Deck 21: The Freedom Movement

Question 1

What was the result of the Brown case?

A) The court declared that separate educations for blacks and whites were not equal, therefore overturning the Plessy case.
B) Blacks were once again denied a right to equal educational opportunities.
C) The Supreme Court agreed that segregation was bad, but refused to issue a decision in the matter.
D) All educational facilities, both private and public, had to be desegregated immediately.

Answer 1

The court declared that separate educations for blacks and whites were not equal, therefore overturning the Plessy case.

Question 2

What did the Brown II decision say?

A) Schools should desegregate "with all deliberate speed."
B) The Brown decision should be ignored, since it was issued without due care.
C) The president should enforce the Brown decision with all the resources at his command.
D) That African Americans should not have to tolerate segregation in any public facility.

Answer 2

Schools should desegregate "with all deliberate speed."

Question 3

What effect did the lynching of Emmett Till have on young black Americans?

A) It frightened many. Young people would have only a small role in the civil rights movement because of their fear.
B) It made many young black men turn to violence, crime, and terrorism.
C) Because Till had been a war hero, many young blacks enlisted in the army.
D) It infuriated many of them, and caused them to fight it ever happening again.

Answer 3

It infuriated many of them, and caused them to fight it ever happening again.

Question 4

What amendment did the NAACP claim southern states were violating when they lacked black graduate education facilities or refused admittance to blacks?

A) First Amendment
B) Fourteenth Amendment
C) Twenty-First Amendment
D) Tenth Amendment

Question 5

How had President Eisenhower reacted to the Brown decision?

A) He supported it wholeheartedly, and threw all his resources into desegregating the schools.
B) He fought the decision at every turn, and never assisted blacks in any way.
C) He did not seem to accept the ruling completely, refusing to provide it with the backing of his office.
D) Eisenhower was unable to enforce Brown because he was so unpopular in office.

Question 6

When Rosa Parks was arrested, how long did E. D. Nixon and Jo Ann Robinson initially plan for the boycott to last?

A) one day
B) one month
C) one year
D) ninety days

Question 7

What group was pivotal in early organizing and protest against the segregated buses in Montgomery?

A) League of Women Voters
B) Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
C) Southern Christian Leadership Conference
D) Women's Political Council

Question 8

What did the Supreme Court decide in Sweatt v. Painter?

A) Blacks had no right to be admitted to white law schools if the school had a separate facility of any kind.
B) Equality in educational facilities included a lot of intangibles. The justices were basically saying that Sweatt had to be admitted to the main law school, not simply give space for him in the basement of the university.
C) Elementary education should not be segregated, as it had a negative effect on young schoolchildren and promoted racism.
D) The NAACP had no right to fund the legal education of black students at white schools.

Question 9

What is true about school desegregation under Brown by 1960?

A) About 75% of all school systems had been desegregated.
B) Only 17 school systems had been desegregated.
C) All but a few schools in Alabama and Mississippi had been desegregated.
D) No school systems were desegregated under Brown at that time.

Question 10

How do most white Americans view the 1950s?

A) as a difficult time of repression and race violence
B) as a time of stable families, great prosperity, and few troubles
C) as a time of great musical developments by blacks
D) as a frightening time of worries about nuclear holocaust

Question 11

Which of the following is true about the Montgomery bus boycott?

A) It was a spontaneous action with little planning, history, or effort behind it.
B) The bus boycott was a result of years of activism and organization.
C) The bus boycott damaged the city's buses, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
D) It was planned, led, and organized entirely by the capable Martin Luther King Jr.

Question 12

What was not a reaction by southern whites to implementing Brown?

A) Some states closed their public schools to prevent integration.
B) Some claimed that the court decision was inspired by communism.
C) Some stated that the decision was unconstitutional, with the courts taking too much power.
D) They began a policy of massive, organized violent resistance.

Question 13

What event sparked the Montgomery bus boycott?

A) the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr.
B) the arrest of Rosa Parks, a local seamstress and civil rights activist
C) the violence against black men on the buses
D) A dispute over police brutality in the city.

Question 14

Why was Rosa Parks arrested on December 1, 1955?

A) for refusing to move from her seat for a white man
B) for sitting in the white section of the bus
C) for organizing the bus boycott
D) she was assisting with marches and demonstrations over the boycott

Question 15

Which of the following cases involved a young woman who had been denied admission to a law school because she was black?

A) State of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada
B) Sweatt v. Painter
C) Sipuel v. Oklahoma State Board of Regents
D) Brown v. Board of Education.

Question 16

What provoked whites in Money, Mississippi to lynch Emmett Till?

A) It was a breach of social etiquette - the boy called a white woman "Baby."
B) Till raped a white woman.
C) Till was married to a white woman, and had several children in the North with her. When he and his family moved into the South, they were all lynched.
D) Till attempted to register to vote.

Question 17

Who was chosen to lead the new Montgomery Improvement Association?

A) E. D. Nixon
B) Rosa Parks
C) Martin Luther King Jr.
D) Jo Ann Robinson

Question 18

How was the case of Briggs v. Elliot different from prior NAACP cases in education?

A) It involved a case of medical school education, rather than law school.
B) It was the first case to involve elementary school education, rather than graduate school education.
C) It was the first successful desegregation case.
D) It was a loss for the NAACP, and resulted in large setbacks.

Question 19

Why did the NAACP not decide to use Claudette Colvin's arrest as a test case on the buses?

A) Colvin was a white woman who tried to sit in the black section of the bus, and they wanted a black woman arrested.
B) Colvin was not considered "suitable"-she was 15, unmarried, and pregnant.
C) Colvin was too old, and in unstable health. They did not feel she would make it through an arduous trial.
D) Colvin had already had her life threatened by white supremacist groups in Montgomery and Birmingham.

Question 20

What did the case of State of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada involve?

A) It was about how the Fourteenth Amendment only applied to businesses, and did not protect against discrimination against blacks.
B) It was about how public transportation between different states could not be segregated.
C) It forced states to provide equal facilities to blacks for legal education within their borders.
D) It was about how states could not restrict entry into the parties by race or level of education.

Question 21

Which of the following is not true about King?

A) He was a gifted, eloquent speaker.
B) He inspired courage in others.
C) He combined the ideas of nonviolence and black Christian theology in a unique way to provide a justification for the movement.
D) He was the only real organizer and power behind the bus boycott.

Question 22

Why did students form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, rather than join the SCLC?

A) They thought that Martin Luther King was a communist.
B) They didn't agree with the type of leadership structure of the SCLC.
C) They thought that older people did not know anything about segregation.
D) All of these answers are correct.

Question 23

How did whites in Alabama react to the Freedom Riders passing through their state?

A) They paid little attention, since the riders were peaceful and made no trouble.
B) They reacted violently, bombing the buses and beating the riders and bystanders.
C) They generally supported the black students, as long as they were peaceful.
D) They supported the students with donations of food and money.

Question 24

How did Orville Faubus react to the Brown decision?

A) He completely accepted it. Arkansas was one of the few states to allow peaceful segregation.
B) He tried to keep blacks from attending the local high school by posting the National Guard there, and closing the schools down.
C) He basically did nothing, and was quickly voted out of office by a white supremacist mob.
D) Faubus attempted to build a new school for blacks to keep them from integrating.

Question 25

What group did Martin Luther King Jr. form to continue the civil rights struggle begun with the Montgomery bus boycott?

A) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
B) Montgomery Bus Boycott League
C) Southern Christian Leadership Council
D) Congress of Racial Equality

Question 26

What were the Freedom Rides?

A) an interracial attempt by students to ride public transportation through the South
B) an attempt to gain voting rights for blacks
C) an attempt by whites to destroy the SCLC and SNCC
D) an effort by the Kennedy administration to publicize black problems to people in the North

Question 27

What tactic did college students begin to employ beginning in 1960?

A) the protest bombing
B) the boycott
C) the musical concert benefit
D) the sit-in

Question 28

What group did students form to continue their activism?

A) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
B) Southern Christian Leadership Conference
C) Congress of Racial Equality
D) Southern Regional Congress

Question 29

What facilities did Atlanta students specifically target?

A) private, restricted clubs
B) government facilities, which should have been willing to serve all customers
C) Woolworth's lunch counters
D) swimming pools and outdoor parks

Question 30

Which of the following is true about the Civil Rights Act of 1957?

A) The act outlawed poll taxes and literacy tests.
B) The act created a commission to study infringements on black voting.
C) The act provided an enforcement mechanism for school systems that refused to integrate.
D) The act outlawed all discrimination in employment.

Question 31

Who was the "most dangerous man in America," at one point, according to J. Edgar Hoover?

A) Bayard Rustin
B) Martin Luther King Jr.
C) W. E. B. Du Bois
D) Marcus Garvey

Question 32

Why did the SCLC object to the tactics and methods of the SNCC?

A) They thought that SNCC was too conservative in accepting segregation.
B) They wanted the students to work solely on issues for younger children.
C) They thought the SNCC was too confrontational and disrupted race relations.
D) They wanted less control of the movement.

Question 33

What is true about the sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina in February of 1960?

A) It was a completely spontaneous effort, with little planning beforehand.
B) It was the first time the sit-in tactic had been used.
C) It sparked a wave of similar activities, and great support from the student community.
D) It was a complete failure generally..

Question 34

What adult proved very influential in the formation of SNCC?

A) Martin Luther King Jr.
B) Ella Baker
C) Bayard Rustin
D) Jackie Robinson

Question 35

How did the boycott affect the bus system?

A) It did not-whites were able to compensate by riding the buses more.
B) It had a dramatic effect-it reduced their business by 65%.
C) It affected the companies slightly, but it was the lawsuit that was the most effective.
D) The marches and protests completely disrupted the bus routes.

Question 36

What was not a goal of the SCLC?

A) training black activists in nonviolent protest
B) helping to get voting rights for blacks
C) raising money for efforts across the country
D) working to spread the ideas of all religions

Question 37

What group of Montgomerians was pivotal to the effectiveness of the boycott?

A) The women of the city were pivotal, only because they persuaded the men not to ride the buses.
B) The women of the city, who funded and organized the boycott, were pivotal.
C) Martin Luther King was really the only reason the boycott succeeded.
D) The ministers, who were united behind the cause and took great personal risks, were pivotal.

Question 38

What did the Supreme Court decide in the case of Browder v. Gayle?

A) Whites had a right to segregate anything they wanted to under the Fourteenth Amendment.
B) Blacks had no right to sue a private facility for discrimination.
C) Segregation in public transportation was unconstitutional.
D) Law schools had to be open to both blacks and whites.

Question 39

What group began to come to the forefront of the civil rights movement beginning in 1960?

A) older blacks
B) very poor agricultural workers
C) college students
D) northern whites

Question 40

How did many local residents of the southern towns support the students' efforts?

A) Southerners never supported black efforts.
B) Many southerners moved North at this time as a protest against the South.
C) They supported them through economic boycotts of offending businesses.
D) They supported them by donating substantial amounts of money to black colleges.

Question 41

What was the result of the Freedom Rides?

A) All of the students made it successfully to New Orleans, although they endured violence along the way.
B) The remaining students who persevered through Alabama were promptly arrested in Mississippi.
C) The students were able to get the buses desegregated after some legal effort.
D) The students decided not to continue, as they had been frightened so badly.

Question 42

What party did Freedom Summer activists create to challenge the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party?

A) Black Power Party
B) True Democratic Party
C) Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
D) Racial Freedom Party

Question 43

What did King and the SCLC finally do to provoke "Bull" Connor to violence in Birmingham?

A) They resorted to violence themselves.
B) They decided to use children in the protest marches.
C) They turned out in great numbers to march.
D) The protesters appeared at a KKK rally.

Question 44

Who did many African Americans initially support in the election of 1960?

A) John F. Kennedy
B) Richard Nixon
C) George Wallace
D) Lyndon B. Johnson

Question 45

How did Albany Sheriff Laurie Pritchett respond when activists tried to overflow the jails?

A) He reacted violently, using his police force to beat and murder black activists.
B) He completely ignored them, refusing to send his officers out on the streets that day.
C) He quickly found more space in surrounding jails, making the tactic useless.
D) He immediately desegregated the town, without further objection.

Question 46

What two dramatic events set the stage for larger changes in the civil rights movement?

A) the Albany Movement and the Birmingham March
B) the Albany Movement and King's assassination
C) Johnson's election to the presidency and the Vietnam War
D) Kennedy's assassination and the bombing of the 16ᵗʰ Street Baptist Church in Birmingham

Question 47

What steps did Kennedy take in civil rights areas?

A) He appointed numerous blacks to important administrative positions.
B) He allowed his brother to put force into the Justice Department's civil rights litigation.
C) He required government agencies to stop discrimination in federally supported housing.
D) He eliminated segregation in the military.

Question 48

What did Kennedy do in response to the Birmingham March and the continued violence?

A) He ignored the march and violence, since he was afraid of losing southern support.
B) He proposed a major piece of civil rights legislation, but was never able to get enough support in Congress to pass it.
C) He quickly denounced King's use of violence in the march.
D) Kennedy appointed a new commission to study the issue.

Question 49

Which of the following groups was not a member of COFO?

A) SNCC
B) SRC
C) SCLC
D) NAACP

Question 50

What did the Civil Rights Act of 1964 not do?

A) It created a regulatory body to monitor discrimination in employment.
B) It banned discrimination in all public facilities across the nation.
C) It gave the federal government the power to withhold federal money from discriminatory businesses or institutions.
D) Restored all voting rights to African American men and women.

Question 51

Kennedy generally only acted decisively for African Americans when what happened?

A) He acted decisively when he felt his authority as president was threatened.
B) Kennedy was a great civil rights supporter and acted for civil rights without regard to the thoughts of the white South.
C) He acted decisively when he was asked by the Soviet Union to improve the situation for blacks.
D) Kennedy failed to act decisively in any instance when he was in office.

Question 52

Why did many African Americans support John Kennedy during the 1960 presidential election?

A) Many did not-he was seen as a typical racist from the South.
B) Kennedy, as governor of Massachusetts, had hired many blacks into important offices.
C) He made several important gestures, including helping King get released from prison.
D) Kennedy promised to desegregate the military and housing, and to allow black churches to be exempt from taxation in the South.

Question 53

What was the ultimate outcome of the Albany Movement?

A) It was a complete success-with King's assistance, they desegregated the entire town.
B) Blacks were able to make some limited gains, like desegregating the lunch counters.
C) Blacks were appointed to several political offices by the mayor to prevent further violence.
D) It was a complete failure-although the city initially agreed to compromises, they quickly refused to implement any changes.

Question 54

What was "Freedom Summer"?

A) an attempt by students to ride integrated buses through the South
B) an attempt by Martin Luther King to bring attention to segregation
C) an SNCC project designed to bring voting rights to people in Mississippi
D) an attempt by whites in the South to free themselves of meddlesome civil rights workers

Question 55

What did King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" state?

A) He justified the use of direct action as a way to force change to unjust laws.
B) He justified the use of violence in civil rights organizing.
C) He foreshadowed his own assassination, noting that he was ready to die for his cause.
D) That King was converting from Christianity to the Muslim faith.

Question 56

How did Kennedy react to the actions of Ross Barnett and George Wallace?

A) He approved of their decisions to allow students to attend universities.
B) He acted decisively, sending in or federalizing troops to ensure black students were admitted to universities.
C) He refused to do anything, allowing them to deny admission to black students.
D) He told them verbally he supported their actions, disappointing his black supporters.

Question 57

Which state was generally seen as the symbolic center of racism and violence in 1964?

A) Mississippi
B) Georgia
C) Florida
D) Tennessee

Question 58

Why did COFO recruit northern white students to help with Freedom Summer?

A) There were no black students interested.
B) They thought the white students would give the project more media attention.
C) They thought the white students were more experienced in organizing activities.
D) They wanted some younger people to balance the age ratio..

Question 59

Who was responsible for the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers?

Question 60

What was the ultimate goal of the Albany Movement?

A) the registration of a black student at the local college
B) voter registration and total desegregation of the town
C) that local restaurants serve blacks as well as whites
D) that a local black newspaper be rebuilt after being burned down by racist whites

Question 61

What did the Voting Rights Act not do?

A) It outlawed educational requirements for voting in certain areas.
B) It allowed the federal government to supervise voter registration.
C) It greatly increased black political participation in the South.
D) It created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Question 62

What act of violence was the immediate cause of Johnson pushing through the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

A) the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing
B) the assassination of Martin Luther King
C) the assassination of John F. Kennedy
D) the murder of James Reeb, a white minister from Boston, who was visiting Alabama

Question 63

What happened to civil rights protesters as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the March 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery?

A) They were allowed to cross peacefully, a great achievement for King and the movement.
B) They were highly criticized by most middle-class blacks.
C) The police tear-gassed and beat the demonstrators, all of which was captured on television.
D) They received notice of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and the protest march became a great celebration.