Q 01/05

Which union did Jimmy Hoffa lead from 1957 until 1971, four years before he vanished near Detroit?

A) Longshoremen

B) Teamsters

C) Mine Workers

D) Machinists

Answer · why

B) Teamsters

Teamsters membership passed 2.3 million under Hoffa, making it the largest union in the United States. He disappeared from a restaurant parking lot an...

Q 02/05

In which city was Martin Luther King Jr. backing a sanitation workers' strike when he was assassinated in 1968?

A) Birmingham

B) Montgomery

C) Memphis

D) Atlanta

Answer · why

C) Memphis

Memphis sanitation workers walked out after two of them, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death in a garbage compactor while sheltering f...

Q 03/05

Which president fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981 and banned them from federal jobs?

A) Ronald Reagan

B) Jimmy Carter

C) Richard Nixon

D) George H. W. Bush

Answer · why

A) Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan gave the controllers 48 hours to return to work, even though their union, PATCO, had endorsed him in the 1980 campaign. It lost its cert...

Q 04/05

Which industrialist stunned rivals in 1914 by more than doubling most of his workers' pay to five dollars a day?

A) Walter Chrysler

B) Ransom Olds

C) Louis Chevrolet

D) Henry Ford

Answer · why

D) Henry Ford

Henry Ford was trying to stop a costly churn of staff: some of his departments were hiring 300 men a year to keep 100 jobs filled.

Q 05/05

Which protest tactic takes its name from an English land agent shunned by his Irish neighbors in 1880?

A) Blockade

B) Boycott

C) Picket

D) Lockout

Answer · why

B) Boycott

Boycott was the surname of Captain Charles Boycott, cut off so completely in County Mayo that it took soldiers and constables to bring in his crops, a...