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FrançaisAP US History Unit 8: Period 8, 1945–1980
In thirty-five years, the United States built a global empire of bases and alliances, watched a Black freedom movement remake the nation's laws, sent hundreds of thousands of young men to fight in Vietnam, put a footprint on the moon, and watched the postwar liberal consensus crack apart over inflation, defeat in Southeast Asia, and Watergate. The story of Period 8 is the story of how the country that won World War II became the country that elected Ronald Reagan, and the long shadow that transformation still casts over American politics.
The 15 lessons in order
Contextualizing Period 8
The opening lesson. Frames the years from 1945 to 1980 as one connected story and previews the Cold War, civil rights, Great Society, postwar economic boom, and conservative backlash that drive the next fourteen lessons.
The Cold War from 1945 to 1980
Containment from Truman to Carter. The Marshall Plan, NATO, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, detente, and the proxy wars that the superpower contest produced across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The Red Scare
The postwar hunt for domestic communists. Loyalty oaths, HUAC, the Hollywood blacklist, the Hiss and Rosenberg cases, and Senator Joseph McCarthy's rise and fall.
Economy after 1945
The postwar boom and the people it moved. Federal spending, the GI Bill, the baby boom, suburbanization, the rise of the Sun Belt, and the great migrations south and west that reshaped the American electoral map.
Culture after 1945
The first television generation. Mass culture, Cold War conformity, the Beats, rock and roll, the cult of domesticity, and the early intellectual challenges that would erupt into the counterculture of the 1960s.
Early Steps in the Civil Rights Movement (1940s and 1950s)
The legal, military, and grassroots foundations of the postwar Black freedom movement. Truman's desegregation of the armed forces, Brown v. Board of Education, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the early leadership of Martin Luther King Jr.
America as a World Power
Global engagement beyond Europe. Decolonization, nonalignment, the Middle East and oil, Cold War policy in Latin America, and the growing debate over executive war powers and the military-industrial complex.
The Vietnam War
America's longest hot war of the Cold War era. Escalation under Kennedy and Johnson, Tet, the antiwar movement, Vietnamization, the fall of Saigon, and the credibility crisis the war produced for the American foreign-policy establishment.
The Great Society
Lyndon Johnson's domestic project. Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty, federal aid to education, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, and the broader liberal expansion of the federal role at home.
The African American Civil Rights Movement (1960s)
From Greensboro to Selma. Sit-ins, Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, Birmingham, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the splintering of the movement after 1966 over Black Power, urban unrest, and the Vietnam War.
The Civil Rights Movement Expands
The model travels. The women's movement and Title IX, the Chicano movement, the American Indian Movement, the Asian American movement, and the early gay rights movement that opened with Stonewall in 1969.
Youth Culture of the 1960s
The counterculture and its critics. The New Left, Students for a Democratic Society, the antiwar movement on college campuses, the cultural revolt that ran from Berkeley to Woodstock, and the conservative backlash that organized in response.
The Environment and Natural Resources from 1968 to 1980
From Silent Spring to the second oil shock. Earth Day, the Clean Air Act, the EPA, the OPEC embargoes of 1973 and 1979, and the federal response that produced the first national energy policy.
Society in Transition
The 1970s pivot. Stagflation, Watergate, the rise of the Christian right, the New Right's tax revolt, the evangelical political mobilization, and the early intellectual and political architecture of the Reagan coalition.
Continuity and Change in Period 8
The closing lesson. Synthesis essay, full-period DBQ practice, and a graphic comparison of the 1945 New Deal order with the conservative resurgence that handed the country to Reagan in 1980 and opened Period 9.