Reference no: EM132284704

HUEY LONG : Letter to Members of the Share Our Wealth Society (1935)

Study Questions

1. What were the specific elements of Senator Long’s Share Our Wealth plan? Who stood to benefit from the plan? Who would have been hurt by it?

2. What was Long’s goal in proposing this plan? How did he hope to change American society?

3. Although this is a letter to his supporters, Long also made extensive use of the radio. What advantages might the radio have provided to a populist insurgent like Long?

4. In this letter, Long invokes a long list of American founders and statesmen—the Pilgrim fathers, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and others—whom he says would have supported his plan. Why do you think he invokes these iconic figures? How and why might opponents of Long have invoked some of the same men?

Cold War Foreign Policy: NSC 68 (1950)

Study Questions

1. How do the authors of NSC-68 describe the global goals of Soviet leaders? What threat do they believe the Soviet Union poses to the world order?

2. According to the document’s authors, how should the United States respond to the Soviet threat? Why shouldn’t the United States continue on its current path? Why don’t the authors support immediate negotiations with the Soviet Union? When do they think negotiations might be fruitful, and what would they hope to achieve with this kind of diplomacy?

3. NSC-68 argues that the American public and other “free peoples” must be made to see “that the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake.” What does this suggest about American public opinion in early 1950? Why might Americans have been reluctant to support an expensive military buildup? What development later in 1950 helped to change public opinion, allowing
the report’s recommendations to be enacted?

4. The authors of this report call for the “steady development of the moral and material strength of the free world and its projection into the Soviet world.” What do you think they mean by this? Do you think Soviet leaders would see this as creating a “positive program for peace”? Do you?

U.S. SUPREME COURT : Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Study Questions

1. According to the Brown decision, why do the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment have limited bearing on this case?

2. Why does the Supreme Court reject its own precedent in Plessy v. Ferguson? On what kind of evidence or logic does its argument rest?

3. In 1954 the United States was in the midst of a cold war and less than ten years removed from World War II. How might this have affected the Court’s judgment about the role of education in American society?

4. Chief Justice Warren thought it essential that the Court issue a unanimous decision in Brown. (He considered this so critical, in fact, that he agreed to postpone a ruling on the decision’s implementation and eventually accepted vague language on this point.) Why do you think Warren considered unanimity in this case so crucial?