United Grade 11 US History (Reconstruction to present)

Chapters: 7

1. C3 inquiry arc

Developing questions and planning inquiries · Evaluating sources and using evidence · Communicating conclusions and taking informed action

Research Skills: From a Question to a Finished Project – Research is a careful way of finding an answer. You ask a clear, focused question, plan how to answer it, find information and check that each source can be trusted, collect and analyse your own data, draw a conclusion that the evidence supports, and share it while crediting every source you used.

2. C3 history thinking (grades 9-12)

Events in historical context · Change and continuity over time · Historical significance of people and events · Factors shaping people’s perspectives · Historical context shapes perspectives · Perspectives of historians · Present-day perspectives on the past · Limits of available sources · Sources and secondary interpretations · Limits of historical evidence and interpretations · Usefulness of historical sources · Generating questions from sources · Appropriateness of sources in interpretations · Multiple causes and effects · Long-term causes vs triggering events · Evidence-based historical arguments · Critiquing arguments in history writing

Historical Thinking: How Historians Work – History is the study of the past using evidence. Put events in order on a timeline and read them in their context. Use primary sources (made at the time) and secondary sources (made later). Judge each source: who made it, when, why, and what is missing. Events have many causes: slow long-term causes and a short trigger. Look for both change and continuity, decide what was significant, and build an argument backed by evidence.

3. Industrialization and the Gilded Age

Industry, immigration and cities · Progressive Era

The Industrial Revolution: Causes, Effects and Reform (1760–1914) – Between about 1760 and 1914 work moved from hand tools at home to machines in factories. A first wave (about 1760–1840) began in Britain with coal, iron, steam power and cotton mills. A second wave (about 1870–1914) brought steel, electricity, chemicals and oil, and spread to Western Europe, the United States, Japan and Russia. Towns grew fast; workers faced long hours, child labour and dirty housing. Workers organised in unions, new ideas (liberalism, socialism, conservatism) argued about what to do, and governments slowly passed factory, health and voting reforms.
Reform Movements and the Progressive Era in the United States – Between about 1820 and 1920, groups of ordinary Americans worked to fix problems in society. Early reformers, inspired partly by a religious revival (the Second Great Awakening), fought for free public schools, temperance, better care of prisoners and the mentally ill, the abolition of slavery and women's rights. After the Civil War, fast industrial growth brought new problems: unsafe factories, child labour, crowded cities, monopolies and corrupt politics. Progressive reformers and muckraking journalists exposed these, and new laws and four constitutional amendments (16th–19th) followed.

4. US in world affairs

Imperialism and World War I

World War I (1914–1918): Causes, Course and Consequences – World War I was fought from 1914 to 1918 between the Allies (France, Britain, Russia, later Italy, the USA and others) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria). Four long-term causes built tension: militarism, alliances, imperialism and nationalism (MAIN). The spark was the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. On the Western Front the war became a stalemate of trenches; new weapons made it very deadly. It was a total war: whole economies, women workers and colonies were mobilised, including about 1.3 million Indians. Russia left after its 1917 revolution, the USA joined in 1917, and fighting stopped with the armistice of 11 November 1918. The peace treaties of 1919–1920, including Versailles, redrew Europe, ended four empires, created the League of Nations and left anger that helped cause World War II.

5. 1920s and the Great Depression

The 1920s · Depression and the New Deal

The 1920s in the United States: the Roaring Twenties – After the First World War, the USA had a decade of fast growth. Assembly lines made cars and household goods cheap, buying on credit and advertising spread, and radio and films created a shared mass culture. Jazz, the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Migration changed music and cities, and women voted for the first time nationally (1920). The decade also had sharp clashes: Prohibition fed organised crime, immigration was cut by quotas, the Ku Klux Klan grew again, and science and religion clashed in the Scopes trial. Under the boom, farmers struggled, wealth was very unequal and people bought shares with borrowed money: weak spots that led to the 1929 crash.
The Great Depression (1929–1939) – The Great Depression was the worst economic slump of the 20th century. It started in the USA with the Wall Street Crash of October 1929. Share prices fell, banks failed, factories closed and by 1933 about one in four American workers had no job. Countries raised taxes on imports, so world trade shrank by about two-thirds and the crisis spread to Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. Governments answered in different ways: the New Deal in the USA, public works and welfare in some democracies, and in Germany and Japan the crisis helped extreme nationalist parties grow, which led towards the Second World War.

6. World War II and the Cold War

World War II at home and abroad · The Cold War

World War II (1939–1945) – World War II was the deadliest war in history. Its roots were the anger left by World War I, the Great Depression and the rise of dictators in Germany, Italy and Japan. It began when Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. The Axis (Germany, Italy, Japan) fought the Allies (Britain and its empire, France, the USSR, the USA, China and others). It was a total war and a war of annihilation: about 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and 70–85 million people died. Germany surrendered in May 1945 and Japan in September 1945. The war led to the United Nations, the Cold War and the end of empires.
The Cold War (1945–1991) – The Cold War was a long contest (1945–1991) between two superpowers: the USA with its Western allies (capitalism, multi-party elections) and the USSR with its Eastern allies (communism, one-party rule). They never fought each other directly. Instead they formed rival alliances (NATO, Warsaw Pact), raced to build nuclear weapons and reach space, backed opposite sides in proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan) and came close to nuclear war in Cuba in 1962. Many new nations, led by India and others, stayed non-aligned. Détente eased tension in the 1970s. Reforms in the USSR, the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the break-up of the USSR (1991) ended it.

7. Civil rights and modern America

The Civil Rights Movement · Late 20th century to the present

The Civil Rights Movement: How Ordinary People Changed Unfair Laws – The Civil Rights Movement (about 1954–1968) was a mass campaign by Black Americans and their allies to end legal segregation and discrimination in the United States. After slavery ended, 'Jim Crow' laws kept Black people in separate and worse schools, seats and services and blocked them from voting. Using court cases, boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides and marches, and mostly nonviolent methods inspired partly by Gandhi, groups such as the NAACP, SCLC, SNCC and CORE won the Brown decision (1954), the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965) and the Fair Housing Act (1968). Later Black Power, Black arts and Black feminist movements, and links with anticolonial struggles, carried the fight further. Inequality in housing, wealth and justice is still debated today.
Modern US History: From 1865 to Today – After the Civil War the USA became the world's biggest industrial economy and then a superpower. The Gilded Age (1865–1900) brought railways, factories and millions of migrants, but also deep inequality. Populists and Progressives (1890–1920) pushed for reforms, and the USA expanded overseas and joined the First World War. The 1920s boom ended in the 1929 crash and the Great Depression; Roosevelt's New Deal and the Second World War rebuilt the economy. After 1945 most Americans enjoyed new wealth while the civil rights movement fought segregation, the country led one side of the Cold War, and the Vietnam War and Watergate shook public trust. From 1980, Reagan's conservatism, the end of the Cold War, the internet economy, new migration, 9/11 and the 2008 crisis shaped the present. A useful lens for the whole period: who got opportunity, and who faced inequality?