GED History Lesson: Ending World War II, Dropping the Atomic Bomb, Making of the Post War World

Full Wikipedia Article

The United States, with the consent of the United Kingdom as laid down in the Quebec Agreement, dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, during the final stage of World War II. The two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history.

In the final year of the war, the Allies prepared for what was anticipated to be a very costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. This was preceded by a U.S. firebombing campaign that obliterated many Japanese cities. The war in Europe had concluded when Nazi Germany signed its instrument of surrender on May 8, 1945. The Japanese, facing the same fate, refused to accept the Allies' demands for unconditional surrender and the Pacific War continued. Together with the United Kingdom and China, the United States called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945—the alternative being "prompt and utter destruction". The Japanese response to this ultimatum was toignore it.

In July 1945, the Allied Manhattan Project successfully detonated an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert and by August had produced atomic weapons based on two alternate designs. The 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces was equipped with the specializedSilverplate version of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, that could deliver them from Tinian in the Mariana Islands.

On August 6, the U.S. dropped a uranium gun-type atomic bomb (Little Boy) on the city of Hiroshima. American President Harry S. Truman called for Japan's surrender 16 hours later, warning them to "expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth". Three days later, on August 9, the U.S. dropped a plutonium implosion-type bomb (Fat Man) on the city of Nagasaki. Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000–146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day. During the following months, large numbers died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians, although Hiroshima had a sizable military garrison.

On August 15, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war, Japan announced its surrender to the Allies. OnSeptember 2, it signed the instrument of surrender, effectively ending World War II. The bombings' role in Japan's surrender and their ethical justification are still debated.

Michelle Alexander: Drug War Racism

From Wikipedia:

Alexander published her first book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010). In it, she argues that systemic racial discrimination in the United States has resumed following the Civil Rights Movement's gains; the resumption is embedded in the US War on Drugs and other governmental policies and is having devastating social consequences. She considers the scope and impact of this current law enforcement, legal and penal activity to be comparable with that of the Jim Crow laws of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her book concentrates on the mass incarceration of African-American men.^[4]

In The New Jim Crow, Alexander argues that mass incarceration in America functions as a system of racial control in a similar way to how Jim Crow once operated. Alexander writes, “Race plays a major role-indeed, a defining role – in the current system, but not because of what is commonly understood as old-fashioned, hostile bigotry. This system of control depends far more on racial indifference (defined as a lack of compassion and caring about race and racial groups) than racial hostility – a feature it actually shares with its predecessors.”^[5]

The New Jim Crow describes how she believes oppressed minorities are, "subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, public benefits, and jury service, just as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents once were". Alexander argues the harsh penalty of how "people whose only crime is drug addiction or possession of a small amount of drugs for recreational use find themselves locked out of the mainstream society-permanently" and also highlights the inequality presented from the fact that, "blacks are admitted to prison on drug charges at a rate from twenty to fifty-seven times greater than that of white men". Alexander's The New Jim Crow analyzes some of the factors she argues contribute to the new and modified Jim Crow laws that reside in American society today.

In a 2012 interview, Alexander told the story of the origin of the book. Working on "Driving While Black" DWB racial profiling in Oakland with the ACLU, a young African-American man came in with a well-documented case of most of a year of repeated stops by police with dates and names. Listening to his story, Alexander increasingly felt she had the test case for which she was looking. Then the man said in passing he had a drug-felony conviction on his record and Alexander had to backtrack completely and finally: The conviction was an insurmountable obstacle to a test case in front of a jury for her at that time. In turn, the man then built a strong anger toward her, saying in effect "I'm innocent ...; it was just a plea bargain"; and that she "was no better than the police" and "You're crazy if you think you're going to find anyone here to challenge the police who is not already 'in the system'?"; he ended by stalking out, tearing up his notes as he went. The experience stuck with Alexander and eventually grew, prompted in part by more observations of events in Oakland, into the book. She has tried to find the young man again, in part to dedicate the book to him, but has so far been unable to.^[6]

The New Jim Crow was re-released in paperback in early 2012 and has received significant praise. As of September 30, 2012, it has been on The New York Times Best Seller list for 35 weeks^[7] and it also reached number 1 on the Washington Post bestseller list in 2012. The book has also been the subject of scholarly debate andcriticism.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Starting in the fall of 2015 all freshmen enrolled at Brown University will read The New Jim Crow as part of the campus's First Readings Program initiated by the Office of the Dean of the College and voted on by the faculty.^[12]" 

The Great Migration

Full Priceonomics Article on the Great Migration

In 1910, 89% of African Americans lived in the South. But by 1970, this was true of only 53% of the African American population.

This change, which has come to be know as “The Great Migration”, represents the largest internal movement of any group in American history. In “The Warmth of Other Suns”, Isabel Wilkerson’s chronicle of this crucial event, she writes:

It was during the First World War that a silent pilgrimage tooks its first steps within the border of this country. The fever rose without warning or notice or much in the way of understanding by those outside its reach. It would not end until the 1970s and would set into motion changes in the North and South that no one, not even the people doing the leaving, could have imagined at the start of it or dreamed would take nearly a lifetime to play out...

Historians would come to call it the Great Migration. It would become perhaps the most underreported story of the twentieth century...

Like so many before them, the men and women who were part of the Great Migration feltcompelled to migrate to escape persecution and to search out economic opportunity. In the 20th Century, this meant the atrocities of the Jim Crow South combined with the employment opportunities afforded by labor shortages in the Industrial North. The combination led millions to leave the only world they knew for a new and uncertain life.

In many ways, the Great Migration consisted of many smaller migrations between local communities. The African Americans who left South Carolina were particularly likely to migrate to New York and Philadelphia, while migrants from Louisiana mostly headed to the great cities of the West. 

We can track these patterns using data from the decennial census. This data sheds light on a momentous shift in American history.

SuccessGED GED Civics and Government Studies with Exercises

Civics is the study of the great theoretical and practical aspects of citizenship, its rights and duties; the duties of citizens to each other as members of a political body and to the government.^[1] It includes the study of civil law and civil code, and the study of government with attention to the role of citizens ― as opposed to external factors ― in the operation and oversight of government.^[1]

Within a given political or ethical tradition, civics refers to educating the citizens. The history of civics dates back to the earliest theories of civics by Confucius in ancient Chinaand Plato in ancient Greece. In China also along with Confucianism developed the tradition of Legalism. These traditions in the East and in the West developed to an extent differently, therefore, with bringing in the past different concepts of citizens rights and the application of justice, together with different ethics in public life. This was mainly valid before the translation of the Western legal tradition to Chinese which started in 1839 after which influence by Western tradition was brought to China, with periods of restoration of traditional Chinese law, influence by Soviet law; specific is the common ordinary language used in Chinese laws which has significant educational role.

Hit this button, then once you get to the Cerego site, push the "Start Learning" button. 

PRACTICE CIVICS FACTS HERE

CIVILIZATION FOR GED STUDENTS

 Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark

Civilisation—in full, Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark—is a television documentary series outlining the history of Western art, architecture and philosophy since the Dark Ages. The series was produced by the BBC and aired in 1969 on BBC2. Both the television scripts and the accompanying book version were written by art historian Lord Clark (1903–1983), who also presented the series. The series is considered to be a landmark in British Television's broadcasting of the visual arts.

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

A civilization (US) or civilisation (UK) is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralization, thedomestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labor, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon agriculture, and expansionism.^{[2][5][3][8][7]} Historically, a civilization was an "advanced" culture in contrast to more supposedly barbarian, savage, or primitive cultures.^[1][3][5][9] In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized feudal or tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists or hunter-gatherers. As an uncountable noun, civilization also refers to the process of a society developing into a centralized, urbanized, stratified structure.

Civilizations are organized in densely populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which, by the engagement in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.^[10]

The earliest emergence of civilizations is generally associated with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution, culminating in the relatively rapid process of state formation, a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite. This neolithic technology and lifestyle was established first in the Middle East (for example at Göbekli Tepe, from about 9,130 BCE), and Yangtze and later in the Yellow river basin in China (for example the Pengtoushan culture from 7,500 BCE), and later spread. But similar "revolutions" also began independently from 9,000 years ago in such places as the Norte Chico civilization in Peru^[11]and Mesoamerica at the Balsas River. These were among the six civilizations worldwide that arose independently.^[12] The neolithic revolution in turn was dependent upon the development of sedentarism, the domestication of grains and animals and the development lifestyles which allowed economies of scaleand the accumulation of surplus production by certain social sectors. The transition from "complex chieftains" to "civilisations", while still disputed, seems to be associated with the development of state structures, in which power was further monopolised by an elite^[13]

Towards the end of the Neolithic period, various Chalcolithic civilizations began to rise in various "cradles" from around 3300 BCE. Chalcolithic Civilizations, as defined above, also developed in Pre-Columbian Americas and, despite an early start in Egypt, Axum and Kush, much later in Iron Age sub-Saharan Africa. TheBronze Age collapse was followed by the Iron Age around 1200 BCE, during which a number of new civilizations emerged, culminating in the Axial Agetransition to Classical civilization. A major technological and cultural transition to modernity began approximately 1500 CE in western Europe, and from this beginning new approaches to science and law spread rapidly around the world.^[14]