TOPIC 8.4: The Economy after World War 2

Interstate highway System and Systematic Racism: S.P.Y Analysis “Gallery Walk”

Unit 8: L.O.- D Explain the causes (and effects) of economic growth in the years after World War II.

Objective 1: Students will be able to explain the impact of the Interstate Highway System on Black communities throughout the U.S.

Objective 2: Students will self-evaluate their progress on primary source document analysis skills by comparing their analysis attempt with example essays.

This Key COncept in An Antiracist classroom:

“Racial and economic segregation in urban communities is often understood as a natural consequence of poor choices by individuals. In reality, racially and economically segregated cities are the result of many factors, including the nation’s interstate highway system. In states around the country, highway construction displaced Black households and cut the heart and soul out of thriving Black communities as homes, churches, schools, and businesses were destroyed.” - Deborah N. Archer

During the middle and second half of the 20th century, the government subsidized the growth of the White middle-class, while systematically denying the same privileges to Black Americans, thus creating a system of institutional racism in the United States. There are several other Antiracist APUSH lessons that cover this topic: 7.10 on FHA and Redlining, 7.12 on the G.I. Bill and broken promises to Black veterans, and 8.10c on educational, employment, and housing disparities and the urban uprisings of the 1960s.

The creation of the Interstate Highway System offers another clear example of systematic racism in practice. Historian Eric Avila describes in The Folklore of the Freeway that the racial context of the 1950s and 1960s led to Black communities being misunderstood and severely undervalued by white urban planners. He describes how even planners “with the best intensions” completely destroyed Black and Brown communities.

I understand that using words in the classroom like structural or systematic racism is very controversial and even illegal in several states. Some administrators want teachers to “stick to the book” in order to avoid controversy. I also understand that the best selling AP textbook, American Pageant, does not mention Black communities in context with the Interstate Highway System. However, this class is supposed to be a college equivalent class. You are not teaching serious college level U.S. history if you are trying to describe the growing economy of the 1950s and are not discussing issues involved with systematic racism.

Notes

This “gallery walk” activity goes with document 7 of the 2021 DBQ on economic growth between 1940 and 1970. You can do this as part of feedback after they write the DBQ or you can do the activity without the full DBQ and just have the students take 5 minutes to review the prompt and S.P.Y. the document.

My students became much better writers after I developed the S.P.Y. document analysis strategy while at the official AP exam reading in the summer of 2019. The gallery walk idea emerged later after I realized some students were still not grasping exactly what it meant to “use a document to support their thesis” or exactly what it meant to analyze an author’s perspective or purpose.

The gallery walk explained in the lesson plan will only take 10-15 minutes but I have also added a valuable addition to the lesson which is a review of secondary source material. I love discussions on secondary sources after SPYing a primary source because that is when it feels like we are really doing college level history. This leads to a powerful and very relevant discussion about the merits of the theories surrounding systematic racism.