Answer:
See below
Explanation:
In both instances the impact was far reaching. In the 1950's the USA was still a segregated country, particularly in the South where it was institutionalized. The refusal of Rosa Parks to sit in a coloured seat in a bus in Montgomery Alabama is often seen as the spark which started the civil rights movement.
Protests against such institutionalized racism grew in the 50's and 60's. Such protests were marred by a violent reaction from white supremacists such as the Ku Klux Clan and southern politicians such as Governor George Wallace of Alabama. There was bitter and violent opposition to any moves towards ending segregation. This included high profile examples such as the assassinations of civil rights leaders, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, the bombing of a black church in Birmingham Alabama which killed 4 girls, and the murder of 3 civil rights workers in Mississippi.
Although Kennedy was committed to civil rights legislation it was left to his successor Lyndon Johnson a Texan who understood the south much better, to get it through Congress. He signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
However racial equality was not achieved overnight. Continuing economic, social and political discrimination against African-Americans as well as other racial minorities continue to this day in the USA.
At the end of WW2, in 1945, global politics were transformed. The old European empires were in decline and the USA and Soviet Union, although allies during the conflict emerged as not only the dominating superpowers but also as bitter rivals.
This relationship was known as the Cold War as they never directly fought each other. However they opposed each other across the globe in a bitter power struggle.
Initially this was in Europe which quickly became divided into Western Europe, allied to the USA. and Eastern Europe which was taken over by the Soviets who imposed communist governments.
The need to contain communism, from an American perspective was reflected in policies such as containment, the Truman Doctrine and the Domino Theory. The division i Europe included also Germany and even Berlin, divided into East and West.
The Arms Race was another example where both superpowers developed huge arsenals of nuclear weapons as aform of deterrent.
It would be fair to say that in the 40's, 50's and early 60's there was a paranoiac fear of nuclear war which very nearly happened over the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Central to this was the need by the USA from their perspective to build alliances such as NATO to contain communism, and where necessary to intervene directly such as in Korea and Vietnam.
