history

• Cold War


  45 year struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union
• Cold War


  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Ideological in nature
  • Soviet Union stood for one party, while the US was a democratic ideal
• Soviets had a bomb

  1949
• Yalta Conference


  Feb 1945, city in the Soviet Union where Stalin had the upper hand in the conversation
• Yalta Conference


  1. Stalin wants a pro-soviet buffer zone

  2. Churchill and Roosevelt interpret this to mean he wants communist countries

  3. Demand that the countries in the buffer zone get to have free elections
• Potsdam Conference


  1. After Germany falls, allies meet to redraw the map and determine whose army goes where

  2. During the conference, Churchill was voted out of office

  3. Divide Germany and then subdivide Berlin
• Iron Curtain


  Became a way to think about the division in Europe
• Containment in the West


  Can't get rid of communism but it can be contained
• Domino theory


  The idea that if one country becomes communist then the other countries around it will become communist too
• Truman Doctrine


  Official name of American foreign policy to do whatever means necessary to prevent the spread of communism
• Truman Doctrine


  Truman asks Congress for $400 million in military and economic aid to fight off the communists in Greece and Turkey
• Marshall Plan


  $13 billion plan to financially rescue Europe and prevent communism from taking over
• Formation of West Germany


  1. In 1948 the Americans, British, and French combined into one zone and start calling it West Germany

  2. Soviets felt the Americans were being imperialistic and that it represented everything wrong with money and politics

  3. Soviets block all travel between west and east Berlin
• Berlin Airlift


  1. Truman looks for an alternative to get supplies to West Berlin

  2. Every day they start airlifting supplies to West Berlin

  3. In May the Soviets finally agreed to lift the roadblock
• China fell to communism

  1949
• Soviets successfully tested a nuclear weapon


  1949
• Berlin Wall


  1. The economy of East Germany is bad, not much civil liberties and economically depressed

  2. 4000 people were leaving East Germany a week

  3. Khrushchev tells Kennedy that he has to stop taking refugees, threatened a war

  4. Communist in East Berlin were desperate for a solution and started building a wall
• Cuban Missile Crisis


  1. Castro was initially popular in the US but then started taking large amounts of land owned by American companies

  2. Khrushchev formed an alliance with Castro and allowed him to put missiles in Cuba facing the US

  3. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba

  4. Khrushchev eventually agrees to remove the missiles if US agreed to remove the ones in Turkey
• McCarthyism


  Claimed he had a list of people who worked for the US government who were communists and given secrets to the Russians
• McCarthyism


  1. McCarthy would stage hearings in the Congress and would drag suspected communists

  2. Made it illegal for communists to work in the US government

  3. Labor unions had to purge themselves of communism and socialist people
• Domestic policy


  The American government wanted to promote a certain way of life to fight communism
• Domestic policy


  1. Promote the American dream as the best way to fight communism

  2. Build interstates and highways for military to move troops coast to coast

  3. Give veterans home loans for houses in the suburbs

  4. Make a tax code for men to be able to write off their wife and children to keep women out of the workforce
• Segregation in the US


  Included access to public facilities, those who trespassed these boundaries could face death
• Jim Crow System


  National trend in the South, stricter segregation including separate entrances, drinking fountains, smoking cars on trains, restrictions on where you could live, travel, and what you could do in public
• Plessy v Ferguson


  Ruled that segregation was perfectly legal in the Constitution as long as there were equal things (separate but equal)
• Terrorism against African Americans


  Custom social norms, extra-legal punishment exists outside of the legal system including murder, torture, lynching, mutilation
• World War II


  • African Americans joining the war, Tuskegee Airmen not treated the same as the white units, black soldiers often used to clean up or serve the white soldiers
• Cold War Politics


  More international interest in what's happening in the US, the Russians knew how America treated the blacks in the country, direct correlation between the upsurge of activism and the scrutiny of the Cold War
• Brown v Board of Education


  Argued that separate schools violated the US Constitution
• Montgomery Bus Boycott


  Rosa Parks sat in the middle of the bus and refused to give up her seat to a white man when he got on the bus, people refused to ride the buses but the problem was how to get to work, the store, etc.
• Martin Luther King, Jr.


  Became a figure of internationally renowned, deeply influenced by Christianity and Gandhi, nonviolence is the only moral way to achieve this goal
• Desegregation of Schools


  Hard to do in public schools, started in Arkansas, white southerners were angry and said they wouldn't stand for it
• Central High School


  Government ordered 9 black students to integrate Central High school, the Governor said he has a duty to protect the peace and called up the National Guard to block the door and the streets, President Eisenhower sent the federal army into the city to force the doors open
• University of Mississippi


  Veteran James Meredith wanted to transfer to Ole Miss, the governor personally met him in the administration building to tell him he wasn't allowed on the campus, President Kennedy said if they wanted to keep federal funding, they had to allow Meredith onto the campus
• Civil Disobedience


  Must do this without violence, groups would hold retreats on the weekend and would practice getting yelled at or hit, had to train to be nonviolent
• Sit-ins


  A group of college students from the local HBCU walked in and sat at the counter at Woolworth, wouldn't leave until they got service, white people were very angry
• Birmingham Movement


  Wanting to bring attention to their efforts to integrate the cities, Bull Connor had no trouble doing anything to humiliate the protestors coming into the city, the scenes in Birmingham shocked people around the war
• Campus


  President Kennedy said if they wanted to keep federal funding, they had to allow Meredith onto the campus
• Civil Disobedience

  • Must do this without violence
  • Groups would hold retreats on the weekend and would practice getting yelled at or hit
  • Had to train to be nonviolent
• Sit-ins


  1. Greensboro, North Carolina

  2. Woolworth counter

  3. A group of college students from the local HBCU walked in and sat at the counter

  4. Wouldn't leave until they got service