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What is the ERA?

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a constitutional amendment that was first proposed by Congress (the law-making body of the United States) in 1972 to promote the equality of women. It stated that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex." Congress initially granted states a ten-year grace period to approve the proposed amendment, but by 1982 only thirty-five of the thirty-eight states required had ratified (approved) the amendments. The initiative died at this point as a result of heated disagreements over interpretations of the language in the amendment. While supporters viewed it as a means to secure equal treatment for women under the law, opponents claimed that the amendment might threaten women by forcing them to forfeit the financial support of their husbands or by requiring them to serve in the military.

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1. International Movements
   1. When did nationalism emerge?
   2. What is Zionism?
   3. What was the nonviolent Indian reform movement?
   4. What was the May Fourth Movement?
   5. Who were the Wobblies?
   6. Who was Eugene Debs?
   7. What happened at Tiananmen Square?
   8. What is Solidarity?
   9. What was the anti-apartheid movement?
   10. When did the birth control movement begin?
   11. Do women have the right to vote in all countries of the world?
   12. What is the zero population growth movement?
2. American Movements
   1. When did the abolitionism begin?
   2. How did the slavery question affect the admission of new states to the Union?
   3. What is racism?
   4. Did slavery end when the slave trade was outlawed in Britain?
   5. Why did President Lincoln wait to issue the Emancipation Proclamation?
   6. What is the history of the Ku Klux Klan?
   7. What was the Niagara movement?
   8. Who were the notable abolitionists?
   9. What was the nonviolence movement?
   10. When and how did the Civil Rights movement begin?
   11. What were the Freedom Rides?
   12. When did Martin Luther King Jr. give his famous "I Have a Dream" speech?
   13. What does the letter "X" in Malcolm X's name mean?
   14. How did Southern states prevent African Americans from voting in the first half of the twentieth century?
   15. What was the Temperance movement?
   16. What was the American Suffragist movement?
   17. What is Populism?
   18. What was the Progressive movement?
   19. When did the U.S. labor movement begin?
   20. Why was the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory important?
   21. What is the AFL-CIO?
   22. Who was César Chávez?
   23. Who are Nader's Raiders?
   24. Who were the hippies?
   25. Did the feminist movement begin in the twentieth century?
   26. How did Silent Spring influence the environmental protection movement?
   27. What is the ERA?
   28. What is the gay rights movement?