1. 69. Germany was divided following World War II into democratic and capitalist West Germany and communist East Germany. Similarly, the city of Berlin was divided into West Berlin and East Berlin.

2. 70. The United Nations was created following World War II in order to preserve peace in the future. The UN Charter was signed in San Francisco following the war; the United Nations is located in New York City.

3. 71. After World War II, soldiers came home to a prosperous nations thanks to the GI Bill, the boom in housing construction, and the conversion of the economy from war production to the production of consumer goods.  The GI Bill of Rights provided free college education to soldiers and low interest loans for houses, among other things.  The housing construction business was extremely prosperous – in fact, homes were mass produced in “Levittowns” – which used assembly line methods to construct high- quality, low-cost houses.  The war time economy was rapidly transformed, and factories which had once made war supplies quickly began to make consumer goods.

4. 72. The Baby Boom resulted in an huge increase in population following World War II – and stimulated the economy as families sought to purchase goods for their children!

5. 73. By executive order, President Harry S Truman desegregated the Armed Forces of the United States in 1948.

6. 74. The Cold War was a war of ideas and philosophies – without direct violent conflict - between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, much of the world was divided into two camps.  During the Cold War, the United States was devoted to democracy, individual rights, and capitalism.  The Soviet Union was committed to communism and a “dictatorship of the proletariat.”  The Soviet Union controlled the nations of Eastern Europe with an iron fist; the United States attempted to stop the spread of communism in Europe by a policy of containment.

7. 75. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created in 1949 as a collective security alliance against threats from the Soviet Union.

8. 76. In response, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact in 1955, a defense agreement among Eastern European nations and the Soviet Union (USSR.)

9. 77. During the Korean War, the United States (and UN forces) protected South Korea from the aggressive invasions of North Korea and China. The war ended in a stalemate; General Douglas MacArthur had to be removed from command for publicly disagreeing with President Truman and encouraging the escalation of the war.

10. 78. During the Cuban Missile Crisis President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev took the world to the brink of nuclear war, but eventually negotiated an agreement to remove missiles from Cuba.

11. 79. The policy of containment was used by the United States during the Cold War to stop the spread of Communism: whether it be in a single city – like Berlin – or an entire continent – like Europe. The Berlin Airlift The Truman Doctrine

12. 80. The domino theory was the belief that if one nation in a region fell to communism, that all nations nearby would also be threatened by communism. It was a major reason for US involvement in the Vietnam War. President Lyndon Johnson asked for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and escalated the war in 1964 to stop the spread of communism.

13. 81. The Vietnam War ended when Americans agreed to a cease fire with the North Vietnamese and withdrew in 1975. Vietnam was unified under one communist government; Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of their former leader.

14. 82. The Cold War ended in the late 1980s and early 1990s; the United States prevailed and the USSR collapsed.  Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met with President Ronald Reagan repeatedly to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles.  Eastern European nations were allowed self government – the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989.  Germany reunified in 1990 as a capitalist, democratic nation.  Finally, the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991, ending the Cold War altogether.

15. 83. In the case of Brown V. Board of Education, Topeka, KS, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was illegal in the United States and that integration must take place with all deliberate speed. The ruling overturned the Plessy V. Ferguson case of 1896.

16. 84. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed in non-violence and civil disobedience. He encouraged passive resistance against unjust segregation laws.

17. 85. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus, starting the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955.

18. 86. The Freedom Riders challenged the bus segregation laws on the interstates in 1961 – riding from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, LA and encountering much violence and danger along the way.

19. 87. The Interstate Highway System was created by President Dwight David Eisenhower during the 1950s to improve the nation’s defense and to encourage easier transportation and trade.

20. 88. Sit-in movements took place in order to demand the integration of lunch counters across the Deep South.

21. 89. Marches to end segregation in Southern cities like or to demand the right to register to vote often ended in violent crackdowns, as in Birmingham, AL below.

22. 90. The NAACP had been founded in 1909 by W.E.B. Dubois and others in order to protest against discrimination, segregation, and racial violence directed at African Americans. The group sponsored dozens of legal challenges against segregation, including Brown V. Board of Education, Topeka, KS, arguing that the 14 th Amendment guaranteed citizenship rights and “equal protection under the law.” W.E.B DuBois, Founder of NAACP Thurgood Marshall, lead lawyer of NAACP

23. 91. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended discrimination based on race, sex, or religion. African- Americans, other minority groups, and women all benefited from the passage of the Civil Rights Act.