Unit 10 · America in a Changing World

Richard Nixon became president in January 1969. He was a Republican from California who had been Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president. Nixon took over a country divided by the Vietnam War and upset by protests and violence. Just six months later, the nation shared a moment of pride.

On July 20, 1969, the lunar module of Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Astronaut Neil Armstrong climbed down a ladder and stepped onto the dusty ground. Buzz Aldrin soon joined him. Michael Collins circled above in the command ship. About 600 million people around the world watched on television.

The Moon landing was a win in the space race with the Soviet Union. President John F. Kennedy had set the goal in 1961. Thousands of engineers, scientists and workers made it happen. Some were Black women mathematicians, such as Katherine Johnson, who did key calculations at NASA. Over the next few years, 12 American astronauts walked on the Moon. The last mission returned in 1972.

Nixon was known as a strong anti-Communist. Yet he surprised the world. With his adviser Henry Kissinger, he followed a plan called détente. Détente means an easing of tension between rivals. Nixon believed talking with Communist powers could make the world safer.

In February 1972, Nixon visited the People’s Republic of China. No U.S. president had gone there since the Communists took power in 1949. He met the Chinese leader Mao Zedong and toured the Great Wall. Soon after, Nixon went to Moscow. He and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed an arms treaty called SALT I. It limited some nuclear weapons.

Nixon also slowly pulled U.S. troops out of Vietnam. The last American combat troops left in 1973. That same year, the draft ended. Before, young men could be ordered into the military. Now the country moved to an all-volunteer army. The draft had been a big cause of anger during the Vietnam War.

By the late 1960s, pollution was easy to see. Smog hung over cities. Factories dumped waste into rivers and lakes. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire because it was so full of oil and trash. Many Americans decided something had to change.

On April 22, 1970, about 20 million Americans joined the first Earth Day. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin helped start it. Students held teach-ins. People cleaned parks and marched in streets. The event showed that protecting the environment had wide support from both political parties.

Congress and President Nixon acted. In 1970, the government created the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. The Clean Air Act of 1970 set limits on air pollution. The Clean Water Act of 1972 worked to clean up rivers and lakes. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protected animals and plants at risk of dying out, such as the bald eagle. Over time, the air and water in many places became much cleaner.

In June 1972, police arrested five men inside the Democratic Party’s offices at the Watergate building in Washington, D.C. The burglars had ties to Nixon’s reelection campaign. Nixon won the 1972 election in a landslide. But reporters kept digging. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post wrote story after story about the break-in.

The real trouble was the cover-up. People in the White House tried to hide what had happened and paid money to keep the burglars quiet. A Senate committee held hearings on TV. Then Americans learned that Nixon secretly taped talks in his office. Nixon refused to hand over the tapes. In July 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that he had to.

The tapes showed that Nixon had helped plan the cover-up soon after the break-in. A House committee had already voted to impeach him. Nixon knew he would likely be removed from office. On August 9, 1974, he resigned. Watergate showed that no one, not even a president, is above the law. It also left many Americans less trusting of their leaders.

Gerald Ford had been a congressman from Michigan. He became vice president in 1973 and president in 1974. He was the only president never elected as president or vice president. Ford promised honesty. But a month later he pardoned Nixon, so Nixon could not be tried for any Watergate crimes. Ford said the nation needed to heal. Many Americans were angry.

Ford also faced money troubles. In 1973, Arab oil-producing nations stopped selling oil to the United States. They were angry about U.S. support for Israel in a war. Gas prices jumped. Drivers waited in long lines at gas stations. This energy crisis showed how much the country depended on oil from other places.

Prices for many goods kept rising. This is called inflation. At the same time, many people lost jobs. In the Midwest, some factories and steel mills began to close or cut workers. Americans started to call the region the Rust Belt. For many families, the 1970s were a time of worry about money.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter, a Democrat and former governor of Georgia, won the presidency. He was a peanut farmer and a Navy veteran. He promised to be honest with the American people. Carter made human rights a big part of his foreign policy. He spoke out against governments that jailed or hurt their own people.

Carter’s greatest success came in 1978. He invited Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, and Israel’s prime minister, Menachem Begin, to Camp David in Maryland. The two countries had fought several wars. After 13 days of hard talks, they agreed on a plan for peace. The Camp David Accords led to a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979.

But troubles grew. Prices kept rising fast. In November 1979, students in Iran took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They held 52 Americans as hostages. A rescue attempt failed in 1980. The hostages were held for 444 days. They were freed on January 20, 1981, the day Carter left office.

Ronald Reagan grew up in small towns in Illinois, including Dixon. He went to Eureka College in Illinois. He became a radio announcer and then a movie actor. Later he served two terms as governor of California. Reagan was a skilled speaker. People called him the Great Communicator.

In 1980, Reagan ran against Carter. He asked voters if they were better off than four years before. Many said no. Reagan won in a landslide. He was part of a growing conservative movement. Conservatives wanted a smaller federal government, lower taxes and fewer rules on business. Many also stressed religion and traditional family values.

Reagan’s win changed American politics. Some voters who used to support Democrats, including many factory workers, now voted for him. People called them Reagan Democrats. Reagan was nearly killed by a gunman in March 1981 but recovered. That same year, he named Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman on the Supreme Court.

In 1981, Congress passed large tax cuts that Reagan asked for. Reagan believed lower taxes would let people and businesses keep more money. He said they would spend and invest it, and the economy would grow. Supporters called this supply-side economics. Reagan also pushed deregulation, or cutting government rules on business. Carter had already begun this with airlines and trucking.

At first, the economy got worse. In 1982, many people were out of work. The Federal Reserve had raised interest rates very high to stop inflation. It worked. Inflation fell sharply. By 1983, the economy was growing again, and it kept growing for years.

Reagan also spent much more on the military. With lower taxes and higher spending, the government borrowed a lot. The national debt nearly tripled while Reagan was president. Supporters said his policies beat inflation, created jobs and helped win the Cold War. Critics said the tax cuts helped the rich most, cut programs for poor people, and left huge debts. Americans still argue about this.

A 1965 law ended old limits that favored immigrants from Europe. After that, more immigrants came from Latin America and Asia. After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, many refugees came from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The Refugee Act of 1980 set up a system for welcoming people fleeing danger. In 1986, a new law gave legal status to about 2.7 million immigrants who had come without permission.

Americans were also on the move. Many left the Northeast and Midwest for the Sun Belt, the warm states of the South and Southwest. Jobs, cheaper housing and air conditioning drew them. States like Texas, Florida and Arizona grew fast. They gained seats in Congress.

New voices rose in politics. In 1983, Chicago voters elected Harold Washington as the city’s first Black mayor. In 1984, Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman chosen by a major party to run for vice president. Latino and Asian American leaders won more offices too. The nation was becoming more diverse.

In his first years, Reagan took a hard line against the Soviet Union. He built up the military and called the Soviet Union an evil empire. He also proposed a system to shoot down nuclear missiles from space. Critics called it Star Wars. Many people feared the arms race could lead to nuclear war.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader. He was younger than earlier leaders and wanted change. The Soviet economy was failing. Gorbachev allowed more open talk, called glasnost. He also tried to reform the economy, called perestroika.

Reagan and Gorbachev met several times. At first they could not agree. But they came to trust each other. In 1987, they signed the INF Treaty. For the first time, the two sides agreed to destroy a whole type of nuclear missile. Reagan said the U.S. would trust but verify, which meant checking that the Soviets kept their word.

In 1989, change spread across Eastern Europe. In Poland, a workers’ movement called Solidarity, led by Lech Wałęsa, won free elections. Hungary opened its border to Austria. Huge peaceful protests filled the streets of East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Gorbachev did not send troops to stop them.

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall opened. By the end of the year, Communist governments had fallen in most of Eastern Europe. In October 1990, East and West Germany reunified, or became one country again. President George H.W. Bush worked with other leaders to make these changes peaceful.

Inside the Soviet Union, the republics that made it up wanted to be free. In December 1991, the Soviet Union broke apart into 15 independent countries, including Russia and Ukraine. Gorbachev resigned. The Cold War, which had lasted more than 40 years, was over. The United States was now the world’s only superpower.

For years, people with disabilities faced closed doors. Many buildings had only stairs. Many buses had no lifts. Employers could refuse to hire someone because of a disability. Activists fought back. In March 1990, dozens left their wheelchairs and crawled up the steps of the U.S. Capitol to demand a law.

In July 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA. It banned discrimination against people with disabilities in jobs, schools, stores and transportation. It required ramps, accessible buses and other changes. Today, curb cuts, elevators and captioned videos are common partly because of the ADA.

Meanwhile, trouble came in the Middle East. In August 1990, Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, invaded the small oil-rich country of Kuwait. President Bush built a coalition of more than 30 nations. In January 1991, the coalition attacked. The Persian Gulf War ended in about six weeks, and Kuwait was freed. Saddam Hussein, however, stayed in power in Iraq.

George H.W. Bush was president when the Cold War ended. His popularity soared after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. But then the economy slowed down. Many people lost jobs. Bush had promised not to raise taxes, but he agreed to a budget deal that did. Some voters felt he had broken his word.

In 1992, Bill Clinton, the Democratic governor of Arkansas, ran against Bush. A businessman named Ross Perot also ran as an independent candidate. Perot won almost one-fifth of the popular vote, a strong result for a third candidate. Clinton won the election. Clinton called himself a New Democrat, a moderate who wanted to mix ideas from both parties.

With the Soviet Union gone, the United States faced a new kind of world. There was no single rival superpower. But conflicts still broke out. In the 1990s, U.S. troops took part in peacekeeping missions, such as in Bosnia and Kosovo in southeastern Europe. Americans debated how much the country should get involved in faraway conflicts.

In 1993, Congress approved the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. It took effect in 1994. NAFTA removed most taxes on trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico. Supporters said it would lower prices and help businesses sell more. Critics, including many labor unions, said factories would move to Mexico, where wages were lower. Both sides pointed to evidence in later years.

The economy grew for most of the 1990s. Unemployment fell. New technology companies created many jobs. Tax money poured into the government. Clinton and a Republican-led Congress also agreed on spending limits and welfare changes. By 1998, the government had a budget surplus. It took in more money than it spent for the first time since 1969.

Clinton’s presidency also had a scandal. He was accused of lying under oath about a relationship with a young White House worker. In 1998, the House of Representatives impeached him on charges of perjury, or lying under oath, and obstruction of justice. In 1999, the Senate held a trial and did not remove him. Clinton became the second president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson.

In the 1970s, computers were huge machines used mostly by governments, colleges and big companies. Then small personal computers came along. Apple sold its first computers in the late 1970s. IBM released its personal computer in 1981. Microsoft’s software ran on millions of machines. By the 1990s, many homes and schools had a computer.

The internet began as a U.S. government project that linked computers at research centers. In 1989, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, a way to link pages of information. In 1993, students and staff at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign released Mosaic. It was one of the first easy-to-use web browsers, and it helped millions of people go online.

New companies grew quickly. Amazon started selling books online in 1995. Google began in 1998. People sent email instead of letters. Many jobs now needed computer skills. This digital economy made some people rich. But not everyone had equal access. People called this gap the digital divide.

In 2000, Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat, ran against Texas governor George W. Bush, a Republican. Bush was the son of the former president. On election night, the result came down to Florida. Whoever won Florida’s electoral votes would win the presidency. The count there was extremely close.

Florida began a recount. Some ballots were hard to read, and the rules for counting them were unclear. Lawyers for both sides went to court. For weeks, the country did not know who its next president would be. The Florida Supreme Court ordered more hand counts.

On December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in Bush v. Gore. The decision stopped the recount. Bush was declared the winner of Florida by 537 votes. That gave him the presidency, even though Gore won more votes nationwide. Supporters of the ruling said it ended a chaotic process that treated ballots unequally. Critics said every vote should have been counted. Gore accepted the result.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men from a terrorist group called al Qaeda took over four passenger airplanes. They crashed two into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Both towers fell. They crashed a third plane into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. military, near Washington, D.C.

On the fourth plane, United Flight 93, passengers learned what had happened by phone. They fought back against the hijackers. The plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Everyone on board died, but the plane did not reach its target in Washington. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day, including hundreds of firefighters and police officers.

Al Qaeda was led by Osama bin Laden. The group practiced terrorism, using violence against ordinary people to create fear for political goals. Americans were shocked and grieving. Many gave blood, raised money and flew flags. Muslim Americans, and people mistaken for Muslims, sometimes faced hate and violence. Leaders reminded the nation that the attackers did not represent a whole religion.

The government moved fast to protect the country. Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001. It gave the government more power to watch and investigate suspected terrorists. In 2002, Congress created the Department of Homeland Security to guard borders, airports and other targets. Airport security became much stricter. Some Americans worried that the new powers went too far and threatened privacy.

In October 2001, the United States and its allies attacked Afghanistan. Its rulers, the Taliban, had sheltered al Qaeda. The Taliban quickly lost power, but fighting went on for years. In May 2011, U.S. forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan in August 2021, and the Taliban took control again.

In March 2003, the U.S. led an invasion of Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein. Bush said Iraq had dangerous weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were found. A long and costly insurgency, or armed uprising, followed. Americans were deeply divided about the Iraq War. Most U.S. troops left Iraq in 2011. Thousands of U.S. troops and many more Iraqis died in the war.

In late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. In New Orleans, the storm caused levees to fail. Levees are walls built to hold back water. About 80 percent of the city flooded. Some neighborhoods were under many feet of water.

Many people had left before the storm. But thousands could not, often because they had no car or money to travel. Many of them were poor, elderly or Black. People waited on rooftops for rescue. Thousands crowded into the Superdome and the convention center with little food, water or medical care. More than 1,800 people died because of the storm.

Help from local, state and federal governments was slow and poorly organized. The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, resigned. Many Americans asked why the richest nation in the world could not do better. Volunteers came from across the country. Many New Orleans residents moved away for good, and rebuilding took years.

In the early 2000s, home prices rose fast. Banks made many risky mortgages, or home loans, to people who might not be able to pay them back. Banks then bundled and sold these loans as investments. When home prices began to fall around 2006 and 2007, many people could not pay. They lost their homes.

The losses spread through the banking system. In September 2008, a huge investment bank, Lehman Brothers, collapsed. Panic hit Wall Street. Congress passed a plan to spend up to 700 billion dollars to rescue banks. Some people called it a bailout. Supporters said it kept the economy from collapsing. Critics said it rewarded the banks that caused the problem.

The Great Recession lasted from late 2007 to mid-2009. Millions of Americans lost jobs. Many families lost savings and homes. In 2009, Congress passed a large spending plan to boost the economy. The auto industry got government loans. Recovery was slow. It took years for jobs to come back.

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. As a young man, he moved to Chicago and worked as a community organizer on the city’s South Side. He later taught law and served in the Illinois state senate. In 2004, Illinois voters elected him to the U.S. Senate.

In 2008, Obama won the Democratic nomination after a close race with Hillary Clinton. He then defeated Republican John McCain. On election night, a huge crowd gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park to hear him speak. Obama became the first African American president. Many Americans saw it as a milestone in a country shaped by slavery and segregation. He won reelection in 2012.

In 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare. It aimed to help millions of uninsured people get health insurance. It stopped insurance companies from turning people away for health problems they already had. Supporters said it made health care fairer. Critics said it cost too much and gave the government too much power. In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld most of the law.

In 2007, Apple released the first iPhone. Soon, most Americans carried a smartphone, a small computer that fits in a pocket. People could look up facts, take photos, find directions and shop anywhere. Social media sites, such as Facebook, which began in 2004, let people share news and ideas instantly.

These tools changed daily life. Protest movements could organize quickly. Small businesses could reach customers everywhere. But there were problems too. False information could spread fast. Many people worried about privacy and about how much time young people spent online. Americans still debate how, or whether, to regulate tech companies.

Globalization also grew. This means the world’s economies and cultures became more closely linked. A phone might be designed in California, built in Asia with parts from many countries, and sold everywhere. Global trade lowered many prices. It also cost some American factory jobs. China became a major trading partner and rival of the United States.

Scientists report that Earth’s climate is warming, mostly because burning coal, oil and gas releases heat-trapping gases. In 2015, the U.S. helped create the Paris climate agreement to cut these gases. Since then, presidents of different parties have left it, rejoined it and moved to leave it again. Meanwhile, the country has become a top producer of oil and natural gas, and it also makes more electricity from wind and solar power each year.

In 2016, Republican Donald Trump, a New York businessman, defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton. Clinton was the first woman nominated for president by a major party. Clinton won more votes nationwide, but Trump won the Electoral College. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump. Kamala Harris became the first woman, and the first Black and South Asian American, to serve as vice president.

Trump did not accept the 2020 results and said the election was unfair. Courts and state officials rejected those claims. On January 6, 2021, while Congress was counting the electoral votes, a crowd of Trump supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol. Congress finished counting that night. In 2024, Trump defeated Harris. He became the second president, after Grover Cleveland, to serve two terms that were not back to back.

In early 2020, a new disease called COVID-19 spread around the world. It became a pandemic, a disease outbreak across many countries. Schools and businesses closed for months. Many people worked and learned from home. Scientists quickly developed vaccines, which became available in December 2020. By 2022, more than one million Americans had died of COVID-19. Americans disagreed about rules such as mask requirements and closings.

Today, about one in seven people living in the United States was born in another country. The largest groups come from Mexico, India, China and the Philippines, among many others. The Chicago area is home to large Mexican American, Polish American and Indian American communities. The Latino and Asian American populations have grown fast.

Immigration is also a subject of strong debate. Millions of people live in the country without legal permission. Some Americans want stricter border security and more deportations. Others want a path to citizenship for people who have lived and worked here for years. Many want both. Congress has debated major immigration changes for decades without passing a full plan.

In a democracy, citizens have both rights and responsibilities. Adults who are citizens can vote and serve on juries. People of any age can volunteer, write to leaders, attend public meetings and learn about issues from reliable sources. Students can serve on school councils and help their communities. The story of the United States is still being written, and each person has a part in it.