Deck 5: Civil Rights

Question 1

During the late nineteenth century, the equal protection clause was

A) severely limited in scope by the Supreme Court.
B) ruled unconstitutional.
C) more strongly defended by individual states than by the federal government.
D) not implemented because of a lack of tax revenue.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

In response to the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the Supreme Court

A) upheld the act as constitutional.
B) declared the act unconstitutional because it protected against acts of private discrimination rather than state discrimination.
C) declared the act unconstitutional because Congress had violated the principles of federalism.
D) declared the act unconstitutional because Congress had violated the separation of powers.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

The Thirteenth Amendment

A) abolished slavery.
B) guaranteed voting rights for African American men.
C) guaranteed equal protection of the laws.
D) granted women the right to vote.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Women were guaranteed the right to vote with the passage of the ________ Amendment in 1920.

A) Fourteenth
B) Fifteenth
C) Nineteenth
D) Twenty-Seventh

Question 5

President ________ appointed the first President's Commission on Civil Rights in ________.

A) Lincoln; 1863
B) Wilson; 1920
C) Roosevelt; 1942
D) Truman; 1946

Question 6

What does the term Jim Crow mean?

A) northern whites who sympathized with African Americans
B) the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century
C) the system of racial segregation in the South after Reconstruction
D) white politicians from northern states who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era

Question 7

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees

A) women the right to vote.
B) equal pay for all races.
C) African American men the right to vote.
D) due process of law to all citizens of the United States.

Question 8

What was the result of the Compromise of 1877?

A) Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president.
B) Jim Crow laws were struck down in the United States.
C) It ended the Civil War.
D) It ended the slave trade.

Question 9

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 attempted to

A) protect former slaves from discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels and theaters.
B) protect African Americans against disenfranchisement in the voting booth.
C) expand the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to recent Asian immigrants.
D) protect women against disenfranchisement in the voting booth.

Question 10

The Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) that

A) racially restrictive covenants on housing could not be enforced by courts.
B) universities and professional schools had to desegregate.
C) public universities were required to admit women, but private colleges could still segregate on the basis of gender.
D) busing to integrate public schools was unconstitutional.

Question 11

Restrictive covenants were

A) state-level bans on interracial marriage.
B) policies enacted by the U.S. military during World War II that segregated soldiers on the basis of race.
C) agreements between state and local governments to provide higher levels of funding for all white schools than for all black schools.
D) contract clauses added by the seller of a home that required the buyer to agree never to sell the home to any non-Caucasian.

Question 12

________ was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

A) Woodrow Wilson
B) W. E. B. Du Bois
C) Thurgood Marshall
D) Malcolm X

Question 13

About ________ percent of southern white families owned slaves in 1840.

A) 1
B) 5
C) 25
D) 50

Question 14

What was the Seneca Falls Convention?

A) a meeting in upstate New York during the mid-nineteenth century regarding women's rights
B) an important gathering that initiated the abolitionist movement
C) the convention that wrote and debated the Fourteenth Amendment
D) the convention where leaders of the Confederacy and the Union negotiated the end of the Civil War

Question 15

The "peculiar institution" was a phrase used by southerners to describe

A) the Confederacy.
B) women's suffrage.
C) slavery.
D) the Constitution.

Question 16

The ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A) established the "separate but equal" rule.
B) upheld the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
C) declared that segregation by race was unconstitutional.
D) ruled that the equal protection clause applied only to the federal government and not to state governments.

Question 17

During the 1940s and 1950s, who was the head lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund?

A) Thurgood Marshall
B) James Byrnes
C) W. E. B. Du Bois
D) Felix Frankfurter

Question 18

The first slaves were brought to what would become the United States in ________.

A) 1619
B) 1720
C) 1763
D) 1780

Question 19

Which was the first state to allow women to vote?

A) Massachusetts
B) Wyoming
C) New York
D) California

Question 20

After World War II, which government institution first began drawing attention to the problem of racism in America?

A) the Supreme Court
B) the White House
C) Congress
D) the State Department

Question 21

________ states have enacted legislation requiring voters to show positive identification at the polls.

A) Nine
B) Eighteen
C) Twenty-seven
D) Thirty-six

Question 22

________ civil rights acts were passed during the first decade after the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

A) No
B) Three
C) Ten
D) Twenty

Question 23

In ________, the Supreme Court permitted busing children as a way of bringing about desegregation of schools.

A) 1942
B) 1947
C) 1964
D) 1971

Question 24

In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress expanded the role of the executive branch and the credibility of court orders by

A) mandating that the southern states racially gerrymander their legislative districts to ensure that more African Americans were elected to Congress.
B) creating a Department of Civil Rights.
C) requiring that federal grants-in-aid to state and local governments for education be withheld from any school system that practiced racial segregation.
D) ordering the desegregation of the military.

Question 25

One step taken toward the desegregation of public schools was

A) busing children from poor urban school districts to wealthier suburban ones.
B) opening numerous private schools and academies.
C) providing white parents with tax credits if they enrolled their children in all-black schools.
D) attracting more black students to white schools by hiring only African American teachers.

Question 26

"Pupil placement" laws

A) required that states bus children from poor urban school districts to wealthier suburban ones.
B) were ruled constitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.
C) were struck down as unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.
D) delayed desegregation efforts by authorizing school districts to place each pupil in a school according to a variety of academic, personal, and psychological considerations.

Question 27

Which of the following cities had a major racial confrontation concerning school busing in the 1970s?

A) Atlanta
B) New Orleans
C) Boston
D) Dallas

Question 28

In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No.1 (2007), the Supreme Court ruled

A) public school policies that assigned students to a school on the basis of race were unconstitutional because they discriminated against African Americans.
B) public school policies that assigned students to a school on the basis of race were unconstitutional because they discriminated against whites.
C) public school policies that assigned students to a school on the basis of race were constitutional.
D) state-imposed desegregation could only be brought about by busing children across school districts.

Question 29

The "Black Lives Matter" protests started in

A) Ferguson, Missouri.
B) Baltimore, Maryland.
C) Chicago, Illinois.
D) New York.

Question 30

Legally enforced segregation in public schools is a form of ________ discrimination.

A) de facto
B) de jure
C) stare decisis
D) suspect

Question 31

In response to the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), southern officials

A) passed laws requiring schools to desegregate.
B) centralized school boards to prevent local districts from obeying the Supreme Court.
C) praised the Court's decision.
D) enacted "pupil placement" laws, which put the burden of transferring to all-white schools on local school boards rather than parents.

Question 32

In terms of combating racism, the NAACP had the most success with ________.

A) mass marches and protests
B) civil disobedience
C) lawsuits
D) radio and television advertising

Question 33

Ten years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954), only ________ percent of black children in the Deep South attended school with white children.

A) 1
B) 20
C) 33
D) 50

Question 34

Strict scrutiny refers to

A) a set of regulations determining which schools receive grants-in-aid from the federal government.
B) a test used by the Supreme Court that places the burden of proof partially on the government and partially on the challengers to show that the law in question is unconstitutional.
C) the apportionment of voters in districts in such a way as to give unfair advantage to one racial or ethnic group or political party.
D) a test used by the Supreme Court that places the burden of proof on the government rather than on the challengers to show that the law in question is constitutional.

Question 35

Who began the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-1956?

A) Martin Luther King, Jr.
B) Orbal Faubus
C) George Wallace
D) Rosa Parks

Question 36

Why did President Dwight D. Eisenhower deploy federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957?

A) There were massive race riots as a result of a federal court order to bus white children into African American neighborhoods for schooling.
B) The governor of Arkansas mobilized the Arkansas National Guard to block the enforcement of a federal court order to integrate Little Rock Central High School.
C) Ku Klux Klan members from Little Rock were making terrorist threats against President Eisenhower if the local school district tried to integrate.
D) The local police refused to respond to calls from African American neighborhoods.

Question 37

In ________, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

A) 1942
B) 1948
C) 1954
D) 1963

Question 38

In 1965, in the seven states of the Old Confederacy covered by the Voting Rights Act (VRA), approximately ________ percent of the eligible black residents were registered to vote, compared with approximately ________ percent of the white residents.

A) 10; 85
B) 15; 80
C) 30; 75
D) 40; 70

Question 39

The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act

A) allowed the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to initiate legal action in cases of housing discrimination.
B) required banks to lend in the neighborhoods in which they do business.
C) outlawed the practice of banks offering subprime mortgage products with higher interest rates to home buyers on the basis of race.
D) mandated that all property tax revenue would remain within local communities.

Question 40

In Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Supreme Court

A) struck down Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
B) upheld the constitutionality of state laws banning interracial marriage.
C) struck down state laws banning interracial marriage.
D) upheld the constitutionality of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Question 41

Why did the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) rely primarily on the courts to press for black political rights in its early years?

A) The NAACP was composed of five members and, due to the fact that they were all lawyers, the strategy of litigation seemed to be the most logical choice.
B) The NAACP was legally prohibited from contacting elected officials at the state and local levels and therefore had no other alternative than a strategy of litigation.
C) Many judges were African American and therefore more sympathetic than legislators to the claims of the NAACP.
D) The northern African American vote was too small to bring about policy change at the legislative level, so the NAACP chose a strategy of litigation.

Question 42

What best explains the increased attention the federal government paid to the problem of racial discrimination during the 1940s?

A) The NAACP had successfully lobbied members of Congress for better federal legislation against disenfranchisement.
B) Northern migration of African Americans increased their voting strength.
C) The fight against the Nazis challenged the assumptions of white supremacy.
D) The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment forced the federal government to act on racial discrimination.

Question 43

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court determined that

A) Dred Scott was a free citizen.
B) slaves were not citizens of the United States.
C) African Americans had minimal process rights under the U.S. Constitution.
D) the Missouri Compromise was constitutional in all aspects.

Question 44

After the Civil War, which amendments to the U.S. Constitution offered African Americans the most hope for achieving full citizenship rights?

A) the First, Second, and Third amendments
B) the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh amendments
C) the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments
D) the Twentieth, Twenty-First, and Twenty-Second amendments

Question 45

What occurs when electoral districts are drawn so that one group or party is unfairly advantaged?

A) disenfranchisement
B) gerrymandering
C) logrolling
D) redlining

Question 46

In Shelby County v. Holder (2014), the Supreme Court

A) upheld the 1965 Voting Rights Act's formula for determining whether a jurisdiction needed federal preclearance before making any changes to its voting laws or practices.
B) struck down the 1965 Voting Rights Act's formula for determining whether a jurisdiction needed federal preclearance before making any changes to its voting laws or practices.
C) struck down an Arizona law requiring that individuals produce proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote.
D) struck down all state laws that required voters to show photo identification before casting a ballot.

Question 47

What is redlining?

A) the practice of bank officials refusing to make loans to people living in certain neighborhoods
B) the practice of drawing electoral districts that are biased against minority groups
C) denying someone the right to vote by drawing a red line across his or her name in the voter registry
D) the practice of drawing school district boundaries in a way that ensures segregated schools

Question 48

The Supreme Court justified its decision to strike down the use of white primaries in the South by claiming that

A) the practice infringed on Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce.
B) parties were "an agency of the State," and therefore any practice of discrimination against blacks was a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment.
C) separate but equal elections violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
D) only Congress had the authority to conduct primaries under the Constitution.

Question 49

The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was controversial because it called for

A) the right to vote for African Americans.
B) a constitutional amendment to outlaw the production and sale of alcohol.
C) an end to the slave trade.
D) the right to vote for women.

Question 50

Which statement best describes the path to women's suffrage in the United States?

A) Some states granted women the right to vote first, and then a constitutional amendment extended the right to all women in the United States.
B) A constitutional amendment gave all women the right to vote, and then each state passed laws granting women the right to vote.
C) During the fall of 1920, every state passed a law granting women the right to vote, and then the U.S. Constitution was amended to give women the right to vote.
D) The Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting women's suffrage were unconstitutional, and all states were forced to give women the right to vote.

Question 51

The Seneca Falls Convention was significant because it

A) marked the starting point of the abolitionist movement.
B) marked the starting point of the modern women's movement.
C) marked the end of the modern women's movement.
D) led to the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments.

Question 52

Which statement about the Reconstruction era is correct?

A) African Americans held no state-level political offices.
B) The Constitution was amended only once.
C) African American voters supported the Republican Party
D) African American voters supported the Democratic Party.

Question 53

Observers claim that the Supreme Court's decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007) represents the "end of the Brown era" because it

A) explicitly overturned the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
B) rejected the precedent that strict scrutiny should be applied in cases about racial discrimination.
C) confirmed the precedent that strict scrutiny should be applied in cases about racial discrimination.
D) declared one of the few public strategies left to promote racial integration unconstitutional.

Question 54

The Reconstruction era came to an end because

A) African Americans had been granted full social, political, and economic equality in the South.
B) northern Republicans agreed to end federal occupation of the South if southern Democrats allowed Rutherford B. Hayes to become president.
C) the Supreme Court ruled that federal troops could not be stationed in southern states.
D) in 1876, state legislatures in the South passed laws forcing the federal government to remove all troops immediately.

Question 55

President Harry S. Truman was moved to bring the problem of racial discrimination to the nation's attention by

A) the southern states' strategy of "massive resistance" to federal attempts at desegregation.
B) the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.
C) the 1963 March on Washington.
D) revelations of Nazi racial atrocities during World War II.

Question 56

Which government institution would most likely handle a complaint about a case of workplace discrimination?

A) Supreme Court
B) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
C) Department of Commerce
D) Executive Office of the President

Question 57

Congress strengthened voting rights in 1975 by

A) making literacy tests mandatory for presidential elections.
B) making literacy tests illegal and mandating bilingual ballots or other assistance for non-English-speaking Americans.
C) giving 18-year-olds the right to vote.
D) making poll taxes illegal.

Question 58

Suffragists called the Statue of Liberty "the greatest hypocrisy of the nineteenth century" because

A) it was in New York-a state that had prohibited women from owning property throughout its history.
B) "liberty" had historically been represented as a male figure, not a female figure.
C) it was supposed to represent "liberty," yet women could not vote in the United States.
D) the statue wore clothes that were inappropriate for women during the time.

Question 59

The Supreme Court began to change its position on racial discrimination in the ________.

A) 1890s
B) 1910s
C) 1930s
D) 1960s

Question 60

Desegregating schools in northern states proved to be difficult because

A) very few minorities lived in the North.
B) segregation in the North was generally de facto and hard to prove.
C) discrimination in the South was so visible and pervasive that little attention had been given to other parts of the country.
D) there was less tax revenue to fund integration efforts in the North.

Question 61

Which of the following best summarizes the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954)?

A) Racially segregated schools can never be equal.
B) States that segregate must spend more money to make African American schools equal.
C) States that segregate must spend less money on all-white schools in order to make them equal with African American schools.
D) School segregation is unethical but does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.

Question 62

It was during the tenure of Chief Justice ________ that the Supreme Court established gender discrimination as a highly visible area of civil rights law.

A) Taft
B) Warren
C) Burger
D) Rehnquist

Question 63

Which of the following statements about voter identification (ID) laws is accurate?

A) More than 30 states have enacted legislation requiring voters to show positive identification at the polls.
B) Nine states require prospective voters to show an official photo ID before they are allowed to cast a ballot.
C) The Supreme Court has never upheld the constitutionality of a state-level voter ID law.
D) Republicans generally oppose voter ID laws.

Question 64

In the years before Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court

A) overturned forms of segregation using the separate but equal rule.
B) had struck down forms of segregation through the commerce clause, but not the Fourteenth Amendment.
C) consistently refused to strike down any form of segregation.
D) had refused to hear cases on segregation.

Question 65

________ once said, "Your denial of my citizen's right to vote is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial of my peers as an offender against law."

A) Dred Scott
B) Elizabeth Cady Stanton
C) Lucretia Mott
D) Susan B. Anthony

Question 66

Which of the following is true of Brown v. Board of Education (1954)?

A) The Court outlawed de facto segregation.
B) The Court outlawed de jure segregation.
C) The Court allowed school systems to desegregate "with all deliberate speed."
D) The Court upheld the separate but equal doctrine.

Question 67

The Fair Housing Act of 1968

A) had little effect on housing segregation because its enforcement mechanisms were very weak.
B) had little effect on housing segregation because it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1969.
C) dramatically increased housing segregation.
D) dramatically reduced housing segregation.

Question 68

The ________ forbade workplace discrimination based on race.

A) Fourteenth Amendment
B) Civil Rights Act of 1875
C) Civil Rights Act of 1964
D) Nineteenth Amendment

Question 69

What level of scrutiny do federal judges apply to cases involving gender discrimination?

A) strict scrutiny
B) intermediate scrutiny
C) loose scrutiny
D) stare decisis

Question 70

Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,

A) the United States closed its border with Mexico.
B) the United States granted "most favored nation" trade status to Mexico.
C) the United States set strict limits on the number of immigrants who were allowed to settle from Mexico each year.
D) Mexico ceded to the U.S. territory that now comprises Arizona, California, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado, Nevada, and Utah.

Question 71

Which of the following statements best describes the effect of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on voter registration in southern states?

A) A smaller percentage of African Americans registered to vote in southern states after passage of the Voting Rights Act.
B) A much larger percentage of whites registered to vote in southern states after passage of the Voting Rights Act.
C) The percentage of African Americans registering to vote did not change after passage of the Voting Rights Act.
D) The gap between the percentage of whites registering to vote and the percentage of African Americans registering to vote declined significantly after passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Question 72

Which of the following was used as a way to limit the electoral influence of African Americans?

A) literacy tests
B) restrictive covenants
C) open primaries
D) closed primaries

Question 73

Which of the following statements about the Supreme Court's rulings on hiring, promotion, and training programs is most accurate?

A) The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission can only initiate employment discrimination suits when there is clear evidence of de jure discrimination.
B) The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission can only initiate employment discrimination suits when there is clear evidence of de facto discrimination.
C) The federal government has no constitutional authority to regulate hiring, promotion, and training programs.
D) The burden of justification is on employers to show that their job requirements are a "business necessity" that bears "a demonstrable relationship to successful performance."

Question 74

Under the "rational basis test,"

A) government classification schemes are enacted only when a cost-benefit analysis proves that they will help more people than they will hurt.
B) courts determine whether to uphold government policies based on a "rational" interpretation of the Constitution.
C) courts use a points-based formula for calculating whether the plaintiff or the government bears the burden of proof.
D) the burden of proof is on the plaintiff to show that there is no rational basis, whatsoever, for the government's rules.

Question 75

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

A) made discrimination by state governments illegal, but permitted discrimination by private employers.
B) ended some of the most blatant forms of discrimination across the country.
C) did not permit the Justice Department to implement federal court orders to desegregate schools.
D) was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy.

Question 76

The American experience with civil rights suggests which of the following things about political change in the United States?

A) Political change can only be achieved when citizens bypass the courts and the Congress entirely.
B) The courts are far more powerful than the Congress and therefore can advance political change on their own.
C) The Congress is far more powerful than the courts and therefore can advance political change on its own.
D) Congress needs constitutional authority to act from the courts, and the courts need legislative assistance to implement court orders and focus political support.

Question 77

The Equal Rights Amendment failed to pass because it

A) won approval in the House but not in the Senate.
B) won approval in the Senate but not in the House.
C) was not ratified by the necessary 38 states.
D) was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan.

Question 78

Which of the following statements best describes the number of peaceful civil rights demonstrations during the 1950s and 1960s?

A) Most demonstrations were held in the mid-1950s, and the number of demonstrations declined throughout the 1960s.
B) There were almost no demonstrations prior to 1968.
C) The number of demonstrations grew in the early 1960s and peaked in 1965.
D) There were almost no demonstrations during the 1950s and 1960s.

Question 79

The attempt to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment was an important struggle for ________.

A) Native Americans
B) women
C) gays and lesbians
D) Latinos

Question 80

Strict scrutiny is the level of judicial review that federal judges give to all cases that involve ________ classifications.

A) racial
B) gender
C) age
D) ability