In accepting the Democratic nomination in 1932, Roosevelt pledged "a new deal for the American people."
Correct Answer
True
True. Roosevelt flew to the convention to accept the nomination in person, and his promise of a new deal gave his program its name.
Category: Roosevelt's Rise
Question 2
Roosevelt won the 1932 election narrowly, carrying fewer than half of the states.
Correct Answer
False
False. Roosevelt won in a landslide, carrying all but six states.
Category: Roosevelt's Rise
Question 3
In February 1933, an assassin's shots in Miami missed Roosevelt but fatally wounded the mayor of Chicago.
Correct Answer
True
True. Giuseppe Zangara fired at the president-elect, and Chicago mayor Anton Cermak was struck and died weeks later.
Category: Roosevelt's Rise
Question 4
During the interregnum, Roosevelt agreed to work closely with Hoover to carry out Hoover's program.
Correct Answer
False
False. Roosevelt declined to commit himself to Hoover's policies or act as an adviser without authority, and little was done while the banking crisis worsened.
Category: Roosevelt's Rise
Question 5
Polio left Roosevelt largely paralyzed from the waist down, and he avoided being photographed in his wheelchair.
Correct Answer
True
True. Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921, and he took care to hide his disability from the public for fear of seeming unfit to lead.
Category: Roosevelt's Rise
Question 6
The Civil Works Administration was designed as a permanent jobs program and lasted into the 1940s.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Civil Works Administration was a short-lived emergency program that put millions of people to work during the winter of 1933 to 1934 before it was shut down.
Category: First New Deal Programs
Question 7
The National Recovery Administration encouraged union organizing, which contributed to a wave of strikes in 1934.
Correct Answer
True
True. The recovery act recognized workers' right to organize, and in 1934 major strikes, some of them violent, broke out in cities such as Toledo, Minneapolis and San Francisco.
Category: First New Deal Programs
Question 8
The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 combined commercial and investment banking into single firms.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial banking from investment banking, so that banks holding ordinary deposits could not gamble them on securities.
Category: Banking Reform
Question 9
The Home Owners' Loan Corporation refinanced home mortgages to help families avoid foreclosure.
Correct Answer
True
True. By refinancing mortgages on easier terms, the corporation kept many families in their homes and also helped struggling banks.
Category: First New Deal Programs
Question 10
The American Liberty League was a group of left-wing activists who argued the New Deal did too little.
Correct Answer
False
False. The American Liberty League was made up largely of conservative business leaders and conservative Democrats who attacked the New Deal as a threat to liberty.
Category: Critics and the Courts
Question 11
The Social Security Act at first left out farm and domestic workers, which excluded many African Americans and women.
Correct Answer
True
True. Farm laborers and household workers were not covered, and those jobs were held disproportionately by African Americans and women.
Category: The Second New Deal
Question 12
The Works Progress Administration hired only construction workers and gave no jobs to artists or writers.
Correct Answer
False
False. Alongside its construction projects, the Works Progress Administration's Federal One program employed artists, actors, musicians and writers.
Category: The Second New Deal
Question 13
In 1937, while the court-packing plan was still before Congress, the Supreme Court upheld both the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Court upheld the Wagner Act in April 1937 and the Social Security Act in May 1937, before the Senate sent the court-packing bill back to committee that July. The plan itself failed, but the Court had shifted toward upholding New Deal laws.
Category: Critics and the Courts
Question 14
The Tennessee Valley Authority's dam projects displaced no families from their land.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Tennessee Valley Authority's dams and reservoirs forced thousands of families to leave their homes.
Category: First New Deal Programs
Question 15
The Federal Writers' Project recorded the life stories of formerly enslaved people.
Correct Answer
True
True. Interviewers in the late 1930s collected oral histories from people who had lived through slavery, creating a lasting historical record.
Category: Impact on Americans
Question 16
The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 strengthened the Dawes Act's policy of breaking up tribal lands.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Indian Reorganization Act reversed the assimilation policy of the Dawes Act, ending allotment and encouraging tribal self-government.
Category: Impact on Americans
Question 17
Eleanor Roosevelt lobbied for a federal anti-lynching law.
Correct Answer
True
True. Eleanor Roosevelt pressed for anti-lynching legislation and other civil rights causes, even when the president held back to avoid angering Southern Democrats.
Category: Impact on Americans
Question 18
By 1940, unemployment had returned to the low levels of the 1920s.
Correct Answer
False
False. Unemployment remained high in 1940, still far above 1920s levels, and full recovery came only with the military buildup for World War II.
Category: The Second New Deal
Question 19
The Public Works Administration funded large construction projects such as bridges, dams and schools.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Public Works Administration financed tens of thousands of projects, creating jobs and lasting public facilities across the country.
Category: First New Deal Programs
Question 20
The Southern Tenant Farmers Union admitted only white members.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Southern Tenant Farmers Union was interracial, bringing Black and white sharecroppers and tenants together to protest evictions.
Category: First New Deal Programs