Period 8: Cold War, Civil Rights, and Liberalism, 1945–1980
Cold War abroad
After 1945 the United States pursued containment of Soviet communism. The Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, and Berlin Airlift formed the architecture; the Korean War ended in stalemate. Eisenhower relied on nuclear deterrence and covert action. McCarthyism and the second Red Scare restricted dissent at home. Vietnam divided the nation: the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, escalation, Tet, and protests led to Vietnamization and eventual withdrawal.
Affluence and rights at home
The postwar boom produced suburbanization, the baby boom, the interstate highway system, and consumer culture, but not for everyone. Brown v. Board (1954) overturned Plessy; Montgomery, Little Rock, sit-ins, and the March on Washington built the movement. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned public accommodations discrimination; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 protected Black suffrage. The Great Society created Medicare and Medicaid and expanded education. Later, Nixon's détente, Watergate, and stagflation eroded trust; the Warren Court expanded rights.
Traps: containment was not rollback. The Civil Rights Act did not guarantee voting-the Voting Rights Act did. 'The Great Society ended poverty' overstates; poverty fell but persisted. Watergate was a constitutional crisis, not merely a scandal.
Worked example: if asked why the civil rights movement succeeded in the mid-1960s, connect grassroots protest, federal courts, Cold War image concerns, and Johnson's legislative skill.
Rule of thumb: link foreign containment to domestic conformity and to the credibility pressures that aided civil rights.