Topic #26 Overview Sheet
 
  Assignment #1
 

Sources:
  • textbook:  pg. 789 to mid-pg. 802.    [11th ed. --> pg. 799 - mid-pg. 813]
  • PowerPoint:  "1950s America."
  • film clips:  "The Century--America's Time."
 

Questions:
  1. What were the causes of the great economic growth in the country from 1945 to 1960?  What was the impact on the American standard of living?
  2. Why did the West grow faster than the rest of the nation in the post-World War II era?
  3. What was Keynesian economic theory?  How did the developments of the 1950s and early 1960s seem to confirm the theory?
  4. What was the post-war trend in economic consolidation?
  5. What was the nature of the "post-war contract" that developed between big labor and big business?  What were the "escalator clauses?"
  6. How was the labor movement hampered by scandal, new government restrictions, and other factors?
  7. Identify the key medical advances of the mid-20c.  What were the social results of these discoveries?
  8. What key developments in electronics in the 1950s and 1960s transformed consumer and industrial products and paved the way for the computer revolution?
  9. How did Americans react to the Soviet Sputnik?  What was the response of the US government?
  10. What was the expanded role of advertising and consumer credit in the 1950s?  Why can it be said that the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s was substantially consumer-driven?
  11. What was the appeal of Levittown and similar suburban developments?  How did typical suburbs transform family life and shape women's attitudes?
  12. What was the impact of the automobile and the super highway on metropolitan development patterns, especially the traditional downtown?
  13. What impact did the automobile culture have on railroads, energy consumption, air pollution, and retailing?  How did the American experience compare with that of other developed nations at the time?
 

Terms:
 
  Assignment #2
 

Sources:
 

Questions:
  1. Why can it be said that television was central to the culture of the postwar era?  How did the medium simultaneously unify and alienate Americans?
  2. What types of programs characterized television's "Golden Age?"  What were the major social, political, economic, and cultural themes in those shows?
  3. How did radio and the movies maintain their appeal to the new television generation during the 1950s?
  4. Describe the depth of the "gender divide" in the 1950s, especially in regard to jobs, primary gender roles, and body image.
  5. What was the "Beat" movement?  How did the values of the beatniks differ from those of mainstream America in the 1950s?
  6. Identify some of the writers and social critics of the period who challenged American affluence.  How did their challenge reveal the limitations and dangers of national economic abundance?
  7. 1950s?  How did Hollywood and radio reflect this importance?
  8. How did the music of African American influence the development of rock and roll?  To what extent was the audience multi-racial?
  9. What groups in society seemed mired in hard-core poverty largely outside the prosperity of the 1950s?  Why?
  10. What demographic shifts occurred in minority populations during World War II and the postwar era?
  11. What was the result of the "urban renewal" program?
  12. What were the conclusions of the report from President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights?  What steps did Truman take to end racial discrimination in the federal government?
  13. Why was Jackie Robinson an important figure in the struggle for civil rights?
  14. Why was Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, KS such a landmark Supreme Court case? [create a case analysis sheet on the details and ramifications of this case!].
  15. What were President Eisenhower's views on civil rights [especially regarding the Brown decision]?
  16. What was the intent of the Southern Manifesto?
  17. How did President Eisenhower enforce the Brown ruling in Little Rock, AR in the summer of 1957?
  18. Why was Rosa Park's courageous stand and the resulting Montgomery bus boycott so important to the 1950s civil rights movement?
  19. How and why did Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerge as the leader of the civil rights movement in the US in the 1950s?
  20. Identify the various African American organizations that were created during the 1950s to fight segregation and racism.
 

Terms:
 
  Assignment #3
 

Sources:
  • textbook:  mid-pg. 812 - pg. 817.    [11th ed. --> mid-pg. 823 - pg. 829]
  • film clips:  "The Century--America's Time."
  • PowerPoint: "Eisenhower's Foreign Policy."
  • document packet:  "America in the 1960s" [doc. 1].

 
 

Questions:
  1. From what segment of society did President Eisenhower draw most of the members of his administration?  How did these individuals differ from their 1920s counterparts of similar background?
  2. How did the domestic policies of the Eisenhower administration compare and contrast with the Roosevelt and Truman administrations?
  3. Why did President Eisenhower's new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, question Truman's policy of containment?
  4. Explain Eisenhower's policy of "brinksmanship" and "massive retaliation" in terms of its impact on American foreign relations during the 1950s.
  5. What was the political significance of the U-2 spy plan incident of 1960?
  6. What were some of the views that Americans and their government had about the newly independent countries of the "Third World?"
  7. Why did many Third World nations feel hostile to the US?  What was the stereotype in their eyes of the "ugly American?"
  8. How did the Eisenhower administration use the CIA to further its foreign policy?
  9. Briefly describe the effects of US intervention in Iran.
  10. List the provisions of the Geneva Accords of 1954.  Why was the US not satisfied with this agreement?
  11. Why was the President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, a difficult ally to support?
  12. What were the key issues that led to the Suez War of 1956?  Why did the US side with the Soviet Union in this conflict?
  13. What was the Eisenhower Doctrine?  What authority did Congress give the President when they approved this policy?
  14. Why did the Soviet Union form the Warsaw Pact in 1955?
  15. How was Nikita Khrushchev a different Soviet leader from Stalin?  How was he the same?
  16. Why did Hungary become a Cold War trouble spot in 1956?  How did the US respond to the Hungarian Crisis?
 

Terms:
 
                
Quizzes:
  1. Textbook Quizzes -->  chapter 30 
  2. My Quizzes -->  A   B   C
    3.   D   E
     
Outlines / Lecture Notes / Review Sheets:
  1. Giant AHAP Review Sheet by a student from the class of '04, Horace Greeley HS
  2. Lecture outline --> "The Search for Consensus and Conformity" (Prof. David McGee, Central Virginia Community College)
  3. Lecture outline --> "Struggles for Equality" (Prof. David McGee, Central Virginia Community College)
  4. Note Cards ->  1351-1400      1401-1450
  5. Leader of the Free World, 1945-1975 - essay
  6. Presidential Election Data --> 1952     1956     1960
  7. Key Events in the American Civil Rights Movement - chart
  8. Cram Sheets --> Dwight D. Eisenhower through Ronald W. Reagan
    9.

 


   
 

Ten Commandments of Good Historical Writing

College Board A. P. U. S. History Main Page (.pdf file)