Answer 1
They should be able to identify the issues that the New Right exploited to win support and the weaknesses in their arguments. The 1964 election provides an excellent example of both. Then ask students to compare conservatism of the 1960s with today. What issues are the same and which are different? To what extent was the New Right of the 1960s the harbinger of future political trends in the United States? Better students should be able to see the New Right and its successors as a reaction to the New Deal, while also pointing out that many governmental programs were very popular.
Answer 2
Students will point to young blacks' frustration with the pace of integration coupled with rising unemployment and a lack of opportunities for the emergence of a more militant current within the civil rights movement. Good students will identify Stokely Carmichael and the sit-in movement, the Watts riots, the growth of the Black Muslims under Malcolm X, and the armed presence of the Black Panther Party in most major American cities as expressions of Black Power. In effect, Black Power represented an eclectic response to the perceived inability of more legitimate types of protest to solve the mounting problems facing black youth during the 1960s.