labor per week in iron and steel manufacturing
average youths and children employed in manufacturing

5. 1900
other colored females 5-20 years of age
illiterate foreign-born alien males 21 years of age and over
native white illiterates 10 years of age and over of native parentage
farms of colored owners and tenants
capital invested in buildings used in manufacturing
salaries of salaried officials, clerks, etc. in manufacturing

6. 1910
rural population
white persons born in asian turkey
native white males of voting age of mixed parentage
Indian, Chinese, Japanese and male of all other races of voting age
persons 15-17 years of age attending school
farms of foreign-born whites

1. When Pocahontas, daughter of Algonquian chief Powhatan, met King James I in England, he chided her husband, colonist John Rolfe, for having dared to marry a royal.

True. Or at least, he is recorded as doing so in colonist Robert Beverley's 1705 The History and Present State of Virginia, today a major resource in early Virginian and colonial history. Beverley gives a full account of Pocahontas's story (though historians debate its accuracy). According to Beverly, in England,

"Pocahontas had many Honours done her by the Queen . . . she was frequently admitted to wait on her Majesty, and was publickly treated as a Prince's Daughter; she was carried to many Plays, Balls, and other publick Entertainments, and very respectfully receiv'd by all the Ladies about the Court. Upon all which Occasions she behaved her self with so much Decency, and show'd so much Grandure in her Deportment, that she made good the brightest Part of the Character Capt. Smith had given of her. In the mean while she gain'd the good Opinion of every Body, so much that the poor Gentleman her Husband had like to have been call'd to an Account for presuming to marry a Princess Royal without the King's Consent . . ."

2. Queen Lili'uokalani, forced to abdicate her throne in 1893, was the last female royal of the Hawaiian monarchy.

False. Upon coming to the throne in 1891—following the death of her brother, King Kalakaua—Queen Lili'uokalani appointed Victoria Ka'iulani Cleghorn, her half-Scottish half-Hawaiian niece, as Crown Princess of Hawaii. Born in 1875 and educated in the UK, Ka'iulani spent the latter part of her short life advocating for the restoration of her country's independence. She died of illness in 1899, at the age of 23—shortly after the U.S. officially annexed Hawaii. The Hawaiian royal line continues today, but Ka'iulani was the last princess appointed while the monarchy held political power.

3. One female sachem (an Algonquian tribal chief) took part in the bloody 1675-1676 conflict between New England colonists and Native Americans known as King Philip's War.

False. Two female sachems took part in King Philip's War. The most famous is Weetamoo, sachem of the Wampanoag tribe called the Pocassets and sister-in-law of Metacom, sachem of the Pokanoket. Called Philip by the English, Metacom was the Philip of King Philip's War and, with Weetamoo and her tribe, fought against the English. Less famous is Awashonks, female sachem of the Sakonnets. Though she originally sided with Weetamoo and Philip, she later chose to ally her tribe with the English.

4. The marriage of Japanese imperial princess Kazunomiya to the acting ruler of Japan, shogun Tokugawa Iemochi, was a direct reaction to the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa, in which American Commodore Matthew C. Perry intimidated Japan into opening its ports to the U.S.

False. The imperial family objected to the opening of Japan—which had kept its borders largely shut to outsiders for centuries—to the U.S., but the imperial princess' marriage did not take place until several years after the shogun concluded a second treaty, this one with the first U.S. Consul General to Japan, Townsend Harris. The shogunate, essentially a monarchy made up of warrior-rulers, had long held the power of government in Japan, while the traditional monarchy of the imperial family had become largely ceremonial. However, the shogunate's agreeing to open the country to Westerners in the treaties of 1854 and 1858 created a political divide between supporters of the shogun and of the emperor; Kazunomiya's marriage to Iemochi in 1862 was meant to bridge this divide.

1. What president's wife first spoke on national radio, broke precedent by inviting noticeably pregnant women to stand with...

Lou Hoover.

2. Several First Ladies were widely known as counselors to their husbands, but which one engineered her husband's run for ...

Helen Taft.

3. What First Lady was the first (and only) woman to have married a President in a White House ceremony?

Frances Cleveland.

4. What president's wife was the first to descend into a mine?

Julia Grant.

5. What president's wife was the first to invite spirit mediums to the White House to conduct séances?

Mary Lincoln.

6. Who was the first woman to see her husband being sworn in as President? A famous writer described her as "a fine, portly...

Dolley Madison.

7. Who was the first woman widowed as First Lady to be present for the inauguration of her husband's successor?

Jacqueline Kennedy.