Unit 1: 1960s-1980s Flashcards
Unsuccessful presidential candidate against Lyndon Johnson in 1964; he called for dismantling the New Deal, escalation of the war in Vietnam, and the status quo on civil rights. Many see him as the grandfather of the conservative movement of the 1980s.
Barry Goldwater
Proposed by John Kennedy and signed by Lyndon Johnson; it
desegregated public accommodations, libraries, parks, and amusements and broadened the powers of federal government to protect individual rights and prevent job discrimination.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
It expanded the federal government’s protection of voters and voter registration; it also increased federal authority to investigate voter irregularities and outlawed literacy tests.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Controversial Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1953–1969); he led the court in far-reaching racial, social, and political rulings; including school desegregation and protecting rights of persons accused of crimes.
Earl Warren
Alabama governor and third-party candidate for president in 1968 and 1972; he ran on a segregation and law-and-order platform. Paralyzed by an attempted assassination in 1972, he never recovered politically.
George Wallace
President Lyndon Johnson’s social and economic program that helped the poor, the aged, and the young.
Great Society
President, 1969–1974; he extracted the United States from Vietnam slowly, recognized Communist China, and improved relations with the Soviet Union. His foreign policy achievements were overshadowed by the Watergate scandal.
Richard Nixon
Leading attorney for NAACP in 1940s and 1950s, who headed the team in Brown vs. the Board of Education case; later, Lyndon Johnson appointed him the first black justice on the United States Supreme Court.
Thurgood Marshall
Unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president in 1972; he called for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam and a guaranteed income for the poor. When his vice presidential choice got into trouble, he waffled in his defense, which cost him further with the electorate.
George McGovern
President, 1974–1977, who served without being elected either president or vice president; appointed vice president under the terms of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment when Spiro Agnew resigned, he assumed the presidency when Nixon resigned.
Gerald Ford
Label for the political radicals of the 1960s; influenced by “Old Left” of the 1930s, which had criticized capitalism and supported successes of Communism, the New Left supported
civil rights and opposed American foreign policy, especially in Vietnam.
New Left
Cartel of oil-exporting nations, which used oil as a weapon to alter America’s Middle East policy; it organized a series of oil boycotts that roiled the United States economy throughout the 1970s.
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
President, 1981–1989, who led a conservative movement against détente with the Soviet Union and the growth of the federal government; some people credit him with America’s victory in the Cold War while others fault his insensitive social agenda and
irresponsible fiscal policies.
Ronald Reagan
Label Nixon gave to middle-class Americans who supported him, obeyed the laws, and wanted "peace with honor" in Vietnam; he contrasted this group with students and civil rights activists who disrupted the country with protests in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Silent Majority
Name given the economic condition throughout most of the 1970s in which prices rose rapidly (inflation) but without economic growth (stagnation). Unemployment rose along with inflation. In large part, these conditions were the economic consequences of rising oil prices.
Stagflation
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1969–1986; although considered more conservative in leadership than Earl Warren, his court upheld school busing, a women’s right to an abortion, and ordered Nixon to surrender the Watergate tapes.
Warren Burger
