APUSH Exam Review: Practice DBQ #2

Document 1 Source: Letter from women members of the Workers Council of Colored People to Harry Hopkins, head administrator of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), 1937

“We the Workers Council of Colored People in Raleigh, [North Carolina,] do wish to state some facts to you about how colored women (mostly heads of families) have been treated by W.P.A. heads here. Also wish you to make investigation about it at once for its pure injustice to us, the way it has been done.... We also wish you to investigate why [it is] that so many teachers unemployed and eligible to teach have not been employed by the Adult Education here, [so] that these teachers can have classes as they once had and help the illiterate colored people. One time it was many grown and old people going to the classes learning and proud of the opportunities.... Mr. Hopkins, colored women have been turned out of different jobs [and] projects to make us take other jobs...and white women were hired and sent for and given places that colored women was made to leave or quit. Let us say that if we cannot work on W.P.A. projects and be compelled to take these poor paying jobs that [instead] food, clothes, and rent money be provided for us at once because we are suffering. We the Workers Council understood that...colored women cannot be hired this winter on any of the W.P.A. projects. We wish you to tell us why.”

Document 2 Source: United States War Food Administration, pamphlet distributed to farmers, 1943

“If the local U.S. Crop Corps mobilization, including the Women’s Land Army and Victory Farm Volunteers, fails to supply the necessary farm labor requirements,...the office of Labor of the War Food Administration will bring skilled or semiskilled workers from surplus farm labor areas. Many migrant farm laborers that farmers in special-crop areas depended on in past years have gone into war plants or into the service or have year-round farm occupations. Where labor of this type is essential, arrangements are made to bring in workers from Mexico, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. Laborers from these foreign countries will be treated in accordance with agreements reached between their governments and ours.”

Document 4 Source: President John F. Kennedy, State of the Union address, 1962

“A strong America cannot neglect the aspirations of its citizens—the welfare of the needy, the health care of the elderly, the education of the young. For we are not developing the Nation’s wealth for its own sake. Wealth is the means—and people are the ends. All our material riches will avail us little if we do not use them to expand the opportunities of our people.... In matters of health, no piece of unfinished business is more important or more urgent than the enactment...of health insurance for the aged.... Private health insurance helps very few—for its cost is high and its coverage limited.... I now urge that its coverage be extended [by the government] without further delay to provide health insurance for the elderly.”

Document 5 Source: Barry Goldwater, speech accepting the Republican Party presidential nomination, 1964

“My fellow Americans, the tide has been running against freedom.... We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom.... It is the cause of Republicanism to resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people.... We must assure a society here which, while never abandoning the needy or forsaking the helpless, nurtures incentives and opportunity for the creative and the productive.... We Republicans seek a government that attends to its inherent responsibilities of...encouraging a free and a competitive economy.... We Republicans define government’s role where needed at many, many levels, preferably through the one closest to the people involved.”

Document 6 Source: César Chávez, leader of the National Farm Workers Association, a labor union that included many Mexican-descended migrant farm workers, statement to the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 1969

“How can the Nation, how can Congress help the farmworker close the yawning gap between his own social and economic condition and that of other wage earners...? Answer? Through strong, effective, well-run unions. The road to social justice for the farmworker is the road of unionization. Our cause [and] our strike...are all founded upon our deep conviction that...unionization holds far more hope for the farmworker than any other single approach.... Unionization cannot make progress in the face of hostile employer attitudes unless it receives effective governmental support.... If farm unionism is to make progress, we need sufficient economic power under law to be able to wrench signed [labor] agreements from unwilling hands of [agricultural] growers who still refuse to admit that unionization and collective bargaining have a rightful place to take in agriculture.... Today we ask the American people and the Congress to help us build our union.”

Document 7 Source: Marjorie S. Holt, Republican member of Congress, The Case Against the Reckless Congress, 1976

“Today we ask whether the noble American experiment in freedom is dissolving into a new tyranny.... Spending by all levels of government in these United States consumes 37 percent of the gross national product.... By taxation and inflation, government drains away so much of our savings that we lack the capital necessary for investment in expanding private industry and creating jobs.... How did we get into this mess? The answer is that Congress has brought us here. For three decades Congress has consistently demonstrated incompetence to do anything except promise more and spend more.... It has done nothing to slow the growth of government, and has actually proceeded to accelerate that growth.... Social and economic planning by the central government is the surest road to tyranny.... The people are best served by policy set at the state and local levels. The cause of freedom is best served at a level where the individual voice can be heard.”