Hello everybody and welcome back to another end of unit reflection. This time it’s about the 60s and how the world was on the brink of nuclear war. Over the year we have looked back through history in chronological order. We started the year with the Manhattan Project, which ended WWII. We then went on to looking at the 50s and the red scare. Followed up by the Civil Rights Movement throughout the 60s. Now we just finished looking at the cold war through the 50s-60s.
The final product for the unit came to us in the form of a research essay. There weren’t many requirements for topic of the essay. The driving question for the essay and the whole unit was “How was the world on the brink?” We were to answer this question with one specific event from the Cold War. The event I chose to research for my essay was West Germany joining NATO.
Now that was only half of the unit. After looking at the political side of the world being on the brink, we had to now look at the social side. Throughout the 1960s, there was lots of change happening. There were civil rights acts being passed, as well as other rights that were starting to be challenged. We watched a video called “The Times They Are A’ Changin'”. There were five main topics we could dive into from this video, they were; Women’s Rights, Environmental Impacts, United Farm Workers, Conservative Movement, and Gay Rights. From this lost we were to chose one and then write an argument explaining how it put the social world on the brink and a piece of media.
So how did Gay Rights push the social world to the brink? People were sick and tired of being considered mentally ill just for liking the same sex. Homosexuals weren’t allowed to work in the government, they would constantly lose their jobs, and were commonly having to deal with police raids in their bars. There were tests done on people who where gay where they would show photos of women and men, and if the gay man got aroused by a man he would be electrically shocked. It was an all time low for gay rights and something had to be done. This all changed in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in the Greenwich neighbourhood of New York City, and on June 28, 1969 it became a war zone. At about 1:20 in the morning four police who were stationed outside, raided the bar along with two policeman who were undercover inside. This time it didn’t go quite as planned for the police officers. The customers in the bar fought back and started riots all along the street. There was now a big mob along the whole street and damage was being done. These events were what led to the first gay pride parades in the United States.
Now onto the learning.
We started the unit off by watching the movie titled “Thirteen Days”. It was about the Cuban Missile Crisis and how the United States reacted to it. This was what got us started on the Cold War this unit. We then went through a giant lecture about all the different topics we could focus on for our essays. I didn’t quite realize how interesting the Cold War was until this unit. After coming home one day after school and talking with my mom about how cool the Cold War was, she mentioned how we had a board game that goes through the whole war. So on one of the weekends we played it, it only took a short six hours. The following weekend I played it with Alex. I think you could now classify me as a Cold War enthusiast.
Overall I really enjoyed this unit and felt that I got interested in a topic I didn’t know much about coming into the unit. I am now extremely engaged in learning more about the Cold War and how many different ways it could’ve played out. Also I can look back to this unit and thank it for introducing me to a great board game.
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