Citizenship in Postwar America

Citizenship Paper Who is a citizen and what constitutes citizenship has changed significantly over the history of the nation? At no time in our past has this been more evident than in the seven decades since the end of World War II. During the postwar period, various groups and individuals have advanced different understandings of what it means to be a citizen of the United States—what a citizen can expect of the government and what the government can expect of its citizens. As American values and institutions change, what it means to be an American citizen also changes. Your task in this essay will be to examine the ongoing conversations about citizenship by comparing and contrasting any two of the written primary sources we have studied. The two you choose will be up to you, but they must be chosen from the assigned readings in A History of Our Time; Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience,” and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” To repeat: you need only choose two from these many readings. Your paper should be 4 to 5 (at least 4 complete) pages in length (in addition to a Works Cited or Bibliography page).