Period8, Ch37-38 Study Guide
NAME: ____________________________
Modern America (1945-1980), part1:
Post-War America & the 1950s (Ch. 37-38)
...is about exploring America’s post-WWII hegemony, characterized by the blossoming of a powerful middle-class, consumer economy
and ideological ‘Cold War’ conflict with the Soviet Union.
Objectives:
1. Analyze the causes and consequences of the post-World War II economic boom.
2. Analyze the growth of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union after Germany’s
defeat and Truman’s accession to the presidency.
3. Analyze the causes and consequences of the Korean War.
4. Compare Truman and Eisenhower’s approach to the Cold War.
5. Explain how Eisenhower’s leadership coincided with the American mood in the 1950’s.
6. Describe the changes in the American consumer economy in the 1950s, and their relationship to
the rise of popular “mass culture.”
7. Describe the rise and fall of McCarthyism and the second Red Scare.
8. Describe the origins and beginnings of the civil rights movement.
Key Concepts:
Explain the definition, role, and significance of…
Chapter 37
Harry Truman
GI Bill
Fair Deal
Sunbelt
Levittown
Baby boom
Yalta conference
Joseph Stalin
Cold War
Bretton Woods Conference
George Kennan
United Nations
Nuremberg war crimes trial
Berlin airlift
Containment
Truman Doctrine
George Marshall
Marshall Plan
NATO
Korean War
House Un-American Activities Co
Joseph McCarthy
Executive order 9981
Chapter 38
Dwight Eisenhower
McCarthyism
Jim Crow
Jackie Robinson
NAACP
Thurgood Marshall
Rosa Parks
Martin Luther King Jr
Earl Warren
Brown v. Board of
Education
Plessy v. Ferguson
Little Rock Nine
SCLC
SNCC
Bracero
Interstate Highway Act
Nikita Khrushchev
Brinksmanship
Vietnam
Indochina
Ho Chi Minh
Viet Minh
Dienbienphu
Ngo Dinh Diem
Geneva
Iran
Suez crisis
OPEC
Sputnik
Cuba
Fidel Castro
White collar jobs
Betty Friedan
The Feminine Mystique
Television
Elvis Presley
Cumulative Content
1st Industrial Market Revolution
2nd Industrial Revolution
Roaring ‘20s
Spanish-American War
Square Deal
New Deal