AP U S History Postwar America 1945 1960

AP U. S. History Postwar America, 1945 -1960

Truman Postwar Transitions • The Baby Boom • G. I. Bill of Rights • Employment Act of 1946 – Council of Economic Advisors— Keynesianism • Labor Strikes, Inflation, & Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 • Suburbia; Levittown, NY & “bedroom communities” • Civil Rights, Dixiecrats, & election of 1948 • The Fair Deal

“The Eisenhower Fifties” • The Eisenhower governing philosophy • Interstate Highway National Defense Act • Corporate Oligopoly & “climbing the corporate ladder” – The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, Sloane Wilson – The Organization Man, William Whyte • Big Labor; AFL-CIO merger, 1955 • Television & popular homogenization • Social Conformity – “MRS. Degree”, The Baby Book, Dr. Benjamin Spock • Youth Culture – Rock and Roll: Elvis Presley – The Beat Generation: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg

Civil Rights Stirrings • Jackie Robinson, 1947 • Military Desegregation, 1948 • Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954 – Little Rock Central High School • Montgomery bus boycott – Southern Christian Leadership Conference • Greensboro sit-in, 1960 – Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

Eisenhower Foreign Policy • Mc. Carthyism & the Second Red Scare – HUAC, Alger Hiss, & the Rosenberg Trial – Army-Mc. Carthy Hearings, 1954 • “The New Look”—John Foster Dulles – Massive Retaliation – Brinkmanship – Postcolonial “Brushfires” • 1953—CIA & Iran • 1954—CIA & Guatemala • 1956 Suez Crisis & The Eisenhower Doctrine – 1954 Vietnam; Dien Bien Phu, Geneva Accords, domino theory

U. S. A. & the U. S. S. R. • Nikita Khrushchev & peaceful coexistence • 1956 Hungarian Crisis • Sputnik, 1957; NASA • Second Berlin Showdown • U-2 Incident • The Military-Industrial Complex