1. The term "Jim Crow" originally referred to:

b. A popular burlesque song and theatrical dance number

White actor, singer, and dancer, Thomas D. Rice, wrote and performed "Jim Crow" (sometimes called "Jump Jim Crow" because of the first line of the chorus) in 1829 or 1830. To perform the song, Rice dressed in tattered rags and frolicked comically to impersonate a very low caricature of a black man. His performances became an overnight sensation among white audiences, and he performed all over the country. He then took his act to Britain and France, where it became an even bigger hit.

One dismayed English drama critic in the London Satirist, however, wrote: "Talent is of no country, neither is folly; and were 'Jim Crow' of English creation, we should have assuredly dealt as severely with it as we have now done with the bantling of the new world--perhaps more so, for we would have strangled it in its birth to prevent it begetting any more of its own species to offend the world's eye with their repulsive deformities. The circumstance of its being an exotic, the production of the pestilential marshes of backwood ignorance, has had no effect with us in giving our opinion. There is no concealing the fact, that Jim Crow owes its temporary triumph in this country to one of those lapses of human nature which sometimes occurs, when the senses run riot, and a sort of mental saturnalia takes place." Quoted in "Jim Crowism," Spirit of the Times (New York), February 4, 1837.

2. "Jim Crow cars" were separate railway passenger cars in which blacks were forced to travel, instead of in the passenger cars in which whites took their seats. The term "Jim Crow cars" first came into use:

a. In the mid-1830s, in Massachusetts and Connecticut

Segregated public transportation began in the North before the Civil War. In many parts of the South, a black could not travel at all, unless he or she was accompanying (or accompanied by) a white, or carrying a pass from a white person.

The inconsistencies themselves bred conflict. One Massachusetts newspaper editor wrote, "South of the Potomac, slaves ride inside of stage-coaches with their masters and mistresses—north of the Potomac they must travel on foot, in their own hired vehicles, or in the 'Jim Crow' car. … What a black man is, depends on where he is. He has no nature of his own; that depends upon his location. Moreover the contradictions that appertain to him, produce corresponding contradictions in the white man. … Seriously, very seriously—do not the incongruities, the strange anomalies, in the condition of the coloured race, clearly show there is terrible wrong somewhere? … The confusion of tongues is terrible; the confusion of ideas is worse." From "Incongruities of Slavery," The Friend, March 26, 1842, quoting the [Worcester] Massachusetts Spy.

3. Among the very first deliberate African American challengers to Jim Crow practices in public transportation was:

b. Frederick Douglass, who refused, in 1841, to give up the first-class seat on the Eastern Railroad he took when he boarded the train at Newburyport, MA, and move to the train's Jim Crow car

Douglass may not have been the very first, but he appears to have been one of the first. African Americans in New England, beginning in late 1839, along with white abolitionists, with some successes, deliberately challenged extra-legal but fairly common Jim Crow accommodations on railroads, on stagecoaches, in churches ("Negro pews"), and in schools. The persistence of Jim Crow practices in the North, however, gave Southern slave-holding whites the opportunity to reproach even abolitionist Northern whites for "not treating their free blacks better."

4. After the Civil War, the practice of formally segregating whites and blacks working in Federal Government offices was instituted during the administration of which U.S. President?

c. Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson, who had been born in Virginia, soon after he took office in 1913, began a government-wide segregation of blacks and whites in Federal workplaces, restrooms, and lunchrooms. The policy appears to have been instituted after Wilson's Georgia-born wife Ellen visited the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in Washington and "saw white and negro women working side by side." Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury, William McAdoo (also Georgia-born, and soon to be the Wilsons' son-in-law) took the hint. Shortly thereafter, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury John Skelton Williams issued an order segregating the races in the Bureau. A Washington-wide order, covering all Government offices, followed, and soon all Federal offices everywhere in the country were covered by the same order.

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. A statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. stands on a pedestal engraved with these words: "His dream liberated [. . .] from itself and began a new day of love, mutual respect, and cooperation." Which city fills in the gap?

a. Birmingham, AL

The statue stands in Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, AL. The park, which predates the civil rights movement, was used by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as a staging point for nonviolent protests in 1963. Protesters, many of them local schoolchildren, massed here to organize for sit-ins, boycotts, and marches; in the streets around the park, law enforcement officers drenched protestors with fire hoses and menaced them with dogs. Photographs of these events created some of the most enduring images of the movement.

Today, the park contains the Freedom Walk, which leads visitors past a number of statues related to the protests, including statues of the dog attacks and children in jail.

2. A 30-foot-tall black granite pinnacle encircled by spirals of steel rises from a pool of water in front of you. You're standing in front of a memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. in what city?

d. Seattle, WA

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Park in Seattle, WA, honors the memory of King with an abstract sculpture inspired by his final speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop." No specific event in the civil rights movement or in King's life took place at this location; like memorials, events, and other observances nationwide, the Memorial Park sculpture, by Seattle artist Robert Kelly, reminds the surrounding community not of specific historical events but of the assumed spirit of King's life and of the civil rights movement.

3. A well-muscled African American man, wearing only a loincloth, holds his newborn up to the sky. Which city are you visiting now?

d. Atlanta, GA

Sculptor Patrick Morelli's BEHOLD stands in the Peace Plaza in Atlanta, GA. Around the plaza range sites important in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., including his birth home and Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached as co-pastor with his father. Newer sites also surround the statue and plaza: The King Center, the location of King's tomb, founded by King's widow, Coretta Scott King, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Visitor Center, maintained by the National Park Service.

4. Surrounded by trees, you walk from one upwelling of water to the next. Each small fountain, set back into a semicircular niche of stone, commemorates a martyr to the civil rights movement. You're strolling through the King memorial in which city?

c. Washington, DC

The Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial does not yet exist, but the memorial's design has been completed and ground broken, ceremonially, on the proposed site. When finished, the envisioned four-acre memorial will be positioned along the edge of the Tidal Basin, along a sightline stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Jefferson Memorial. Difficulties and controversy have dogged the memorial's progress, including backlash when Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin was chosen to carve the nearly-three-story-tall statue of King that will anchor the memorial.

1. A steadily growing number [of women] were entering the professions of medicine, law, education, religion, and the various fields of science and engineering. More and more were occupying positions of leadership in business and government formerly held only by men.

The above textbook excerpt on feminism and the post-World-Wars women's movement dates from:
a. 1966

This excerpt comes from Harcourt and Brace's Rise of the American Nation, by Lewis Paul Todd and Merle Curti. The excerpt has a tone of optimism—more and more women, the text says, were and are entering male-dominated fields. This excerpt also reveals which career fields the 1966 authors considered previously barred to women.

2. In some ways, the position of women in American society was worse in the 1960s than it had been in the 1920s. After forty years, there was a lower percentage of women enrolled in the nation's colleges and professional schools. Women were still relegated to stereotyped occupations like nursing and teaching; there were few female lawyers and even fewer women doctors.

This textbook excerpt on feminism and the women's movement dates from:
c. 1995

This excerpt comes from HarperCollins' America Past and Present, by Robert A. Divine et al. Contrast this excerpt with that in Question 1. By 1995, HarperCollins' textbook authors see the 1960s not as a period of "steady growth" in women's rights, but instead as a time in which such opportunities decreased. What changed? Certainly not events themselves. Perhaps contrast between conditions for women in 1995 and in the 1960s made the 1960s seem backward by comparison. Perhaps the different authors interpreted the same cultural trends differently. Or perhaps authors drew upon different data to create the narratives.

3. With his great popularity and shrewd handling of Congress, Reagan soon got much of his economic program passed. The final bill included $39 billion in tax cuts and a 25 percent cut in income taxes. The results of Reaganomics, however, were not quite what the President had hoped. Spending cuts, together with high interest rates, brought inflation down, but at first the cure was painful.

This textbook excerpt on Ronald Reagan's presidency dates from:
b. 1999

This excerpt comes from Glencoe McGraw-Hill's American History: The Modern Era Since 1865, by Donald A Ritchie. Contrast this excerpt with the excerpt in Question 4. In 1999, a decade after Reagan's presidency ended, this textbook's author could look back over the whole of Reagan's term and draw conclusions about the success or failure of Reagan's policies.

4. [Reagan] promised economy in government and a balanced budget, and he committed himself to "supply-side" economics, or tax reductions to businesses to encourage capital investment. But while he planned to slash federal spending, Reagan also pledged to cut income taxes and boost the defense budget—a feat John Anderson said could only be done with mirrors.

This textbook excerpt on Ronald Reagan's presidency dates from:
b. 1982

This excerpt comes from Houghton Mifflin's A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, by Mary Beth Norton et al. Contrast this excerpt with the excerpt in Question 3. In 1982, Reagan's presidency was in its early years, and textbook writers could not yet address his term in office as a neat whole. While it needed to be described—as the inevitable conclusion of the textbook's historical narrative—the recent past resisted easy integration into the text.

(Illinois Congressman John Anderson ran against Ronald Reagan in the 1980 Republican primary.)