21. The post-war era to 1980
America’s libraries offer resources for teaching about the Cold War, Korean War, Vietnam War, and America’s global presence during the post-war era. Among them, students find newspaper archives, many digitized, and sites such as Open Library and Project Gutenberg offer many scanned or digitized books and magazines as well. While often the materials offer a politically charged point of view, they also give insights into the concerns of average citizens during the era, and the changes to America. It was a period which saw a rapid rise in the number of college-educated Americans, the emergence of the middle class, and the urban flight to the suburbs. How Americans traveled changed with federal support of commercial aviation and the creation of the interstate highway system.
Students also find vast archives documenting the turbulence in America over the Civil Rights Movement, protests over the Vietnam War, and the scandals which caused the only American President to date to resign his office. Teaching the post-war era is best left to high school students, other than the Civil Rights Movement, which education sites, for the most part, introduce in third and fourth grade, expanding on it throughout the remainder of elementary and high school. Teaching the Civil Rights Movement necessitates an understanding of the Jim Crow laws which emerged following Reconstruction, and dominated American society and politics in the Southern states through the early 1960s.
