Unit 10: Domestic and Global Changes

We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children; send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities ... we will still love you. But we will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom we will appeal to your heart and conscience so that we will win you in the process.
Source: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom, 1958.

I don’t favor violence.  If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good.  Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully.  But I’m also a realist.  The only people in this country who are asked to be non-violent are black people.  I’ve never heard anybody go to the Ku Klux Klan and teach them non-violence...  I believe we should protect ourselves by any means necessary when we are attacked by racists.

Source: Malcolm X, interview in the Young Socialist, January 18, 1965. 

According to these documents, a key difference between the approaches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X is 

• King advocates for self-defense, while Malcolm X supports nonviolence

• King argues for protests while Malcolm X advocates for letter writing

• King advocates nonviolence and Malcolm X for self-defense

• King argues for electoral politics and Malcolm X for community organizing

We will not hate you, but we cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children; send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities ... we will still love you. But we will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And in winning our freedom we will appeal to your heart and conscience so that we will win you in the process.
Source: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom, 1958.

I don’t favor violence.  If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good.  Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully.  But I’m also a realist.  The only people in this country who are asked to be non-violent are black people.  I’ve never heard anybody go to the Ku Klux Klan and teach them non-violence...  I believe we should protect ourselves by any means necessary when we are attacked by racists.

Source: Malcolm X, interview in the Young Socialist, January 18, 1965. 

Based on these documents, which statement best expresses a similarity between Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ? 

• They both encourage hatred of the Ku Klux Klan

• They both seek freedom, respect and recognition for African Americans

• They both use religious justification for their arguments against racism

• They both embrace racists as members of a beloved human community

. . . You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, “how can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.” . . .

                    Source:  Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963

Which approach best represents the argument made in the passage?

• civil disobedience

• armed resistance

• Black Power 

• Jim Crow laws are legal

“No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” 

Source: Section 2, Voting Rights Act of 1965

The specific goal stated in this section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was to

• expand the use of property qualifications

• remove barriers to voting based on racial background

• establish voter qualifications such as literacy tests

• stop fraudulent voting in large cities

Which problem could this poster be responding to?  

• Indian boarding schools 

• The Indian Removal Act

• The recruitment of Native Code Talkers 

• Establishing a Native Veterans Monument

The action of the people sitting at the lunch counter in this photograph is most often associated with

• Black Nationalism

• Civil disobedience

• The Black Panther Party

• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

 Which statement is best supported by the information provided in this graph?

• Each year since 1950, immigration has increased.

• Quotas favored immigration from southern and eastern Europe.

• Immigration declined during world wars and economic hard times.

• Every year since 1920, at least one million people have come to the United States

…In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write…. Men want to be part of a common enterprise, a cause greater than themselves. And each of us must find a way to advance the purpose of the Nation, thus finding new purpose for ourselves. Without this, we will simply become a nation of strangers. 

Source: President Lyndon B. Johnson, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1965

 …In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.…

Source: President Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1981

Which policies do these documents most likely refer to?

• The Great Society and Reaganomics

• Civil rights and the Cold War

• The New Deal and World War II

• The Agricultural Adjustment Act

 Which situation related to the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009 is addressed in this cartoon?

• crisis in home foreclosures 

• growth of federal budget deficits

• shortage of healthcare facilities

• decline in the financial stability of Social Security

 This cartoonist is expressing a concern that the current Social Security system

• imposes taxes which are too high

• does not cover most American workers

• faces threats from future increases in the number of recipients 

• does not support a decent standard of living