John F. Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic elected president of the United States.
Correct Answer
True
True. Some voters opposed Kennedy because of his religion, but he won the 1960 election by a very narrow popular margin. Al Smith, the Catholic Democrat who ran in 1928, had lost.
Category: Kennedy Years
Question 2
Kennedy chose Lyndon Johnson as his 1960 running mate mainly to strengthen the ticket in New England.
Correct Answer
False
False. Kennedy was himself from Massachusetts; he picked Johnson, a Texan and powerful Senate leader, to win support in the South, where many Democrats distrusted Kennedy's stand on civil rights.
Category: Kennedy Years
Question 3
Yuri Gagarin's orbit of Earth in 1961 helped spur Kennedy to call for landing an American on the moon.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Soviet lead in space alarmed Americans, and Kennedy set the goal of a moon landing, which was achieved in 1969. Space spending also boosted military technology and the growth of the Sun Belt.
Category: Kennedy Years
Question 4
The Alliance for Progress was a Kennedy program of economic aid aimed at Southeast Asia.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Alliance for Progress was aimed at Latin America, where Kennedy hoped economic growth and stability would reduce the appeal of communism after the Cuban Revolution.
Category: Kennedy Years
Question 5
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union set up a direct hot line between Washington and Moscow.
Correct Answer
True
True. The crisis showed how dangerous slow communication could be, so the two governments installed a direct link in 1963 to allow quick contact in an emergency.
Category: Kennedy Years
Question 6
The Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 banned all nuclear weapons tests, including those conducted underground.
Correct Answer
False
False. The treaty banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and underwater, but it still allowed underground tests.
Category: Kennedy Years
Question 7
The Twenty-Fourth Amendment, ratified in 1964, banned poll taxes in federal elections.
Correct Answer
True
True. Poll taxes had long been used to keep poor and Black citizens from voting in the South, and the amendment barred them as a condition for voting in federal elections.
Category: Great Society
Question 8
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was aimed mainly at discrimination in employment.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 targeted discrimination in the sale and rental of housing. Employment discrimination had already been banned by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Category: Great Society
Question 9
Head Start, the preschool program for low-income children, began under Kennedy's New Frontier.
Correct Answer
False
False. Head Start began in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and was run at first by the Office of Economic Opportunity.
Category: Great Society
Question 10
The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helped launch PBS and NPR.
Correct Answer
True
True. The act was part of the Great Society's support for culture and education, along with the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Category: Great Society
Question 11
The Tet Offensive of 1968 was an American attack on North Vietnamese bases in Cambodia.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Tet Offensive was a surprise attack by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces on cities across South Vietnam during the lunar new year holiday in January 1968.
Category: Vietnam Escalation
Question 12
Weeks after Eugene McCarthy's strong showing against him in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek reelection.
Correct Answer
True
True. McCarthy won about 42 percent of the vote to Johnson's 49 percent, exposing Johnson's weakness; Robert Kennedy then entered the race, and Johnson withdrew on March 31, 1968.
Category: Vietnam Escalation
Question 13
Malcolm X delivered the "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington in August 1963.
Correct Answer
False
False. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which drew a vast crowd to the Lincoln Memorial.
Category: Civil Rights Movement
Question 14
Civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were murdered in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964.
Correct Answer
True
True. The three men were killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan with the help of local law officers, and the murders drew national attention to the violence facing the voter registration campaign.
Category: Civil Rights Movement
Question 15
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 in Birmingham, Alabama.
Correct Answer
False
False. King was killed on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers. Riots broke out in many cities after his death.
Category: Civil Rights Movement
Question 16
Stokely Carmichael promoted the idea of Black Power while serving as chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Correct Answer
False
False. Carmichael was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which under him moved away from interracial nonviolence. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was led by Martin Luther King Jr.
Category: Black Power and Chicano Activism
Question 17
In Loving v. Virginia in 1967, the Supreme Court struck down state laws banning interracial marriage.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Court ruled unanimously that such bans violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which invalidated the remaining laws against interracial marriage.
Category: Black Power and Chicano Activism
Question 18
The Free Speech Movement began at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964 in protest against limits on political activity on campus.
Correct Answer
True
True. Students surrounded a police car for many hours after an arrest and later staged a large sit-in. The movement inspired student activism at campuses around the country.
Category: New Left and Students
Question 19
Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique argued that most women found complete fulfillment as homemakers.
Correct Answer
False
False. Published in 1963, the book challenged the postwar idea that marriage and motherhood alone should fulfill women, and it helped spark the modern women's movement.
Category: Women's Movement
Question 20
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned employment discrimination based on sex as well as race.
Correct Answer
True
True. A Virginia congressman added sex to the list, reportedly hoping to defeat the bill, but the provision stayed in the law and became a key tool for women seeking equal treatment at work.
Category: Women's Movement