The Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement #989253

The Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement explores one of the most dramatic and transformative periods in modern American history. As the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, it entered a tense ideological struggle with the Soviet Union that reshaped diplomacy, military policy, domestic politics, and American identity. From the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan to the Korean War, McCarthyism, and the Red Scare, this book explains how Cold War fear and ambition shaped the nation at home and abroad.

At the same time, Black Americans challenged the contradiction at the heart of American democracy: a nation claiming to defend freedom around the world still denied equal rights to millions of its own citizens. Through Brown v. Board of Education, Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King Jr., sit-ins, Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, this volume shows how the struggle for civil rights transformed the United States and forced the country to confront the true meaning of liberty.