Complete all three parts of this exam. It is an open book exam. Create one document with all three parts. Submit that document by the due date. Your final exam will be checked for originality via Turnitin.
Part 1. IDs: Choose 5 to write on. Remember who, what, when, where, why.
Containment
The Suez Crisis, 1956
Little Rock Nine
The Berlin Wall
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Great Society
1968 Democratic National Convention
Reaganomics
Operation Desert Storm
The Great Recession
Part 2. General Essay: Choose one of the two essays below to write on.
1. Choose either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, and then identify and analyze 3 significant ways that party (and its guiding ideology) has changed since 1945. At least one of those changes should be in the realm of domestic policy, and at least one in foreign policy. Your answer should be attentive to major events – wars, elections, legislation, domestic crises, etc. – that contributed to the evolution of the party you are examining. In your conclusion, address these broader questions: Have the changes in the party been more accentual or revolutionary? Is there one underlying causal factor responsible for the party’s change, or was its evolution in response to multiple variables? How would you evaluate its current preparedness to handle the many responsibilities of governing the United States in the 21st century?
OR
2. Beginning from the 1950s and into the present day, what do you make of our country’s war record? Can you perceive any themes or trends in this country’s many and various decisions to go to war with other peoples? In other words, do you believe our national interests (those things for which we will fight) have remained largely the same since the 1950s, or have America’s reasons for war shifted over time? Finally, if you had to come down one way or another, are America’s reasons for war more often right or wrong? (And how you define right and wrong, I leave up to you ☺)
Part 3. Anne Moody Essay: Everyone writes on this essay question
When Anne Moody travelled with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Washington, and heard him deliver his “I Have a Dream Speech,” she had a very different reaction at the time than how most Americans remember that speech today. As she wrote in her autobiography, she was disappointed by some of the sentiments in King’s speech, and lamented the fact that she and the Civil Rights Movement “had dreamers instead of leaders leading us.” How do you explain Anne Moody’s reaction, and what does it tell us about how and why some African Americans turned to the Black Power Movement as an alternative to King’s message of non-violence?
