Unit 7 Flashcards
Truman’s Fair Deal
1945 liberal domestic reform program, called for expanded social security, new wages-and-hours and public-housing legislation, and a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act that would prevent racial or religious discrimination in hiring.
Taft-Hartley
1947 U.S. federal law that extended and modified the 1935 Wagner Act. It prohibits certain union practices and requires disclosure of certain financial and political activities by unions.1 The bill was initially vetoed by President Truman, but Congress overrode the veto.
Dixiecrats
right-wing Democratic group 1948 organized by Southerners who objected to the civil rights program of the Democratic Party
Hydrogen Bomb
US detonates the world’s first hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific. The test gave the US a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.
Baby Boom
Many babies born because of positive and secure outlook on their futures.
GI Bill of Rights
Officially the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, the G.I. Bill was created to help veterans of World War II. It established hospitals, made low-interest mortgages available and granted stipends covering tuition and expenses for veterans attending college or trade schools
Suburbs & Levittowns
safe middle-income suburb, all identical housing
Red-Lining
discriminatory practice in which financial services are withheld from neighborhoods that have significant numbers of racial and ethnic minorities.
Migration in the post-war period
illegal immigration from South America
Bracero Program
U.S. Govt-sponsored program that imported Mexican farm and railroad workers into US between the years 1942 and 1964. Designed to fill agriculture shortages during World War II,
United Nations
a diplomatic and political international organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and serve as a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations.
Nuremberg Trials
a series of trials held in Nurnberg, Germany, in 1945-46, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal.
Interstate Highway System
The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, or the Eisenhower Interstate System, is a network of controlled-access highway, for quick military mobilization
Joseph McCarthy & McCarthyism
period of time in American history that saw U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin produce a series of investigations and hearings during the 1950s in an effort to expose supposed communist infiltration of various areas of the U.S. government. The term has since become a byname for defamation of character or reputation by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations, especially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges.
Red Scare
a form of moral panic provoked by fear of the rise, supposed or real, of leftist ideologies in a society, especially communism.
Julius & Ethel Rosenberg
an American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs.
Alger Hiss
an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
HUAC
The House Committee on Un-American Activities, popularly the House Un-American Activities Committee, was an investigative committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties.
NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a civilian agency of the government of the U.S. of America, charged with space and aeronautical research and space exploration.
Pledge of Allegiance & currency
a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the U.S. and the republic of the U.S.A
Korean War
fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953.
Eisenhower’s “Modern Republicanism”
conservative when it comes to money and liberal when it comes to human beings. He cut the federal budget and instituted measures to increase states’ rights but at the same time increased Social Security
Brinkmanship
The policy or practise of pushing a dangerous situation to the brink of disaster (to the limits of safety), in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome; – used especially of diplomatic maneuvers in crisis situations, and originally applied to the policies of John Foster Dulles under President Eisenhower.
Vietnam War
conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. It was part of a larger regional conflict as well as a manifestation of the Cold War.
France & Indochina
grouping of French colonial territories in Mainland Southeast Asia until its end in 1954
Geneva Accords
are international humanitarian laws consisting of four treaties and three additional protocols that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war.
Coup to overthrow Diem
In November 1963, President Ngô Đình Diệm and the Personalist Labor Revolutionary Party of the Republic of Vietnam were deposed by a group of CIA-backed Army of the Republic of Vietnam officers who disagreed with Diệm’s handling of the Buddhist crisis and the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong threat to South Vietnam
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 5, 1964, during the Vietnam War. Johnson presented it as a response to two allegedly unprovoked attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on the U.S. destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy on August 2 and August 4, respectively. Passage of the resolution led to the direct involvement of the U.S. in the Vietnam War.
Operation Rolling Thunder
the codename for an American bombing campaign during the Vietnam War. U.S. military aircraft attacked targets throughout North Vietnam from March 1965 to October 1968. This massive bombardment was intended to put military pressure on North Vietnam’s communist leaders and reduce their capacity to wage war against the U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam.
Tet Offensive
`1968 was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the U.S. to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. Though U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to hold off the attacks, news coverage of the massive offensive shocked the American public and eroded support for the war effort.
My Lai Massacre
A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children and old men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968
Agent Orange
mixture of herbicides that U.S. military forces sprayed in Vietnam from 1962 to 1971 during the Vietnam War for the dual purpose of defoliating forest areas that might conceal Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces and destroying crops that might feed the enemy.
Khmer Rouge
radical communist movement that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 after winning power through a guerrilla war.
Napalm
An aluminum soap of various fatty acids that when mixed with gasoline makes a firm jelly used in some bombs and in flamethrowers.
Vietnamization
a strategy that aimed to reduce American involvement in the Vietnam War by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam. The increasingly unpopular war had created deep rifts in American society.
Kent State
Four Kent State University students were killed and nine were injured on May 4, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War.
Pentagon Papers
a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. military analyst Daniel Ellsberg—who had worked on the study—came to oppose the war, and decided that the information contained in the Pentagon Papers should be available to the American public.
War Powers Act
a congressional resolution designed to limit the U.S. president’s ability to initiate or escalate military actions abroad. Among other restrictions, the law requires that presidents notify Congress after deploying the armed forces and limits how long units can remain engaged without congressional approval. Enacted in 1973 with the goal of avoiding another lengthy conflict such as the Vietnam War, its effectiveness has been repeatedly questioned throughout its history, and several presidents have been accused of failing to comply with its regulations.
Vietnam Syndrome
that refers to public aversion to American overseas military involvements after the domestic controversy over the Vietnam War. In 1973, the U.S. ended combat operations in Vietnam
JFK’s Presidency - The New Frontier
Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech in the 1960 U.S. presidential election , frontier of science and space race
Growth of TV
televised elections, debates, and news
Rock n Roll & color barrier
Elvis Presley
seen as rebellious and outside of social norms; different
Brown v. Board decision (1954)
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9–0) that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions.
NAACP legal strategy
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) pushed the country toward racial equality through organized protests and highly strategic law suits that challenged the racist laws that promoted discrimination against blacks. founded in 1909
