Free CLEP US History II Practice Test (2026)

Question 1

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

Accepted Answer

suspended literacy tests in much of the South and sent federal voting examiners

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abolished the poll tax in federal elections across the country

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required ballots in every language spoken in each state

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ended racial segregation in hotels, restaurants, theaters and other public places

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lowered the voting age to 18 in all federal and state elections

Question 2

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) argued that

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many educated women felt unfulfilled as full-time suburban housewives

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poverty was hidden in rural Appalachia and city slums

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women should leave their paid jobs to make room for returning war veterans

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the Equal Rights Amendment had already ended job discrimination

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pesticides were harming the health of women and children

Question 3

Passed over President Nixon's veto in 1973, the War Powers Resolution

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required notice to Congress and limited deployments to 60 days without its approval

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required a constitutional amendment before troops could be sent overseas

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ended the military draft and created an all-volunteer army

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gave the president sole power to send troops abroad without ever consulting Congress

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formally declared war on North Vietnam after years of fighting

Question 4

In 1919 and 1920, after a series of bombings, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer

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raided radical groups, arresting thousands and deporting hundreds of immigrants

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used federal agents to break up the revived Ku Klux Klan in the South

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ordered the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast

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pushed Congress to protect the right of workers to organize and strike

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brought antitrust suits against the largest corporations

Question 5

In 1894 the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, joined a strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company, halting rail traffic across much of the country. How did the strike end?

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A federal court injunction and federal troops sent by President Cleveland broke the strike.

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Theodore Roosevelt brought both sides to the White House and arranged a settlement.

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Congress passed a law requiring Pullman to recognize the union.

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Pullman restored the workers' wages after federal arbitration.

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The strike grew into a nationwide general strike that forced the governor of Illinois to resign.

Question 6

Writers such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, often called the "Lost Generation," are best known for works that

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voiced disillusionment with World War I and 1920s materialism

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chronicled the Dust Bowl migration to California

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urged a return to strict religious values

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described the hardships of Northern factory workers in the 1890s

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celebrated the heroism of the war and the virtues of small-town life

Question 7

Which of the following was created by the Social Security Act of 1935?

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Old-age pensions funded by payroll taxes, plus unemployment insurance

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Federal protection of workers' right to bargain collectively

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Federal insurance for bank deposits up to a set amount

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A national minimum wage and a standard 40-hour workweek

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Government health insurance for Americans over age 65

Question 8

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

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halted Chinese labor immigration and denied Chinese immigrants citizenship

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invited unlimited Chinese immigration to build the transcontinental railroad

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set immigration quotas for every nation based on the 1890 census

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ended all immigration from Europe

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applied only to Chinese merchants and students, not to laborers

Question 9

The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, passed over President Truman's veto,

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banned the closed shop and allowed states to pass right-to-work laws

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created the Social Security system

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barred states from passing right-to-work laws

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merged the AFL and the CIO into one federation

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set the first federal minimum wage and a maximum workweek for many workers

Question 10

A police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City in June 1969 is usually seen as

Accepted Answer

a starting point of the modern gay rights movement

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the first large protest against the Vietnam War

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a turning point in the California farmworkers' strike

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the beginning of the Black Power movement

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the event that led Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment

Question 11

The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, passed after a disappointed office seeker shot President James Garfield, provided that

Accepted Answer

some federal jobs be filled by merit exams, not party loyalty

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federal workers be allowed to form unions and strike

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all federal jobs be filled by members of the president's party

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the Senate confirm every federal clerk and postmaster

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federal employees be elected by the voters of their districts

Question 12

Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle (1906) to expose the hard lives of immigrant workers in Chicago, but the public reacted most strongly to its scenes of

Accepted Answer

unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking plants

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the dangers faced by young women in New England textile mills

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the lavish spending of railroad owners

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child labor in Pennsylvania coal mines

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corruption in New York City's government

Question 13

In 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress for power to appoint an extra Supreme Court justice for each sitting justice over age 70, up to six new justices. What happened to this plan?

Accepted Answer

Congress refused to pass it, though the Court soon began upholding New Deal laws.

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Roosevelt dropped it after the Court struck down the National Labor Relations Act.

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It was added to the Constitution as the Twenty-first Amendment.

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Congress passed it, and the Court grew to fifteen justices.

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The Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional.

Question 14

Beginning in 1942, the Bracero Program

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brought Mexican workers in on temporary contracts, mostly for farm work

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opened the border to unlimited immigration from Latin America

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organized farmworkers into a union to bargain with growers

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granted citizenship to anyone who served in the US military

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deported Mexicans and many Mexican Americans during the Great Depression

Question 15

In 1948 President Harry Truman issued an executive order that

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ordered equal treatment in the armed forces, leading to their desegregation

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banned poll taxes in federal elections across the South

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created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

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ended racial segregation in public schools and colleges

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sent federal troops to integrate Central High School in Little Rock

Question 16

Jacob Riis's book How the Other Half Lives (1890) used photographs and reporting to expose

Accepted Answer

crowded, unsafe living conditions in New York City tenements

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lynching in the South

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the federal government's broken treaties with Native Americans

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the lives of wealthy families in Newport mansions

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the business practices of the Standard Oil Company

Question 17

In 1947 President Harry Truman asked Congress for $400 million in aid to Greece and Turkey, saying the United States must support free peoples resisting outside pressure. This policy

Accepted Answer

was the first major statement of the policy of containment

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supplied West Berlin by air during the Soviet blockade

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created the NATO military alliance with Western Europe

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ended American isolationism by joining the League of Nations

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was the Marshall Plan to rebuild all of Western Europe

Question 18

In his 1895 speech in Atlanta, Booker T. Washington urged Black Southerners to

Accepted Answer

focus on job skills and economic progress before pressing for equal rights

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form a separate political party with poor white farmers

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leave the rural South for factory jobs in Northern cities

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move to Africa and build an independent nation of their own

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demand full civil rights at once through protest and the courts

Question 19

In United States v. Nixon (1974), the Supreme Court ruled that

Accepted Answer

Nixon had to hand over his tapes, because executive privilege is not absolute

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a sitting president cannot be investigated by a federal prosecutor

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executive privilege shields all presidential conversations from review by the courts

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the office of the special prosecutor was unconstitutional

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Congress may not impeach a president for actions taken in office

Question 20

In February 1960 four Black college students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave. The sit-in movement that followed led directly to the founding of

Accepted Answer

the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

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the Congress of Racial Equality

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the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

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the Black Panther Party

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the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Question 21

In April 1898, as Congress authorized war with Spain over Cuba, it passed the Teller Amendment, which

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pledged that the United States would not annex Cuba

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declared the Philippines an independent republic

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announced that the United States would police Latin American nations that could not pay their debts

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demanded equal trading rights for all nations in China

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gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba's affairs

Question 22

The farmworkers' union led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, later named the United Farm Workers, won national attention in the late 1960s mainly by

Accepted Answer

organizing a nationwide consumer boycott of California table grapes

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suing to end the segregation of Mexican American schoolchildren

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winning a sit-down strike at a General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan

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campaigning to expand the Bracero Program

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occupying Alcatraz Island to claim it for Native peoples

Question 23

The Twenty-second Amendment, ratified in 1951, was mainly a reaction to

Accepted Answer

Franklin Roosevelt's four election victories

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the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation

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the disputed presidential election of 1876

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the assassination of John Kennedy

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Woodrow Wilson's stroke while in office

Question 24

In 1954 Congress added the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, and in 1956 it made "In God We Trust" the national motto. These actions are best understood as part of

Accepted Answer

a Cold War effort to contrast American faith with atheist communism

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the fundamentalist campaign against teaching evolution in the 1920s

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the counterculture's interest in Eastern religions

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the Social Gospel movement's push for urban reform

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a Supreme Court ruling requiring prayer in public schools

Question 25

In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court

Accepted Answer

upheld the wartime order removing Japanese Americans from the West Coast

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struck down racial segregation in public schools

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ruled the removal unconstitutional and ordered compensation for those affected

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upheld the right of Japanese immigrants to become citizens

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ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment protects only native-born citizens

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