AP US History Document Based Question
Directions: The following question requires you to construct an essay that integrates
your interpretation of the Documents and your knowledge of the period referred to in the
question. In the essay you should strive to support your assertions both by citing key
pieces of evidence.
The 1920's and 1960's witnessed tremendous social upheaval, unrest and
reevaluation of our goals. Compare and contrast the 1920s and 1960s in each of the
following areas: (a) literature (b) respect for the law (c) social customs (d) foreign
policy.
Document A
“The recorded progress of our Republic, materially and spiritually, in itself proves
the wisdom of the inherited policy of non-involvement in Old World affairs. Confident of
our ability to work out our own destiny, and jealously guarding our right to do so, we
seek no part in directing the destinies of the Old World. We do not mean to be entangled.
We will accept no responsibility except as our own conscience and judgment, in each
instance, may determine…. [but] a world supergovernment is contrary to everything we
cherish and can have no sanction by our Republic. This is not selfishness, it is sanctity. It
is not aloofness, it is security. It is not suspicion of others, it is patriotic adherence to the
things which made us what we are….” President Harding's Inaugural Address, 1921.
Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, 1789-1965.
Document B
“There is only one way out. We have got to fight for the health and happiness of
the Unborn Child. And to do that in a practical, tangible way, we have got to free women
from enforced, enslaved maternity. There can be no hope for the future of civilization, no
certainty of racial salvation, until every woman can decide for herself whether she will or
will not become a mother and when and how many children she cares to bring into the
world. That is the first step.” Margaret Sanger's ''Children's Era'' Speech, 1926. American
Voices, Significant Speeches in American History, 1640-1945, p. 429-432.
Document C
Document D
“America is shocked and saddened by the brutal slaying tonight of Dr. Martin
Luther King. I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who
lived by nonviolence. I pray that his family can find comfort in the memory of all he tried
to do for the land he loved so well.
I know that every American of good will joins me in mourning the death of this
outstanding leader and in praying for peace and understanding throughout this land. We
can achieve nothing by lawlessness and divisiveness among the American people. It is
only by joining together and only by working together that we can continue to move
toward equality and fulfillment for all of our people. I hope that all Americans tonight
will search their hearts as they ponder this most tragic incident.” President Lyndon B.
Johnson's Remarks on the King Assassination, 1968. Public Papers of the Presidents of
the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, Book I (1968 9), p. 493.
Document E
“AN ACT: To prohibit discrimination on account of sex in the payment of wages by
employers engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America
in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the ''Equal Pay Act of 1963.''
No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall
discriminate, within any establishment in which such employees are employed, between
employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a
rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such
establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill,
effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions….”
Approved June 10, 1963, 12:00pm. Equal Pay Act of 1963. U.S. Statutes at Large, Public
Law 88-38, p. 56-57.
Document F
AMENDMENT 19
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1920. Triumph of the American Nation,
p. 214.
Document G
“The President of the German Reich, the President of the United States of America,
His Majesty the King of the Belgians, the President of the French Republic, His Majesty
the King of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor
of India, His Majesty the King of Italy His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, the President
of the Republic of Poland, the President of the Czechoslovak Republic.
Deeply sensible of their solemn duty to promote the welfare of mankind; Persuaded
that the time has come when a frank renunciation of war as an instrument of national
policy should be made to the end that the peaceful and friendly relations now existing
between their peoples may be perpetuated….” “Pact of Paris, 1928.” Treaties and Other
International Agreement of U.S. 1776-1949, Compiled by Charles I. Bevans, p. 23432348.
Document H
Document I
Document J
“The morals of America's young people engaged the worried attention of the
religious press. Samuel Byrne, editor of the Pittsburgh Observer (Catholic) wrote:
“There has been a change for the worse during the past year in feminine dress,
dancing, manners, and general moral standards. The causes are the lack of an adequate
sense of responsibility in the parents or guardians of girls, a decline in personal religion, a
failure to realize the serious ethical consequences of immodesty in girls' dress, a dulling
of moral susceptibilities, an inability to grasp the significance of the higher things in
human life, and, last, but not least, the absence of sufficient courage and determination to
resist the dictates of what is known as Fashion when these are opposed to decency.”
The Southern Baptist Review and Expositor held similar views:
“There is a great deal of frank talk among young people that in many cases
smacks of boldness. One hears it said that the girls are actually tempting the boys more
than the boys do the girls, by their dress and their conversation. Not all the boys and girls
are bad but evil is more open and defiant of public opinion and restraint. The situation
causes grave concern on the part of all who have the ideals at heart of purity and home
life and the stability of our American civilization.” Source: Mark Sullivan, Our Times,
Vol. VI, [1940] p. 578-80.
Document K
“That the War should give rise to books and plays was natural. What constituted a
phenomenon was that the "war books" unanimously took one view of the war, the bitter
view. All pictured war grimly, a horrible, destructive experience for those who lived
through it; a loathsome, useless death for those who died. The figures whom literature
about former wars had made to seem romantic, glamorous - Kipling's clashing young
subalterns, Richard Harding Davis's gallant captains, even Rupert Brooke's eager young
patriots - all these seemed a thousand years away from the stony disillusionment
expressed in the novels and plays about the Great War.
When the war books turned out to be very grim, and yet best sellers, there was
argument about what inference should be made, what the phenomenon might portend….
This disillusionment, the unanimity of it, and the force with which it was expressed, gave
to the war books as a group an importance unique in the literature of the time. The
importance had no relation to the literary value of the books. The importance was not in
the field of literature; it was in the world of national point-of- view. The war books at
once expressed and helped to create the national thought about a national question; they
had weight in determining the country's attitude….” Source: Mark Sullivan, Our Times
Vol VI [1940] p.372-3.
Document L
Document M
March 4, 1929
My Countrymen:
“If we survey the situation of our Nation both at home and abroad, we find many
satisfactions; we find some causes for concern. We have emerged from the losses of the
Great War and the reconstruction following it with increased virility and strength….But
all this majestic advance should not obscure the constant dangers from which selfgovernment must be safeguarded…. The most malign of all these dangers today is
disregard and disobedience of law. Crime is increasing. Confidence in rigid and speedy
justice is decreasing….
It is only in part due to the additional burdens imposed upon our judicial system by
the eighteenth amendment. The problem is much wider than that. Many influences had
increasingly complicated and weakened our law enforcement organization long before
the adoption of the eighteenth amendment.” President Hoover's Inaugural Address, 1929.
Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, 1789-1965.
Document N
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the Congress:
“I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. I urge every
member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section
of this country, to join me in that cause. At times history and fate meet at a single time in
a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at
Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in
Selma, Alabama. There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial
of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of
God, was killed.
….[T]he cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people, have
summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great government of the greatest
nation on earth. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to
right wrong, to do justice, to serve man…. There is no Negro problem. There is no
Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.
And we are met here tonight as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, we are met
here as Americans to solve that problem.
To those who seek to avoid action by their national government in their own
communities, who want to and who seek to maintain purely local control over elections,
the answer is simple. Open your polling places to all your people.” Source: Lyndon B.
Johnson on Voting Rights, 1965.
Document O
“A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers
how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.
Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in
tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.
The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has
been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has
dried up, that there is no shame today. We're all getting so mean and small and petty and
ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination.” Quotations from Norman
Mailer.
Document P
“Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the
world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and
freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. And so
tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your
support. I pledged in my campaign for the Presidency to end the war in a way that we
could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that
pledge. The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge
can be redeemed; for the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to
negotiate at Paris.
Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us
understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans
can do that.” Source: President Nixon's ''Silent Majority'' Speech, 1969. Public Papers of
the Presidents of the United States, Richard Nixon, 1969, p.901-909.