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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How did some states begin paying public school teachers in the 1930's?

2. What was the Actors Union's response to The Cradle Will Rock?

3. What happened to Orrin Kelly after the incident with the Iowa judge?

4. In 1930's Appalachia, what does the KKK assist in setting up?

5. What is the name of the sketch programs Neil Schaffner performed in troupes across the country?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Wilbur Kane experience the Joe Louis fight against Max Schmeling?

2. What does Dr. Martin Bickham discover about the American drive to work through his relief work in the 1930's?

3. How does Max Shachtman explain the decline of Communism's popularity in America?

4. What was Edward Burgess's experience of the 1930's?

5. What did Hiram Sherman do after The Cradle Will Rock?

6. What strange dichotomy exists in Stanley Kell's interview in Honor and Humiliation?

7. How did Jack Kirkland become famous during the Depression?

8. How were the prisons affected by the Depression?

9. What was the most controversial component of the New Deal?

10. What strange and dangerous episode regarding congressional testimony does C. Wright Patman make?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The Great Depression was a time during which the most basic and reliable of systems in the United States failed. Though full-on revolution never broke out in America, dissident movements cropped up regularly. Write an essay about three such movements. What issue or injustice gave rise to this spontaneous act of dissidence? How did the movement grow in strength? What happened that finally put an end to the movement?

Part 1) The Bonus March.

Part 2) The opening night of The Cradle Will Rock.

Part 3) The farmers of Iowa stopping corn deliveries.

Essay Topic 2

The 1930's, as a result of the abject poverty and of Prohibition, became an era of romanticized criminality. Write an essay on the popularity of illegal behavior at this time. What was the nature of the industry dedicated to circumventing Prohibition laws? Why were figures like John Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly folk heroes for robbing the banks? To what extent were they enacting public disgust with failed institutions?

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay about the far left in America. What were its expectations when the stock market collapsed in 1929? Did it expect that the American capitalist system was completely defunct? How did events in Europe throughout the 1930's affect the coalition of far left groups in the United States? What occurred politically and economically in America that rendered the left toothless by the time World War II started?

(see the answer keys)

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