AP® United States History review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/us-history/units/8/8-15)
Unit 8 · Topic 8.15
8.15 Continuity and Change in Period 8
This skill topic practices continuity and change from 1945 to 1980. You decide how far civil rights advanced, how liberalism grew and then lost support, and how much Cold War policy changed, and you back your judgment with evidence for both change and continuity.
Key terms
- continuity and change over time
- liberalism
- conservatism
- containment
Big changes
- Civil rights in law: from legal segregation and disfranchisement in 1945 to Brown v. Board (1954), the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and new rights for women and other groups.
- Government's role: the New Deal safety net expanded through the Great Society (Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to schools) and environmental regulation (EPA, Clean Air Act).
- Where Americans lived: millions moved to suburbs and the Sun Belt, shifting population and political power.
- Immigration: the 1965 Immigration Act ended national-origin quotas and opened the door to large-scale Asian and Latin American immigration.
- Trust in government: from high confidence after World War II to deep distrust after Vietnam and Watergate.
Important continuities
- Containment remained the core of foreign policy from Truman through Carter, even during détente.
- Economic and housing inequality persisted despite new civil rights laws, as redlining's effects, segregated neighborhoods and urban poverty continued.
- Debate over the government's role continued from the Fair Deal to the Great Society to the tax revolts of the late 1970s.
- Anticommunism shaped politics throughout, from McCarthyism to the opposition to détente.
The arc of liberalism
One useful way to frame Period 8 is as a rise and fall of postwar liberalism, the belief that an active federal government should manage the economy, promote equality and contain communism. It peaked with Johnson's 1964 landslide and the Great Society. Then Vietnam, urban riots, stagflation and Watergate eroded confidence in government, and a conservative movement offered an alternative. By 1980 Ronald Reagan argued that government was not the solution but the problem.
Turning points you could defend include 1954 (Brown), 1964–1965 (the civil rights laws and the Great Society), 1968 (Tet, assassinations and Nixon's election) and 1973–1974 (the oil embargo and Watergate).
Writing a strong CCOT answer
Describe the situation near 1945, describe it near 1980, explain what caused the change, and acknowledge what stayed the same. Use 'although' to set up complexity: 'Although civil rights laws ended legal segregation, economic inequality between Black and white Americans largely persisted because…'
Pick a turning point and defend it. For example, you could argue that 1964–1965 brought the biggest change, because the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid all became law in those two years. Then show continuity by noting that containment still guided foreign policy.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
A CCOT body paragraph
Write a body paragraph evaluating how much the status of African Americans changed from 1945 to 1980.
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Make a claim that weighs change against continuity.
- Step 2: Support change with specific laws and court cases.
- Step 3: Support continuity with specific evidence of persistent inequality, and explain why it persisted.
Answer: Model paragraph: From 1945 to 1980 the legal status of African Americans changed dramatically, but economic inequality largely continued. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overturned 'separate but equal' in schools, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned segregation in public places and job discrimination, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 helped raise Black voter registration in Mississippi from under 7 percent to about 60 percent within a few years. However, decades of redlining and discrimination in the suburban boom had concentrated many Black families in cities just as factories and jobs left them, so riots in Watts and Detroit and the Kerner Commission's 1968 warning of 'two societies' showed that legal equality had not brought economic equality.
Common mistakes
- Describing only change. Even strong change answers should acknowledge something that persisted.
- Using vague evidence ('things got better'). Name laws, cases, numbers and dates.
- Not explaining why change or continuity happened.
On the exam
- Period 8 falls inside the DBQ's 1754–1980 range. Practice a thesis that weighs change and continuity.
- A complexity point can come from linking Period 8 changes to their roots (New Deal, WWII) or their results (Reagan era).
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
4 questions on 8.15 Continuity and Change in Period 8. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
"For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents."
Source: President Lyndon B. Johnson, commencement address at the University of Michigan, May 22, 1964.
The Great Society is best understood as a continuation of the New Deal in that both
| Year | Percent who trust the government in Washington to do what is right "just about always" or "most of the time" |
|---|---|
| 1958 | 73 |
| 1964 | 77 |
| 1968 | 62 |
| 1972 | 53 |
| 1974 | 36 |
| 1976 | 33 |
| 1978 | 29 |
| 1980 | 25 |
Source: American National Election Studies surveys, as compiled by the Pew Research Center.
The trend shown in the table most directly contributed to which political development around 1980?
"At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. . . .
There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. . . . Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome."
Source: President Lyndon B. Johnson, special message to Congress asking for a voting rights law, March 15, 1965.
Over the following decades, Johnson's support for civil rights laws contributed most directly to
"This is our basic conclusion: Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal. . . .
What white Americans have never fully understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it."
Source: Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission), appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, 1968.
The report's conclusion best supports which claim about the 1960s?
0 of 4 answered