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The USA, 1955–92: Conformity and Challenge

  • 16 subtopics
  • 48 things to know
  • Paper 2
  • Paper 2 depth option, chosen from sixteen

What The USA, 1955–92: Conformity and Challenge covers

A Paper 2 depth study of the United States from the Montgomery boycott to the eve of the Clinton presidency, covering suburban affluence and the culture that questioned it, the civil rights movement and Black Power, the Great Society and the counter-culture, the crisis of leadership after Watergate, and the conservative turn under Reagan.

Where it is assessed

Paper 2

Depth study with sources, one option of sixteen.

Check the Pearson Edexcel specification ↗

The 16 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Process

How did the southern campaign force federal action?

Evaluation

How did Watergate damage the presidency?

Key term

What was the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56?

Who and when

What did Medicare and Medicaid provide?

Numbers

Who succeeded Nixon as president?

Who and when

Who was Cesar Chavez?

Key term

What was 'Reaganomics'?

Key term

What characterised American affluence in the late 1950s?

Who and when

How did American cities change after 1955?

Key term

What was 'beatnik' culture?

Key term

What was suburban conformity?

Key term

What was the Peace Corps?

Key term

How are Kennedy's domestic achievements usually judged?

Key term

Who was Malcolm X?

Key term

What was Black Power?

Key term

What was the counter-culture?

Numbers

What was the Free Speech Movement?

Key term

What was Johnson's 'Great Society'?

Key term

What happened at Kent State in 1970?

Key term

What was the 'silent majority'?

Numbers

What economic problems hit the 1970s?

Key term

What was stagflation?

Who and when

How did the business of sport change?

Numbers

What was Title IX and what did it change?

Key term

What was Roe v Wade in 1973?

Key term

What were the main elements of Reagan's economic policy?

Key term

What was the Religious Right?

Key term

What was 'Just Say No'?

Who and when

How did youth culture change in the 1980s?

Numbers

What was the impact of MTV?

Who and when

How did the status of women change by 1992?

Key term

What defined American politics by the early 1990s?

Key term

What was white flight?

Who and when

How did film and television reflect social change?

Key term

What happened in Birmingham in 1963?

Who and when

What did Kennedy achieve domestically?

Key term

Who were the Black Panthers?

Numbers

How did the Vietnam War drive student protest?

Numbers

What did the Great Society do for education?

Key term

What role did Spiro Agnew play in the reaction against protest?

Numbers

What was Watergate?

Numbers

What caused the oil crises?

Who and when

How did television change in the 1970s?

Key term

What was 'Red Power'?

Who and when

How did Reagan's policies affect workers?

Numbers

What was the Moral Majority?

Numbers

What did the AIDS epidemic do to American society?

Numbers

How did the status of ethnic minorities change by 1992?

Take The USA, 1955–92: Conformity and Challenge further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

  • 'Beatnik' culture vs Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56

    'Beatnik' culture: a nonconformist literary and social movement that rejected mainstream suburban values. Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56: A protest sparked by Rosa Parks and led by Martin Luther King that ended segregation on the city's buses.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What characterised American affluence in the late 1950s?

    Model answer

    Suburban growth, consumerism, rising car ownership, white-collar jobs and new domestic technology.

  2. 2

    How did American cities change after 1955?

    Model answer

    White middle-class families moved to the suburbs while poorer black and Hispanic populations concentrated in the centres, eroding the urban tax base.

  3. 3

    What was white flight?

    Model answer

    The movement of white residents out of racially mixing neighbourhoods to the suburbs, accelerated by federal mortgage policy that redlined black areas.

  4. 4

    What was the Interstate Highway Act?

    Model answer

    Eisenhower's 1956 programme to build 41,000 miles of highway, the largest public works project in American history, which enabled suburban commuting.

  5. 5

    How did highway building affect the cities?

    Model answer

    Urban expressways drove through poor and often black neighbourhoods, displacing communities and hastening the movement of business to the suburbs.

  6. 6

    How affluent was America by the early 1960s?

    Model answer

    Real family incomes had risen by about half since the late 1940s, most families owned a car and a television, and home ownership had risen above 60 per cent.

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The USA, 1955–92: Conformity and Challenge revision questions

What does The USA, 1955–92: Conformity and Challenge cover in Edexcel A-Level History?
16 subtopics: urbanisation and affluence, cultural conformity and challenge, the civil rights movement, kennedy’s new frontier, civil rights: malcolm x and black power, protest and personal freedom, johnson’s great society, 1964–68, reactions to the counter-culture, 1968–72, the crisis of political leadership, the impact of economic change on society, changing popular culture, progress in individual and civil rights, new directions in economic policy, the religious right and its critics, cultural challenge and social change in the usa, 1955-92. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.
How is The USA, 1955–92: Conformity and Challenge organised?
By the Edexcel 9HI0 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.

Every question in The USA, 1955–92: Conformity and Challenge, on a schedule.

Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.

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