The New Deal
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50 free The New Deal trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The New Deal was FDR's answer to the Great Depression: a rush of laws, agencies and experiments that began in March 1933 and changed what the country expects from Washington. Much of what it built is still part of everyday life in the United States. This quiz covers the famous initials and what each agency actually did, the landmark laws, the allies and critics who fought over them, the legal battles, and the art, buildings and photographs the programs left behind. It suits APUSH and US history students revising for a test, teachers who want a ready-made review, and anyone curious about how the 1930s reshaped the country. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did Franklin Roosevelt's 1933 inaugural address call the only thing Americans had to be afraid of?
Fear itself
Fear itself was the enemy, Roosevelt told tens of millions of radio listeners at the depth of the Depression. In the same speech he warned that he might ask Congress for broad executive power to fight the emergency like a war.
Q 02Which drink did the Cullen–Harrison Act make legal again in April 1933, weeks into Franklin Roosevelt's first term?
Beer
Beer of up to 3.2 percent alcohol went back on sale on April 7, 1933, a date now marked as National Beer Day. Signing the law, Roosevelt remarked that it would be a good time for one.
Q 03Which presidential retreat, called Shangri-La by Franklin Roosevelt, began as a site built by New Deal relief workers?
Camp David
Camp David was finished in 1938 as Hi-Catoctin, a getaway for federal employees and their families in the Maryland mountains. Dwight Eisenhower renamed it in 1953 for his father and his grandson.
Q 04Which metal did Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 6102 require Americans to turn in to the Federal Reserve in 1933?
Gold
Gold coins, bullion and certificates had to be handed over at $20.67 an ounce, though jewelers and dentists were exempt. Owning it privately stayed restricted until the end of 1974.
Q 05Which future president ran the Texas branch of the New Deal's National Youth Administration in his twenties?
Lyndon Johnson
Lyndon Johnson took the job in 1935 at 26 and quit two years later to run for Congress. The agency offered work and schooling to Americans aged 16 to 25.
Q 06Which mortgage giant began in 1938 as a New Deal agency that bought loans from lenders to free up their cash?
Fannie Mae
Fannie Mae is the nickname of the Federal National Mortgage Association, set up to keep money flowing to mortgage lenders. Its rival Freddie Mac was not created until 1970.
Q 07Who became the first woman in a US cabinet when Franklin Roosevelt named her Secretary of Labor in 1933?
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins held the post for 12 years, more than any other labor secretary. Witnessing the deadly 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York had been a turning point in her life.
Q 08What name was given to the evening radio talks in which Franklin Roosevelt explained the New Deal to Americans?
Fireside chats
Fireside chats got their name from a CBS executive in 1933, after an aide said Roosevelt pictured his audience as a few people sitting around his hearth. He had first tried the format in 1929 as governor of New York.
Q 09Which New Deal program sent its first monthly check, for $22.54, to retired Vermont secretary Ida May Fuller in 1940?
Social Security
Social Security paid Ida May Fuller $22,888.92 before she died at 100, after she had paid in just $24.75 in payroll taxes. Roosevelt had signed the program into law in August 1935.
Q 10Which word for a Boy Scout leather craft became an insult for wasteful government projects during the New Deal?
Boondoggle
Boondoggle meant a Scout's leather lanyard until 1935, when The New York Times reported that relief money was paying for craft classes where the jobless made them.
Q 11Which New Deal agency, nicknamed Roosevelt's Tree Army, put unemployed young men to work in forests and parks?
Civilian Conservation Corps
Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees planted more than three billion trees between 1933 and 1942. Each man earned $30 a month, and $25 of it had to be sent home to a family dependent.
Q 12Which New Deal agency began building Norris Dam in 1933 to bring cheap power to a poor stretch of the South?
Tennessee Valley Authority
Tennessee Valley Authority dams brought power and flood control to a region where malaria affected 30 percent of people. Herbert Hoover had vetoed an earlier federal dam there as socialistic.
Q 13Which New Deal agency, headed by Harry Hopkins, gave paid jobs to 8.5 million Americans between 1935 and 1943?
Q 21Which Dallas city park, finished in 1940 by New Deal relief workers, was the site of John F. Kennedy's assassination?
Dealey Plaza
Dealey Plaza was built by relief crews on the spot where the first home in Dallas once stood. It is named for George Bannerman Dealey, an early publisher of The Dallas Morning News.
Q 22Which Louisiana senator, nicknamed the Kingfish, challenged the New Deal with his Share Our Wealth plan?
Huey Long
Huey Long built a network of 27,000 clubs with over 7.5 million members by 1935. He was assassinated inside the Louisiana State Capitol that year while preparing a run for president.
Q 23Which Michigan 'Radio Priest' turned from praising the New Deal to attacking it before some 30 million weekly listeners?
Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration crews built more than 620,000 miles of streets and over 10,000 bridges. Its workers also sewed clothing for the needy and served millions of school lunches.
Q 14What has the FDIC, a New Deal agency created in 1933, guaranteed for ordinary Americans ever since?
Bank deposits
Bank deposits were first insured up to $2,500, after more than a third of American banks had failed. No depositor has lost a penny of insured money since.
Q 15Which New Deal agency, created in 1934 to police Wall Street, had Joseph P. Kennedy as its first chairman?
Securities and Exchange Commission
The Securities and Exchange Commission went to Kennedy, a self-made multimillionaire financier, partly because of his own experience on Wall Street. He led it from 1934 to 1935.
Q 16Which New Deal agency had ten million acres of cotton plowed up and six million piglets killed to lift farm prices?
Agricultural Adjustment Administration
The Agricultural Adjustment Administration paid landowners to leave fields idle, using a new tax on food processors. That tax got the original law thrown out in 1936.
Q 17Which New Deal agency, created in 1934, protects home lenders against losses so buyers can make small down payments?
Federal Housing Administration
The Federal Housing Administration changed how Americans bought houses: before it, a typical mortgage ran three to five years and demanded 30 to 50 percent down.
Q 18Which symbol did American shops display to show they followed the codes of the National Recovery Administration?
A blue eagle
The Blue Eagle went into shop windows and onto packages, and businesses that did not show one were very often boycotted. The law behind it was ruled unconstitutional in 1935.
Q 19In a jab at the New Deal, which dish did Al Smith say Roosevelt's government was submerged in?
Alphabet soup
Alphabet soup became the standard joke about agencies such as the FERA, the CWA and the NYA. At least 69 new offices were created during Roosevelt's presidency.
Q 20What did the REA, a New Deal agency created in 1935, bring to isolated farms through loans to member-owned cooperatives?
Electricity
Electricity reached about ninety percent of American farm homes by 1959, House Speaker Sam Rayburn said. The cooperatives bought power wholesale and carried it out over their own lines.
Charles Coughlin
Charles Coughlin fell out with Roosevelt after accusing him of being too friendly to bankers. He said he had started broadcasting after the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross at his Royal Oak church.
Q 24Which California physician proposed paying every American over 60 a pension of $200 a month, to be spent quickly?
Francis Townsend
Francis Townsend launched his crusade in 1933 with a letter to his local newspaper, after losing his job as a city health officer. His plan never passed, but its popularity pushed Congress toward a pension law of its own.
Q 25Which Kansas governor lost the 1936 presidential election to Franklin Roosevelt, carrying only Maine and Vermont?
Alf Landon
Alf Landon lost even his home state and won just eight electoral votes to Roosevelt's 523. He lived to 100, and Ronald Reagan came to the birthday party in Topeka.
Q 26Which British economist, who met Franklin Roosevelt in 1934, called budget deficits a good thing in a slump?
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes had urged governments since 1924 to create jobs by spending on public works. He pressed the case on Roosevelt by letter and face to face, and the two men spoke highly of each other.
Q 27Which Secretary of the Interior for nearly 13 years also directed billions in Public Works Administration projects?
Harold Ickes
Harold Ickes held the Interior post from 1933 to 1946, the longest tenure in the office's history. His tight grip on the budget and his hostility to corruption earned him the nickname Honest Harold.
Q 28Which Florida college founder led the informal Black Cabinet that advised Franklin Roosevelt on racial issues?
Mary McLeod Bethune
Mary McLeod Bethune also directed the Division of Negro Affairs at the National Youth Administration. The private school she started for Black students grew into Bethune-Cookman University.
Q 29Which Iowa-born hybrid corn pioneer ran farm policy under Franklin Roosevelt before becoming his vice president in 1941?
Henry A. Wallace
Henry A. Wallace founded the Hi-Bred Corn Company, which became extremely successful, and edited his family's farm journal. He joined the cabinet in 1933 and stayed until 1940.
Q 30Which president echoed the New Deal by naming his own domestic program the Fair Deal in a State of the Union address?
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman asked Congress for national health insurance and federal aid to education, among other measures. A conservative coalition in Congress voted both down, and only a few of his major proposals became law.