Period 8

Atomic bomb

trigger for Cold war → the US was the only country to have this weapon and use it.

-Instensified mistrust between US and USSR

-first and only time (extreme effects)

Legacy of WWII

gave the country a NEW AND LASTING INTERNATIONAL ROLE

-the leading military/economic superpower

Occuption of Berlin

-1st sign of tension between US and USSR

-FDR and Stalin had a good relationship, but FDR died, and Truman wasn’t as cooperative

US wanted a democracy and USSR wanted communism

people in west berlin (USSR) wanted to go east (US), making Stalin angry→ BERLIN WALL

cold war meaning

ideological war

-we are never truly in direct contact

iron curtain

built by Stalin to not only keep people in, but to keep people (resources) out → starvation into submission

Cold War Presidents

Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Regan

foreign policy in 1945-1991

CONTAINMENT: stop the spread of communism out of Western Europe, they would confront the Russians wherever they tried to spread their power

Truman Doctrine- 1947

truman declared that US must help save people from communism

-commited the US to stopping the spread of communism around the world BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

ways for CONTAINMENT

1. Marshall plan: stopping communism by giving countries COLD HARD CASH in order to strengthen/stabilize them so they DON’T FALL TO COMMUNISM

2. NATO: military alliance- countries in NATO will send troops/aid countries in NATO in need

retaliation to NATO

warsal pact: created by USSR- military pact

Cold War heating up in Eurupe

Iron Curtain: isolating east Berlin and starving millions (including Americans)

BERLIN AIRLIFT: US & Great Britian drop 2.5 mil tons of food/fuel

Cold War Heating Up in Asia

1949- China falls to communism

-Due to the truman doctrine we intervene

Korean War-1950

-china wants to expand communism to Korea

-North Korea(backed by China)

-South Korea(US backed): US troops are sent

-ends in a stalemate, no peace treaty

Second Red Scare

Macarthyism- Fear of Soviet espionage in the government created by senator Joseph marcarthy

HUAC

House of Un-American Activites Committee began to hold hearings investigating possibilty of Communists in the government

-ex. tried to say racial equality was a communist idea

Nuclear Annihilation

2nd cold war fear after macarthyism

-STRONG ARM approach → nuclear arms race

-uses CIA

SPUTNIK: soviets first man made satellites, USA creates NASA to come back

1950s

GOLDEN ERA- economic prosperity

-converted wartime product Ed to peace time products= CONSUMERISM

-just like the roaring 20s

GI bill

president eisenhower’s bill have low interest mortgages and college scholarships to veterans

-veterans are now college graduates, not factory workers

culture of conformity

due to thinking communists were anyone who spoke out/against anything, people conformed to have the same opinions to avoid attention

-women roles were right back to in the home after WWII

economy after wars

switches from mass producing wartime products to peace products = consumerism → BOOMING ECONOMY

TV

protrayed the “happy homemaker” through shows like I love Lucy

suburbs

moving to the outskirts of the city to live in houses due to the HOUSING BOOM

-esp. due to the veterens and the GI bills

Baby BOOM

-soldiers returned home from WWII

-families had enough money to support their family due to stable economy/livable wages

Cold War Civil Rights

with racially charged violence and discrimination continuing, the American image was weakening.

-Racial Inequaility and women’s stereotypes played into Russia’s propaganda

Brown v Board

Supreme Court decision overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and ruled that “in the field of education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate education facilities are inherently unequal.” - public schools desegrated

Little Rock Nine

black students were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School due to the Brown decision, & the Governor of Arkansas sent the state National Guard and prevented the students from entering the the school.

-Segregationists held protests at the school and physically blocked them from entering school. 

-President Eisenhower called in federal troops to enforce the Supreme Court ruling. This event showed the federal government would not allow for violence of court orders.

Emmett Till

-Emmett was brutally beaten and murdered for alleged flirting with a white woman

-mother decided to have an open casket to see what “the world had done to her baby’

-Mamie Till(mother) spoke across the country as a civil rights activist

1950s

OLD america, conformity, traditional women roles, nuclear family emphasis, racial segrated

1960s

NEW America, social unrest, reforms, different family structures, racially INTEGRATED

-The era was marked by the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, anti-war protests, Counterculture Movement, Political Assassinations, and the emerging “generation gap.”

election of 1960

FIRST TELEVISED ELECTION

-kennedy (D) beats Nixon (R)

“NEW FRONTIER”

JFK-

domestic policies: civil rights movement, space (get to moon), inc. min. wage, tax cuts

foreign policies: soviet union and Cuba (bay of pigs, cuban missile crisis)-cold war

brinkmanship

high-stakes strategy where one party(government) pushes a conflict(country) to the brink of disaster to force an opponent to back down

Bay of Pigs

US/JFKs plan to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba

-CIA secretly trained 1,500 Cuban exiles (fled to get away from Castro) to stage a coup in 1961

-failed: within 3 days all were killed/caught and Cuba saw it as an attack→asked Soviet Union for help

Cuban Missile Crisis

Soviet Union helps Cuba after Bay of Pigs by sending them missiles to line up facing USA

-Kennedy ordered a naval blockade

-13 scary days (did not know if we would get nuked)

soviet union agreed to remove missiles from Cuba if US secretly removed missiles from Turkey and promised to never invade CUBA

JFKs stance on civil rights

-1st president to make a public support for civil rights

-”no room for racism”

-started to switch from D South to R south (political realignment)

Lee Harvey Oswald

assassinated President Kennedy during a campaign motorcade through downtown Dallas-1963

-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in on Air Force One

Lyndon B Johnson

domestic policies- Great society → war on poverty, civil rights movement

foreign policies = vietnam → gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Operation Rolling Thunder

Great Society

series of welfare programs that combat the issues of Poverty in America

sucess: rate of poverty decrease, medicare/medicaid(expansion of social security in New Deal), headstart programs(pre-K/daycare), fed. spending on education

issues: increase in federal spending for programs (but Johnson cuts poverty in half)+vietnam$

vietnam war background

communist North Viietnam v south Vietnam

eisenhower sends military advisers to teach south vietnam how to fight and so does JFK

-lyndon B Johnson officially sent troops on ground, but they started to invade other places an American lives and resources were being depleted

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution 1964

-US had navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, and a ship got hit with a torpedo, and hit us again

congress authorizes LBJ to escalate vietnam war and send troops w/o declaration of war

Operation Rolling Thunder 1965-1968

LBJ authorized bombing raids on North Vietnam and an aggressive ground war against the vietcong in the South

-vietcong was mainly underground, we were mainly bombing citizens

agent orange

a chemical that was used to kill the plant canopy since Vietcong used unconventional war methods that had never been seen by conventional USA

SNCC v SCLC

SNCC: with more white and women, younger, take more risks

SCLC: older, MLK, kids, christian

Civil Rights Act of 1964

causation: march on Washington

Outlawed discrimination in public places → end of Jim Crow and segregation for the general public.

-did not address the voting rights in the South

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Federal law that made it illegal for Black voters to be disenfranchised through unfair voter registration criteria (aka. Literacy tests are illegal)

-bc of Freedom Summer Murders, Selma police brutality

MLK Jr. v Malcom X

Integrationist - Main aim was racial equality through both races working together by using nonviolent protesting.

Black pride and separation- Called on blacks to rely on their own resources and to take care of their own community; not afraid of violence for self-defense.

assasination of MLK

many debates among Civil Rights activists on the efficacy of nonviolence.

→ When MLK is murdered, the CRM tactics shift → non-violence that MLK promoted will come to end.

migration trends

moving from densely populated Northeast RUSTBELT to the SUNBELT→ lower south areas like FL, GA, TX, CA

-Industries like defense, tech, and oil expanded into southern areas. People desired warmer climates and lower taxes

Reagan Revolution

-old and new conservatives aligned

-Republicans gained control of the Senate for the first time since 1952

-Republican platform embraced positions supported by religious conservatives (ex. Opposing Roe v. Wade, counterculture, and other social concerns).

-Conservative Democrats,“Reagan Democrats” voted Republican.

-Reagan’s victory showed how economic concerns, cultural anxieties, and declining faith in government had transformed American politics since the mid-1960s.