The first exam will consist of ten short answer questions (4-5 sentences each, 50% of test grade) and one long essay (50%).  Be prepared to answer questions on any of the material covered in class: the readings from your texts and from handouts, as well as lecture content and film clips. 

ESSAY QUESTION 
You will receive one of three questions below on the essay section.  You will not know which one of the three will be on the exam, so study for all of them.  Some pointers: answer the question as directly and clearly as possible.  Be sure to address all the components of the question.  Remember to integrate the relevant reading and lecture material to support your argument.  Always avoid vague generalizations.  Refer to specific events, policies, groups, ideas and individuals in your answers.  Paper will be provided for your longer essay.  

1. The southern novelist William Faulkner wrote that the "past is never dead. It's not even past."  Indeed, although the Civil War ended in 1865, some observers argue that it never ended for many southerners.  Why does the war still exert such a powerful influence on how southerners think about region, race, and politics?  Using material covered in this course, write an essay on the role of the Civil War in the memory of southerners.   

2. The agrarian revolt and the Populist Party significantly challenged the southern political order.  Write an essay describing the issues that drew southerners to Populism.  Discuss the ways in which members of the Farmers' Alliance and the Populists Party reacted against the southern political status quo.  And finally, look at whether Populism succeeded or failed as a social protest.

3. Historians consider the period from roughly 1880-1901 to be the low point for race relations in the U. S. South.  Why did race relations in that twenty-year period deteriorate so rapidly?  Make sure to discuss in your answer the major white and black leaders who dealt with what was then called the "Negro problem." 
 

W. J. Cash 
C. Vann Woodward 
The Freedman's Bureau 
"Carpetbaggers" 
black codes 
the Fourteenth Amendment 
sharecropping 
the first wave of the KKK 
Redeemers 
the Compromise of 1877 
Thomas Nelson Page
United Daughters of the Confederacy 
the myth of the New South 
Henry Grady 
mill worker culture and resistance  
Bertha Miller 
the Lost Cause 
disfranchisement  
Plessy v. Ferguson  
Birth of a Nation 
economic crisis of the 1890s 
Tom Watson 
the Farmers' Alliance 
the Ocala Platform 
"Herrenvolk democracy" 
Ida B. Wells
James K. Vardaman
Booker T. Washington  
W. E. B. Du Bois
Hoke Smith 
Atlanta race riot, 1906 
Anglo-Mexican relations in 1930s Texas