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| 340975311 | Taft-Hartley Act | Republican-promoted, anti-union legislation passed over President Truman's vigorous veto that weakened many of labor's New Deal gains by banning the closed shop and other strategies that helped unions organize. It also required union leaders to take a noncommunist oath, which purged the union movement of many of its most committed and active organizers. | |
| 340975312 | Operation Dixie | The CIO aimed after World War II at unionizing southern textile workers and steelorkers, but failed miserably in 1948 to overcome lingering fears of racial mixing. | |
| 340975313 | Employment Act of 1946 | Legislation declaring that the government's economic policy should aim to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power, as well as to keep inflation low. A general commitment that was much shorter on specific targets and rules than its liberal creators had wished. The Act created the Council of Economic Advisers to provide the president with data and recommendations to make economic policy. | |
| 340975314 | GI Bill | Known officially as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act and more informally as the GI Bill of Rights. this law helped returning World War II soldiers reintegrate into civilian life by securing loans to buy homes and farms and set up small businesses and by making tution and stipends available for them to attend college and job training programs. The Act was also intended to cushion the blow of 15 million returning servicemen on the employment market and to nurture the postwar economy. | |
| 340975315 | Sunbelt | The fifteen-state crescent through the American South and Southwest that experienced terrific population and productivity expansion during World War II and particularly in the decades after the war, eclipsing the old industrial Northeast (the "Frostbelt"). | |
| 340975316 | Levittown | Suburban communitieswith mass-produced tract houses built in the New York and Philidelphia metropolitan areas in the 1950s by William Levitt and Sons. Typically inhabited by white middle-class people who fled the citites in search of homes to buy for their growing families. | |
| 340975317 | baby boom | Demographic explosion from births to returning soldiers and others who had put off starting families during the war. This large generation of new Americans forced the expansion of many institutions such as schools and universities. | |
| 340975318 | Yalta conference | Meeting of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, in February 1945 at an old Tsarist resort on the Black Sea, where the Big Three leaders laid the foundations for the postwar division of power in Europe, including a divided Germany and territorial concessions to the Soviet Union. | |
| 340975319 | Cold War | The 45 year diplomatic tension between the United States and the Soviet Union that divided much of the world into polarized camps, capitalist against communist. Most of the international conflicts during that period, particularly in the developing world, can be traced to the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. | |
| 340975320 | Bretton Woods Conference | Meeting of Western allies to establish a postwar international economic order to avoid crises like the one that spawned World War II. Led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, designed to regulate currency levels and provide aid to underdeveloped countries. | |
| 340975321 | United Nations (U.N.) | International body formed in 1945 to bring nations into dialogue in hopes of preventing further world wars.Much like the former League of Nations in ambition, the UN was more realistic in recognizing the authority of the Big Five Powers in keeping peace in the world. Thus, it guranteed veto power to all permanent members of its Security Council - Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. | |
| 340975322 | Nuremberg war crimes trial | Highly publicized proceedings against former Nazi leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity as part of the Allies denazification program in postwar Germany. The trials led to several executions and long prison sentences. | |
| 340975323 | Berlin airlit | Year-long mission of flying food and supplies to blockade West Berliners, whom the Soviet Union cut off from access to the West in the first major crisis of the Cold War. | |
| 340975324 | containment doctrine | America's strategy against the Soviet Union based ideas of George Kennan. The doctrine declared that the Soviet Union and communism were inherently expansionist and had to be stopped from spreading through both military and political pressure. Containment guided American foreign policy throughout most of the Cold War. | |
| 340975325 | Truman Doctrine | President Truman's universal pledge of support for any people fighting any communist or communist-inspired threat. Truman presented the doctrine to Congress in 1947 in support of his request for $400 million to defend Greece and Turkey against Soviet-backed insurgencies. | |
| 340975326 | Marshall Plan | Massive transfer of aid money to help rebuild postwar Western Europe, intented to bolster capitalist and democratic government and prevent domestic communist groups from riding pverty and misery to power. The plan was first announced by Secretary of State George Marshall at Harvard's commencement in June 1947. | |
| 340975327 | North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) | Military alliance of Western European powers and the United States and Canada established in 1949 to defend against the common threat from the Soviet Union, marking a giant stride forward for European unity and American internationalism. | |
| 340975328 | House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) | Investigatory body established in 1938 to root out "subversion." Sought to expose coommunist influence in American government and society, in particular through the trial of Alger Hiss. | |
| 340975329 | Fair Deal | President Truman's extensive social program introduced in his 1949 message to Congress. Republicans and Southern Democrats kept much of his vision form being enacted, excerpt for raising the minimum wage, providing for more public housing, and extending old-age insurance to many more beneficiaries under the Social Security Act. | |
| 340975330 | National Security Council Memorandum Number 68 (NSC-68) | National Security Council recommendation to quadruple defense spending and rapidly expand peace-time armed forces to address Cold War tensions. It reflected a new militarization of American foreign policy but the huge costs of rearmament were not expected to interfere with what seemed like the limitless possibilities of postwar prosperity. | |
| 340975331 | Korean War | First "hot war" of the Cold War. The Korean War began in 1950 when the Soviet-backed North Koreans invaded South Korea before meeting a counter-offensive by UN Forces, dominated by the United States. The war ended in stalemate in 1953. | |
| 340975332 | Benjamin Spock | American pediatrician whose book Baby and Child Care, published in 1946, is one of the biggest best-sellers of all time. Its revolutionary message to mothers was that "you know more than you think you do." Spock was the first pediatrician to study psychoanalysis to try to understand children's needs and family dynamics. His ideas about childcare influenced several generations of parents to be more flexible and affectionate with their children, and to treat them as individuals, whereas the previous conventional wisdom had been that child rearing should focus on building discipline, and that, e.g., babies should not be "spoiled" by picking them up when they cried. | |
| 340975333 | Joseph Stalin | Bolshevik revolutionary, head of the Soviet Communists after 1924, and dictator of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953. He led the Soviet Union with an iron fist, using Five-Year Plans to increase industrial production and terror to crush opposition | |
| 340975334 | Jiang Jieshi | Leader of the Guomindang, or Nationalist Party in China. Fought to keep China from becoming communist, and to resist the Japanese during World War II. He lost control of China in 1949, and fled to Taiwan where he setup a rival government. Also known as Chang Kai Shek. | |
| 340975335 | George F. Kennan | American advisor, diplomat, political scientist, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War. He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers. He anonymously published Foreign Affairs in 1947 which outlined his ideas of containment | |
| 340975336 | Reinhold Niebuhr | Influential liberal protestant clergyman who crusaded against what he percieved as the drift away from Christian foundations for over five decades after WWI. He was vehemently against fascism, communism, and pacifism, and divided the world into "children of light" and "children of darkness." | |
| 340975337 | George C. Marshall | Marshall rose through the administrative ranks and served as the army's Chief of Staff during World War II, then as U.S. ambassador to China. Beginning in 1948 General Marshall oversaw the implementation of the European Recovery Program, since called The Marshall Plan, an economic policy to help Western Europe recover from the devastation of World War II. | |
| 340975338 | The Feminine Mystique | Best-selling book by feminist thinker Betty Friedan. This work challenged women to move beyond the drudgery of suburban housewifery and helped launch what would become second-wave feminism. | |
| 340975339 | rock 'n' roll | "Crossover" musical style that rose to dominance in the 1950s, merging black rythm and blues with white bluegrass and country. Featuring a heavy beat and driving rhythm, rock 'n' roll music became a defining feature of the 1950s youth culture. | |
| 340975340 | Checkers Speech | Nationally televised address by vice-presidential candidate Richard Nixon. Using the new mass medium of television shortly before the 1952 election, the vice presidential candidate saved his place on the ticket by defending himself against accusations of corruption. | |
| 340975341 | McCarthyism | A brand of vitriolic, fear-mongering anti-communism associated with the career of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In the early 1950s, Senator McCarthy used his position in Congress to baselessly accuse high-ranking government officials and other Americans of conspiracy with communism. The term named after him refers to the dangerous forces of unfairness and fear wrought by anticommunist paranoia. | |
| 340975342 | Army-McCarthy hearings | Congressional hearings called by Senator Joseph McCarthy to accuse members of the army of communist ties. In this widely televised spectalce, McCarthy finally went too far for public approval. The hearings exposed the Senator's extremism and led to his eventual disgrace. | |
| 340975343 | Jim Crow | System of racial segregation in the American South from the end of Reconstruction until the mid-twentieth century. Based on the concept of "seperate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites, the Jim Crow system sought to prevent racial mixing in public, including restaurants, movie theatres, and public transportation. An informal system, it was generally perpetuated by custom, violence, and intimidation. | |
| 340975344 | Montgomery bus boycott | Protest, sparked by Rosa Parks's defiantt refusal to move to the back of the bus, by black Alabamians against segregated seating on city buses. The bus boycott lasted from December 1, 1955, until December 26, 1956, and became one of the foundational moments of the Civil Rights Movements. It led to the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., and ultimately to a Supreme Court decision opposing segregated busing. | |
| 340975345 | Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas | Landmark Supreme Court decision that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and abolished racial segregation in public schools. The Court reasoned that "seperate" was inherently "unequal", rejecting the foundation of the Jim Crow system of racial segregation in the South. This decision was the first major step toward the legal end of racial discrimination and a major accomplishment for the Civil Rights Movement. | |
| 340975346 | Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) | Youth organization founded by southern black students in 1960 to promote civil rights. Drawing on its members' youthful energies, SNCC in its early years coordinated demonstrations, sit-ins, and voter registration drives. | |
| 340975347 | Operation Wetback | A government program to roundup and deport as many as one million illegal Mexican migrant workers in the United States. The program was promoted in part by the Mexican government and reflected burgeoning concerns about non-European immigration to America. | |
| 340975348 | Federal Highway Act of 1956 | Federal legislation signed by Dwight D. Eisenhower to construct thousands of miles of modern highways in the name of national defense. Officially called the National Interstate and Defense Highway Act, this bill dramatically increased the move to the suburbs, as white middle-class people could more easily commute to urban jobs. | |
| 340975349 | policy of boldness | Foreign policy objective of Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who believed in changing the containment strategy to one that more directly engaged the Soviet Union and attempted to roll back communist influence around the world. This policy led to a build-up of America's nuclear arsenal to threaten "massive retaliation" against communist enemies, launching the Cold War's arms race. | |
| 340975350 | Hungarian uprising | Series of demonstrating in Hungary against the Soviet Union. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev violently suppressed this pro-Western uprising, highlighting the limitations of America's power in Eastern Europe. | |
| 340975351 | Battle of Dien Bien Phu | Military engagement in French colonial Vietnam in which French forces were defeated by Viet Minh nationalists loyal to Ho Chi Minh. With this loss, the French ended their colonial involvement in Indochina, paving the way for America's entry. | |
| 340975352 | Suez crisis | International crisis launched when Egyptian president 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. | |
| 340975353 | Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) | Cartel comprising Middle Eastern states and Venezuela first organized in 1960. OPEC aimed to control access to and prices of oil, wresting power from Western oil companies and investors. In the process, it gradually strengthened the hand of non-Western powers on the world stage. | |
| 340975354 | Sputnik | Soviet satellite first lauched into Earth orbit on October 4, 1957. This scientific achievement marked the first time human beings had put a man-made object into orbit and pushed the USSR noticeably ahead of the United States in the Space Race. A month later, the Soviet Union sent a larger satellite, Sputnik II, into space, pompting the United States to redouble its space exploration efforts and raising American fears of Soviet superiority. | |
| 340975355 | kitchen debate | Televised exchange in 1959 between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and American Vice President Richard Nixon. Meeting at the AMerican National Exhibition in Moscow, the two leaders sparred over the relative merits of capitalist consumer culture versus Soviet state planning. Nixon won applause for his staunch defense of American capitalism, helping lead him to the Republican nomination for president in 1960. | |
| 340975356 | Dwight D. ("Ike") Eisenhower | Supreme Commander of the U.S. Forces in Europe during World War II; became president and during his two terms presided over the conomically prosperous 1950s. He was praised for his dignity and decency, though critcized for not being more assertive on civil rights | |
| 340975357 | Richard M. Nixon | He was a committee member of the House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities (to investigate "subversion"). He tried to catch Alger Hiss who was accused of being a communist agent in the 1930's. This brought Nixon to the attention of the American public. In 1956 he was Eisenhower's Vice-President. | |
| 340975358 | Betty Friedan | 1960s; wrote "The Feminine Mystique," an account of housewives' lives in which they suboordinated their own aspirations to the needs of men; bestseller was an inspiration for many women to join the women's rights movement | |
| 340975359 | Elvis Presley | White singer born in 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi; chief revolutionary of popular music in the 1950s, fused black rhythm and blues with white bluegrass and country styles; created a new musical idiom known forever after as rock and roll | |
| 340975360 | Joseph McCarthy | 1950s; Wisconsin senator claimed to have list of communists in American gov't, but no credible evidence; took advantage of fears of communism post WWII to become incredibly influential; "McCarthyism" was the fearful accusation of any dissenters of being communists | |
| 340975361 | Rosa Parks | NAACP member who initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 when she was arrested for violating Jim Crow rules on a bus; her action and the long boycott that followed became an icon of the quest for civil rights and focused national attention on boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr. | |
| 340975362 | Martin Luther King, Jr. | U.S. Baptist minister and civil rights leader. A noted orator, he opposed discrimination against blacks by organizing nonviolent resistance and peaceful mass demonstrations. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Nobel Peace Prize (1964) | |
| 340975363 | Earl Warren | 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. | |
| 340975364 | John Foster Dulles | Eisenhower's secretary of state, 1953-1959; moralistic in his belief that Communism was evil; called for more radical measures to roll back communism where it had already spread (containment too cautious). He said it must be confronted with "brinkmanship" (the readiness and willingness to go to war) and "massive retaliation" (the threat of using nuclear weapons). | |
| 340975365 | Nikita Khrushchev | He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, following the death of Joseph Stalin, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. He was responsible for the De-Stalinization of the USSR, as well as several liberal reforms ranging from agriculture to foreign policy. | |
| 340975366 | Ho Chi Minh | Communist leader of North Vietnam; he and his Viet Minh/Viet Cong allies fought French and American forces to a standstill in Vietnam, 1946-1973. Considered a nationalist by many, others viewed him as an agent of the Soviet Union and China. | |
| 340975367 | Gamal Abdel Nasser | Arab leader, set out to modernize Egypt and end western domination, nationalized the Suez canal, led two wars against the Zionist state, remained a symbol of independence and pride, returned to socialism, nationalized banks and businesses, limited economic policies. | |
| 340975368 | Fidel Castro | Cuban revolutionary leader who overthrew the corrupt regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and soon after established a Communist state. He was prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and has been president of the government and First Secretary of the Communist Party since 1976. | |
| 340975369 | John F. Kennedy | President during part of the cold war and especially during the superpower rivalry and the cuban missile crisis. he was the president who went on tv and told the public about hte crisis and allowed the leader of the soviet uinon to withdraw their missiles. other events, which were during his terms was the building of the berlin wall, the space race, and early events of the Vietnamese war. | |
| 340975370 | Lyndon B. Johnson | Signed the civil rights act of 1964 into law and the voting rights act of 1965. he had a war on poverty in his agenda. in an attempt to win, he set a few goals, including the great society, the economic opportunity act, and other programs that provided food stamps and welfare to needy famillies. he also created a department of housing and urban development. his most important legislation was probably medicare and medicaid. |
