The United States of America, 1946–1991
After the Second World War, unlike devastated Europe, the USA had a strong economy and was the leader of the West; military production was converted to peaceful branches and consumption and technology grew in the 1950s–1960s. In domestic politics, in the early 1950s Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for supposed hidden communists (McCarthyism) created an atmosphere of fear; in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in schools unconstitutional, in 1955–1956 the Montgomery bus boycott and the movement led by Martin Luther King strengthened, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 legally banned discrimination. President Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963 and Martin Luther King on 4 April 1968. The USA took part in the Vietnam War in 1965–1973; there was wide protest against it, and troops were withdrawn after the 1973 Paris Agreement. Because of the Watergate scandal President Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974 (before impeachment); in the 1970s the oil crisis and inflation brought economic hardship. President Reagan (1981–1989) achieved growth through tax cuts and limiting state intervention (“Reaganomics”), although the budget deficit and national debt rose sharply; he also opened negotiations with the USSR; in 1989–1993 President George H. W. Bush witnessed the end of the Cold War.
Card game: match 10 events (“Brown case”, “Montgomery boycott”, “Watergate”, …) to their years and build a timeline.