Deck 6: Reconstructing women's lives North and South

Question 1

How did the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor (AFL)treat working women in the late 1800s?

A) The Knights welcomed women workers, whereas AFL leaders believed that women should stay at home.
B) Both unions organized skilled laborers and therefore allowed garment workers and other women in skilled trades to join.
C) The Knights of Labor were more successful and longer-lasting than the AFL but did not allow women to join.
D) The Knights of Labor would not support strikes by women, but the AFL would.

Answer 1

The Knights welcomed women workers, whereas AFL leaders believed that women should stay at home.

Question 2

Why did white southern groups such as the Ku Klux Klan charge that black men were sexual predators who sought access to white women?

A) To assert control over African American men in the aftermath of slavery
B) To win sympathy for the plight of women in northern newspapers
C) To protest the growing rate of interracial marriage that cost them potential marriage partners
D) To hide their shame over their inability to attract suitable marriage partners

Answer 2

To assert control over African American men in the aftermath of slavery

Question 3

What was the argument about woman suffrage advanced by the New Departure theory of the suffrage movement?

A) The right to privacy undergirded women's right to vote, but a constitutional amendment would be advantageous.
B) Women were persons under the Fourteenth Amendment and thus, as citizens, had the right to vote.
C) Women over the age of twenty-one were adults, and all American adults had a fundamental right to vote.
D) The best way for women to win the right to vote was by petitioning Congress for an equal rights amendment.

Answer 3

Women were persons under the Fourteenth Amendment and thus, as citizens, had the right to vote.

Question 4

Within the growing number of wealthy American families after the Civil War,the expected role for women was to

A) invest and safeguard the family's money.
B) consume and display the family's wealth.
C) use modern advances to do more of the housework.
D) shape the family's moral life to guard against materialism.

Question 5

What was the relationship of black women to the new all-black universities established after the Civil War?

A) They were barred from attending because their labor was needed at home.
B) They were welcomed in white women's colleges, so few wanted to attend black schools.
C) They had to attend remedial classes to be able to take classes at these colleges.
D) They were as welcome as black men in these all-black institutions.

Question 6

How did the woman suffrage movement respond to the congressional debates over the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments?

A) Women split over whether to endorse the Fifteenth Amendment, which omitted the word "gender."
B) Women gained the Supreme Court's support for the argument that women could not be denied the vote on the basis of gender.
C) The suffrage movement collapsed after rejection of its goals by Congress and disappeared for the next fifty years.
D) Frustrated by failure to win the vote, the movement shifted to focus on getting women admitted to colleges in greater numbers.

Question 7

With slavery no longer an issue after the Civil War,what was the most overt challenge to national unity?

A) The struggle over women's rights
B) The struggle between labor and capital
C) Conflict over acquisition of territories overseas
D) Conflict over immigration

Question 8

The modern woman of the late nineteenth century viewed the ideal of "true womanhood" as

A) a symbol of stability and economic security.
B) a spur to join the club movement.
C) an idle and purposeless condition.
D) a cherished ideal that was increasingly harder to achieve.

Question 9

Why did "homosocial" relationships come under attack in the late nineteenth century?

A) Too many women were rejecting marriage for the comfort of female companionship.
B) Critics cited them as one more negative aspect of giving women the right to vote.
C) Homosocial relationships of working women were seen as a negative socialist influence.
D) Physicians characterized the relationships as "unnatural" or "abnormal."

Question 10

Many freedwomen responded to the defeat of the Confederacy by

A) leading armed rebellions against their former masters.
B) traveling in large numbers to the North to work in textile factories.
C) taking to the road or advertising to find lost spouses and family members.
D) demanding to be paid for past labor in hopes of educating their children.

Question 11

What was a distinctive component of American cultural life for middle-class women in the late nineteenth century?

A) Membership in a women's club
B) Membership in a health club
C) Enrollment at an all-women's college
D) Advocacy of woman suffrage

Question 12

The Supreme Court's decision in Minor v.Happersett

A) threw the question of woman suffrage back to the states.
B) established that voting was a privilege, not a right of citizenship.
C) held that women should not have voting rights because most were not educated.
D) ruled that the Fifteenth Amendment did not apply to women.

Question 13

In 1871,how did Victoria Claflin Woodhull present the case for the New Departure?

A) She convinced polling officials in New York City to allow her to vote.
B) She published her views in a series of articles in NWSA's journal Revolution.
C) She testified before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
D) She took a lawsuit on woman suffrage to the Supreme Court.

Question 14

A common criticism of working women in the late nineteenth century was that they

A) were not as committed to their work as men.
B) took jobs away from male breadwinners..
C) joined unions in greater numbers than men.
D) were overpaid for the meager work they performed.

Question 15

Why did many African American wives work?

A) Jim Crow laws in the South made it illegal for married black women to be unemployed.
B) White society praised black women who worked to help support their family.
C) Many black women chose to work rather than having their daughters work.
D) More black women embraced the concept of the "New Woman" than white women.

Question 16

Why did many poor white women who worked in southern textile mills in the 1880s consider this work a privilege?

A) The pay in southern factories was better than salaries paid in the North.
B) Factories hired only white women, which made the work seem to be a racial privilege.
C) It was the first opportunity that southern women had to work outside the home.
D) They preferred factory work to working as domestics.

Question 17

Women in the garment industry were viewed as

A) skilled labor because of the intricacy of the sewing they did.
B) unskilled labor because they did not learn the work through an apprenticeship.
C) professional labor because they were often their family's sole breadwinner.
D) casual labor because they typically moved from factory to factory.

Question 18

Why did office work become the fastest-growing sector of the female labor force by 1900?

A) Women were thought to be especially suited to typing on typewriters.
B) Office work offered women the only opportunity to earn wages equal to those of men.
C) Office work required little education and offered better wages than factory work.
D) Office work was the only industry that had a union that accepted women.

Question 19

What did the U.S.Supreme Court rule in Plessy v.Ferguson?

A) Jim Crow laws were unconstitutional.
B) Segregation was legal and compatible with the Fourteenth Amendment.
C) African American men could be denied the right to vote.
D) Public transportation could not be segregated.

Question 20

Black codes were laws passed by

A) the Freedmen's Bureau to protect newly freed slaves.
B) Congress that legalized sharecropping.
C) southern states to limit the freedom of freedmen.
D) southern states to outlaw child labor in the South.

Question 21

Why did most black families choose sharecropping over other forms of agricultural labor during Reconstruction?

A) White landowners refused to hire freedmen as day laborers or use them in gang labor.
B) Sharecropping allowed black farmers to make significant profits.
C) Sharecropping allowed black families to work independently without direct white oversight.
D) Black workers preferred to work the land under white supervision than toil in factories.

Question 22

What was Harriot Stanton Blatch encouraging women to do when she advocated "voluntary motherhood"?

A) Hire nurses to watch their children so they would have more free time
B) Choose when and how often to become pregnant
C) Adopt working-class children to give them a better life
D) Use the new birth control devices developed in Holland

Question 23

What was justified by the "family wage" concept of the late nineteenth century?

A) Paying men higher wages while paying women significantly less
B) Hiring children in textile mills to help immigrants support their families
C) Allowing parents and children to work in the same area in factories
D) The "sweating" system, which kept mothers at home to tend to their children

Question 24

How did the requirements for operating a typewriter differ from those for operating a sewing machine?

A) Sewing machine operators had to attend trade schools and were considered skilled labor, whereas typists learned their craft on the job.
B) The work of typists was much easier, but sewing machine operators had better job security and wages.
C) Most office managers preferred male typists, whereas sewing machine operators were mostly women.
D) Typists were required to have an education and a command of the English language, whereas operating sewing machines required little formal training.

Question 25

The National Women Suffrage Society was formed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.Anthony in response to

A) the need to get more women enrolled in college after the Civil War.
B) demands by African American women in the South to win the right to vote.
C) Congress not including the word "gender" in the Fifteenth Amendment.
D) lack of interest in woman suffrage after the Civil War.

Question 26

How did the Supreme Court's decision in Minor v.Happersett affect the women's rights movement?

A) It dealt a serious blow to the movement, causing it to collapse and disappear for the next fifty years.
B) It led the NWSA to fight for a separate constitutional amendment to grant woman suffrage.
C) It led to the creation of the New Departure theory by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
D) It gave strength to the argument that women had the right to vote through the Fourteenth Amendment.

Question 27

By the late nineteenth century,what gains in women's rights had been realized?

A) The New York legislature had given women the right to vote.
B) Women had the right to vote in territorial and local elections in Wyoming and Utah.
C) The Supreme Court had ruled that women had the right to vote in all elections.
D) African American women had the right to vote.

Question 28

Which trend in the late nineteenth century produced great tension in American society?

A) The increasing gap between rich and poor
B) The granting of the right to vote to women
C) African Americans' rapid economic success after Reconstruction
D) The division of former plantations in the South

Question 29

Which of the following describes the progress of Reconstruction in the South between 1865 and 1900?

A) After southern white resistance was broken down by military occupation, African Americans gradually won the right to vote in local elections.
B) After the U.S. Army withdrew from the defeated southern states, white-dominated legislatures reestablished white supremacy and instituted segregation.
C) The reign of the Ku Klux Klan was only temporary because its excesses were condemned by southern legislatures, most of which had accepted African American suffrage by 1900.
D) After the defeat of the Democratic Party by mixed-race coalitions in the 1870s and 1880s, the Republican Party emerged as the dominant southern party by 1900.

Question 30

Ida B.Wells was significant because she

A) criticized Radical Reconstruction in the South.
B) wrote articles exposing the folly of sharecropping.
C) organized unions for black women workers.
D) campaigned to stop lynching.

Question 31

The Knights of Labor was distinctive in that it

A) admitted only women.
B) was the only union that admitted women.
C) was the least radical of all unions.
D) was brutally suppressed by the government.

Question 32

What was an important impact of the Freedmen's Bureau on the family life of southern blacks?

A) It ensured that freedmen had rights over their own children.
B) It required newly freed men to honor the claim of their first wife.
C) It required that parents send their children to public schools.
D) It prosecuted white landowners who cheated freedmen in labor contracts.

Question 33

What sector of the white female workforce saw the greatest decline in numbers between 1860 and 1900?

A) Domestic service
B) Prostitution
C) Factory work
D) Professional occupations

Question 34

How did the sewing machine affect women's labor in the textile industry?

A) Because they had attended training classes, women who operated sewing machines were considered skilled labor.
B) Women who operated sewing machines were paid hourly and at higher wages than women running power looms.
C) Clothing manufacturing was divided into discrete tasks, and a single worker no longer made an entire piece of clothing.
D) Sewing machine operators had steadier work and shorter hours than other women in the textile industries.

Question 35

What was the danger that African American men faced in the reconstructed South for the slightest suspicion of disrespect to a white woman?

A) Arrest and a lengthy trial
B) Heavy fines
C) Lynching by a mob
D) Deportation to the North

Question 36

Susan B.Anthony demonstrated the New Departure theory when she

A) petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the Fourteenth Amendment unconstitutional.
B) declared that women had the right to petition Congress for an equal rights amendment.
C) enrolled in classes at Harvard University and earned her doctoral degree.
D) convinced election officials in Rochester, New York, to allow her vote.

Question 37

Because of rising incomes in the late 1800s,most urban middle- and upper-class women

A) had larger houses that required more housekeeping.
B) were given a larger role in investing and safeguarding the family's wealth.
C) came to think it was necessary to have domestic servants to do the housework.
D) were expected to provide increased moral guidance to their families because of the growing materialism.

Question 38

What did the endorsement of woman suffrage by the WCTU convince Susan B.Anthony to do?

A) Form one national organization of all women's groups that supported suffrage
B) Disband the NWSA and join the WCTU
C) Follow the model of the WCTU and allow African American women to join the NWSA
D) Make prohibition part of the NWSA's political platform

Question 39

The image of the "New Woman" emphasized "women's work," a term that meant women

A) were best suited to consume goods, while men produced goods.
B) should be exclusively dedicated to motherhood.
C) should participate in paid labor or public service.
D) should be paid less than men for their less demanding jobs.

Question 40

How were elite white southern women affected by Reconstruction?

A) To counteract the freedmen's vote, southern legislators gave elite white women the right to vote.
B) For the first time, elite white southern women had to cook and launder for their own households.
C) Elite white southern women advertised for and hired Irish servants to replace slave labor.
D) Elite white southern women worked to end sharecropping to be able to hire black women as servants.