The document provides an overview of major events and developments in the United States from 1946 to 1960, a period of transition following World War II. It discusses the economic prosperity of the postwar era, the rise of civil rights and feminist movements, and America's growing role on the global stage. It also examines the onset of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, tensions in Europe and Asia, McCarthyism, and the early civil rights struggle against racial segregation laws in the South.

1. Collision Courses 1946-1960
HI 112 US History II
(Chapter 28)
Worcester State University

2. Hiroshima, August 1945
http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/hiroshima_08_05/h29_19773763.jpg

3. America Transformed
Productivity & full employment
End to Depression; era of prosperity
New technologies & products developed in
war
Expanded opportunities – roots of civil
rights movement & feminist movement
Democrats solidly in control of Congress
End of isolationism in foreign relations
US as a world power

4. Servicemen’s Readjustment Act 1944 (aka GI Bill)
• 1 year unemployment pay
• college or vocational training (tuition
directly paid by govt)
• 1 million men
• low-interest, zero down payments for
housing mortgages
• loans for business start-up
https://ushistoryclass.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/gi-bill.jpg

5. Eisenhower
GHW Bush
Carter Reagan
Ford
Johnson Nixon
Kennedy

6. Cold War (1946-1991) - Definitions
Opposing political ideologies + conflicting national interests
+ nuclear weapons = heavily armed standoff
•Atomic weapons arms race
•Truman Doctrine of containment (political consensus)
•AntiCommunism in the US (hysterical at times)
•Marshall Plan to keep Soviets out of W. Europe
•NATO
•Chinese Revolution 1949 & Chinese Communism
•Support (sometimes covert) of wars against communists in
Asia and other parts of the world
•Constant military buildup/ readiness/ spending in the US

7. International Responsibilities
“An iron curtain has
descended…”
--Winston Churchill Bretton Woods Agreement (IMF, World Bank) 1944
United Nations 1945

8. European Reconstruction
NATO 1949
North Atlantic Treaty
Organization

9. Cold War Europe – by 1949

10. Paul Nitze,
author of NSC-68,
the “blueprint of the Cold War”
George Kennan,
author of 1947
“Containment Policy”
telegram from
Moscow

11. Election of 1948
Democrat
Republican
Dixiecrat

12. Communist Revolution in China, 1949

13. Korean War, 1950-1953
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Korean_War_HA-SN-98-07085.JPEG

14. http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/koreanwar_06_23/k13_00915094.jpg

15. http://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt104/vor033/US%20Army%20-%20Korean%20War/11.jpg

16. https://sinaphile.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/crossing_the_38th_parallel.jpg

17. The Atomic Age
Nuclear Testing in
Nevada, 1951-1963

18. 1950s Cold War Sci-Fi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2PLls02gOU

19. McCarthyism & the Second Red Scare

20. The Baby Boom, 1945-1960

21. DuPont worker Steve Czekalinski & family, from Cleveland OH,
with their food for one year (cost $1300). Life Magazine, 19 November 1951

24. Sunkist Gardens Housing Project, Los Angeles CA
published in the California Eagle 28 Sept 1950

25. Election of 1952
1952 1956

26. Two Americas?
West Memphis, Arkansas in 1949

28. Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1954
WW2: CORE, FPEC
Military desegregation (Truman Executive Order) 1948
Pro Baseball (re-)desegregation, 1947
CA state SC overturns ban on interracial marriage, 1948
NAACP voter registration drives, early ‘50s
Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
Thurgood Marshall

29. Children of the
Brown case

30. Baltimore police escorting students to school, October 1954

31. Arrest of Rosa Parks, 1 Dec 1955, Montgomery Alabama

32. National Guard escorting the “Little Rock 9”
Little Rock HS, Arkansas, 1957

33. Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1960
Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
Murder of Emmett Till & acquittal of his killers, 1955
Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956
Desegregation of Little Rock HS, 1957