The Sixties

Question 1

Sit-in

Answer 1

Tactic adopted by young civil rights activists, beginning in 1960, of demanding service at lunch counters or public accommodations and refusing to leave if denied access; marked the beginning of the most militant phase of the civil rights struggle.

Question 2

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Answer 2

Organization founded in 1960 to coordinate civil rights sit-ins and other forms of
grassroots protest.

Question 3

Freedom Rides

Answer 3

Bus journeys challenging racial segregation in the South in 1961.

Question 4

March on Washington

Answer 4

Civil rights demonstration on August 28, 1963, where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Question 5

Bay of Pigs Invasion

Answer 5

U.S. mission in which the CIA, hoping to inspire a revolt against Fidel Castro,
sent 1,500 Cuban exiles to invade their homeland on April 17, 1961; the mission
was a spectacular failure.

Question 6

Cuban Missile Crisis

Answer 6

Tense confrontation caused when the United States discovered Soviet offensive missile sites in Cuba in October 1962; the U.S.-Soviet confrontation was the Cold War’s closest brush with nuclear war.

Question 7

Civil Rights Act (1964)

Answer 7

Law that outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment.

Question 8

Voting rights Act

Answer 8

Law passed in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Selma-to-Montgomery March
in 1965; it authorized federal protection of the right to vote and permitted federal
enforcement of minority voting rights in individual counties, mostly in the South.

Question 9

Hart-Celler Act

Answer 9

1965 law that eliminated the national origins quota system for immigration established by laws in 1921 and 1924; led to radical change in the origins of immigrants to the United States, with Asians and Latin Americans outnumbering Europeans.

Question 10

Great Society

Answer 10

Term coined by President Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1965 State of the Union
address, in which he proposed legislation to address problems of voting rights,
poverty, diseases, education, immigration, and the environment.

Question 11

War on poverty

Answer 11

Plan announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1964 State of the Union address; under the Economic Opportunity Bill signed later that year, Head Start, VISTA, and the Jobs Corps were created, and programs were created for students, farmers, and businesses in efforts to eliminate poverty.

Question 12

Black Power

Answer 12

Post-1966 rallying cry of a more militant civil rights movement.

Question 13

New Left

Answer 13

Radical youth protest movement of the 1960s, named by leader Tom Hayden to
distinguish it from the Old (Marxist-Leninist) Left of the 1930s.

Question 14

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

Answer 14

Major organization of the New Left, founded at the University of Michigan in 1960 by Tom Hayden and Al Haber.

Question 15

Port Huron Statement

Answer 15

○ A manifesto by Students for a Democratic Society that criticized institutions
ranging from political parties to corporations, unions, and the military-industrial
complex, while offering a new vision of social change.

Question 16

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Answer 16

Legislation passed by Congress in 1964 in reaction to supposedly unprovoked attacks on American warships off the coast of North Vietnam; it gave the president unlimited authority to defend U.S. forces and members of SEATO.

Question 17

Counterculture

Answer 17

“Hippie” youth culture of the 1960s, which rejected the values of the dominant
culture in favor of illicit drugs, communes, free sex, and rock music.

Question 18

The Femimnine Mystique

Answer 18

○ The book widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States. Author Betty Friedan focused on college-educated women, arguing that they would find fulfillment by engaging in paid labor outside the home.

Question 19

National Organization for Women

Answer 19

Organization founded in 1966 by writer Betty Friedan and other feminists; it
pushed for abortion rights, nondiscrimination in the workplace, and other forms of
equality for women.

Question 20

Stonewall Inn

Answer 20

○ A gathering place for New York’s gay community, the site of the 1969 police raids and resulting riots that launched the modern gay rights movement.

Question 21

Height-Ashburn District

Answer 21

○ San Francisco
○ Center of counterculture

Question 22

American Indian Movement (AIM)

Answer 22

Movement founded in 1963 by Native Americans who were fed up with the poor conditions on Indian reservations and the federal government’s unwillingness to help. In 1973, the American Indian Movement led 200 Sioux in the occupation of Wounded Knee. After a ten-week standoff with the federal authorities, the government agreed to reexamine Indian treaty rights and the occupation ended.
○ Led to Self-Determination Act

Question 23

Silent Spring

Answer 23

○ A 1962 book by biologist Rachel Carson about the destructive impact of the
widely used insecticide DDT that launched the modern environmentalist
movement.

Question 24

Environmental Protection Agency

Answer 24

Created by Nixon

Question 25

Clean Air Act

Answer 25

1963

Question 26

Warren Court

Answer 26

Gideon V. Wainwright
■ State must provide attorney if a person cannot afford it
○ Engel V. Vitale
■ School prayer unconstitutional
■ 1st amendment separation of church and state
○ Baker V. Carr
■ Regular redrawing of legislative districts to better reflect population ○ Griswold v. Connecticut
■ Supreme Court decision that, in overturning Connecticut law prohibiting the use of contraceptives, established a constitutional right to privacy.

Question 27

Loving V Virginia

Answer 27

Interracial marriages OK

Question 28

Roe v. Wade

Answer 28

1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to permit first-trimester
abortions.

Question 29

Tet Offensive

Answer 29

Surprise attack by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese during the Vietnamese New Year of 1968; turned American public opinion strongly against the war in Vietnam.