chapter 37 // BOLDED Flashcards
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Federal law that banned racial discrimination in public facilities and strengthened the federal government’s power to fight segregation in schools. Title VII of the act prohibited employers from discriminating based on race in their hiring practices, and empowered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to regulate fair employment.
affirmative action
Program designed to redress historical racial and gender imbalances in jobs and education. The term grew from an executive order issued by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 mandating that projects paid for with federal funds take concerted action against discrimination based on race in their hiring practices. In the late 1960s, President Nixon’s Philadelphia Plan changed the meaning of affirmative action to require attention to certain groups, rather than protect individuals against discrimination.
Great Society (1964-1968)
President LBJ’s term for his domestic policy agenda. Billed as a successor to the New Deal, the Great society aimed to extend the post-war prosperity to all people in American society by promoting civil rights and fighting poverty. Great Society programs included the War on Poverty, which expanded the Social Security system by creating Medicare and Medicaid to provide health care for the aged and the poor. Johnson also signed laws protecting consumers and empowering community organizations to combat poverty at grassroots levels.
Freedom Summer (1964)
A voter registration drive in Mississippi spearheaded by a coalition of civil rights groups. The campaign drew the activism of thousands of black and white civil rights workers, many of whom were students from the North, and was marred by the abduction and murder of three such workers at the hands of white racists.
Mississippi Freedom Democratic party (1964)
Political party organized by civil rights activists to challenge MS’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention, who opposed the civil rights planks in the party’s platform. Claiming a mandate to represent the true voice of MS, where almost no black citizens could vote, the MFDP demanded to be seated at the convention but were denied by party bosses. The effort was both a set-back to civil rights activism in the South and a motivation to continue to struggle for black voting rights.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Legislation pushed through Congress by President Johnson that prohibited ballot-denying tactics, such as literary tests and intimidation. The Voting Rights Act was a successor to the Civil Rights Act on 1964 and sought to make racial disenfranchisement explicitly illegal.
Nixon Doctrine
President Nixon’s plan for “peace with honor” in Vietnam. The doctrine stated that the United States would honor its existing defense commitments but, in the future, countries would have to fight their own wars.
My Lai
Vietnamese village that was the scene of a military assault on March 16, 1968, in which American soldiers under the command of 2nd Lieutenant William Calley murdered hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians, mostly women and children. The atrocity produced outrage and reduced support for the war in America and around the world when details of the massacre and an attempted cover-up were revealed in November 1969.
Six-Day War (1967)
Military conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. The war ended with an Israeli victory and territorial expansion into the Sinae Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. The 1967 war was a humiliation for several Arab states, and the territorial disputes it created formed the basis for continued conflict in the region.
Stonewall Rebellion (1969)
Uprising in support of equal rights for gay people sparked by an assault by off-duty police at a gay bar in New York. The rebellion led to a rise in activism and militancy within the gay community and furthered the sexual revolution of the late 1960s.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
A campus-based political organization founded in 1961 by Tom Hayden that became an iconic representation of the New Left. Originally geared toward the intellectual promise of “participatory democracy,” SDS emerged at the forefront of the civil rights, antipoverty, and antiwar movements during the 1960s.
Vietnamization
Military strategy launched by Richard Nixon in 1969. The plan reduced the number of American combat troops in Vietnam and left more of the fighting to the South Vietnamese, who were supplied with American armor, tanks, and weaponry.
silent majority
Nixon administration’s term to describe generally content, law-abiding, middle-class Americans who supported both the Vietnam War and America’s institutions. As a political tool, the concept attempted to make a subtle distinction between believers in “traditional” values and the vocal minority of civil rights agitators, student protesters, counterculturalists, and other seeming disruptors of the social fabric.
Kent State University
Scene of massacre of four college students by National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970, in Ohio. In response to Nixon’s announcement that he had expanded the Vietnam War into Cambodia, college campuses across the country exploded in violence. On May 14 and 15, students at historically black Jackson State College in MS were protesting the war as well as the Kent State shooting when highway patrolmen fired into a student dormitory, killing two students.
Pentagon Papers
Secret U.S. government report detailing early planning and policy decisions regarding the Vietnam War under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Leaked to the New York Times in 1971, it revealed instances of governmental secrecy, lies, and incompetence in the prosecution of the war.
