U.S. Culture and Civilization: Certamen Prof.

Slough

NAME: Eduardo Mansilla Contreras

Points__/61

Grade:______________

Identification

Give a brief definition of each term or explain the person's role in U.S.
history (3 points each)

1. Christopher Columbus: He was an Italian navigator and explorer that

was born in Genoa in 1451. His father was a weaver and Columbus
worked in his father's business until the age of fourteen. On 3 August
1492, Christopher Columbus started a voyage in order to find a new
route from Europe to Asia. He did not achieve his goal but landed on
America. He set foot on a Bahamian island that he called San Salvador.
He died on May 20, 1506.

2. John Smith: An English soldier that played an important role in

establishing the first successful English settlement in North America
(Jamestown). His expedition reached Virginia and founded Jamestown
in 1607. He was elected president of the governing Council of Virginia
Colony 1608.

3. Mayflower: Mayflower was a ship that brought the Pilgrims to

America in 1620. Mayflower was a ship of 180 tuns, twenty six feet
(7.9-m) in width, ninety feet (27.4 m) in length and eleven feet (3.4 m)
in depth. The Mayflower embarked from Plymouth, England in
September with 102 passengers and a crew of about 25 or 30 aboard.
The pilgrims originally wanted to go to Virginia but the weather and
navigational errors made the Mayflower fail to make good its course
and arrived to the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts.

4. Thomas Jefferson: Jefferson was third president of the United States.

He was an American leader that participated actively in the rebellion
against Great Britain and was the primary author of the Declaration of
Independence.

5. Paul Revere: He was the leader of a patriotic organization called

“Sons of Liberty”. He participated in the Boston Tea Party in 1773. He
became famous because of “midnight ride”, Paul Revere rode to
Lexington to tell the colonists the movements of the British
Army In 1775.

Oral Presentations

Answer the following questions about the oral presentations, using

complete sentences (3 points each)

1. Charles Darwin

Explain the basic idea behind Darwin´s theory of Natural Selection.

It is a theory that says that the environment plays an important role in

the process of evolution of a specific organism. Heritable traits that are
useful in a particular environment become more common from
generation to generation because the organisms are very likely to
survive and produce. On the other hand, organisms that have
unfavorable characteristics are not likely to pass their traits to the
future generations.

2. Henry Ford

What is Henry Ford´s idea of mass production?

Cars were cheap because all the cars were equal. He produced cars
with only one color and one engine size. That is why it was easier for
him to produce cars on an Assembly Line. Fewer skilled workers were
needed and the cost of a car was low.

3. Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright is famous for his idea that "form follows function."
What does this mean?

It means that the shape of a house should reflect the purpose of the
house. A house should be built according to the needs of the people
and the environment. So, he thought that every house had to have a
different shape.

4. Emma Goldman

Name one issue or cause for which Emma Goldman fought.

She did not agree with the prejudice against homosexuals. She
defended gay and lesbian rights because she thought there were not
good reasons to discriminate them. She especially supported
homosexual love.
Text Analysis

Choose ONE of the following passages and explain the context and
meaning. Imagine that your reader has never seen these passages
before and would like to know what they mean and how they fit into
U.S. history. Please do a "close reading," quoting exact phrases and
explaining in detail what they mean and their context. Possible
questions (you do not necessarily need to answer these exact ones,
and feel free to add your own) to get you started include the following:
What was going on at the time of this text? Do we know who the
author is (and if we don't why? Does that mean something too?)? Who
did this text affect? Who would have known about it? (10 points)

"The river ends between two hills

Follow The Drinking Gourd

There´s another river on the other side

Follow The Drinking Gourd"

OR

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit
of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,

deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness."

There was a conflict between the North and the South of United States
because people from the North wanted to abolish slavery but people
from the South did not want to do that. That is why slaves wanted to
migrate to the North in order to find freedom. The song “Follow The
Drinking Gourd” gave secret instructions to slaves to follow the safest
way to flee from the South to the North.

The author is unknown because he did not want white people to know
that he had written that piece of song. If whites had known that he was
helping blacks people to escape to the North, they would had tried to
kill the author of the song.
The man that guided blacks was supposedly Peg Leg Joe. The song
makes allusion to him in the following line “The old man is awaiting for
to carry you to freedom”. “Old man” is a slang word for captain. Peg
Leg Joe had previously been a sailor.

The verse means that blacks had to arrive to the headwaters of the
Tombigbee River and then continue going in direction to the north over
the Woodall Mountain and another hill until reaching the Tennessee
River. The drinking gourd is the Big Dipper asterism that showed blacks
which way north was.