Postwar America (1946-1975)
(131 total)

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In September 1968, Captain Rodney R. Chastant, from Mobile, Alabama, extended his 13-month tour of duty in Vietnam with Marine Air Group 13, 1st Marine Air Wing, Da Nang. He was killed 22 October. He was 25 years old. David is his brother.

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Item Type: Diary/Letter
Date: 1967

This letter from the Women's Political Council to the Mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, threatens a bus boycott by the city's African Americans if demands for fair treatment are not met.

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Item Type: Diary/Letter
Date: 1954

These two letters from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., composed four years apart, provide insight into the evolution of King's struggle against injustice. In the excerpt from "Letter from Birmingham Jail," written following King's arrest at a peaceful protest in Alabama , he expresses his disappointment in the "white moderates" who urged a cautious,…

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Item Type: Diary/Letter
Date: 1963

In this letter to a close friend back in the United States, Douglas McCormac, a sergeant in the Special Forces, describes the economic corruption spreading through war-torn Vietnam.

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Item Type: Diary/Letter
Date: 1968

This political cartoon by Tom Darcy portrays the divisive impact of the Vietnam war on American society. According to public opinion polls taken in May 1970, when this cartoon was published, 64% of Americans thought the U.S. had made a mistake sending troops to fight in Vietnam. Five years earlier, the percentage was almost reversed, with 61% of…

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Item Type: Cartoon
Date: 1970

This 1960 comic book warns young readers of the dangers ahead should Uncle Sam fail to steer clear of the "Red Iceberg." Published by Impact, an imprint of the anti-communist Catholic Cathechetical Guild, the comic was distributed to thousands of Catholic school children during the Cold War.

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Item Type: Cartoon
Date: 1960

This 1949 Herb Block cartoon highlights the dangers to civil liberty and intellectual freedoms many Americans saw posed by overzealous and anti-Communist crusaders in the early years of the Cold War. Such fears were not unfounded: during the postwar years, hundreds of elementary and high school teachers lost their jobs as a result of such…

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Item Type: Cartoon
Date: 1949

Despite Nixon's campaign promises to end the war, his first term in office saw an expansion rather than a reduction of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. By 1970 the reasons for this involvement had become increasingly unclear.

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Item Type: Cartoon
Date: 1970

Not long after his election in 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson moved to increase American involvement in Vietnam. This policy would soon result in the defacto American take-over of the effort against the North Vietnamese Communists. In the week this cartoon was published, the State Department announced that Johnson had authorized direct American military…

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Item Type: Cartoon
Date: 1965

In this forward to Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South 1940-1980, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham sketches an outline of the contributions of African Americans from the Northeast, West Coast and Midwest in shaping the Civil Rights Movement. She questions many of the assumptions of previous scholarship on the Civil Rights Movement,…

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Item Type: Book (excerpt)
Date: 2003