APUSH Ch. 24 An Affluent Society,1953-1960

Key premises of American foreign policy during the Eisenhower years...

-Any Soviet attack on one of our allies will result in a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union. -We must be prepared to negotiate with the Soviet Union. -The United States will intervene in the Middle East--militarily, if necessary--to ward off the threats of communism or Arab nationalism in the region.

Features of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s philosophy...

-Blacks and whites must work together to combat segregation -The civil rights movement should always fight racial injustice on a nonviolent basis -the civil rights movement is a crusade, not merely to improve the lot of blacks, but, more broadly, to redeem the soul of America

Describes Rosa Parks in the years prior to her December 1, 1955, arrest...

-She was a participant in meetings protesting the conviction of the Scottsboro Boys. -She was for many years a secretary in her local NAACP chapter. -She had attended a training session for political activist at the Highlander School in Tennessee.

Prominent features of suburban married life during the Fifties...

-a rise in birth rates -a decline in divorce rates -a growing desire among husbands and wives to find fulfillment through the shared enjoyment of material comforts, recreation, and sexual relations

League of United Latin American Citizens

A Southwestern group that challenged restrictive housing, employment discrimination, and the segregation of Latino students.

"missile gap"

A belief that the Soviets had achieved technological and military superiority over the United States.

juvenile delinquency

A mid-1950s panic about "juvenile delinquency" occurred as a result of works such as J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye".

rock-and-roll music

A musical style derided as alarming, overly sexualized, and provocative.

the Beats

A term coined by Jack Kerouac for a small group of poets and writers who railed against mainstream culture.

"standard consumer package"

Along with a home and television set, the car became part of what sociologists called "the standard of consumer package" of the 1950s.

housing discrimination

During the postwar suburban boom, federal agencies continued to insure mortgages that barred resale of houses to non-whites, thereby financing housing segregation.

"Sputnik"

First artificial satellite to orbit the earth; launched October 4, 1957, by the Soviet Union.

school segregation

For years, the NAACP, under the leadership of attorney Thurgood Marshall, had pressed legal challenges to the "separate but equal" doctrine, and in the 1950s, attitudes began to shift.

massive retaliation

In 1954, John Foster Dulles announced an updated version of the doctrine of containment. "Massive retaliation," as it was called, declared that any Soviet attack on an American ally would be countered by a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union itself.

"Capitalism and Freedom"

In 1962, Milton Friedman published Capitalism and Freedom, which identified the free market as the necessary foundation for individual liberty.

"social contract"

In leading industries, labor and management hammered out what has been called a new "social contract." Unions signed long-term agreements that left decisions regarding capital investment, plant location, and output in management's hands, and they agreed to try to prevent unauthorized "wildcat" strikes.

Levittown

Low-cost, mass produced developments of suburban tract housing built by William Levitt after World War II on Long Island and elsewhere.

National Defense Education Act

Passed in reaction to American's perceived inferiority in the space race; encouraged education in science and modern languages through student loans, university research grants, and aid to public schools.

"end of ideology"

Scholars celebrated the "end of ideology" and the triumph of a democratic, capitalist "consensus" in which all Americans except the maladjusted and fanatics shared the same liberal values of individualism, respect for private property, and belief in equal opportunity.

Montgomery bus boycott

Sparked by Rosa Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955, for refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger, a successful year-long boycott protesting segregation on city buses; led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

"Checkers speech"

The "Checkers speech," named after the family dog, rescued Nixon's political career. It illustrated how television was beginning to transform politics by allowing candidates to bring a carefully crafted image directly into Americans' living rooms.

Iranian coup

The U.S.-sponsored coup that overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 created resentments that helped lead to Iran's Islamic Revolution twenty-five years later.

military-industrial complex

The conjugation of "an immense military establishment" with a "permanent arms industry" with an influence felt in "every office" in the land.

Brown v. Board of Education

U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down racial segregation in public education and declared "separate but equal," unconstitutional.

women at work

Working women in 1960 earned, on average, only 60 percent of the income of men. Despite the increasing numbers of wage-earning women, the suburban family's breadwinner was assumed to be male, while the wife remained at home.

In the 1950s, Richard Nixon pioneered efforts to transform the Republican Party's image...

from defender of business to champion of the "forgotten man," for whom heavy taxation had become a burden.

The wave of decolonization that began when India and Pakistan achieved independence in 1947, and by which, in the decades following World War II, Europe's centuries-old empires collapsed, witnessed the newly created Third World nations...

resisting alignment with either major power bloc

The principal organization in the Southwest--the equivalent of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)--that challenged restrictions on housing and employment, as well as the segregation of Latino students was named...

the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

The National Defense Education Act, which for the first time offered direct federal funding for higher education, was passed into law by Congress in 1957 in response to...

the Soviet launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, "Sputnik"

Eric Foner writes, "the either-or mentality of the Cold War obscured the extent to which the United States itself fell short of the ideal of freedom." In this context, to what does "the either-or mentality" refer?

the notion that, in a polarized world, you were either for the United States or for the Soviet Union

During the 1950s, the mass movement for civil rights found principal support among...

the southern black church.