APUSH: Period 8

Post WWII

  • GI Bill of Rights

    • Provided WWII veterans with funds for college and a year of paid leave

  • Baby Boom Generation

    • Women returned home to their previous roles

    • Huge boost in population

    • Many still held jobs out of need

  • White

    • Moved to suburbs as African Americans moved to cities

      • Levittown

        • White communities

        • Racist and segregated

  • African Americans

    • Second Great Migration

      • Moved to cities

      • Faced racial tensions

  • Rise in religion

    • Again a god driven nation

Consumer Culture (1950s)

  • The Beats

    • Controversial group of young writers, poets, painters, and musicians

    • Rebellious

      • Took part in drinking, drugs, crime

  • Rock and Roll

    • New form of music

      • Mixed music of that of African Americans and Whites

      • Extremely controversial

    • Elvis Presley

      • Popularized rock and roll2

  • The Nuclear Family

Truman Administration (1945-1953)

  • Created the National Security Act

    • Created Department of Defense

  • Created the CIA

  • The Fair Deal

    • Increased minimum wage

    • Majority of the acts within the fair deal was rejected

  • NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

    • Alliance of countries

    • Tried to scare countries to not go to war

Containment

  • Coined by George Kennan

    • Foreign ambassador to the Soviet Union

  • Idea to keep communism from spreading

    • Cannot stop communism, but can prevent it from spreading

  • Impact

    • Ended the US policy of isolation

    • Wanted to interfere to stop communism

The Truman Doctrine

  • Offered 400 millions dollars to Greece and Turkey

    • Military and economic

    • Britain could no longer provide aid to Greece and Turkey

  • US feared that soviets would take control or gain influence

    • Provided financial aid to help prevent Greece and Turkey from succumbing to communist control

  • Impact

    • American enters foreign affairs  

The Marshall Plan

  • Created by George Marshall

    • Secretary of State under Truman

  • US gave 14 billion dollars to improve Europe’s financial state and economic recovery

  • Used to make communism less appealing to European countries

Second Red Scare (1940s)

  • Hysteria against communism 

    • Many Americans feared the US government was infiltrated by communists

  • Why did this occur

    • Soviet Union- communist

    • Chinese Civil War

      • Nationalist party lost to communist party

    • Soviet development of nuclear weapons

  • HUAC (created in 1945)

    • House Committee on Un-American Activities

      • Created to hunt down communists

    • Alger Hiss

      • Accused of sharing 65 classified documents

    • “Hollywood Ten”

      • 10 screenwriters that refused to testify

      • Sentenced to jail

  • Joseph McCarthy

    • Stated that he knew communists in the government

    • Led a witch hunt against suspected communists

    • McCarthyism

      • Rosenbergs

        • Husband and wife convicted of giving bomb secrets to the soviets 

        • Executed

  • Effects of the Second Red Scare

    • Blacklisting

    • Violation of constitutional rights

The Korean War

  • Prior to Korean War

    • Korea was divided at the 38th parallel

      • Divided by Potsdam conference

      • North-communist

      • South-non-communist

    • Executive Order 9981

      • Desegregated the military

      • Harry Truman

      • Korean war would be the first war fought with desegregated troops

  • Fighting During the War

    • 1950-North Korea invaded South Korea

      • Truman interferes as he fears the spread of the Soviet Union

    • NSC-68

      • US increased its military size and spending

    • End of the War

      • Eisenhower agrees to demilitarized zone

    • Impact

      • Tensions increase between the US and China

      • Defense spending increases

Dwight Eisenhower 

  • Won the election of 1952

    • General during WWII

      • Led D-day

  • “Dynamic Conservatism”

    • Contention of New Deal Programs

    • Conservative with money

  • Republican

  • Domestic Policies

    • Established the Interstate Highway Act

      • Largest public works project in US

      • Created 42,000 miles of highways

      • Helped create growth of suburbs

    • Alaska and Hawaii admitted as states

  • Eisenhower and the Cold War

    • Korean War ended under his administration

    • Secretary of state-John Foster Dulles

      • Massive retaliation

        • Not being afraid to go to war or use nuclear war

        • Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

          • Nuclear war 

          • Basically if the US nuked the Soviet Union they would nuke the US in return

    • Sputnik-launched by the Soviet Union (1957)

      • Caused the space race

      • Led to increase in spending on science and education

      • Creation of NASA

    • U2 Spy plane 

      • US spy plane shot down by Soviets

      • Increased tensions

  • Foreign Policy

    • Eisenhower Doctrine

      • Fear that communism could progress to Middle East countries

      • President could provide military and economic aid to nations resisting communism

    • Iran

      • Operation Ajax

        • US plan to overthrow the Iranian government

        • Moussadegh was overthrown

        • CIA 

    • Suez Crisis

      • Egyptian president Nasser nationalized the Suez canal

      • France, Britain, and Israel attacked Egypt

      • US did not support the attack

Civil Rights (1950s)

  • Jackie Robinson

    • First African American professional baseball player

  • Murder of Emmett Till-1955

    • Open casket funeral

    • Sparked civil rights movement

  • Brown v Board of Education-1954

    • Overturned Plessy v Fegerssen

      • Declared that separate but equal was not constitutional

    • Ended segregation in schools

  • Southern Resistance

    • Massive resistance

      • Encouraged schools to shut down to avoid desegregation

  • Little Rock Nine-1957

    • National guard was used to keep black students from entering the school

    • Eisenhower sends troops to the school to escort them

    • Military intervened to help African Americans

  • Montgomery Bus Riot-1955

    • Rosa parks refused to give up her seat

    • Highly successful

      • Involved thousands of people

      • Eventually the buses were desegregated

  • Martin Luther King Jr

    • Drew ideas from Thoreau and Gandhi

    • Peaceful

Consumer Culture (1960s)

  • Hippies

    • Counterculture movement

    • Went against traditional ideas

John F. Kennedy Administration

  • Election of 1960

    • Nixon vs. Kennedy

    • Kennedy wins and becomes the 1st Catholic president elected

  • “New Frontier” 

    • Kennedy’s domestic program

    • Gave money to education, health care, and civil rights

    • Most of his policies were blocked

  • Space race

    • Declared that the US would be the 1st to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade

  • Foreign policy

    • The cold war continues under Kennedy’s administration

    • Bay of Pigs invasion-1961

      • CIA plan of overthrowing the Castro government

      • Complete failure

    • Cuban Missile Crisis

      • US discovers that Soviets were installing offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba

      • Kennedy orders a naval blockade of Cuba 

      • Tensions rise and nuclear war was a threat

Lyndon B. Johnson Administration

  • Kennedy was assassinated and Lyndon Johnson took over

  • “The Great Society”

    • Domestic program

    • Expand upon the New Deal, but also seek to advance Civil Rights

      • Civil Rights Act of 1964

      • Voting Rights Act of 1965

        • Abolished literacy tests and poll taxes

    • Medicare, medicaid

    • Education funding

    • Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

      • Ended the quotas designed to restrict immigration

  • “The Other America”

    • Written by Micheal Harington

    • Turned attention to the millions of people living in poverty

    • Influenced Johnson’s The Great Society

  • Election of 1964

    • Johnson wins reelection

Civil Rights (1960s)

  • March on Washington-1963

    • MLK gives the “I have a dream” speech

  • 24th amendment

    • Outlawed poll taxes

  • Freedom Summer-1964

    • Attempted to register as many African Americans to vote as possible in Mississippi

Vietnam War

  • History

    • France lost the battle of Dien Bien Phu and leaves Vietnam

    • US supports unpopular leader of South Vietnam, Diem

  • Gulf of Tonkin incident-1964

    • Lyndon B Johnson claimed that a US ship was attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin

    • Congress then gives LBJ a check to send troops to Vietnam

  • Tet Offensive-1968

    • Surprise attack by the North Vietnamese on a holiday

  • Anti-war opposition

    • SDS and New Left

      • Promoted democracy and protested the end of the Vietnam war

Nixon Administration

  • Election of 1968

    • Richard Nixon wins

  • Vietnam war

    • Nixon promised to end the Vietnam war

      • Withdrew troops slowly through “Vietnamization”

    • My Lai Massacre-1968

      • US troops killed women and children

      • Resurfaced in 1970

      • Caused mass outrage against the war

    • Nixon secretly bombed Cambodia

      • Protest erupted in response

        • Kent State

          • 4 students killed 

  • Nixon Doctrine

    • US would continue to provide support for other countries, but they cannot always rely on the US troops for help

  • Pentagon papers

    • Revealed that the US government had deceived the American people about the Vietnam War

  • Paris Accords

    • US troops withdrawn

    • South Vietnam would be overthrown and North Vietnam ends up taking over

  • Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT)

    • Limited nuclear weapons to reduce tensions from the Cold War

  • Watergate

    • Scandal of the Nixon administration taking part in illegal activities

    • Nixon resigned to not be faced with impeachment

Minority Movements

  • Women

    • Creation of the NOW

      • National organization for women

      • Created by Betty Friedan

    • Roe v Wade-1973

      • Gave reproductive rights to women

      • Legalized abortion

    • Title IX-1972

      • Ended sex based discrimination in schools

  • Hispanics

    • Cesar Chevez

  • American Indian Movement

  • Gay Rights

    • Stonewall Riots-1969

      • Led to the modern gay rights  movement