Unit 8: Period 8 (1945–1980)

Executive Summary

Period 8 covers Cold War confrontation abroad, affluence and anxiety at home, the civil rights revolution, and the era's political realignment.

The Cold War

Containment guided policy: the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Korean War. The arms race, Sputnik, and brinkmanship defined the 1950s; the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) brought the world near nuclear war. Détente eased tensions in the 1970s.

Affluence and anxiety

Postwar prosperity built suburbia, the baby boom, and consumer culture. The G.I. Bill educated veterans. But conformity bred critics — the Beats — and fear bred McCarthyism's red scare. Brown v. Board (1954) overturned school segregation.

Civil rights

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott (1955) launched mass protest. MLK led nonviolent campaigns (Birmingham, Selma, March on Washington). The Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) ended legal segregation and voting barriers. Malcolm X and Black Power offered alternatives; the movement expanded to women, Latinos, Native Americans, and LGBTQ Americans.

The sixties and Vietnam

Kennedy's New Frontier and Johnson's Great Society (Medicare, Medicaid, War on Poverty) expanded the welfare state — while Vietnam consumed resources and trust. The Tet Offensive (1968) turned opinion; protests, the counterculture, and the assassinations of 1968 convulsed the nation. Nixon's Vietnamization and Watergate ended the era in scandal.

Political realignment

Nixon's Southern Strategy began the shift of the white South to Republicans; Roe v. Wade (1973) and busing intensified culture wars. Stagflation of the 1970s eroded faith in liberal economics.

Exam traps

Brown v. Board ended de jure school segregation, not all segregation. The Great Society fought poverty but coexisted with Vietnam's costs. Watergate was a constitutional crisis, not just a burglary. The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act are separate laws — don't merge them.