APUSH Chapter 27 Flashcards
Landrum-Griffin Act
A 1959 act that widened government control over union affairs & further restricted union use of picketing & secondary boycotts during strikes.
Beats
A group of writers from the 1950s whose writings
challenged American culture.
beatnik
Term used to designate members of the Beats.
New Frontier
John F. Kennedy’s domestic and foreign policy initiatives, designed to reinvigorate a sense of national purpose and energy.
- Advocated liberal programs
- Medical care for the elderly, greater federal aid for education & public housing, raising Social Security benefits & the minimum wage, & various anti poverty measures
- Truman
- Thin margin of victory & stubborn opposition by conservative southern D in Congress made it difficult to achieve these goals
Equal Pay Act of 1963
Act that made it illegal for employers to pay men & women different wages for the same job.
A direct result of the commission’s work, mandated equal wages for men & women employed in industries engaged in interstate commerce.
- JFK also directed executive agencies to prohibit sex discrimination in hiring and promotion.
- The work of the commission contributed to a new generation of women’s rights activism.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA)
Federal agency created in 1958 to manage American space flights & exploration.
July 29, 1958
Was created under E administration: To coordinate space explorations & missile development
Alliance for Progress
Program of economic aid to Latin America during the Kennedy administration.
A ten year, $100 billion plan to spur economic development in Latin America.
US put a lot of money ($20 billion) to the project with the Latin nations responsible for the rest
Main goal included: greater industrial growth & agricultural productivity, a more equitable distribution of income, & improved health & housing
Bay of Pigs
Site in Cuba of an unsuccessful landing by 1,400 anti-Castro Cuban refugees in April 1961.
April 17, 1961: a ragtag army of 1,400 counter revolutionaries led by CIA operatives landed at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba’s southern coast.
Castro’s efficient & loyal army easily subdued them
Cuban missile crisis
Crisis between the Soviet Union & the United States over the placement of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Limited Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty
Treaty signed by the US, Britain, & the SU that outlawed nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in outer space, & underwater.
Signed in August 1963 by the US, the SU, & Great Britain
The treaty prohibited above-ground, outer-space, & under-water nuclear weapon test, using global anxieties about radioactive fallout
Eisenhower
- Kept up anti-Communism
- Persuade Americans to accept the East-West stalemate as a permanent fact
- In US, was a reassuring symbol of moderation & stability
Presidency:
- Sought to limit New Deal trends (that had expanded federal power)
- Encouraged voluntary government-business partnership
Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare
To administer federal and federal-state programs in public health, education, and social and economic security.
Appointed its head with the second women in history to hold a cabinet position: Oveta Culp Hobby
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
Gave a “new look” to American foreign policy in the 1950s
- Believed in America’s responsibility to preserve the Free World from godless, immoral communism
- Used the US nuclear weapons as a strategy to emphasize the capacity of the Strategic Air Command
1953 Germany
East Berlin rebelled against Communist rule
- US promised to back them up, did not, SU tanks crushed the uprising
1956 Hungary
Revolted against the Communist rule
- US opened gates to thousands of Hungarian refugees, but refused to intervene against SU tanks & troops
Nikita Khrushchev
1955: New SU leader withdrew Soviet troops from Eastern Austria as a conciliatory gesture
1958: Khrushcev unilaterally suspended Nuclear testing
American U-2
May 1960: The Soviet shot down an American U-2 spy plane gathering intelligence on nuclear facilities
- E tried to deny that the US had been spying, pilot confessed
- Then E refused Khrushcev’s demands for an apology & an end to spy flights
Air warfare
SU Sputnik (earth-orbiting satellite) in 1957: upset Americans sense of security
Americans feared the SU technological power to send intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) against American cities
People angry with E for not knowing this about the enemy, building nuclear bomb shelters
E knew of the Soviet from American spy intelligence, new Soviets were far behind America’s ICBM
The National Defense Education Act
Funneled more federal aid into science in foreign language education
Allen Dulles
CIA Exceeded it’s mandate to collect and analyze information
- Agents would make large secret payments to friendly political parties
~ Conservative Christian democrats in Italy or Latin America
~ Foreign trade unions that opposed the Communist Party
Global Interventions - Iran
Iran 1953: CIA-sponsored opposition movement - drove Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh from office and put in power in autocrat monarch (shah) Riza Pahlavi
- Prove loyal to American companies by renegotiating oil contracts
- US intervention caused anti-Americanism among Iranians
1956: the Suez Crisis
Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, leading voice of Arab nationalism, wanted to build the Aswan High Dam on the Nile
- Went to US & British for economic aid, when negotiations broke down, turn to SU for aid & announced it with nationalize the strategically vital & British controlled Suez Canal
- E refused European appeals for help in forcibly returning the canal to the British
- British, french, and Israeli forces the invaded Egypt on October 1956
- US sponsored a US cease-fire resolution demanding withdrawal off foreign forces
- Yielding to SU pressure, the British friends and eventually is really forces withdrew
- End of Crisis brought no lasting peace the temple region
Jacobo Arbenz Guzman
Guatemala: President, elected in 1950 - Aggressively pursued land reform, encourage the formation of trade unions, and tried to buy enormous acreage of United fruit-owned land but did not cultivate
United Fruit and powerful friends in the CIA, so it began lobbying intensely for US intervention, linking land-reform programs to international communism.
US Navy soft Guatemala-bound ships & seized their cargoes
June 14, 1954: the US-trained anti government force invaded from Honduras
Guatemalans seized United Fruit buildings but US Air Force bombed the Invaders cover
Guatemala look to the UN but E denied CIA involvement
New leader Carlos Castillo Amars flew to Guatemala & capital in the US Embassy plane 1957 he was assassinated, initiating a decade-long civil war between military fractions and peasant guerrillas
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)
September of 1954
The purpose of the organization was to prevent communism from gaining ground in the region.
A NATO like in US dominated security pact included the US, Great Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, & Pakistan
Global Interventions - Vietnam
Ngo Dinh Diem, supported E & refused to permit the promised 1956 elections, knowing that populated hero Ho Chi Minh would easily win
- With CIA and American economic and military aid, kept the increasingly isolated Diem in power
- His corrupt and repressive policies and they did many peas
- By 1959 his Saigon regime face is civil war against the thousand peasants who were joining guerrilla bands to drive him out
- E’s commitment of military advisors & economic aid to South Vietnam, based on Cold War assumptions, had laid the foundation for the Vietnam War of the 1960s
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
Established in 1934, helped a lot in this time with helping people with home payments & mortgages
The Internal Revenue Code (1913)
Allowed the deduction of all forms of interest payments from taxes
William Levitt
A developer, was the first entrepreneur to bring mass-production techniques to home building
- Levitton had many home looking the same
- But NO person of color occupying them, or able to rent them
The 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act
- Made an unprecedented impact on American life
- Educational grants, returning vets low-interest mortgages & business loans
- By 1956 12.4 million of the 15.4 million or 78% received some form of benefits from the law
The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956
Key boost to postwar growth
- By 1972 became US’s largest public works program in American History
- Helped to build highway life & pushed a more future lifestyle
Suburban Life
1950s: Betty Friedan - found that The image of what women were portrayed to be and what they were were different
So many more women were working because to be middle class you needed two sources of income
Billy Graham’s hugely popular “Crusades for Christ” brought the religious revival to millions while warning of godless communism
In California automobiles became huge
Led in creating automobile oriented facilities “motor hotels”
Drive-in movies, drive-through fast food eateries & banks, & parking lot in circle shopping
Contemporary journalist, novelist comment and social scientists fed the popular image of suburban life as it essentially dull, conformities, and people were exclusively by the educated middle class
Organized Labor and the AFL-CIO
1955: the newly combined AFL-CIO brought some 12.5 million union members under one banner
George Meany: Head of the AFL (skilled)
Outspoken anti-communist
Pushed the AFL closer to the Democratic party
Believed, must focus on improving the economic well-being of their members
Walter Reauther, counter in the CIO (unskilled/assembly line)
Prominent leader of the United automobiles workers
Believe strongly that American unions ought to stand for something beyond the bread and butter needs of their members
For many family is unionship brought the middle class prosperity
After 1955 is share of the labor market began a slow but steady decline
Scandals hurt the Union in 1959
Lonely Crowds and Organization Men
David Riseman, sociologist, The Lonely Crowd (1950): Argue that modern America had given birth to a new kind of character type, the “other-directed” man
More mass media cues then Americans were before so now they’re less likely to take risks or were before so now they’re less likely to take risks or act independently
William H. Whyte’s Organization Men (1956): A study of the Chicago suburb of Park forest, offered a picture of people obsessed with fitting into their communities and jobs
He believed, middle class suburbanites now strove mainly for a comfortable, secure niche in the system
The Expansion of Higher Education
Many many more people getting a college education
Most of these new students attended greatly enlarged State University Systems
Having a college degree open to gateway to the middle class to be able to work in certain jobs
Universities themselves were increasingly run like businesses, with administrators adopting the language of input-output, cost-effectiveness, & quality control
- Even most administrators accommodated large business interests, which were well represented on university boards of trustees
Health and Medicine
New antibiotics such as penicillin became widely available to the general population
Polio: Between 1947 & 1951 this disease which usually crippled those it did not kill, struck an average of 39,000 Americans every year
1955: Jonas Salk - pioneered the first effective vaccine against the disease, using a preparation of a killed virus
- By the 1960s the polio vaccination virtually eliminated polio
Healthcare was very much for the Richer and more nicer Hospital areas
- Many poor people in rural people did not have access to good medicine & lacked doctors or decent hospital facilities
The American Medical Association (AMA)
Which certified medical schools, did nothing to increase the flow of new doctors
- Number of physicians per 100,000 people actually declined between 1950 & 1960
~ Doctors trained in other countries made up for the shortfall
Until 1965 with the event of Medicare (for the elderly) & Medicaid (for the poor)-both of which also opposed- the AMA successfully fought any form of direct federal involvement in healthcare
Youth
Manufacturers & advertisers rushed to cash in on youth customers
1900: ⅛ teenagers in school, by the 1950s: 6/8 teenagers were in school
Magazines & other media reinforced the notion of teenagers as a special community
To many parents, the emerging youth culture was a dangerous threat to their authority
Rock & Roll
Millions of white teenagers listened to AA musicians on the radio
- big record companies largely ignored black music
Alan Freed, a white Cleavland DJ, popularized the term rock ‘n’ roll
Elvis Presley:
Reshaped white and black sounding music
Culture shifts, revitalize American pop culture
Chuck Berry, an AA from East St. Louis: Was the greatest songwriter and most influential guitarist to emerge from the first “golden age of rock ‘n’ roll”
- Created lots of music for young people, hits around the trials & tribulations of school, young love, & cars.
- Create music that defined what it meant to be young & postwar America
Television
TV networks originated from Radio Networks and most of them were largely connected
Higher costs of television production forces key changes in the advertising industry
1948: the first great national TV hit = The Milton Berle Show
Urban ethnic comedy shows, lacked politics, social issues, cities, white ethnic groups, African-Americans, & Latinos
1955, Walt Disney produced a series of three 1-hour shows on the life of Frontier Legend Davy Crockett
Television and Politics
No politics were mentioned in entertainment shows for the fear of scaring off sponsors, & ever worry of public protests
1963: With the beginning of half an hour nightly net work newscast, only then did televisions extraordinary power to rivet the nation’s attention during crisis became clear
1950s: Television made Democratic senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee and national public figure through live coverage of his 1951 Senate investigation into organized crime
1952: Republican vice president candidate Nixon’s rambling, emotionally manipulative television appeals to voters-the famous “Checkers” speech-saved his career
Election of 1952: Brought the first use of TV political advertising for presidential candidates
Ever since, television image-making has been the single most important element in American electoral politics
Culture Critics
Beats: Had some of the sharpest descents from the cultural conformity of the day
A group of writers led by novelist Jack Kerouac & the poet Alan Ginsberg
- Shared a distrust for the American Virtues Of progress, power, and material gangs
Kerouac’s 1957 novel On the Road became the Beat manifesto
At a poet reading in San Francisco in 1955, Ginsberg chanted his epic poem Howl to a wildly enthusiastic audience
A San Francisco journalist coined the word beatnik, which by the late 1950s had become popular associated with the scruffy, bearded men & her promiscuous woman, all dressed in black, sporting sunglasses & berets, & acting rebellious & alienated.
By challenging America’s official culture, however, Beat writers foreshadow the mass youth rebellion & counterculture of the 1960s
The Election of 1960
John F. Kennedy: MA elected him to the House in 1946 & then the Senate in 1952
VP Richard M. Nixon was the R nominee & much better known than Kennedy
1960 election = the first televised presidential debates
JFK won
Promised to keep the church & state separate
His new administration really targeted the youth and young adults, because he was a young, handsome, & celebrity looking guy/aura
The Manpower Retraining Act
provided $435 million to train the unemployed
The Area Redevelopment Act
provided federal funds for rural, depressed Appalachia
The Higher Education Act of 1963
offered aid to colleges for constructing buildings & upgrading libraries
The Peace Corps
Was the New Frontier’s best publicized initiative
- Sent thousands of mostly young men & women overseas for 2-year stint to provide technical & educational assistance to underdeveloped Third World countries
Kennedy foreign actions
JFK shifted foreign policy to efforts to ease US-Soviet tensions
JFK expanded E’s cover operations
- Special Forces & the CIA operations against Third World guerrillas
- SF showed JFK’s desire to acquire greater flexibility, secrecy, & independence in the conduct of foreign policy
Kennedy and the Cold War
In Laos, US ignored the 1954 Geneva agreement to set up CIA-back military regime but then had to arrange with the Soviets to neutralize Laos because the regime could not defeat Soviet-supported Lao guerrillas
In South Vietnam: Communist Vietnam guerillas launched an insurgency against the US-supported Diem regime
- JFK ended up sending hundreds of Green Berets & other military adviser to bolster Diem
May 1961, in response to North Vietnamese aid to the Vietcong, JFK ordered a covert action against Ho Chi Minh’s northern regime that included sabotage & intelligence gathering
By 1963: Diem’s army unable to contain the Vietcong rebellion, JFK send nearly 16,000 support & combat troops to SV
- Culture protest with the Buddhist was broadcasted on US TV, Americans saw the awful things happening in SV & the amount of US forces casualties
- SV army fell
- Fall of 1963: American military officers & CIA operatives stood aside with approval as a group Vietnamese generals toppled Diem, killing him & his top advisers
- The first of many coups that cracked the SV government over the next few years
1959 Cuban Revolution
Was the military and political overthrow of Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship, which had reigned as the government of Cuba between 1952 & 1959.
Early 1950s: a peasant-based revolutionary movement, led by middle-class named Fidel Castro, began gaining strength in the rural districts & mountains outside Havana
- Turned to the SU after US withdrew economic aid
- Sold sugar to the Soviets
- Nationalized American-owned oil companies & other enterprises
Post Bay of Pigs
The US CIA had misunderstood Cuban Revolution
JFK was embarrassed liberals criticized him for plotting the overthrow while conservatives blamed him for not supporting invasion
JFK want to get rid of him but poor and peasants attracted to his programs
Intellectual and professionals fled to the US
The 1962 Missile Crisis
October 1962
Castro went to Soviet Premier Khrushchev for military help, had missiles that would hit parts of the US
- American U-2 found these missiles and JFK and advisors talked about a bombing of the missiles
- JFK went on live television to release the missile site, said that they must be removed but avoided the word blockade cuz that would mean an act of War
- Went to UN Security Council and promised that any missiles launched from Cuba would bring “a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union”
- Americans then had to wait to see which superpower would break first
JFK agreed & on November 20th announced the withdrawal of Soviet missiles and bombers from Cuba & he also pledged to respect Cuban sovereignty & promised not to invade the island
November 1963: South Vietnam
Situation was deteriorating
- Diem’s overthrow & mired in a US-backed coup was symptomatic of US failure to secure an anti-Communist alternative to Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary movement
- JFK understood this and there were some indications that he was thinking of cutting losses, perhaps after winning re-election in 1964, there are other signs that he was preparing to escalate the US commitment
The Assassination of President Kennedy
Happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963
Sent the entire nation into shock & morning
Lee Harvey Oswald was the presidents accused killer was himself gunned down before television cameras covering his arraignment in Dallas
- At the time of his death, relations between the US & the SU were more admissible than at any time since the end of World War II
- Much of the domestic liberal agenda of the New Frontier would be finally implemented implemented by Kennedy successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, who dreamed of creating a Great Society
