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  • World War II

    • Road to WWII: The Quarantine Speech, The Arsenal of Democracy Idea, The 4 Freedoms, the Atlantic Charter 

      • The Lend-Lease Act, the Convoy System

    • Opposition to WWII—the America First Committee and the Nye Committee, the Neutrality Acts 

    • Life during Wartimes: mass production and economic growth; Black expectations of service; the Detroit Riots, the Zoot Suit Riots; Japanese internment; Korematsu v. United States 

The Cold War

  • The Communist Spy network in the US and England

    • Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, Klaus Fuchs, the Cambridge 5

  • McCarthyism

    • HUAC, the Lavender Scare, Loyalty Oaths

    • McCarthy’s assumptions 

  • Containment methods

    • Berlin Airlift Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, 

    • Eisenhower and Brinkmanship, covet action in Guatemala and Iran

    • Domino Theory and Magnet Theory

  • Truman, MacArthur and the Korean War

  • Nixon and Détente (goals and methods) 

  • Carter Doctrine, the Camp David Accords, his response to the “death of détente” 

  • Reagan’s foreign policy actions-- The Reagan-Gorbachev relationship and their summits and agreements 

  • Iran-Hostage Scandal (details and effects)

The Civil Rights Movement

  • Key organizations and their ideologies—SNCC, the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam 

  • Brown versus Board of Education and the Little Rock Crisis (gov’t response) 

  • Sit-ins, voter registration, and first-class citizenship

  • Black Power Ideology 

The Women’s Movement

  • Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique

  • Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Magazine

  • The National Organization of Women—goals and achievements 

  • Phyllis Schlafly and her approach to the Equal Rights Amendment 

LBJ & The Great Society 

  • Goals and the ideology behind it. You don’t need to account for all of the laws. 

  • The impact of the Great Society on American life 

The New Left 

  • Students for a Democratic Society and the Port Huron Statement 

  • Attitudes toward the Great Society and the Civil Rights movement 

  • Response to Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and Kent State Massacre

  • Relation to Civil Rights Movement and the Counter Culture

The Vietnam War

  • Why/How did America get involved at all? 

  • Why/How did America escalate its involvement? 

  • What role did the National Liberation Front/Viet Cong play in the war? 

  • What did the Pentagon Papers say about the war?

  • How did the Gulf of Tonkin affect American behavior? 

  • Nixon’s Vietnamization campaign and invasion of Cambodia

Postwar Economic Prosperity

  • The GI Bill, social mobility, suburbanization 

Politics and Culture of the 1970s 

  • OPEC Embargo, Stagflation and the response of Nixon, Ford, Carter 

  • The Watergate Scandal (details and effects) --the Plumbers, the Saturday Night Massacre, the (edited tapes)

  • Nixon, Wallace, and the Law & Order, Narrative

  • Carter’s role as “the anti-Nixon” and his Crisis of Confidence Speech (goals and reactions) 

  • The Silent Majority’s beliefs about the Vietnam War, social liberation movements, and busing 

  • The Iranian Revolution, Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, and the US response to these things

Reagan and Conservatism 

  • Reagan’s political skills and personality traits

  • Reagan’s connection to the New Right and Fusionist ideology 

  • Reagan and the Laffer Curve (and results of this connection)