History Exam 3 Flashcards
The Dust Bowl
This was an area of the Great Plains during the depression.
Between 1930 and 1941, a severe drought afflicted the semiarid states of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arkansas, and Kansas.
Farmers in these areas had stripped the land of its native vegetation, which destroyed the delicate ecology of the plains.
The Farmers made their land vulnerable in times of drought to wind erosion of the topsoil, and when the winds came, huge clouds of thick dust rolled over the land. This caused a major move of at least 350,000 “Okies” to California.
This is significant because it demonstrated how changes in land use by agriculture can contribute to climate change and it started the concept of soil conservation and changes in agricultural practices.
Social Security Act
This was the second initiative, created in 1935, of Roosevelt’s Second New Deal and had a great impact on America.
It had three major provisions:
1) Old-age pensions for workers
2) A joint federal-state system of compensation for unemployed
workers.
3) A program of payments to widowed mothers and the blind, deaf, and disabled.
It became one of the most popular government programs in American history.
This is significant because it was a milestone in the creation of an American welfare state. Never before had the federal government assumed such responsibility for the well-being of a substantial portion of the citizenry.
Civilian Conservation Corps
This replaced the Civil Works Administration during the 1930’s as part of the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal plan to address the problems of massive unemployment.
This was a more long-term program than CWA.
This mobilized 250,000 young men to do reforestation and conservation work across America.
Over the course of the 1930’s these men built thousands of bridges, roads, trails, and other structures in state and national parks, bolstering the national infrastructure.
By the early 1940’s, the CCC had planted 3 billion trees.
This is significant because it helped bring hope to people that had about given up because of the lack of jobs during the Great Depression and helped to raise morale among Americans.
Isolationism
This is a national policy of abstaining from political or economic relations with other countries, seeking to devote the entire efforts of one’s country to its own advancement and remain at peace by avoiding foreign entanglements and responsibilities.
This was the sentiment in the U.S. faced by the Roosevelt administration before WWII.
Before WWII, Congress passed a series of acts to prevent the U.S. from being drawn into another overseas war, practicing isolationism:
The Neutrality Act of 1935
A ban on loans to belligerents in 1936
In 1937 it imposed a “cash-and-carry” requirement: if a warring country wanted to purchase nonmilitary goods from the U.S., it had to pay cash and carry them in its own ships, keeping the United States out of potentially dangerous naval warfare.
This is significant because it has been a recurrent theme in U.S. history.
Pearl Harbor
This happened on December 7, 1941 and was a significant event of World War II.
Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than 2,400 Americans. They destroyed or heavily damaged eight battleships, three cruisers, three destroyers, and almost 200 airplanes.
This attack united the American people.
This is significant because this attack is the reason why American declared war during WWII. If it hadn’t happened America would have stayed neutral.
Rosie the Riveter
To urge women to become war workers during WWII, the War Manpower Commission created the image of “Rosie the Riveter,” later immortalized in posters and by a Norman Rockwell illustration on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.
Women were urged to work during WWII because of the millions of men who joined the military, putting the nation in a critical labor shortage.
This image helped women to make up 36 percent of the labor force in 1945, compared with 24 percent at the beginning of the war.
This encouraged the change of the nation’s factories being filled with women working as airplane riveters, ship welders, and drill-press operators.
This is significant because it changed women’s participation in the paid labor force and it continued to rise over the rest of the 20th century, bringing major changes in family life.
Japanese Internment
The U.S. government thought it would be important to contain the Japanese-American people in internment camps because society viewed them as a potential threat towards the country during the time of WWII.
Japanese Americans were moved from their West Coast homes by The War Relocation Authority to hastily built camps in desolate areas in California, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Arkansas for the rest of WWII.
After WWII, the U.S. government regretted treating the Japanese Americans this way and Congress issued a public apology in 1988 and awarded $20,000 to each of the eighty thousand surviving Japanese Americans who had once been internees.
This is significant because it taught the U.S. government and society that people should not assume things and shouldn’t take peoples’ rights away.
Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, President Truman ordered the dropping of the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city Hiroshima during WWII.
Truman believed that Japan’s military leaders would never surrender unless their country was utterly devastated.
100,000 people were killed in the bombing of Hiroshima.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted the Japanese government to surrender unconditionally on August 10 and to sign a formal agreement on September 2, 1945.
This was significant because this was the first time nuclear weapons were used in history and the impact on Hiroshima was devastating and lingered for decades after.
Joseph McCarthy
He was a Senator of Wisconsin who was against Communism and exposed a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party in a speech in February 1950 in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Even when his career was threatened because of his vocal anti-communist speeches, McCarthy did not back down from the cause of freedom.
In early 1954, McCarthy overreached by launching an investigation into subversive activities in the U.S. Army. When lengthy hearings brought McCarthy’s tactics into the nation’s living rooms, support for him plummeted.
He is significant because he is one of the strongest pro-American figures in the history of the U.S. He was a champion of capitalism and Democracy, and very against Communism.
Korean War (skipped)
This was a “police action” that cost the lives of more than 36,000 U.S. troops and lasted for three years.
This is significant because it was the first armed conflict arising out of the Cold War.
Containment
This was the U.S. policy of the late 1940s which sought to contain communism within its existing geographic boundaries, namely the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and North Korea (and after 1949, China).
Rather than seek to defeat communist governments through military confrontation, the U.S. would instead “contain” the influence of the communist powers.
This occurred in the Cold War years.
It was significant because it helped to stop the spread of Communism.
Brown v. Board of Education
This court case happened when Linda Brown, a black student in Topeka, Kansas, had been forced to attend a distant segregated school rather than the nearby white elementary school.
Thurgood Marshall argued that such segregation was unconstitutional because it denied Linda Brown the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision on May 17, 1954, agreed, overturning the separate but equal doctrine.
This is significant because it overturned the separate but equal doctrine (Plessy vs. Ferguson), starting desegregation, and this was the ultimate validation for the NAACP’s legal strategy.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
This started when Rosa Parks, a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man on December 1, 1955.
Parks was arrested and charged with violating a local segregation ordinance. Parks’ actions sparked the fire for African Americans to boycott the Montgomery bus system.
The boycott continued until the Supreme Court ruled in November 1956 that bus segregation was unconstitutional.
It was significant because it was one example of how non-violent protests could be effective and it catapulted Martin Luther King Jr to national prominence.
SNCC
This stands for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which was cofounded in 1960 by Ella Baker.
Its purpose was to facilitate student sit-ins. These sit-ins were launched across the Upper South, from North Carolina into Virginia, Maryland, and Texas.
In February 1960, about forty college students in SNCC staged a sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter with the intention of integrating eating establishments in Nashville, Tennessee.
SNCC inspired the Congress of Racial Equality to organized the Freedom Rides on interstate bus lines throughout the South.
SNCC is significant because it was one of the first real movements that helped reversed segregation.
Cuban Missile Crisis
This happened in October 1962 during the Cold War.
President Kennedy announced in a televised address on October 22 that U.S. reconnaissance planes had spotted Soviet-built bases for intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba.
Kennedy took a chance and announced that the U.S. would impose a quarantine on all offensive military equipment on its way to Cuba.
On October 25, ships carrying Soviet missiles turned back and both sides made concessions: Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev promised to dismantle the missile bases.
This is significant because it was the first major showdown of the Cold War and the risk of nuclear war, greater during the Cuban missile crisis than any other time in the Cold War, promoted a slight thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations.
