The Cold War and Civil Rights (1945-1980)

The U.S. Cold War strategy of preventing the spread of communism through a combination of military, economic, and diplomatic tools, first articulated by George Kennan and implemented through the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and NATO.

A mass movement of the 1950s-60s that used legal challenges, nonviolent direct action, and political organizing to dismantle legal segregation and secure voting rights for African Americans.

President Lyndon Johnson's ambitious domestic program (1964-68) that created Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and the War on Poverty, representing the largest expansion of the federal safety net since the New Deal.

The gradual expansion of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam from advisory roles under Eisenhower and Kennedy to over 500,000 combat troops under Johnson, authorized by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution rather than a formal declaration of war.

A period of intense anti-communist suspicion in the early 1950s in which Senator Joseph McCarthy and others used unsubstantiated accusations to blacklist, fire, and intimidate Americans suspected of communist sympathies, suppressing political dissent and civil liberties.

A broad set of movements in the 1960s-70s that challenged traditional authority, including the antiwar movement, women's liberation, environmentalism, the Chicano movement, the American Indian Movement, and gay rights activism.

The political scandal stemming from the Nixon administration's break-in at the DNC and subsequent cover-up, which led to Nixon's resignation and a broader erosion of public trust in government institutions.

The economic crisis of the 1970s combining stagnant growth, high unemployment, and high inflation, exacerbated by OPEC oil embargoes that quadrupled energy prices and exposed American dependence on foreign oil.