Study Questions

Howard Zinn
Chapters 16-19
Test will be ________________
Chapter 16: A Peoples War?
1. How does the U.S. governments record in world affairs prior to 1941 indicate that U.S.
involvement in WWII promised not to be an effective blow to imperialism, racism,
totalitarianism, militarism, in the world?
2. How do standard American history textbooks explain Roosevelts reluctance to stop Japanese
and Germany aggression? How does Zinn? Which interpretation do you find most persuasive,
and why?
3. Why did the U.S. government promise the French that their sovereignty will be reestablished
as soon as possible throughout all the territory, metropolitan or colonial, over which flew the
French flag in 1939 when two weeks later the U.S. government promised the right of all
peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live?
4. Why did Roosevelt promise that the United States would not changes its Palestine policy
without consulting the Arabs?
5. How did the U.S. ensure that it would control the international exchanges rates after WWII?
6. The International Bank for Reconstruction expected to rebuild war-destroyed areas with foreign
investment. After WWII, which was the only country that had money to invest? (Hint: which
was the only country fighting in WWII that did not fight on its own soil?)
7. How did the structure of the U.N. allow it to be controlled by the U.S, England, and France?
8. How does Zinn explain Roosevelts failure to take steps that might have saved thousands of
people from dying in Nazi concentration camps?
9. During WWII, women replaced men as factory workers. Why might this result in a
developing attitude of militancy or a crusading spirit, as observed by the Womens Bureau of
the Department of Labor?
10. If an economic motive could be attributed to the signing of Executive Order 9066, what might
it be?
11. Why were there so many strikes by U.S. workers during WWII?
12. According to the character Red in Mailers The Naked and the Dead, why were U.S. GIs dying
in the jungles of the Pacific Islands? What experiences might Red have had before and during
the war that would lead him to feel this way?

13. Why is it ironic that 18 leaders of the only organization that was explicitly pacifist were sent to
prison for violating the Smith Act?
14. Why were most American blacks unenthusiastic and even unsupportive of the US participation
in WWII?
15. Why did the Allies engage in saturation bombing of enemy civilians when Roosevelt had
already labeled such actions as inhuman barbarism?
16. If the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary to force Japan to
surrender, why was it done?
17. Why did Truman claim, The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as
possible, the killing of civilians?
18. Why were there so many strikes following the end of WWII?
19. How does a permanent war economy solve the the problems of control?
20. How did the Truman Doctrine convince Americans that the U.S. government should support
fascism in Greece?
21. Is that rationale for American involvement in the Korean War contradicted by the its actions
during the war?
22. How did the Korean War contribute to the forging of a liberal/conservative consensus?
23. Is there any difference between Executive Order 9835 and the expulsion of non-communists in
the Czech government in 1948?
24. How did the U.S. government portray the independence movements of the Indochinese,
Indonesians, Africans, and Filipinos to the American public?
25. For what was Joe McCarthy censured?
26. What point is Zinn making by revealing the positions that Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey,
and John Kennedy took regarding the governments anti-communist strategy of the late 1940s
and early 1950s?
27. Why would such figures as Einstein, Sartre, and Picasso take such a passionate interest in the
fate of the Rosenbergs (is it reminiscent of Mark Twains concerns for Aquinaldo and his
Filipino guerrillas)?
28. What role did the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) play in forging the
consensus behind American foreign policy after WWII?
29. What was Americas foreign policy after WWII?

30. What evidence was there that American communists were advocating the violent overthrow of
the government?
31. After 1960, how did the U.S. nuclear arsenal compare to the Soviets?
32. What was the economic goal of the Marshall Plan? What was the political goal?
33. Why did U.S. foreign policy support right-wing dictatorships? (Why did the U.S. overthrow
democratically elected governments, e.g., in Guatemala in 1954?)
34. Was Fidel Castro an agent of Soviet expansion? How so? How not?
35. What measures did the U.S. government take to keep the Bay of Pigs invasion secret from the
American public? Why did the U.S. government plot to overthrow Castro with such secrecy?
36. According to James Reston, what were Kennedys budgetary goals for his administration?
What conclusions does Zinn draw from this?
Chapter 17: Or Does it Explode?
37. Why do you suppose Henry Cabot Lodge put McKays poem in the Congressional Record?
38. How does Countee Cullens poem Incident capture the complex and indelible psychological
impact of racism?
39. Why were many whites surprised by the black revolt of the 1950s and 1960s?
40. Why did Herndon join the Communist Party? For what action(s) did he spend five years in
prison?
41. Why did Truman and his advisers feel a need to act on the race question immediately
following WWII? What evidence exists to support Zinns answer to this question?
42. What actions did Trumans administration take on the race question? What actions did they
not take?
43. In what way did the 1954 Brown decision by the Supreme Court mark a departure from its
previous course? In what way did it not?
44. How did the Montgomery bus boycott begin? What was the end result of the boycott?
45. What were the successful tactics and tools used in the Montgomery boycott that were used in
similarly successive struggles?
46. What was the key strategy that King contributed to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and
1960s?
47. What event led to sit-ins in 15 cities and 5 states? What was the purpose of the sit-ins?

48. What was the final result of the sit-ins?

49. What was the goal of the Freedom Riders? How were they able to achieve that goal?
50. What are the differences and similarities between SNCC and the IWW? Consider the
following when answering: goals, tactics, strategies, tools, media response, government
response, membership, degree of success.
51. What point is Zinn making by retelling the murders of Goodman and Schwerner?
52. Compare the degree of success or failure of the civil rights movement and the Populist
movement. Consider: legislation passed, effectiveness of legislation, difference between stated
goals and accomplished goals, effect on the dominant culture of the U.S.
53. How did the Voting Rights Law of 1965 differ from previous laws?
54. In 1968, only 60% of those eligible to vote were registered. What is the significance of being a
registered voter? Of not be registered? If 30% of registered voters voted in the presidential
election of 1968, what then is the percentage of total voters who voted? (What? A math
problem in history???)
55. Why did the U.S. government choose to enforce voting to the exclusion of other means to end
racism in the U.S.? Why did the U.S. government later choose busing as another area to
enforce? What laws were on the books by the end of the 1960s that were not being enforced
by the government?
56. What compromises did civil rights leaders make in order to have federal approve of the 1963
March on Washington? Why do you think they felt that federal approval was worth such
compromises?
57. What did Malcolm X think of the 1963 march?
58. What do you think Zinn means by this: but voting was not a fundamental solution to racism
or poverty?
59. How did the Watts riot begin? How did it end?
60. How did the National Advisory Committee on Urban Disorders explain the explosion of
violence that followed the Watts riot of 1965?
61. Why did the Black Panthers have guns?
62. Why did King speak out against the war in Vietnam? Why did he not speak out against the war
earlier than he did?
63. How did the government respond to Kings shift in focus from civil rights to poverty? How
can one explain the governments response?

64. Judge Harold Cox exonerated the police who killed two students at Jackson State College by
declaring that those who participated in protest demonstrations must expect to be injured or
killed. Why is it important for the government to have such a principle established?
65. Were Fred Hampton and Mark Clark murdered?
66. What were the goals of black capitalists? What strategies did they adopt to achieve these
goals?
67. In 1977, what percentage of elective offices were held by blacks in the South? Did this
represent progress? Progress toward what goal? Whose goal?
68. How was busing an ingenious concession to protest? Did it contribute to deferring the
dream?
Chapter 18: The Impossible Victory: Vietnam
69. How were organized human beings able to defeat organized modern technology? Is it
surprising to you that they did? Why or why not?
70. What were the Vietnamese complaints against French rule as itemized in their 1945 Declaration
of Independence in 1945 and in Ho Chi Minhs letters to Truman?
71. How did the U.S. Department of Defense internally account for Ho Chi Minhs widespread
popular support? What was the public account?
72. Why did the U.S. finance 80% of the French war effort in Indochina? Did the public reason
differ from the reason circulated internally?
73. What did the 1954 Geneva Peace Accord stipulate? Why did the U.S. agree to elections and
then prevent elections from occurring?
74. Why was the Diem regime unpopular with the South Vietnamese?
75. What constituted the fundamental strength of the National Liberation Front (NLF)?
76. Can you draw any parallels between the political activity of the NLF in the villages of South
Vietnam and the American Communist partys work with American labor? What about
between the NLF and the Farmers Alliance?
77. What was Kennedys policy toward Vietnam? How was such policy consistent with his policy
toward Cuba?
78. Why did Vietnamese Buddhists immolate themselves? Were the Buddhist self-immolations an
effective tactic?
79. Why did Kennedy not warn Diem of the impending coup?

80. How did the Johnson administration persuade Congress to give the president the freedom to
wage war on Vietnam?
81. Why might U.S. newspaper accounts of the U.S. bombings of Vietnam cause American readers
to questions the reasons behind U.S. involvement in the war?
82. Why did the U.S. military hope to achieve by increasing the number of and size of the bombs
dropped on Vietnam one more turn of the screw?
83. Why did the U.S. adopt the tactic of free fire zones?
84. What were search and destroy missions? What was their purpose?
85. What was Operation Phoenix? Why were the American people kept ignorant of its
existence?
86. What does napalm do? Why use it rather than conventional bombs?
87. Why does the poison 2, 4, 5,T do? Why use it?
88. In what way was the American attack on My Lai 4 a search and destroy mission?
89. Why was the U.S. military surprised by the Tet Offensive? What did the NLF accomplish by
the offensive?
90. Why did the U.S. press not report the saturation bombing of the Plain of Jars?
91. What did the majority of voting Americans want their president to do about the Vietnam war in
1968? Did Nixon respond to this opinion when elected?
92. Was Nixons order to invade Cambodia a tactical error in his pursuit of control over American
foreign policy?
93. What were the connections that civil rights activists made between American domestic policies
and American pursuit of war in Vietnam?
94. What methods did the U.S. government use in its attempt to silence domestic critics of the
Vietnam war?
95. What methods did Americans use to hamper the U.S. governments pursuit of war in Vietnam?
96. What were the Pentagon Papers? Why did the government want to keep them secret? Why
was Ellsberg not jailed for releasing classified material?
97. What experiences initially radicalized those who were to become antiwar priests and nuns?
98. Did the government respond to antiwar protesters differently than the Black panthers or the
Wobblies?

99. What event precipitated the largest general student strike in American history? What is a
general student strike?
100.
Why was the media coverage of the Vietnam war protests biased toward middle-class
intellectuals (academic, religious, and civic leaders)?
101.
Americans with only a grade school education were much more strongly for
withdrawal from the war than Americans with a college education. What might explain this?
What evidence is there that might support this statement?
102.
But Vietnam produced opposition by soldiers and veterans on a scale and with a fervor
never seen before. Why?
103.
What need was being satisfied by underground newspapers? Bookstores?
Coffeehouses?
104.
What was being described (testified to) by the speakers at the Winter Soldier
investigations?
105.

What was Sam Choys experience in the army?

106.
Why did the North Vietnamese refuse to sign the peace afford offered by the U.S.
government in the fall of 1973?
107.

At what point did the Vietnam war end?

108.
What evidence and arguments does Zinn give to support his thesis that the U.S.
involvement in Vietnam was not a response to the demands of the American (or even South
Vietnamese) people? What is the evidence that the end of the war did not end at the initiative
of the leaders?
109.
According to McNaughtons memo, what prevented the U.S. government from
perpetrating even greater horrors on the Vietnamese population than they did?
110.
After the Tet Offensive, why did Johnson refuse Westmorelands request for 200,000
troops?
111.
The Catonsville Nine were convicted in 1968. The Camden 28 were acquitted in 1971.
How does Zinn account for the different verdicts?
Chapter 19: Surprises
112.
By 1960, 36% of all women sixteen and older 23 million women worked for paid
wages. But there were nursery schools for the children of only 2% of working mothers. What
is the point of pairing these two statistics?
113.

How did WWII cause the modern feminist movement?

114.

Why did women in the civil rights, students, and antiwar movements become feminists?

115.
The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is
by creative work of her own. Why would a working-class woman not be inspired to become a
feminist by such a statement?
116.
By 1969, One out of every three working women had a husband earning less than
$5,000 a year. What is the significance of this fact?
117.

What was the double bind that working women were in?

118.
Why might Radical Women call Bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs and other
things womens garbage?
119.
Why could women not seek legal action before 1967 if they had been discriminated
against because they were women?
120.

Why is abortion perceived as a feminist issue and not a medical or civil rights issue?

121.

Match the evidence with the interpretation:

Women organized to gain some control over their work lives.

Women fought to enter occupations previously denied them.
Women fought to be judged by their work and not by their gender.
Women fought to gain credibility for their own culture.
i. A woman fought to be a jockey.
ii. Women tennis players organized
iii. Women journalists picketed the Gridiron Club in Washington
iv. Dorothy Bolden organized women into the National Domestic Workers Union.
v. Womens history became a legitimate academic field of study.
vi. Women successfully protested for the elimination of certain television
commercials humiliating to women.
vii. Feminists established the NOW legal and Education Defense Fund.
viii. The National Welfare Rights Organization was founded.

122.

Welfares like a traffic accident? What did Johnnie Tillmon mean by this?

123.

Why did prisoners go on strike, fast, and riot?

124.
The poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. With what
evidence does Zinn support this argument?
125.

What was it like to be a prisoner in Attica in 1971?

126.

What incident provoked the Attica rebellion? How did the rebellion end?

127.
How can you account for the racial harmony among prisoners, given the discriminatory
manner in which they were treated?

128.
What did the Supreme Court determine in 1978 regarding prisoners and their ability to
communicate with the outside world? What lesson did prisoners draw from this decision?
129.

Why was the emergence of the American Indian Movement (AIM) a surprise to whites?

130.
How did Chief Luther Standing Bears testimony in 1933 explain many Indians refusal
to adopt the dominant culture as their own?
131.

In the 1960s, by what methods did Indians assert their treaty rights?

132.
How can you explain the difference between the states response to the Attica rebels and
the Indians who occupied Alcatraz?
133.

What happened at Pit River, California, in 1970?

134.
What parallels did Evan Haney make between the U.S. government treatment of Indians
and the treatment of the Vietnamese?
135.
Why was the governments response to the occupation of Wounded Knee different from
its response to the Attica rebellion?
136.

How did the sexual revolution manifest itself?

137.
What effect did the 60s have on the role of the expert in American society? What
professions were specifically affected and how?
DONE!!!!!!!!