Like Civil Rights Movement in Context, this assessment gauges students’ ability to contextualize two historical documents and place them in the correct chronological order. Document A is an excerpt from the joint resolution by the Allies at the Moscow Conference in 1943. Document B is from an article published in the Chicago Daily News on February 14, 1951. This assessment draws on students' knowledge about American foreign policy but in a way that goes beyond the simple recall of facts and dates. In this assessment, students must show that they have a broad understanding of how American foreign policy changed over time and demonstrate the ability to use knowledge about the past to place the two documents in context.
In this assessment, students who correctly contextualize the documents will see that Document A, which describes an alliance between the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China against Germany, was a product of World War II foreign policy and therefore likely written before Document B, which refers to American Cold War containment policy in Korea.
