AP U.S. History 8.1: Contextualizing Period 8

Victory in 1945 left the United States the strongest power in a shaken world. By 1947 it was in a cold war with the Soviet Union: a long rivalry fought through alliances, aid, an arms race and wars in other countries, such as Korea.

On March 12, 1947, President Harry Truman asked a joint session of Congress for aid to Greece and Turkey and said that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." American leaders set out to limit the growth of Communist military power and influence, build a free-market world economy and build an international security system. In April 1949 the United States signed the North Atlantic Treaty, which says "an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all."

Leadership abroad changed life at home. The military services and the defense industry expanded a great deal in the 1950s, and Cold War policies set off public debates over the power of the federal government and over how to pursue the nation's goals while protecting civil liberties. In 1954 the Senate censured Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose charges against suspected Communists in government had made him notorious on little proof.

Sources: Truman Doctrine (National Archives); North Atlantic Treaty (Avalon Project); Censure of Senator McCarthy (National Archives); Eisenhower's Farewell Address (National Archives).

The second force came from Americans demanding the equality promised during Reconstruction. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The ruling met considerable resistance. On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination in public places and in employment. The National Archives calls it the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, and Southern Democrats in the Senate had tried to talk it to death in a filibuster. Activists and leaders won real victories, but progress toward racial equality was slow.

The African American civil rights movement inspired others. Feminist, Latino, American Indian, Asian American and LGBTQ+ activists pressed their own claims to equality, and an environmental movement fought pollution.

Liberalism in these years meant anti-communism abroad and a firm belief that federal power could achieve social goals at home. It reached its high point in the mid-1960s. Medicare and Medicaid, signed in July 1965, made the federal government a health insurer for older and low-income Americans; opponents had long warned against "socialized medicine." Liberalism then came under attack from the left, from critics who said it did too little to change the racial and economic order, and from a resurgent conservative movement that wanted a smaller federal government.

Sources: Brown v. Board of Education (National Archives); Civil Rights Act (National Archives); Medicare and Medicaid Act (National Archives).

The third force was economic and demographic. The feared postwar depression did not come. The G.I. Bill paid for schooling for about eight million veterans, and by 1955 it had backed 4.3 million home loans. Rapid economic and social change fed a sense of optimism. A growing private sector, federal spending, the baby boom and new technology spurred growth. As higher education spread, much of the middle class moved to the suburbs, and many Americans moved to the South and West, the region called the Sun Belt. In June 1956 Congress authorized the interstate highway system, the biggest public works project in the nation's history.

The gains were not shared equally. Black veterans were often unable to get mortgage loans in Black neighborhoods, and prejudice and discrimination kept most of them from buying homes in white suburbs.

New ways of living, and anxiety about the Cold War, changed American culture and set off moral and political debates that sharply divided the nation. Mass culture grew more alike from place to place, and artists, intellectuals and rebellious youth challenged its conformity. In the 1960s a counterculture rejected many of its parents' values. Evangelical Christian churches grew fast, and religious conservatives became more active in politics.

Sources: Servicemen's Readjustment Act (National Archives); Interstate Highways Act (National Archives).

Contextualization means explaining how a specific development fits a broader process of its time. A date is not context, and neither is an idea on its own. Name what was happening, then show how it shaped the development you are explaining.

Take Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. A weak context says only This happened in the 1960s. Another weak one names only a belief: liberals trusted federal power. Liberals held that belief in the 1940s too, when President Truman asked Congress for national health insurance and later backed off. A strong context names what had changed. Between 1950 and 1963 the population aged 65 and older grew from about 12 million to 17.5 million, hospital costs rose about 6.7 percent a year, and by 1960 it was clear that private insurers could not give older Americans affordable coverage. Those pressures, met by liberals at the height of their influence, explain why the law came in 1965.

Many developments of Period 8 sit inside two of the forces in this lesson. The censure of McCarthy belongs to the Cold War and to the argument over civil liberties at home. Pick the force that does the most to explain your development, and name the events that carried it.

Source: Medicare and Medicaid Act (National Archives).