Lesson Plans

The American Journey: A History of the United States ©2000

by David Goldfield, Carl Abbott, Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Jo Ann E. Argersinger, Peter H. Argersinger, William L. Barney, Robert M. Weir

Focus Lesson 23

Chapter 29: "The Cold War at Home and Abroad, 1946–1952"
Chapter 30: "The Confident Years, 1953–1964"

AP* Course Description

• Truman and the Cold War
  • Postwar domestic adjustments
  • The Taft-Hartley Act
  • Civil rights and the election of 1948
  • Containment in Europe and the Middle East
    • Truman Doctrine
    • Marshall Plan
    • Berlin crisis
    • NATO
  • Revolution in China
  • Limited war: Korea, MacArthur
• Eisenhower and Modern Republicanism
  • Domestic frustrations; McCarthyism
  • Civil rights movement
    • The Warren Court and Brown v. Board of Education
    • Montgomery bus boycott
    • Greensboro sit-in
  • John Foster Dulles's foreign policy
    • Khrushchev and Berlin
  • American people: homogenized society
• Kennedy's New Frontier; Johnson's Great Society
  • New domestic programs
  • Foreign policy
    • Bay of Pigs
    • Cuban Missile crisis
    • Vietnam quagmire

Key Components

• Instructor's Manual:
  Chapter 29, pp. 194–201
  Chapter 30, pp. 202–210
• Study Guide, Vol. II Since 1877:
  Chapter 29, pp. 95–103
  Chapter 30, pp. 104–113
• Test Item File:
  Chapter 29, pp. 332–343
  Chapter 30, pp. 344–355

Key Web Sites

• About.com: 20th Century History: Korean War
• Korean War Project
• United Nations
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• PBS: The American Experience/Vietnam
• Vietnam Introduction

Key Words and Terms

Suggested Pacing

Test Strategy

Key Concepts

• The growth of the suburbs
  The discussion of suburbs in Chapter 29 provides an opportunity for students to compare and contrast the 1950s with the 1890s. Have students consider how the factors influencing cities and suburbs in the 1890s were the same as or different from the influences on cities and suburbs in the 1950s. Students should recognize in both cases the importance of economic factors and the influence of the growing middle class. Students should be aware of how the popularity and availability of automobiles since the 1920s was a factor in the suburbanization of the country in the 1950s, whereas the trolley line was a factor in the outward spread of cities in the 1890s.
  
  
• Civil disobedience in U.S. history
  The civil rights movement presents an opportunity to make connections among various movements in U.S. history that used civil disobedience to gain their ends. The earliest, of course, was the fight for independence from Great Britain by the Patriots. The abolitionists of the 1840s and 1850s who defied the Fugitive Slave Act also broke the law for what they considered a higher good—hiding and protecting runaway slaves.
  
  
• Comparing and contrasting foreign policy
  Introduce students to similarities in foreign policy between the 1950s and 1960s and the late nineteenth century. Students should be able to make the link between the factors that underlay the imperialism of the United States in the 1880s and 1890s and the mid-twentieth century. Among these factors were the need for the United States to find new markets for its goods, the fear of other nations that were considered threats to the United States, and a continuing sense of racial superiority.

Summing Up Student Understanding

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• American Issues: Vol. II Since 1865, edited by Unger and Tomes—Chapters 11, 12, and 13
• The Power of Words: Vol. II From 1865, edited by Breen—Chapters 10 and 11
• Constructing the American Past, Vol. II, edited by Gorn, Roberts, and Bilhartz—Chapters 11 and 12
• American Experiences: Vol. II From 1877, edited by Roberts and Olson (secondary source readings)—Part Six and Part Seven