APUSH Period 8

Barry Goldwater

A Libertarian Senator from Arizona who ran as the Republican nominees for President in 1964 and lost badly to LBJ. He published an enormously popular book The Conscience of a Conservative (1960), which articulated his libertarian philosophy. He demanded more aggressive conduct in the Cold War and critiqued the New Deal welfare state as a "danger to freedom," which he believed stifled individual initiative and independence. He called for the substitution of private charity for public welfare programs and Social Security, and the abolition of the graduated income tax, and he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Despite his loss in 1964, he is often credited for sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s.

The Taft-Hartley Act, 1947

A Republican-sponsored bill passed over Truman's veto, this legislation sought to reverse some of the gains made by organized labor in the 1930s and 1940s. The measure authorized the president to suspend strikes by ordering an eighty-day "cooling-off period," and it banned sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts (labor actions directed not at an employer but at those who did business with him). It outlawed the "closed shop," which required a worker to be a union member when taking up a job, and authorized states to pass "right-to-work" laws, prohibiting other forms of compulsory union membership.

Engel v. Vitale, 1962

A Supreme Court ruling that said it was a violation of the First Amendment, and thus unconstitutional, for state officials to compose an official school prayer and encourage it to be recited in public schools. While this ruling protected the rights of religious minorities, many Christian conservatives viewed it as symptomatic of the moral decline of society.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, 1962

A book often credited with sparking the modern environmental movement, it was written by a female marine biologist who--writing about hard science in clear and powerful prose that a general audience appreciated--brought home to millions of readers the effects of DDT, an insecticide widely used by homeowners and farmers against mosquitoes, moths, and other insects. In chilling detail, she related how DDT killed birds and animals and caused sickness among humans. Chemical and pesticide companies launched a campaign to discredit her--some critics called the book part of a communist plot. Time magazine even condemned her as "hysterical" and "emotional"--words typically used by men to discredit women.

The birth control pill

A catalyst for the sexual revolution, this is a birth control method that, when taken everyday, inhibits female fertility. It became mass marketed in 1960 and made possible what "free lovers" had long demanded--the separation of sex from procreation. By the late 1960s, sexual freedom had become as much an element of the youth rebellion as long hair and drugs.

The Bay of Pigs invasion

A failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group in 1961. Fidel Castro had led a revolution in 1959 that ousted the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, who was friendly towards U.S. economic interests. When Castro's government began nationalizing American landholdings and other investments, and taking other threatening measures, the CIA began training anti-Castro Cuban exiles for an invasion of Cuba, which Kennedy allowed to go ahead in 1961. Military advisors predicted a popular uprising that would topple the Castro government. Instead, nearly 100 of the 1,400 invaders were killed, and 1,100 were captured. This event solidified the hostile relationship between the U.S. and Cuba that would continue into the 21st century.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

A female black tailor's assistant and civil rights activist, who broke the law by refusing to give up her seat to a white rider on a bus in Alabama in 1955. In the short term, her arrest sparked a yearlong bus boycott by Montgomery's black community and lead to a Supreme Court ruling in 1956 that found segregation in public transportation unconstitutional. But the boycott also marked a turning point in postwar U.S. history by launching a movement for racial justice as a nonviolent crusade based in the black churches of the South.

Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism

A little-known senator from Wisconsin who gave a new name to the anti-communist crusade. With a genius for self-promotion, he made wild accusations and preposterous charges of communist infiltration in the government, and though he never identified a single person guilty of genuine disloyalty, he gained gained notoriety as the nation's chief commie-hunter. Eventually, as a result of nationally televised hearings, during which he acted like a bully who browbeat witnesses and made sweeping accusations with no basis in fact, his power collapsed, and he was ultimately censured by the Senate. The term, based on his name, entered the American political vocabulary as a shorthand for character assassination, guilt by association, and abuse of power in the name of anti-communism.

The "Golden Age" of capitalism

A name given to the quarter century following WWII, from 1946-1973, which was one of the greatest periods of worldwide economic expansion in world history, generally characterized by stable prices, low unemployment, rising standards of living, and sense of optimism. In the United States, the swelling middle-class began a mass migration towards the suburbs; it was a period of prosperity in which most people could enjoy a job for life, a house, a car, and new consumer products. The boom established the conditions for a larger series of global changes including an increase in consumerism, a booming population, the welfare state, the space race, the civil rights movement, the counterculture of the 1960s, the beginning of second-wave feminism, and a nuclear arms race.

Second-wave feminism (1960s-1980s)

A periodization concept used by social historians to refer to a period of feminist activity and thought that first began in the early 1960s in the United States, and eventually spread throughout the Western world and beyond. In the United States the movement lasted through the early 1980s. Whereas first-wave feminism in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the U.S. consisted of movements for woman suffrage, prohibition, maternalist reform, and efforts to overturn coverture laws, second-wave feminism broadened the debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, official legal inequalities, and de facto and systemic inequalities. Second-wave feminism also drew attention to domestic violence and marital rape issues, establishment of rape crisis and battered women's shelters, and changes in custody and divorce law.

Libertarianism

A political philosophy that emerged in the 1950s (but which was essentially the same as classical liberalism) that upheld liberty as a core value and emphasized individualism, limited government, free market capitalism, equality of individuals before the law, and the freedoms of speech, thought and choice. Supporters of this political philosophy adopted this new name for classical liberalism during the 1950s because FDR had co-opted the word liberal for his New Deal policies, which supporters of this political philosophy opposed. Although they were largely ignored by the mainstream, they developed ideas that would come to define conservative thought (aka limited-state liberalism) for the next half century. They were very different from, but aligned with, the "new conservatives" of the 1950s in opposition to communism and the federal government.

Malcolm X

A prominent African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist during the 1960s. During the heyday of the integration struggle, this fiery orator insisted that blacks must control the political and economic resources of their communities and rely on their own efforts rather than working with whites. Having committed a string of crimes as a youth, he was converted in jail to the teachings of the Nation of Islam, or Black Muslims, who preached a message of white evil and black self-discipline. He dropped his last name ("Little"), which he called his "slave surname," in favor of "X," symbolizing blacks' separation from their African ancestry. On his release from prison he became a spokesman for the Nation of Islam and a sharp critic of the ideas of integration and nonviolence, and of Martin Luther King's practice of appealing to American values. After a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, he changed many of his views and began to speak of the possibility of interracial cooperation and radical change in the U.S. He was assassinated in 1965 by members of the Nation of Islam. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching hate, racism, violence, and a pessimistic form of ethnic nationalism.

Elvis Presley

A rock-and-roll singer with an openly sexual performance style who became an immensely popular entertainment celebrity during the 1950s.

"Black Power"

A slogan that came to national attention in the late 1960s as it became a rallying cry for those bitter over the federal government's failure to stop violence against civil rights workers, white attempts to determine the movement's strategy, and the civil rights movement's failure to have any impact on the economic problems of black ghettos. A highly imprecise idea, it suggested everything from the election of more black officials to the belief that black Americans were a colonized people whose freedom could be won only through a revolutionary struggle for self-determination and ethnic nationalism. However employed, it reflected the radicalization of young civil rights activists and sparked an explosion of racial self-assertion.

The Beats

A small group of poets and writers who rallied against the mainstream, materialistic, middle-class culture of the U.S. in the Fifties. Works like Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl (1955) and Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road (1957) rejected the consumerism and desperate materialism of the suburban middle class and celebrated impulsive action, immediate pleasure (often enhanced by drugs) and sexual experimentation. Despite the Cold War slogans, they insisted, personal and political repression, not freedom, were the hallmarks of American society.

The Cold War

A state of political tension and military rivalry between the US (and its NATO allies) and the Soviet Union (and its Eastern European satellite states) lasting from roughly 1947, the year of the Truman Doctrine, until 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. It was partly a battle of ideas (communism vs. liberal democracy or capitalism), and partly a battle for economic and political dominance. Its name comes from the fact that there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides involved in the conflict, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

A sweeping document approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 that identified a broad range of rights to be enjoyed by people everywhere, including freedom of speech, religious toleration, and protection against arbitrary government as well as social and economic entitlements like the right to an adequate standard of living and access to housing, education, and medical care. The document had no enforcement mechanism, but the core principle that a nation's treatment of its own citizens should be subject to outside evaluation became widely accepted with time. And since WWII, the enjoyment of human rights has increasingly taken its place in definitions of freedom across the globe.

The New Left

A term that referred to a group of progressives in the 1960s who, mostly white and college-educated, rejected the intellectual and political categories that had shaped radicalism and liberalism for most of the twentieth century. Unlike the "Old Left" (ie, socialists and communists) this younger group of progressives did not take the USSR as a model or see the working class as the main agent of social change. Instead of equality and industrial freedom--the language of New Deal liberals--this group spoke of loneliness, isolation, and alienation, of powerlessness in the face of bureaucratic institutions and a hunger for authenticity that affluence could not provide. They were inspired by the black freedom movement and called for a democracy of civic participation.

The Reconstruction of Japan (1945-52)

After the defeat of Japan in World War II, the United States led the Allies in the occupation and rehabilitation of the Japanese state. Between 1945 and 1952, the U.S. occupying forces, led by General Douglas A. MacArthur, enacted widespread military, political, economic, and social reforms. Japan adopted a new, democratic constitution which gave women the right to vote and also stated that Japan would renounce forever the policy of war and armed aggression. The U.S. also oversaw the economic reconstruction of Japan, eliminating absentee landlordism so that most tenant farmers became owners of land and rebuilding Japan's industrial base as a bastion of anti-communist strength in Asia.

Consumer Culture

American culture by the Fifties was characterized by mass consumption of consumer goods: TVs, cars, appliances, and a thousand other household goods. The Fifties represented the culmination of a long-term trend in which consumerism replaced economic independence and democratic participation as central definitions of American freedom. More Americans were going into debt in order to pay for new consumer goods.

Car Culture

American culture during the Fifties was transformed by this transportation technology. American lifestyles were dramatically altered (commuting to work, fast food, road trips, etc.) as was the American landscape (highways, suburbs, motels, and shopping malls.) By 1960, 80 percent of American families owned at least one of these. They they now seemed essential, and they symbolized the identification of freedom with individual mobility and private choice.

Ella Baker

An African-American civil rights activist, who often worked behind-the-scenes, alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders of the 20th century, and as a mentor to many emerging activists. She criticized professionalized, charismatic leadership; she promoted grassroots organizing, radical democracy, and the ability of the oppressed to understand their worlds and advocate for themselves.

Thurgood Marshall

An attorney for the NAACP who, for a quarter century, pressed legal challenges to the "separate but equal" doctrine (originally laid down by the Court in the Plessy decision of 1896), ultimately winning his greatest victory against educational segregation in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. He later went on to serve as the first African American justice on the Supreme Court (1967-1991).

Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" (1962)

An economist during the post-war period who identified the free market as necessary to the foundation of individual liberty. This was not an uncommon idea during the Cold War, but he pushed it to extreme conclusions. He called for turning over nearly all government functions to the private sector and for repeal of minimum wage laws, the graduated income tax, and the Social Security system.

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

Arguably the most significant Supreme Court ruling regarding race in the 20th century. It found that segregation in public education violated the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment ("Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal"). It overturned the doctrine of "separate but equal" (established in 1898 Plessy case). It was a very limited ruling that addressed neither segregation in institutions outside of education, nor the de facto segregation of the North, nor did it order immediate implementation. Nevertheless, it did signal the emergence of the Supreme Court as an agent for social change and inspire a wave of optimism that discrimination would soon disappear.

The Truman Doctrine

Articulated by President Truman in 1947, this committed the U.S. to the policy of containing communism for the duration of the Cold War. Rhetorically, it divided the world into two sides--"free" and "unfree"--and committed the U.S. to supporting "freedom loving people" wherever communism threatened them. The immediate occasion for the policy was a speech to Congress in which Truman requested U.S. aid to two strategically important allies--Greece and Turkey--threatened by internal opposition.

The Berlin Airlift (1948-49)

At the end of WWII, the four victorious powers (US, France, Britain, and USSR) assumed control of a section of Germany and the capital city of Berlin, located deep in the Soviet zone. When the Soviets cut off road and rail traffic to Berlin from the American, British and French zones of occupied Germany in 1948, the Western allies launched an 11-month airlift in which over 278,000 flights (approximately one plane every 30 seconds!) carried fuel and food to their zones in Berlin. Stalin ultimately lifted the blocked, granting the West a major victory. Soon, two nations emerged, East and West Germany, each side allied with a side in the Cold War. Berlin itself remained divided.

Jackie Robinson

Baseball player who, by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, challenged the long-standing exclusion of black players in major league baseball. His dignity in the face of constant verbal abuse won him nationwide respect, and his baseball prowess earned him the Rookie of the Year award. His success opened the door to the integration of baseball and led to the demise of the Negro Leagues, to which black players had previously been confined.

The Watts Riot of 1965 and other urban riots

Battles between tens of thousands of residents of this black area of Los Angeles that involved attacking (predominantly white) police and firemen, looting white-owned businesses, and burning buildings. It required 15,000 police and National Guardsmen to restore order, by which time thirty-five people lay dead, 900 were injured, and $30 million worth of property had been destroyed. Similar urban rebellions spread to other major cities, including Newark and Detroit. The urban uprisings drew attention to the national scope of racial injustice and to the inequalities in jobs, education, and housing that the dismantling of legal segregation left intact.

Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers (UFW) Union

Beginning in 1965, these two migrant farm workers led a series of nonviolent protests in California's Central Valley, including marches, fasts, and a nation boycott of California grapes, to pressure the farm owners to agree to labor contracts with their union. This union was as much a mass movement for the civil rights of Latinos as a campaign for economic betterment. The grape boycott mobilized Latino communities throughout the Southwest and drew national attention to the pitifully low wages and oppressive working conditions of migrant laborers. In 1970, the major growers agreed to contracts with the union.

The Anti-War Movement

Beginning with demonstrations in 1964 against the escalating role of the U.S. military in the Vietnam War, this movement grew into a broad social movement over the ensuing several years. Many in the movement within the U.S. were students, mothers, or anti-establishment hippies. Opposition grew with participation by the African-American civil rights, women's liberation, and Chicano movements, and sectors of organized labor. Additional involvement came from many other groups, including educators, clergy, academics, journalists, lawyers, physicians, and military veterans. Their actions consisted mainly of peaceful, nonviolent events; few events were deliberately provocative and violent. In some cases, police used violent tactics against peaceful demonstrators. By 1967, according to Gallup Polls, an increasing majority of Americans considered US military involvement in Vietnam to be a mistake.

The Desegregation of the Armed Forces

Begun by President Truman's executive order in 1948, the armed services became the first large institution in American life to promote racial integration actively and to attempt to root out long-standing racist practices. The Korean War would be the first American conflict fought by an integrated army since the War of Independence.

Teen Culture

By the 1950s, many teenagers had dressed differently than adults, danced to rock-and-roll music, and developed their own culture and music, while older generations saw them as somewhat rebellious and alienated from the world of adult respectability. With teenagers a growing part of the population, thanks to the baby boom, the emergence of a popular culture geared to the emerging youth market suggested that significant generational tensions lay beneath the bland surface of the 1950s.

President Lyndon B. Johnson ("LBJ")

Democratic President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, known for his domineering personality and his aggressive coercion of powerful politicians to advance legislation. In domestic policy, he designed the "Great Society" legislation by expanding civil rights, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts, urban and rural development, public services, and his "War on Poverty." His presidency marked the peak of modern liberalism after the New Deal era. In foreign policy, he escalated America's involvement in the Vietnam War. While he enjoyed widespread approval after his 1964 election victory over Barry Goldwater, his support declined as the public became upset with both the Vietnam War and the growing violence at home. In 1968, the Democratic Party factionalized as anti-war elements denounced him; he ended his bid for renomination after a disappointing finish in the New Hampshire primary. Richard Nixon was elected to succeed him.

Truman's Loyalty Program (1947)

Designed to root out communist influence in the federal government, the President established this system in which government employees were required to demonstrate their patriotism without being allowed to confront accusers or, in some cases, knowing the charges against them. The program failed to uncover any cases of espionage, but the federal government dismissed several hundred persons, and thousands resigned rather than submit to investigation.

Television

During the 1950s, this mass communication technology became increasingly prominent in American life and the primary means of influencing public opinion, as nearly nine in ten American families owned a set by the end of the decade. Advertisements aimed primarily at middle-class suburban viewers, conveyed images of the good life based on endless consumption of consumer goods.

"New Conservatism" of the 1950s

Emerging during the Cold War, this intellectual movement warned that the West was suffering moral decay and called for a return to a civilization based on values grounded in the Christian tradition and in timeless notions of good and evil. Although they wanted government expelled from the economy, they trusted government to regulate personal behavior, to restore a Christian morality in American society (Notice: this form of conservatism favors a form of active-state liberalism). With libertarian conservatives representing one strand, this group represented the other major strand of modern American conservatism united together in opposition against communism and the federal government.

The Peace Corps

Established by JFK as a new way to counter communist influence in the world, this innitive sent young Americans abroad to aid in the economic and educational progress of developing countries and to improve the image of the U.S. there.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) and the Occupation of Alcatraz

Founded in 1968, this organization of Native Americans staged protests demanding greater tribal self-government and restoration of economic resources guaranteed in past treaties. In 1969, a group calling itself "Indians of All Nations" occupied (or from their point of view, "re-occupied") this island in San Francisco Bay, claiming that it had been illegally seized from its original inhabitants. The protest, which lasted into 1971, launched the Red Power movement. In the years that followed, many Indian tribes would win greater control over education and economic development on the reservations. Indian activist would bring land claim suits, demanding and receiving monetary settlements for past dispossession.

Little Rock, 1957

In 1957, after Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration of the central high school in this mid-sized Souther city. Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to the city. In the face of a howling mob, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division escorted nine black children into the school. It was the first time the federal government intervened to enforce the Brown v. Board of Education ruling from three years earlier.

The Sit-in Movement, 1960

In 1960, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat down at a local Woolworth's lunch counter (which was reserved for whites only), and began a sit in, quietly remaining in their seats and refusing to leave until they were served. This sit-in sparked a massive wave of similar sit-ins, not only at lunch counters, but at segregated parks, pools, restaurants, bowling alleys, libraries, and other facilities across the South. By the end of the year, about 70,000 people had participated. Often they were confronted by angry whites before being arrested, but having been trained in nonviolent resistance, they did not strike back.

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

In 1964, North Vietnamese vessels encountered an American ship on a spy mission in this body of water off its coast. When North Vietnamese patrol boats allegedly fired on the American vessel (many years later it was revealed that no attack actually took place), Johnson proclaimed that the U.S. was a victim of "aggression." In response, Congress passed this resolution by the same name, authorizing the president to take "all necessary measures to repel armed attack" in Vietnam. Not a formal declaration of war, it was essentially a blank check to wage war in Vietnam, and it passed without any discussion of American goals and strategy in Vietnam.

Tet Offensive

In January of 1968, on Vietnamese New Year, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops launched this well-organized attack on U.S. and South Vietnamese forces throughout South Vietnam, completely surprising American military leaders. While it was ultimately a military victory for the U.S., it was a propaganda victory for the communists, and it beame the turning point in the U.S. war in Vietnam. The U.S. drove back the offensive and inflicted heavy losses. But the intensity of the fighting, brought into America's homes on television, shattered public confidence in the Johnson administration's promises of victory "just around the corner." U.S. public support for the Vietnam War declined after this event.

The Selma Campaign, 1965

In order to spur the passage of a voting rights bill, Martin Luther King launched this campaign in Selma, Alabama in 1965 (where only 355 of the 15,000 black residents had been allowed to register to vote). Defying a ban by Governor George Wallace, King attempted to lead a march from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery. When the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which lead out of the city, state police assaulted them with cattle prods, whips, and tear gas. Once again, violence against nonviolent demonstrators flashed across TV screens throughout the world, placing pressure of LBJ and Congress to pass a voting right bill.

Jacabo Arbenz in Guatemala, 1953

In the early 1950s, Guatemala's idealistic young President embarked on a sweeping land-reform policy that threatened the domination of Guatemala's economy by the American-owned United Fruit Company. While he was neither a communist nor a Soviet ally, the CIA branded him a communist (with the help of Edward Bernays) and organized a coup to have him overthrown and replaced by a new president who would be friendly to U.S. businesses. This is an example of how the policy of containment could be used as a propaganda tool to disguise actions that served U.S. economic and strategic interests.

Black Panther Party

Inspired by the idea of black self-determination, a group founded in Oakland, CA, in 1966 that became well-known for advocating armed self-defense in response to police brutality. Its "Ten Point Program" contained a list of radical demands including the release of black prisoners because of racism in the criminal justice system. The party's youthful members alarmed whites by wearing military garb, although they also ran health clinics, schools, and children's breakfast programs. But internal disputes and an FBI campaign against them (which left several leaders, including Fred Hampton, dead in shootouts) destroyed the organization.

Arguments in favor of the U.S. war in Vietnam

It is essential to stop the spread of communism, represented by Ho Chi Minh. Communism is a threat to freedom, capitalism, and religion. The Domino Theory: If South Vietnam falls to communism, then it is likely that Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and the rest of Southeast Asia will also fall. This spread of communism will eventually pose a serious threat to the economic and strategic interests of the U.S. and potentially threaten the survival of our country. The North Vietnamese Communists are invading South Vietnam. The U.S. is simply defending the self-determination and freedom of a weak, non-communist country (South Vietnam) from aggressive communist expansion. If the US does not use force to stop the spread of communism in South Vietnam, the U.S. will appear weak and our promises to European allies that we will stop the spread of communism (our "containment policy") will seem unreliable.

The Freedom Rides, 1961

Launched by CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) in 1961, this was a major non-violent civil rights campaign in which integrated groups (of mostly college-age people) traveled by bus into the Deep South to test compliance with court orders banning segregation on interstate buses and trains and in terminal facilities. Violent mobs assaulted them. Near Anniston, Alabama, a firebomb was thrown into the vehicle and the passengers beaten as they escaped. In Birmingham, Klansmen attacked riders with bats and chains, while police refused to intervene. Many of the riders were arrested, but their actions pressured the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce the desegregation of buses and terminals.

Freedom Summer, 1964

Launched by a coalition of civil rights groups, this was a campaign to register voters in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. Blacks had been cut off from voting in Mississippi since the turn of the century due to barriers to voter registration and other laws. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population. Hundreds of white college students from the North traveled to the state to take part. An outpouring of violence greeted the campaign, including 35 bombings and numerous beatings of civil rights workers.

The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965

Major immigration reform law of the Great Society that, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, established racially neutral criteria for immigration, notably family reunification and possession of skills in demand in the U.S.. It also contained provisions to offer asylum to refugees from communist countries. It led to the largest wave of immigration in U.S. history over the next half century, and significantly altered the demographic make up of the U.S. This law abandoned the national-origins quota system from the 1920s (which had excluded Asians and severely restricted southern and eastern Europeans). However, because of the hostility in the Southwest towards Mexican immigration, the law established the first limit, 120,000, on newcomers from the Western Hemisphere. This created for the first time the category of "illegal aliens" from the Americas. The law sparked a dramatic shift in which immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia came to outnumber those from Europe.

Proxy Wars

Military conflicts in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, emanating from the larger Cold War, typically fought between communist and noncommunist forces with the aid of the US and the Soviet Union, and China. Examples: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, etc.

National Organization of Women (NOW)

Modeled after civil rights organizations, consisting overwhelmingly of middle class white women, and led by its President, Betty Friedan, this was the most powerful organization of the modern women's movement. It demanded equal opportunity in jobs, education, and political participation and attacked the "false image of women" spread by the mass media. Its members and supporters were generally more conservative than those who identified with the Women's Liberation movement.

The March on Washington, 1963

Often considered the high point of the nonviolent civil rights movement, 250,000 black and white Americans converged on the nation's capital for the largest public demonstration in the nation's history at the time. Calls for passage of a civil rights bill pending before Congress took center stage, and Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, 1963

Often credited with sparking the modern women's movement, this best-selling book of 1964 challenged the widely-shared belief that fulfillment for a woman came from being a housewife and a mother. Asked in 1957 to conduct a survey of her former Smith College classmates for their 15th anniversary reunion, she found that many of them were unhappy with their lives as housewives, which prompted her to begin conducting interviews with other suburban housewives, as well as researching psychology, media, and advertising. The resulting book's opening chapter, "The Problem That Has No Name," painted a devastating picture of talented, educated women trapped in a world that viewed marriage and motherhood as their primary goals. For many women, she argued, the suburban home had become a "comfortable concentration camp."

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

One of the greatest legislative achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, this law prohibited racial discrimination in employment, institutions like hospitals and schools, and privately owned public accommodations such as restaurants, hotels, and theaters. It also banned discrimination on the grounds of sex--a provision added by opponents of civil rights in an effort to derail the entire bill and embraced by liberals and female members of Congress as a way to broaden its scope.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

One of the last legislative triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement, this law prohibited racial discrimination in voting. It outlawed literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities, allowed federal officials (as opposed to only local officials) to register voters, and prohibited every state and local government from imposing any voting law that resulted in discrimination against racial or language minorities. Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, it proved very successful in secured voting rights for racial minorities throughout the country, and especially in the South.

Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (pronounced "Snick")

One of the most important organizations of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, it emerged from a student meeting organized by Ella Baker in 1960 and grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support its work in the South. It played a major role in the sit-ins and freedom rides, a leading role in the 1963 March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party over the next few years. Its major contribution was in its field work, organizing voter registration drives all over the South, especially in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Medicaid

One of the most significant pieces of LBJ's Great Society, this is a health insurance program for families and individuals of all ages whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health care. This program is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for people with low income in the United States. It is a "means-tested" program (states examine applicants' finances to determine whether or not they are eligible) that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments and managed by the states, with each state having broad leeway to determine who is eligible for its implementation of the program.

Medicare

One of the most significant pieces of LBJ's Great Society, this is a single-payer, national health insurance program administered by the federal government. It provides health insurance for Americans aged 65 and older who have worked and paid into the system through the payroll tax.

The Birmingham Campaign, 1963

Organized in 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and led by Martin Luther King Jr., and others, this was a major non-violent civil rights campaign that culminated in widely publicized confrontations between young black students and white civic authorities. When King had thousands of black schoolchildren march through town, the police chief, Eugene "Bull" Connor unleashed his forces against them. The images, broadcast on TV, of children being assaulted with nightsticks, high-pressure fire hoses, and attack dogs produced a wave of revulsion throughout the world and led to President Kennedy's endorsement of the movement's goals as well as the municipal government's overturning of the city's discrimination laws.

The "Lavender Scare"

Refers to a witch hunt and the mass firings of gay people in the 1950s from the United States government. It paralleled the anti-communist campaign known as McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare. Homosexuals were deemed particularly susceptible to blackmail by Soviet agents as well as supposedly lacking in the manly qualities need to maintain the country's resolve in the fight against communism. Ironically, the government's anti-gay campaign came at the very time that gay men enjoyed a powerful presence in the realms of culture and commercial life being promoted as expressions of American freedom--modern art and ballet, fashion, and advertising.

Eisenhower's Farewell Address

Shortly before leaving office, Eisenhower's delivered this famous speech on TV, in which he warned against the drumbeat of calls for a new military buildup. He urged Americans to think about the dangerous power of what he called the "military-industrial complex"--the conjunction of "an immense military establishment" with a "permanent arms industry"--with an influence felt in "every office" in the land. "We must never let the weight of this combination," he advised his countrymen, "endanger our liberties or democratic processes." While few Americans shared Ike's concern at the time, a few years later (during the Vietnam War), and at many points later in the century, his words would seem prophetic.

The Modern Environmental Movement (aka environmentalism)

Sparked in part by Carson's Silent Spring, this movement moved beyond the preservation and conservation efforts of the Industrial Age as many new groups sprang into existence to alert the country to the dangers of water contamination, air pollution, lead in paint, and the extinction of animal species. Despite vigorous opposition from business groups that considered its proposals destructive of economic growth, environmentalism attracted the broadest bipartisan support of any of the new social movements. Under Republican president Richard Nixon, Congress during the late 1960s and early 1970s passed a series of measures to protect the environment, including the Clean Air and Water Acts and the Endangered Species Act. On April 22nd, 1970, the first Earth Day, some 20 million people, most of them under the age of thirty, participated in rallies, concerts, and teach-ins.

Miranda v. Arizona, 1966

Supreme Court ruling said that an individual in police custody must be informed of the rights to remain silent and to confer with a lawyer before answering questions and must be told that any statements might be used in court. Many progressives welcomed the ruling as greater protection for vulnerable individuals against police abuse, while many conservatives critiqued the court for creating new rights without any textual basis in the Constitution, and warned it favored criminals over the safety and security of society.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using the tactics of nonviolence and civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs and inspired by the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. At the youthful age of 26, he helped to lead the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, and he went on to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and then helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the following year he and SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated by James Earl Ray on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. King's death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities.

1968 as a Year of Turmoil

The Sixties reached their climax in 1968, a year when momentous events succeeded each other so rapidly that the foundations of society seemed to be dissolving. (Jan) Tet Offensive (military victory, PR disaster) LBJ (D) faces anti-war Democratic challengers (Eugene McCarthy and RFK) (March) LBJ announces on TV that he will not seek re-election George Wallace (Independent) runs on segregation (April) MLK assassination, riots ensue (June) RFK assassination (Aug) riots at the Democratic Convention (Humphrey nominated on pro-war platform) Nixon (R), speaking for "the silent majority" runs on "law and order" and a "secret plan" for Vietnam, defeats Humphrey (begins "Conservative Resurgence")

The Freedom Movement (aka The Civil Rights Movement), 1954-1968

The Twentieth Century's greatest citizens' movement--the black struggle for equality. The name "Civil Rights Movement" implies that the struggle was largely for rights conferred to citizens by their government (like the right to vote or to sit at a lunch counter), while the name "Freedom Movement" implies it was a struggle for more than that; it was for not only civil rights, be also dignity, economic opportunity, self-assertion, or as many in the movement put it, "Freedom." While the narrative of the "Civil Rights" movement usually begins in 1954 (with Brown v. Board) and ends in 1968 (with the assassination of MLK), the black struggle for "freedom" began long before that and continues today.

Arguments in opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam

The Vietnamese are in the midst of a long struggle for national independence from France, Japan, and now, the U.S.. Ho Chi Minh is first and foremost a nationalist independence leader (whose 1945 Declaration of Independence was modeled after the US Declaration of Independence). The United States is invading South Vietnam. While the pro-war position states that the U.S. is protecting non-communist South Vietnam from an invasion by North Vietnam, the anti-war position sees the war as a civil war between South Vietnamese rural peasants called the Viet Cong and the undemocratic, unpopular government in Saigon backed by the United States (formerly under the leadership of Ngo Din Diem.) The US is preventing the South Vietnamese (who are simply receiving help from North Vietnam—not being invaded by them) from obtaining their right of self-determination. The U.S. is supporting a brutal, repressive, undemocratic, and unpopular regime in South Vietnam. Stop Death and Destruction: Many U.S. soldiers are dying (about 58,000 U.S. deaths by the end of the war). Twice as many bombs were dropped on Vietnam than were dropped by the U.S. in all of World War Two. Millions of Vietnamese were made refugees, 2-3 million died, hundreds of thousands suffered disease from U.S. chemical weapons like Agent Orange after the war. The U.S. military strategy fails to distinguish between Vietnamese civilians and soldiers. The most infamous example is the My Lai massacre. Torture and kidnapping of suspected communists by the US was common in the Phoenix Program. The U.S. is fighting primarily for our own selfish political, strategic, and economic interests.

The Second Red Scare

The anti-communist crusade that created a pervasive atmosphere of fear in American politics, culture, and society that lasted from the late 1940s through the 1950s, even longer and more pervasive than the first one following World War One.

"The War on Poverty"

The centerpiece of LBJ's Great Society, this was a government crusade to eradicate poverty in the United States. While food stamps offered direct aid (and were the most popular and successful component), most of the efforts concentrated on equipping the poor with skills and rebuilding their spirit and motivation. The Office of Economic Opportunity oversaw a series of initiatives designed to lift the poor into to social and economic mainstream: Head Start (an early childhood education program), job training, legal services, scholarships for poor college students, and VISTA (a domestic version of the Peace Corps for the inner cities).

Ho Chi Minh

The central leader of the Vietnamese struggle for national liberation and independence. He was both a nationalist who wished to see his nation emerge independent from colonial rule, but he was also a communist. This duality which went to the heart of the controversy around the U.S. war in Vietnam. Americans generally opposed communism as antithetical to American ideals. But many Americans also sympathized with nationalist liberation movements because America was founded in a revolutionary struggle for independence from British rule.

The Hippy Counterculture

The flamboyant youth revolt whose rejection of both traditional forms of authority as well as respectable norms in clothing, language, sexual behavior, and drug use became the basis of a mass movement. Surely self-indulgence and self-destruction were built-in, but there was far more to this movement than the new consumer styles or the famed trio of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. To young dissenters, personal liberation represented a spirit of creative experimentation, a search for a way of life in which friendship and pleasure eclipsed the single-minded pursuit of wealth. It meant a release from bureaucratized education and work, repressive rules of personal behavior, and above all, a militarized state that, in the name of freedom, rained destruction on a faraway people. It encouraged new forms of radical action, emphasized the ideal of community, contributed to the growing environmental consciousness, and lead to a flowering of artistic, religious, and spiritual creativity and experimentation.

Containment

The fundamental foreign policy of the United States throughout the duration of the Cold War in which the U.S. committed itself to trying to prevent any further expansion of communism and the power of the Soviet Union. The policy began to take shape in 1946 with George Kennan's "Long Telegram," and Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, but it was first embraced as the foundation of U.S. foreign policy in the Truman Doctrine, in 1947.

Suburbanization

The huge demographic shift whereby millions of American moved from cities to suburbs in the period following World War Two. By 1960, suburban residents of single-family homes outnumbered urban dwellers and those living in rural areas. (Today they outnumber both combined).

Interstate Highway Act

The largest public works project in U.S. history, this act authorized the building of the 41,000 mile interstate highway system. Both Cold War arguments (especially the need to provide rapid exit routes from cities in the event of nuclear war) and economic ones (good for commerce and industry) justified the project.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962

The most dangerous crisis of the Kennedy administration, and in many ways of the entire Cold War, came in October, 1962, when American spy planes discovered that the Soviet Union was installing missiles in Cuba capable of reaching the U.S. with nuclear weapons. Rejecting advice from military leaders that he authorize an attack on Cuba, which would almost certainly have triggered a Soviet response in Berlin and perhaps a nuclear war, Kennedy imposed a blockade, or "quarantine," of the island and demanded the missiles' removal. After tense behind-the-scenes negotiations, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles; Kennedy pledged that the U.S. would not invade Cuba and secretly agreed to remove American Jupiter missiles from Turkey, from which they could reach the Soviet Union.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

The most sensational of a series of highly publicized "spy trials" during the early years of the Cold War involved this working class Jewish couple from New York City. They were convicted of conspiracy to pass secrets concern the atomic bomb to Soviet agents during WWII. The case against the husband rested on secret documents that could not be revealed, and there was almost no evidence against the wife. But in the atmosphere of hysteria, their conviction was certain. Despite international outcry, the death sentence for both was carried out in 1953. Controversy still surrounds the degree of the couple's guilt, but almost no one today defends their execution. The trial powerfully reinforced the idea that an army of Soviet spies was at work in the United States.

The Fair Deal

The name for Democratic President Truman's domestic agenda, which focused on the social safety net and raising the standard of living of ordinary Americans. Truman called on Congress to increase the minimum wage, enact a program of national health insurance, and expand public housing, Social Security, and aid to education. The Republican controlled congress ensured that only a few of the major initiatives became law.

Levittown

The name of the first suburban community, on Long Island in NY, built by William and Alfred Levitt. Quickly and easily assembled from prefabricated parts, they were priced well for most Americans. The physical embodiment of hopes for a better life and increasing standards of living, this community was used as a model by developers all across the country, as a suburban housing boom doubled the number of houses in the U.S. in the 1950s.

The Great Society

The name that refers to LBJ's domestic initiatives as president, which together represented the most sweeping agenda of active-state liberalism since the New Deal. It provided health services for the poor and elderly in the new Medicaid and Medicare programs and poured federal funds into education and urban development. New cabinet offices--the Department of Transportation and of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)--and new agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the National Endowment for the Humanities and for the Arts (NEH and NEA), and a national public broadcasting network (PBS) were created. These measures greatly expanded the powers of the federal government, and they completed and extended the social agenda (with the exception of national health insurance) that had been stalled in Congress since 1938.

The Baby Boom

The period from 1946 until 1964 witnessed a large spike in the U.S. birth rate. At a time of low immigration, the U.S. population rose by nearly 30 million (almost 20 percent) during the 1950s alone. There were multiple causes, including veterans coming home from war, the return of economic prosperity and stability (after the Great Depression and WWII), men and women reaffirming the virtues of family life and deciding to marry younger, and the decline in the divorce rate. This development helped fuel mass consumption and the construction of suburban homes.

Modern Republicanism

The title Eisenhower gave to his domestic agenda. The first Republican President in twenty years, Ike aimed to sever his party's identification in the minds of many Americans with Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression and indifference to economic conditions of ordinary citizens. He not only left the core New Deal programs in place, but he expanded them, particularly Social Security. He used government spending to promote productivity and boost employment (Interstate highway Act, National Defense Education Act). Rather than dismantling the New Deal, Ike consolidated and legitimized it.

Women's Liberation

The younger and more radical branch of the feminist movement during the period of Second-Wave Feminism that greatly expanded and permanently changed Americans' definition of freedom. Many women in this movement had worked earlier in other campaigns in the New Left, or for civil rights, or against the Vietnam War, where they were disillusioned to find that even their progressive male allies held deeply ingrained assumptions of male supremacy. By the late 60s, in part by forming thousands of "consciousness-raising" groups around the country in which women discussed the source of their discontentment, this movement inspired a major expansion of the idea of freedom by insisting that it should be applied to the most intimate realms of life. Introducing the terms "sexism," and "sexual politics," and the phrase "the personal is political" into public debate, this movement insisted that sexual relations, conditions of marriage, and standards of beauty were as much "political" questions as the war, civil rights, and the class tensions that had traditionally inspired the left to action.

HUAC (The House Un-American Activities Committee)

This Congressional committee was created to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties. During the Second Red Scare, it commanded broad popular support and consistently attracted major headlines. Through its power to subpoena witnesses and hold people in contempt of Congress, it often pressured witnesses to surrender names and other information that could lead to the apprehension of Communists and Communist sympathizers. Pioneering some of the "red-baiting" examination techniques later made infamous by Joseph McCarthy, Committee members often branded witnesses as "red" if they refused to comply or hesitated in answering committee questions.

Roe v. Wade, 1973

This Supreme Court ruling declared access to abortion a fundamental right protected by the U.S. Constitution. The Court ruled 7-2 that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but added that this right must be balanced against the state's interests in regulating abortions: protecting women's health and protecting the potentiality of human life. In effect, abortion became far more accessible during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy, but this ruling allowed states to imposed significant restrictions on access to abortion during the third trimester. This decision was overturned In 2022 by the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which rejected a constitutional right to abortion and returned abortion law to the states.

Loving v. Virginia (1967)

This Supreme Court ruling struck down all state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. This aptly named case arose from the interracial marriage of Richard and Mildred Loving. Barred by Virginia law from marrying, they did so in Washington, D.C. and later returned to their home state. Two weeks after their arrival, the local sheriff entered their home in the middle of the night, roused the couple from bed, and arrested them. The Lovings were sentenced for five years in prison, although the judge gave them the option of leaving Virginia instead. They departed for Washington, but five years later, wishing to return, the sued in federal court, claiming that their rights had been violated.

The Stonewall Uprising, 1969

This event marked the beginning of the "gay liberation" movement. Police raided a bar in New York City's Greenwich Village that was a gathering place for homosexuals, but rather than bowing to police harassment, as in the past, the mostly gay patrons fought back. Five days of rioting followed, and a militant movement was born. Gay men and lesbians stepped out of the "closet" to insist that sexual orientation is a matter of identity, rights, and power. Prejudice against homosexuals persisted. But within a few years, "gay pride" marches were being held in numerous cities.

Mutually Assured Destruction ("MAD")

This foreign policy doctrine, emerging during the early Cold War, declared that any Soviet attack on an American ally would be countered by a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union itself. Critics called the doctrine "brinksmanship" because it threatened to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. The reality that all-out war would result in the destruction of both nations involved inspired widespread fear of impending nuclear war. But it also succeeded in making both great powers cautious in their direct dealings with one another, and it may explain why the Cold War remained cold and why no nuclear weapons have been used since World War Two.

NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

This is a long-term military alliance between the U.S., Canada, and ten western European nations, in which each pledged to come to the defense of each other in the event of any future Soviet attack. It was created in 1949, in the wake of the USSR's first successful atomic bomb test. (The Soviets later formalized their own Eastern European alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955.)

Michael Harrington's The Other America (1962)

This popular and influential book is often credited with inspiring LBJ's War on Poverty. The author, a democratic socialist, argued that poverty in the United States persisted despite the New Deal, with about 50 million people still living in debilitating conditions, particularly among marginalized groups like unskilled workers, immigrants, urban African Americans, the elderly, and the disabled. He contended that these groups were trapped in a "culture of poverty," lacking the community support and values necessary for upward mobility. Harrington believed that capitalism failed to provide a dignified life for the poor, necessitating a socially conscious state to intervene. He advocated for a comprehensive "war on poverty" through federal legislation, ultimately arguing that a socialist reorganization of the government was the only long-term solution.

Massive Resistance

This term refers to the overwhelming response of white Southerners to the Supreme Court's call for desegregation. State after state passed laws to block desegregation. Some made it illegal for the NAACP to operate, others closed public schools rather than integrate them. Some offered "freedom of choice" plans to allow white students to opt out of integrated schools, while others offered funds to enable white students to attend all-white private institutions (many of which were set up in the South as a way to get around integration). Additionally, some Southern states began flying the Confederate battle flag over their capital building, using it as a symbol of opposition to integration.

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

This was a New Left student activist organization in the 1960s. It's manifesto, "The Port Huron Statement," summarized the beliefs of the New Left. What made the document the guiding spirit of a new radicalism was its vision of social change: "We seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation [in which] the individual shares in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life." Freedom, for the New Left, meant "participatory democracy." Although rarely defined with precision, this became a standard by which students judged existing social arrangements--workplaces, schools, government--and found them wanting.

The Korean War, 1950-53

This was a major proxy war between Communist North Korea (aided by the USSR and China) and South Korea (aided United Nations and led by the U.S.). Occupied by Japan during WWII, Korea had been divided in 1945 into Soviet and American zones. These soon evolved into two governments: communist North Korea and anti-communist South Korea. When North Korea invaded the South in 1950, hoping to reunify the country under communist control, Truman--viewing it as a test his containment policy--persuaded the United Nation's Security Council to authorize force to repel the invasion. Bloody fighting eventually reached a stalemate around the 38th parallel, the original border between North and South Korea. Roughly 33,000 American and 1 million Koreans died in the war.

Berkeley Free Speech Movement

This was a student protest movement which took place during the 1964-65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students like Mario Savio--the movement's most powerful speaker--and others. In protests unprecedented in size, UC-Berkeley students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom. The movement developed a critique of the entire structure of the university and of an education geared towards preparing graduates for corporate jobs. The movement was affiliated with the New Left of the 1960s.

The Marshall Plan

This was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers (GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), modernize industry, make Europe prosperous once more, and prevent the spread of communism. It was based on the idea that the threat to U.S. security was not so much Soviet military power but rather the economic and political instability which could be breeding grounds for communism. It proved to be one of the most successful foreign aid programs in history.

de jure and de facto (segregation)

Two latin terms that are very useful in describing segregation, among other things. The first roughly translates to "by law" and the other roughly translates to "in fact," or "in reality." The Civil Rights Acts laws of the 1960s eliminated all laws that required segregation on the basis of race. Nevertheless, many facets of American life have continued to be segregated to one degree or another due to other reasons.

The Hollywood Ten (1947)

When summoned to a series of HUAC hearings about communist influence in Hollywood in 1947, these ten "unfriendly witnesses" refused to answer HUAC's questions about their political beliefs or to "name names" (identify individual communists) on the grounds that the hearings violated the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and political association. They all served jail terms of six months to a year and were blacklisted (denied employment) along with more than 200 others who were accused of communist sympathies or refused to name names.

Sputnik and the National Defense Education Act of 1957

When the Soviets launched this, the first artificial earth satellite in 1957, Eisenhower responded with a law that, for the first time, offered direct federal funding to higher education.

Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, 1954

When this Iranian Prime Minister nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, whose refinery in Iran was Britain's largest remaining overseas asset, the CIA helped to organize his overthrow and replace him with the Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ("the Shah"), who served U.S. strategic and economic interest until his overthrow during the (very anti-U.S.) Iranian Revolution of 1979. This is an example of how the policy of containment could easily slide over into opposition to any government, whether communist or not, that seemed to threaten U.S. economic and strategic interests.

Critiques of the Cold War

While few Americans were sympathetic to the Soviet Union (known for its brutal dictatorship that jailed and murdered millions of its citizens), some American critics pointed out that the U.S.'s Cold War rhetoric of a global battle between "freedom and slavery" was not only far too simplistic, but it also made it difficult to view international crisis on a case-by-case basis or to determine which ones genuinely involved either freedom or U.S. interests. In practice, political, economic, and strategic interests shaped American foreign policy as powerfully as the idea of freedom. But American policymakers used the language of a crusade for freedom to justify actions around the world that sometimes had little to do with freedom by any definition.