APUSH Part 8 Chapters 25 to 29 Key Terms

Stonewall Inn

A defining event in the new gay liberation movement. Police had raided gay bars for decades, making arrests, publicizing the names of patrons, and harassing customers simply for being gay. In the summer of 1969, a Greenwich Village, New York local gay bar, the *Stonewall Inn* was raided by police and in response its patrons rioted for two days. The bar was burned and protesters fought with police in the streets. Activists celebrated the riots as a symbolic demand for full citizenship and the gay liberation movement quickly grew. By 1975, the National Gay Task Force and other national organizations lobbied Congress, served as media watchdogs, and advanced suits in courts. Progress was slow and in most places gays and lesbians did not enjoy the same legal protections and rights as other Americans.

Environmental Protection Agency

A federal agency created by Congress and President Richard Nixon in 1970 to enforce environmental laws, conduct environmental research, and reduce human health risks and environmental risks from pollutants.

Veterans Administration

A federal agency that assists former soldiers. Following WWII, the VA helped helped soldiers to purchase homes with no down payment, which in turn sparked a building boom that created jobs in the construction industry and fueled consumer spending in home appliances and automobiles.

tax revolt

A movement to lower or eliminate taxes. California's Proposition 13, which rolled back property taxes, capped future increases for present owners, and required that all tax measures have a two-thirds majority in the legislature, was the result of one such revolt, inspiring similar movements across the country.

Operation Rolling Thunder

A massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam in 1965. Over the entire course of the war, the U.S. dropped twice as many tons of bombs on Vietnam as the Allies had dropped in both Europe and the Pacifice during all of WW II. The bombing in Vietnam had little effect on the Vietcong's ability to wage war in the south. The Vietcong quickly rebuilt roads and bridges and moved munitions plants underground. Instead of destroying the morale of the North Vietnamese, Operation Rolling Thunder hardened their will to fight. The massive commitment of troops and air power did devastate Vietnam's countryside.

Proposition 13

A measure passed overwhelmingly by Californians to roll back property taxes, cap future increases for present owners, and require that all tax measures have a two-thirds majority in the legislature. Proposition 13 inspired "tax revolts" across the country and helped conservatives define an enduring issue: low taxes. But Proposition 13 decreased available public funds in the nation's most populous state. Per capita funding of California's public schools, once the envy of the nation, plunged from the top tier to the bottom. Its complicated formula ended up benefitting middle class and wealthy homeowners at the expense of lower income citizens, especially those who depended on public services. Because commercial property received the same protection, businesses also benefitted.

Malcolm X

A member of the Nation of Islam. He was the most notable Black Muslim and a charismatic speaker. Malcolm X preached a philosophy of militant separatism, although he advocated violence only for self-defense. Malcolm X had little interest in changing the minds of hostile whites and believed that strengthening the black community represented a surer path to freedom and equality. In 1964, after a power struggle with founder Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam. While he remained a black nationalist, he moderated his anti-white views and began to talk of a class struggle uniting poor whites and blacks. Following an inspiring trip to the Middle East, where he saw Muslims of all races worshipping together, Malcolm X formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity to promote black pride and to work with traditional civil rights groups. In February of 1965, he was assassinated while delivering a speech in Harlem. Three Black Muslims were later convicted of his murder. (The X stood for his African family name lost under slavery.)

Warsaw Pact

A military alliance established in Eastern Europe in 1955 to counter the NATO Alliance. It included Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union.

States' Rights Democratic Party

Southern Democrats, led by Strom Thurmond, were against desegregation and broke from the Democratic Party, forming the States' Rights Democratic Party, popularly known as the Dixiecrats.

Harry Truman and the Civil Rights Movement

Though Truman did not immediately support social equality for African Americans, he did support civil rights because he believed in equality under the law. He also understood the growing importance of the black vote in key northern states. Black civil rights activists and vocal white liberals pressed Truman to act to advance civil rights. Truman appointed a Presidential Committee on Civil Rights and in response to their 1947 report issued an executive order desegregating employment in federal agencies and the armed forces. Truman then sent a message to Congress asking that all of the reports recommendations be made into law. This included the abolition of poll taxes and the restoration of the Fair Employment Practices Commission. It was the most aggressive and politically bold call for racial equality by a political party since Reconstruction.

Beats

a group of writers and poets centered in New York and San Francisco who looked down upon middle-class materialism. The Beats glorified spontaneity, sexual adventurism, drug use, and spirituality.

black nationalism

a major strain of African American thought that emphasized black racial pride and autonomy. Present in black communities for centuries, it periodically came into popularity, as in Marcus Garvey's pan-Africanist movement in the early 20th century and in various organizations in the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party.

deregulation

The limiting of regulations by federal agencies. Deregulation of prices in the trucking, airline, and railroad industries had begun under President Carter in the late 1970s, and Reagan expanded it to include cutting back on government protections of consumers, workers, and the environment.

*Sputnik*

The world's first satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. The United states was surprised by this Soviet achievement and went into high gear to catch up in the Cold War space competition.

The Immigration Act of 1965

This act abandoned the quota system that favored northern Europeans and replaced it with numerical limits that did not discriminate among nations. To promote family reunification, the law also stipulated that close relatives of legal residents in the United States could be admitted outside the numerical limits, which greatly benefitted Asia and Latin American immigrants.

National Interstate and Defense Highways Act

This act passed in 1956, authorized $26 billion over a 10 year period for the construction of a nationally integrated highway system, consisting of 42,500 miles of highway.

Joseph Stalin

one of the Big Three. He was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid 1920s to 1953. Wanted to spread communism throughout Europe.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

outlawed literacy tests and other devices designed to prevent African Americans from registering to vote. It also authorized the attorney general to send federal examiners to register voters in any county where registration was less than 50%. Together with the 24th Amendment, which outlawed the poll tax in federal elections, the Voting Rights Act enabled millions of African Americans to vote for the first time since the Reconstruction era. The results were stunning. In 1960, only 20% of black citizens had been registered to vote, by 1971 it was 62%. Across the nation, the number of black elected officials began to climb dramatically.

Emmitt Till

14 year old Emmett Till from Chicago was visiting his aunt in Mississippi when he was seen speaking with a white woman. He was tortured and murdered in the middle of the night. His mutilated body was found at the bottom of a river, tied with barbed wire to a heavy steel cotton gin fan. Photos of Till's body in Jet magazine brought national attention to this terrible crime. Two white men were charged with the murder. Despite being identified by Till's uncle (who said it was the first time in his life that he had the courage to accuse a white man of a crime) the all white jury found the men not guilty. The killers later admitted their guilt in a magazine article. This motivated an entire generation of African Americans to fight for their civil rights.

Port Huron Statement

40 students from the Big Ten and Ivy League Universities held the first National SDS conference in Port Huron, Michigan. *Tom Hayden* penned a manifesto, *The Port Huron Statement* expressing students' disillusionment with the nation's consumer culture and the gulf between the rich and poor. These students *rejected the Cold War foreign policy, including the war in Vietnam*.

kitchen debate

A 1959 debate over the merits of their rival systems between U.S. vice president Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev at the opening of an American home exhibition in Moscow. Khrushchev did not believe that the consumer products in the home (toasters, televisions, and other consumer products) were available to the average American worker. Most revealing about the debate were not the differences between the political systems but rather how Americans came to see themselves by the late 1950s - as homeowners and consumers - the new definition of middle class. At the time, the middle class was increasing at the rate of 1.1 million per year. This American postwar middle class enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world.

*The Feminine Mystique*

A 1963 book by Betty Friedan targeting college-educated middle class women who found themselves not working for wages but stifled by their domestic routine. The book quickly became a bestseller, with thousands of women identifying with it. The book convinced women that being the manager of the house was not enough and that to lead rich fulfilling lives they needed education and work outside the home. With domesticity already crumbling, women embraced the idea that they needed more than to be housewives to be fulfilled.

War Powers Act

A 1973 law that limited the president's ability to deploy U.S. forces without congressional approval. Congress passed the War Powers Act in 1973 as a series of laws to fight the abuses of the Nixon administration.

Bakke v. University of California

A 1978 SCOTUS ruling that limited affirmative action by rejecting a quota system.

Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)

A Constitutional amendment passed by Congress in 1972 that would require equal treatment of men and women under federal and state law. Facing fierce opposition from the New Right and the Republican Party, the ERA was defeated as time ran out for state ratification in 1982.

*Shelly v. Kraemer*

A SCOTUS case that ruled restrictive covenants were illegal. However racial discrimination still continued as the FHA continued the practice known as "redlining" by refusing mortgages to African Americans and other minorities seeking to by in white neighborhoods. While *Shelley v. Kraemer* outlawed restrictive covenants, racial discrimination was not prohibited until Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968.

Miles Davis

A black jazz trumpeter who produced cerebral, intimate, and individual music. He sound was known as the "cool" sound.

*The Power of Positive Thinking*

A book by Norman Vincent Peale published in 1952 that argued for the use of religion as the the antidote to life's trials and tribulations. Peale taught that with faith in God and "positive thinking" anyone could overcome obstacles and be a success.

Silent Spring

A book published in 1962 by biologist Rachel Carson. Its analysis of the pesticide DDT's toxic impact on the human and natural food chains galvanized environmental activists.

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

A cartel formed in 1960 by the Persian Gulf states and other oil-rich developing countries that allowed its members to assert greater control over the price of oil. Once the world's leading oil producer, the United States had become heavily dependent on inexpensive imported oil, mostly from the Persian Gulf. American and European oil companies had discovered and developed the Middle Eastern oil fields early in the 20th century, when much of the region was ruled by British and French empires. With European colonialism gone, these countries now demanded concessions for access to the fields. While foreign companies still extracted the oil, they now did so under profit-sharing agreements with the Persian Gulf states. In 1960, these Persian Gulf states and other oil-rich developing countries formed a cartel (a business association formed to control prices), OPEC.

Stokely Carmichael

A civil rights leader who began with mainstream civil rights groups but who then led the way in embracing a secular form of black nationalism known as Black Power. Under this banner, Carmichael and others call for black self-reliance. He and others in the Black Power movement believed that African Americans could build economic and political power in their own communities and translate that into a less dependent relationship with white America.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

A civil rights organization founded in 1942 in Chicago by James Farmer and other members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) that promoted nonviolent direct action. It adopted the philosophy of nonviolent direct action espoused by Mahatma Gandhi of India. In 1961 CORE organized a series of what were called Freedom Rides on interstate bus lines throughout the South to call attention to blatant violations of Supreme Court rulings against segregation in interstate commerce.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

A civil rights organization founded in 1960 to facilitate student sit-ins. It was started by *Ella Baker*, an administrator with the SCLC. By the end of 1960, students had launched sit-ins in 126 Southern U.S. cities. More than 50,000 participated and nearly 3600 were jailed. This movement successfully drew African American college students into the civil rights movement. Northern students formed solidarity committees, raising money for bail for those arrested. Baker found these students receptive to her notion of *participatory democracy*. Baker believed in nurturing leaders from the grass roots, encouraging ordinary people to stand up for their rights rather than relying upon charismatic leaders. Some of those she nurtured went on to become some of the most important civil rights leaders in the U.S. - Stokely Carmichael, Anne Moody, John Lewis, and Diane Nash.

American GI Forum

A civil rights organization in Corpus Christie, Texas founded by WW II veterans to protest the poor treatment of Mexican American soldiers and veterans.

Harvey Milk

A closeted gay businessman until he was 40, Milk arrived into San Francisco and became involved in city politics. He ran as an openly gay candidate for city supervisor (city council) twice and the state assembly once, both times unsuccessfully. By mobilizing the gay vote into a powerful bloc, Milk finally won a supervisor seat in 1977. While not the first openly gay elected official, he became a national symbol of emerging gay political power. After he helped to win the passage of a gay rights ordinance in San Francisco, he was assassinated in 1978 - along with the city's mayor, George Moscone - by a disgruntled former supervisor named Dan White. When White was convicted of manslaughter rather murder, 5,000 gays and lesbians in San Francisco marched on city city hall.

Cold War liberalism

A combination of moderate liberal policies that preserved the programs of the New Deal welfare state and forthright anticommunism that vilified the Soviet Union abroad and radicalism at home. It was the policy adopted by President Truman and the Democratic Party during the late 1940's and early 1950s.

Presidential Commission on the Status of Women

A commission formed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Its 1963 report documented gender discrimination against women in employment and education.

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

A congressional committee especially prominent during the early years of the Cold war that investigated Americans who might be disloyal to the government or might have associated with communists or other radicals. HUAC was launched by Congressman Martin Dies of Texas along with other conservatives in 1938. HUAC helped spark the Red Scare by holding hearing in 1947 on alleged communist infiltration of the movie industry. The Hollywood Ten, a group of writers and directors, were jailed for contempt of Congress after their refused to testify about their past associations. Hundreds of actors, writers, and directors who were mentioned during the HUAC investigation were unable to get work after they were placed on a blacklist honored by Hollywood industry executives.

Howard Jarvis

A conservative anti-New Dealer who was a genius at mobilizing grassroots discontent. He proposed California's Proposition 13 in order to fix the property taxes of California's suburban property owners as real estate values rose rapidly, pushing up property taxes along with them. Some retirees and others on fixed incomes faced unaffordable tax bills as this happened. Proposition 13 was Jarvis's answers and, despite opposition by most of California's political leaders, the voters overwhelmingly agreed.

Jimmy Carter

A former naval officer and a peanut farmer and the governor of Georgia. He emerged from the pack to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976. Carter pledged to to restore morality to the White House. He played up his credentials as a Washington outsider, but chose a Senator, Walter Mondale, as his running mate to ensure ties to traditional democratic voting blocs. Ford's pardon of Nixon hurt him and Carter won the election. Shortly after his election Carter's inexperience began to show. Disdainful of the Democratic establishment, Carter relied heavily upon inexperienced advisors from Georgia. As a detail-oriented micromanager, Carter exhausted himself over the fine points of policy better left to his aids. On the domestic front, Carter's biggest challenge was managing the economy. Stagflation was difficult to solve. If the government focused on inflation and raised interest rates unemployment would become worse. If the government tried to stimulate employment, inflation would rise. Carter was an economic conservative. While he considered an industrial policy to bail out the ailing manufacturing sector, he instead moved to in a free-market direction by lifting the New Deal-era regulation of the airline, trucking, and railroad industries. Deregulation stimulated competition and cut prices, but it also drove firms out of business and hurt unionized workers. Carter's efforts failed to reignite economic growth. With stagflation, an inflation rate of 11%, and long lines at the gas pumps, Cater's approval rating fell below 30%.

A. Philip Randolph

A labor leader and civil rights activist who organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African American labor union. In the early Civil Rights Movement, Randolph led the March on Washington Movement, which convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. The plan had been to bring 100,000 protesters to the nation's capital if African Americans were not given equal opportunity in war jobs. FDR wanted to avoid the protest, and thus issued the order. Randolph's efforts showed that white leaders and institutions could be swayed by concerted African American action, which would become a critical lesson for the civil rights movement. Later, Randolph would successfully pressure President Harry S. Truman to issue Executive Order 9981 in 1948, ending segregation in the armed services.

Phyllis Schlafly

A lawyer active in conservative causes. Despite her career as a lawyer, she advocated traditional roles for women. She proclaimed that the ERA would create an unnatural "unisex society," with women drafted into the army and forced to use single-sex toilets. She claimed abortion could never be prohibited by law. She founded the organization, STOP ERA mobilizing thousands of women who showed up at statehouses with home-baked bread and apple pies. The message resonated widely, especially among those troubled by the rapid pace of social change. The ERA was never ratified, even after a congressional extension of the deadline to 1982.

Vietnamization

A new U.S. policy, devised under President Nixon in the early 1970s, of delegating the ground fighting to the South Vietnamese in the Vietnam War. American troop levels dropped and the American casualties dropped correspondingly, but the killing in Vietnam continued.

women's liberation

A new women's liberation movement emerged out of the New Left, antiwar and civil rights movements, where women discovered that the male leaders considered them little more than pretty helpers who typed memos and fetched coffee. Women who tried to raise feminist issues at civil rights and antiwar events were shouted off the platform with jeers such as "Move on, little girl, we have more important issues to talk about here than women's liberation. A much broader view of women's oppression emerged. More was required than simply equal opportunity as it was necessary for a culture that regarded women as nothing more than men's helpmates and sexual objects to change as well.

Three Mile Island

A nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where a reactor core came close to a meltdown in March 1979. After the incident, no nuclear plants were authorized in the United States, though a handful with existing authorization were built the 1980s.

energy crisis

A period of fuel shortages in the United States after the Arab states in OPEC declared an oil embargo in October 1973.

collective bargaining

A process of negotiation between labor unions and employers, which after WWII translated into rising wages, expanding benefits, and an increasing rate of home ownership. After WWII, for the first time trade unions and collective bargaining became major factor's in the nation's economic life. When labor unions first started, they had been confined to a narrow band of craft trades and a few industries. But postwar labor unions overwhelmingly represented America's industrial workforce. By the beginning of the 1950s, most major industries were operating with union contracts. (Auto, steel, clothing, chemicals, and virtually all manufacturing.) The average worker with 3 dependents gained 18% in spendable real income in the 1950s. Unions also delivered greater leisure with more paid holidays and longer vacations, as well as a social safety net - pension plans and health benefits. (However, this postwar labor-management truce would not last far into the future.)

Loyalty-Security Program (Executive Order 9835)

A program created in 1947 by President Truman that permitted officials to investigate any employee of the federal government for subversive activities. While Truman intended the order to apply primarily to actions designed to harm the U.S., such as treason or sabotage, it was used broadly to accuse people of subversion for even the slightest reason. It was used to dismiss anyone deemed "unfit" for government work including gay men and lesbians.

Peace Corps

A program launched by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 through which young American volunteers helped with education, health and other projects in developing countries around the world. It represented the call to public service he incorporated into his inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." The Peace Corps was a low-cost Cold War weapon whose mission was to show the developing world that there was an alternative to communism.

Nation of Islam

A religion founded in the United States that became a leading source of black nationalist thought in the 1960s. Black Muslims preached an apocalyptic brand of Islam, anticipating the day when Allah would banish the white "devils" and give the black nation justice. Nation of Islam fused a rejection of Christianity with a strong philosophy of self-improvement. Black Muslims adhered to a strict code of personal behavior and dress (men in dark suits with white shirts and ties and women in long dresses with head coverings). Although full converts only numbered about 10,000, the Nation of Islam had a wide popular following in northern cities.

Joseph McCarthy

A senator from Wisconsin. In 1950, McCarthy gave a speech claiming to have the names of 205 people who were members of the Communist Party and were working within the State Department. In different speeches McCarthy made different claims about the number of people on the list, but he never released any names or any proof. As the chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, McCarthy waged a smear campaign. Anyone who disagreed with him laid themselves open to charges that they were "soft" on communism. While Truman called McCarthy's charges "slander, lies [and] character assassination" but but was ineffective at stopping him. McCarthy almost exclusively targeted Democrats and Republicans remained silent accepting the political benefits to their party. McCarthy failed to identify a single Communist in government. Finally, he overreached when he launched an investigation into subversive activities within the U.S. Army and support for him plummeted. He was ultimately censured by the Senate for unbecoming conduct.

Jim Crow

A system of racial segregation in the south that lasted a century, from after the civil war until the 1960s. Jim Crow prevailed in every aspect of life in southern states, where two-thirds of African Americans lived in 1950. African Americans could not eat in restaurants patronized by whites, there were separate waiting rooms at bus stations, public transportation was segregated by custom or law. Public parks and libraries were segregated and even drinking fountains were labeled "White" and "Colored." Virtually no African American could work for city or state government and the best jobs in the private sector were reserved for whites. Black workers labored "*in the back*," cleaning, cooking, stocking shelves, and loading trucks for the lowest wages. Rural African Americans labored in a *sharecropping system* that kept them stuck in poverty, and often *prevented them from getting an education*, offering no way to escape poverty.

military-industrial complex

A term that President Eisenhower used to refer to the military establishment and defense contractors who, he warned, exercised undue influence over national government. In fact Eisenhower's administration had fostered this defense establishment, but he nevertheless feared the influence it could have over the government. The complex had its roots in the business-government partnerships of WWII. After the war, the onset of the Cold War the government operated in a state of perpetual readiness for war increasing the size of the Department of Defense (DOD) and resulting in long-term relationships between defense-industries and the Pentagon. Nearly 3.5 million Americans were employed by the complex by 1961. While in previous periods of peace military spending had constituted only 1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), now it represented 10 percent. Some private companies generated over 60% of their income from government contracts. Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Lockheed, Republic Aviation, McDonnell Douglas, General Electric, and General Dynamics all benefitted greatly from military contracts with the DOD. The country's economic growth thus became increasingly dependent on a robust defense sector. As time went on, science, industry, and government became more intertwined with government spending on the race to the moon and aviation research, electricity and electronics research, scientific research, and automobiles. With this government financial assistance, these industries found ways to transform new technologies into useful products.

National Defense Education Act

After the Soviets launched the first satellite, President Eisenhower became concerned that the United states was falling behind in science and technology. He persuaded Congress to appropriate additional money for college scholarships and university research. The National Defense of Education Act of 1958 funneled millions of dollars into American universities helping institutions such as UC, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, and University of Michigan become the leading research centers in the world.

environmentalism

Activist movement begun in the 1960s that was concerned with protecting the environment though activities such as conservation, pollution control measures, and public awareness campaigns. In response to the new environmental consciousness, the federal government staked out a broad role in environmental regulation in the 1960s and 1970s.

Title IX

Adopted by Congress in 1972, it broadened the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include educational institutions, prohibiting colleges and universities that received federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex. By requiring comparable funding for sports programs, Title IX made women's athletics a real presence on college campuses.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

After Rosa Parks arrest, Martin Luther King Jr. endorsed a plan to boycott riding on Montgomery's busses. The plan was originally that of a local black women's organization. It was inspired by similar boycotts that had taken place in Harlem in 1941 and Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1953. For 381 days Montgomery's African Americans formed car pools or walked to work, refusing to use the bus system. Many of the busses were nearly empty and the transit company neared bankruptcy. Local stores complained about the loss of business. But it was not until the SCOTUS ruled in November 1956 that bus segregation was unconstitutional that the City of Montgomery finally complied.

Israel

After WWII, many survivors of the Nazi extermination camps resettled in Palestine, which was controlled by Britain under a WWI mandate. In November 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine between Jewish and Arab sectors. When the British mandate ended in 1948, Zionist leaders proclaimed the state of Israel. The Arab League invaded but Israel survived. During the fighting many Palestinians fled and became permanently stranded in refugee camps. President Truman recognized the state immediately.

38th Parallel

After WWII, the U.S. and Soviet Union had agreed to jointly occupy the Korean peninsula, which had been a Japanese colony. It was at this time that the 38th parallel was established as a temporary line of demarcation between the territory occupied by the U.S. in the south and the territory occupied by the Soviets in the north. As tensions in Europe rose, this line became permanent with the Soviets supporting a Communist government in North Korea (led by Kim Il Sung)and the United States supporting a right-wing Nationalist government in South Korea (led by Syngman Rhee).

Richard M. Nixon

After losing the presidential race in 1960 and the California gubernatorial (governor's) race in 1962, he won the Republican presidential nomination in 1968. Nixon and his advisors believed that there were two groups ready to switch to the Republican Party, northern working class voters and southern whites. Nixon won over a key southern endorsement from Democrat-turned-Republican senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Nixon told Thurmond that while his administration would have to formally support civil rights, they would go easy on enforcement. Nixon then campaigned against the antiwar movement, pledging to represent the "quiet voice" of the forgotten Americans, the nonshouters and nondemonstrators. Nixon won the election by about 500,000 votes.

Marshall Plan

Aid program begun in 1948 to help European Countries recover from WWII. The United States gave nearly $13 billion to this European recovery program. It was named after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall

Alfred Kinsey

Alfred Kinsey conducted studies about human sexuality and documented the full range of sexual experiences of thousands of Americans. He broke numerous taboos, discussing topics such as homosexuality and marital infidelity in scientific terms. By the early 1950s a hidden sexual revolution had begun. Kinsey estimated that 85% of men had sex prior to marriage and that 25% of married men had sex outside of marriage by the time they were 40. He also estimated that approximately 10% of men were exclusively homosexual, with much higher numbers of men having experienced some type of homosexual experience. Women too were found to have engaged in homosexual acts but at a much lower rate. His findings helped homosexuals begin to be involved in activism in support of gay rights.

Medicaid

Also passed in 1965, a health plan for the poor paid for by general tax revenues and administered by the states.

Dolores Huerta

An American labor leader and civil rights activist who, along with Cesar Chavez, was the co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. As a young activist she worked with the Community Service Organization (CSO) promoting civil rights for Mexican Americans.

Barry Goldwater

An Arizona Republican senator, Goldwater was an archconservative. He ran on an anticommunist, antigovernment platform representing a genuinely conservative alternative to liberalism rather than an echo of liberalism offered by the moderate wing of the Republican Party. Goldwater campaigned against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and promised a more vigorous Cold War foreign policy. With Johnson campaigning as the man to fulfill Kennedy's legacy, Johnson won by a landslide. However, *Goldwater's candidacy marked the beginning of a grassroots conservative revolt that would eventually transform the Republican Party*.

Freedom of Information Act

An act passed in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which gave citizens access to federal records.

Earth Day

An annual event honoring the environment that was first celebrated on April 22, 1970, when 20 million citizens gathered in communities across the country to express their support for a cleaner, healthier planet. The establishment of Earth Day was spurred in part by 3 major events: an offshore drilling rig spilled millions of gallons of oil off the coast of Santa Barbara; the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland burst into flames because of the accumulation of flammable chemicals on its surface; and Friends of the Everglades opposed an airport that threatened plants and wildlife in Florida.

stagflation

An economic term coined in the 1970s to describe the condition in which inflation and unemployment rise at the same time. Stagflation was difficult to solve. If the government focused on inflation and raised interest rates unemployment would become worse. If the government tried to stimulate employment, inflation would rise.

Sierra Club

An environmental organization that successfully fought two damns in 1966 that would have flooded the Grand Canyon.

Billy Graham

An evangelical Protestant preacher who used television, radio, and advertising to reach his audience. His massive 1949 revival in Los Angeles and his 1957 crusade at Madison Square Garden in NYC was attended or viewed by hundreds of thousands of Americans, establishing him as the nation's leading evangelical. Graham and other evangelical preachers (such as Robert Schuller) told Americans that it was acceptable to embrace the consumer culture, telling them that if they lived moral lives then they deserved the material blessings of modern life.

Environmental Agenda under Johnson

An expanded national park system, improvement of the nation's air and water, protection of endangered species, stronger land-use planning, and highway beautification.

Bretton Woods

An international conference in New Hampshire in July 1944 that established the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Together the World Bank and the IMF formed the cornerstones of the Bretton Woods system, which guided the global economy after the war. In 1947, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) joined the Bretton Woods system in order to establish an international framework for overseeing trade rules and practices. The three together served America's conception of an open-market global economy and assisted with the U.S.'s diplomatic aims during the Cold War. Bretton Woods and GATT favored the U.S. at the expense of recently independent countries because the U.S could set the lending terms and stood to benefit as nations purchased more American goods. But at the same time the system worked because it provided needed economic stability.

Young Lords Organization

An organization formed by Puerto Ricans in New York who were inspired by the Black Panthers. Like the Black Panthers, YLO activist sought self-determination for Puerto Ricans, both those in the U.S. and those on the island of Puerto Rico. They worked on improving conditions in Puerto Rican neighborhoods in East Harlem, where most Puerto Ricans lived. Conditions there were bad with substandard city garbage collection and squalid conditions in housing owned by slumlords. Women in the YLO protested sterilization campaigns and fought to improve access to health care. While victories were not immediate, this organization produced a generation of leaders, many of whom later went into politics.

STOP ERA

An organization founded by Phyllis Schlafly in 1972 to stop the equal rights amendment.

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

An organization founded during the Freedom Summer in response to blacks being banned from the Mississippi Democratic party. MFDP leaders were determined to attend the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey as the legitimate representatives of the state. At the convention the MFDP challenged the most powerful figures in the Democratic Party, including Lyndon Johnson. Despite their efforts, the all white delegation from Mississippi was seated at the convention and they refused to recognized the MFDP.

Taft-Hartley Act

An overhaul of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, it was passed by the Republican controlled Congress in 1947. (Truman vetoed it but it was passed over his veto). The act placed restrictions on organized labor that made it more difficult for unions to organize workers, including section 14b, which allowed states to pass "right to work laws" prohibiting union shops. The law also forced unions to purge communists, who had been the most successful organizers during the 1930s. The act effectively contained the labor movement from moving into the South and into industries not already organized. Trade unions did continue to support the Democratic Party.

1968 Democratic National Convention

At the convention the political divisions generated by the war consumed the party. Thousands of protesters descended upon the city of Chicago, where the convention was being held. Two of the protesters from the Youth International Party there made it their goal to gain media attention for their cause. These "Yippies", Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin nominated a Pig, Pigasus, for president. Larger and more serious groups of activists were there to demonstrate against the war as well and they started what many came to call the *Siege of Chicago*. The Democratic mayor Richard J. Daley ordered the police to break up demonstrations, of which there were many. On the evening of the nominations, a "police riot" ensued with the officers attacking protesters with tear gas and clubs. Television networks broadcast scenes of the riots, *cementing the impression that the Democratic Party was in a state of disarray*. Hubert H. Humphrey became the democratic nomination and the delegates adopted a middle-of-the road platform that endorsed continued fighting in Vietnam while simultaneously seeking a diplomatic solution.

Martin Luther King Jr.

At the time Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was the recently appointed pastor of Montgomery's Dexter Street Baptist Church. King embraced the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. King had worked with Bayard Rustin in the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and had studied nonviolent philosophy. King endorsed the plan for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which had originally been proposed by a local black women's organization. It was the Montgomery Bus Boycott that brought King national attention. In 1957, along with Jesse Jackson and other southern black ministers, formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). After riots in Watts, Detroit, Newark, and other major cities over a 4 year period from 1964 to 1968, King began to expand his vision beyond civil rights to the problems of poverty and racism in America. He criticized President LBJ and Congress for prioritizing the war in Vietnam over the fight against poverty at home. King planned a massive movement called the Poor People's Campaign to fight economic injustice. He went to Memphis, Tennessee to advance that cause. In Memphis on April 4, 1968 MLK was assassinated by an escaped white convict James Earl Ray. Kings' death set off a further round of urban rioting with major violence breaking out in over 100 cities.

Allen Ginsberg

Author and writer of the poem *Howl*, which became the manifesto of the Beat generation. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix."

Rachel Carson

Author of *Silent Spring*. Carson was a biologist. Her book was a stunning analysis of the pesticide DDT's toxic impact on the human and natural food chains.

Betty Friedan

Author of *The Feminine Mystique*, who argued for women to become educated and to work outside the home in order to have rich and fulfilling lives. Friedan was the first President of the *National Organization of Women (NOW)*

Jack Kerouac

Beat author. Wrote the novel *On the Road* in which he glorified spontaneity, sexual adventurism, drug use, and spirituality.

the long hot summer

Began in 1964 in NYC when police shot a black criminal suspect in Harlem. Angry youths looted and rioted for a week. Over the next four years, the volatile issue of police brutality set of riots in dozens of cities. In August 1965, the arrest of a young black motorcyclist in LA sparked six days of rioting (the Watts Riots) that left 34 people dead. The riots of 1967 were the most serious, affecting 22 cities, including Detroit and Newark, in July and August. In addition to the numerous lives lost in each of the riots, they caused millions of dollars in property damage.

Consolidation of corporate power

Beginning in the 20th century, the consolidation of economic power into large corporate firms had characterized American capitalism. In the postwar decades, that tendency accelerated. By 1970, the top four U.S. automakers produced 91% of all vehicles sold in the U.S. It was similar for tires (72%), cigarettes (84%), detergents (70%). Expansion into foreign markets also spurred corporate growth. In the 1950s U.S. exports nearly doubled. By the 1970s large corporations such as Coca-Cola, Gillette, IBM, and Mobile made more than half of their profits abroad.

Freedom Summer

Black organizers mounted a campaign in Mississippi to remove obstacles to black voting rights, which had not been addressed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The effort drew thousands of volunteers from across the country, including nearly 1,000 white college students from the North. These activists spread out across the state. They established freedom schools for black children and conducted a major voter registration drive. White opposition was so prevalent that only about 1200 black voters were registered to vote. Four civil rights workers were murdered and thirty-seven black churches were bombed or burned.

Shopping malls

By the late 1950s, the suburban shopping center had become a part of the American landscape along with the suburban developments. A major developer of shopping malls in the Northeast called them *crystallization points for suburbia's community life*. These malls brought the market to the people instead of the people to the market. In 1939, the suburban share of metropolitan retail trade was 4%; by 1961, it was 60%.

Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez was an American farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist. As a young activist he worked with the Community Service Organization (CSO) promoting civil rights for Mexican Americans. Later, he with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers union, UFW). Chavez became the best known Latino American civil rights activist and inspired the Chicano movement of the 1960s. He was strongly promoted by the American labor movement, which was eager to enroll Hispanic members. His public-relations approach to unionism and aggressive but nonviolent tactics made the farm workers' struggle a moral cause with nationwide support. By the late 1970s, his tactics had forced growers to recognize the UFW as the bargaining agent for 50,000 field workers in California and Florida.

evangelicalism

Church membership jumped from 49% of the population in 1940 to 70% in 1960. Fears of nuclear annihilation and the spread of "godless communism" drove Americans to reaffirm their faith. Many flocked to evangelical Protestant denominations.

Billy Graham

Cofounder of Youth for Christ in 1945, he toured the United States and Europe preaching the gospel. Following a stunning 1949 tent revival in Los Angeles that lasted 8 hours, Graham shot to national fame. His success in Los Angeles lead to a popular radio program. As he continued to travel, he conducted old fashioned revival meetings he called crusades. A massive 16 week crusade at Radio City's Madison Square Garden made Graham one of the most visible religious leaders. Graham and other evangelicals in the 1950s and 1960s laid the groundwork for the Fourth Great Awakening. Divorce rates, social unrest, and challenges to family values were what led people to seek the stability of faith. Additionally, many Americans regarded feminism, the counterculture, sexual freedom, homosexuality, pornography, and legalized abortion as a collective sign of moral decay. To seek answers and find order, more and more people turned to evangelical ministries and preachers such as Graham.

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

College students began to organize and agitate for social change. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, they founded *Students for a Democratic Society* in 1960. Two years later, 40 students from the Big Ten and Ivy League Universities held the first National SDS conference in Port Huron, Michigan. *Tom Hayden* penned a manifesto, *The Port Huron Statement* expressing students' disillusionment with the nation's consumer culture and the gulf between the rich and poor. These students *rejected the Cold War foreign policy, including the war in Vietnam*. The founders of the SDS movement referred to themselves as the *New Left* to distinguish themselves from the old left - communists and socialists of the 1930s and 1940s.

Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)

Conservative students in this group asserted their faith in "God-given free will" and their fear that federal government accumulates the power which tends to diminish order and liberty." The YAF was the largest political organization in the country. They defended free enterprise and supported the war in Vietnam. Its founding principles were in "*The Sharon Statement* (drafted in Sharon, Connecticut) two years before the Port Huron Statement. It inspired young conservatives, many of whom would play important roles in the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

*The Other America*

Echoing the sentiments of *The Affluent Society*, Michael Harrington's book, *The Other America*, chronicled the economic underworld of American life, noting that "one-third of the nation" was poorly paid, poorly educated, and poorly housed. While the top and middle of society converged, the bottom still stayed far behind.

"New Look"

Eisenhower's "New Look" policy stepped of production of the hydrogen bomb and developed long-range bombing capabilities. [The main elements of the New Look were: (1) maintaining the vitality of the U.S. economy while still building sufficient strength to prosecute the Cold War; (2) relying on nuclear weapons to deter Communist aggression or, if necessary, to fight a war; (3) using the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry out secret or covert actions against governments or leaders "directly or indirectly responsive to Soviet control"; and (4) strengthening allies and winning the friendship of nonaligned governments. ]

American Indian Movement (AIM)

Embracing the concept of Red Power, the groups Indians of All Tribes (IAT) and *American Indian Movement (AIM)* staged escalating protests to draw attention to Indian concerns. AIM managed to focus national media attention with a siege at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1973. While violence left two people dead, it attracted widespread media coverage on spurred government action on tribal issues, as had African American protests in the decade preceding it.

John F. Kennedy

First Catholic President of the United States. Kennedy was a Cold Warrior who projected an air of idealism but as a senator he had shown that he was a conventional cold war politician. Kennedy brought to Washington young, ambitious men to join the New Frontier, his term for the challenges facing the country.

Vaccinations and Improvements in Health Care

Formerly serious illnesses became routine after the development and widespread use of vaccinations for things like polio. Other drugs such as penicillin, streptomycin, and cortisone helped to control other illnesses.

Potsdam Conference

Followed the Yalta Conference. Harry Truman instinctively stood up to Stalin, but no action was taken because Truman was new and had no previous experience in world affairs.

United Farmworkers Union (UFW)

Founded by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, this was a union for migrant workers. A 1965 grape picker's strike led the UFW to call a nationwide boycott of table grapes, bringing Chavez huge publicity and backing from the AFL-CIO. To draw attention to the struggle, Chavez staged a hunger strike in 1968, which dramatically ended after 28 days, with Senator Robert F. Kennedy at Chavez's side to break the fast. In 1970 victory was achieved when California grape growers signed contracts recognizing the UFW.

Christmas bombing

Following the breakdown of peace talks with North Vietnam just a few days earlier, President Richard Nixon announces the beginning of a massive bombing campaign to break the stalemate. For nearly two weeks, American bombers pounded North Vietnam. On December 13, peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam collapsed. The North Vietnamese and American negotiators traded charges and countercharges as to who was to blame. Infuriated, President Nixon ordered plans drawn up for retaliatory bombings of North Vietnam. Linebacker II was the result. Beginning on December 18, American B-52s and fighter-bombers dropped over 20,000 tons of bombs on the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The United States lost 15 of its giant B-52s and 11 other aircraft during the attacks. North Vietnam claimed that over 1,600 civilians were killed. The bombings continued until December 29, at which time the North Vietnamese agreed to resume the talks. A few weeks later, the final Paris Peace Treaty was signed and the Vietnam War came to a close, ending the U.S. role in a conflict that seriously damaged the domestic Cold War consensus among the American public. The impact of the so-called "Christmas Bombings" on the final agreement was difficult to assess. Some historians have argued that the bombings forced the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table. Others have suggested that the attacks had little impact, beyond the additional death and destruction they caused. Even the chief U.S. negotiator, Henry Kissinger, was reported to have said, "We bombed the North Vietnamese into accepting our concessions." The chief impact may have been in convincing America's South Vietnamese allies, who were highly suspicious of the draft treaty worked out in October 1972, that the United States would not desert them. In any event, the final treaty did not include any important changes from the October draft.

Kerner Commission Report

Following the riots in Detroit and Newark, President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) appointed Otto Kerner as the head of a presidential commission to investigate the causes of the riots. Released in 1968, the Kerner Commission Report was a searing look at race and America, the most honest and forthright government document about race since the Presidential Committee on Civil Rights 1947 report. The report stated, "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal. While the report did not excuse the riots, it put the rage of the rioters in context - shut out of the white-dominated society, impoverished African Americans felt they had no stake in the social order.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Formed by MLK, Jesse Jackson and other southern black ministers in 1957, the SCLC had the backing of Christian churches, long the center of African American social and cultural life. Now the civil rights movement had the organizational strength of these black churches behind it. Additionally, black churchwomen could transfer the skills they had honed doing work for the church to fight for civil rights. The SCLC joined the NAACP at the leading edge for the push for racial justice.

Ms. Magazine

Founded by Gloria Steinem and other women's rights activists, the magazine made its first appearance in 1972. These women believed that women needed a feminist magazine distinct from the lifestyle magazines such as McCall's and Redbook. Ms. Magazine would take on issues relevant to women such as reproductive rights, childcare, employment, educational equality, sexual harassment, and marriage and relations between men and women.

James Farmer

Founder of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) a civil rights organization. It was founded in 1942 in Chicago byFarmer and other members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) that promoted nonviolent direct action. In 1961 CORE organized a series of what were called Freedom Rides on interstate bus lines throughout the South to call attention to blatant violations of Supreme Court rulings against segregation in interstate commerce.

Gross domestic product

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period. GDP is usually calculated on an annual basis.

George F. Kennan

He first proposed the idea of *containment* in a confidential cable to the U.S. State Department. Kennan had a post at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Kennan made a case for the proposition that the Soviet Union was an "Oriental despotism" and that communism was the "fig leaf" justifying Soviet aggression. In an article he later published, Kennan called for "long-term patient but firm and vigorous containment of Russian expansive tendencies." Thus, containment became the word that would define America's approach toward the Soviet Union.

Fidel Castro

In 1959 Fidel Castro overthrew the right wing dictator Fulgenico Batista and declared a revolution. His troops defeated the exiles sent to the Bay of Pigs to overthrow him.

"To Secure These Rights"

In 1946, Truman appointed the Presidential Committee on Civil Rights, whose 1947 Report, "*To Secure These Rights*, called for federal action to ensure equality for African Americans. After the report was issued, Truman responded by issuing an executive order desegregating federal agencies, and under pressure from A. Philip Randolph and other activists, he also desegregated the military. Truman then sent a message to Congress asking that all of the reports recommendations be made into law. This included the abolition of poll taxes and the restoration of the Fair Employment Practices Commission. It was the most aggressive and politically bold call for racial equality by a political party since Reconstruction.

*Mendez v. Westminster School District*

In 1947, five Mexican American fathers sued a local school district for placing their children in separate Mexican schools. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that *such segregation was unconstitutional*, laying the legal groundwork for broader challenges to racial inequality. The NAACP's Thurgood Marshall filed a brief in the case.

Suez Canal

In 1952 Gamal Abdel Nasser led a military coup, overthrowing the monarchy and creating a constitutional republic. Nasser sought to end the Middle East's colonial relationship with the West. In 1956 negotiations with the U.S. for Egypt to build a hydroelectric dam on the Nile failed. Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, which was the lifeline for Western Europe's oil. Britain, France allied with Israel and attacked Egypt, seizing the canal. The U.S.'s President Eisenhower asked France and Britain to pull back, fearing the Egypt would seek assistance from the Soviets. The UN General Assembly added pressure, calling for a truce and troop withdrawal. When the Western nations backed down, Egypt reclaimed the Suez Canal and built a dam on the Nile with Soviet support. The end result was the loss of Nasser as a potential ally in the Middle East.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

In 1962 Kennedy persuaded Congress to increase funding for NASA in order to land a man on the moon within a decade. He was motivated by the Cold War competition with the Soviets, who had already beaten the U.S. into space with the 1957 *Sputnik* satellite and the 1961 flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The increased funding allowed the U.S. to pull ahead of the Soviets and U.S. astronauts arrived on the moon in 1969.

Education under Johnson

In 1965 he passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which authorized $1 billion in federal funds for teacher training and other educational programs. A short time later, Johnson passed the Higher Education Act, providing federal scholarships for college students.

Geneva Accords

In August of 1945, the Japanese occupiers of Vietnam surrendered to China in the north and Britain in the south. The Vietnamese nationalist movement,that had led the fight against the Japanese seized control of the north. Their leader was Ho Chi Minh, a communist. The French had previously colonized Vietnam and sought to regain control over the country. Based on its anti-communist policy, the U.S. provided financing for the French war against the Vietnamese Nationalists (the Vietminh) fighting for the liberation of their country. After a 56 day siege in 1954, the French were defeated. The result was the 1954 *Geneva Accords*, which partitioned Vietnam temporarily at the 17th parallel and called for elections within two years to unify the nation. The U.S. rejected the Geneva Accords. With the help of the CIA, a pro-American government took power in South Vietnam in June of 1954, helping to install its President Ngo Kinh Diem in rigged elections. Knowing he would be defeated by Ho Chi Minh, Diem called off the scheduled reunification elections. The last French soldiers left in 1956, but the U.S. propped up Diem's government with financial aid and military advisors.

Rosa Parks

In December of 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Rosa Parks was a civil rights leader and a longtime member of the NAACP. She had been contemplating doing this for some time. Ms. Parks was middle aged and unassuming a good pick for the person to help the NAACP challenge segregated buses. Ms. Parks was arrested and charged with violating a local segregation ordinance.

Greensboro Sit-Ins

In February 1960, 4 black college students came up with the idea to sit at the white only seats at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Woolworth's said that they would abide by local custom, meaning that they would refuse to serve the men. The students were determined to "sit in" until they were served. For three weeks, hundreds of students inspired by the original four took turns sitting at the counters, quietly eating, doing homework, or reading. These activists were taunted by groups of whites and were often pelted with food and debris. The students, who at time occupied all 66 seats, held strong. While many were arrested, Woolworth's finally desegregated their lunch counter. Sit-ins then quickly spread to other cities.

Berlin Wall

In June of 1961, Nikita Khrushchev stopped movement between Communist-controlled East Berlin and the city's Western sector. Kennedy sent 40,000 additional troops to Europe. In order to stop East Germans from fleeing, the Communist regime in East Germany constructed the Berlin Wall and policed the border with guards who were ordered to shoot to kill anyone crossing trying to cross to the West. This wall stood as the most concrete image of the Cold War until it came down in 1989.

Bloody Sunday

In March of 1965, James Bevel of the SCLC called for a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to protest the murder of a voting rights activist. As soon as 600 marchers left Selma, crossing over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, mounted state troopers attacked them with tear gas and clubs. The scene was shown on national television and the day became known as *Bloody Sunday*. Calling the episode an "American tragedy", Lyndon Johnson went back to Congress.

Great Society

In a speech by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the University of Michigan, he talked about the Great Society. " We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society but upward toward the Great Society. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice." Johnson set forth his *agenda to renew American education, rebuild the cities, and restore the natural environment*.

Thurgood Marshall

In the 1930s, he was a lawyer for the NAACP. Along with other NAACP lawyers (Charles Hamilton Houston and William Hastie), he began preparing a strategy to advance African American civil rights through the federal court system in a series of cases. The key to his strategy was to prod the SCOTUS into using the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause to overturn its 1896 ruling in *Plessy v. Ferguson*, which upheld racial segregation under the "separate but equal doctrine." In 1936, Marshall and Hamilton won a state case that forced the University of Maryland Law School to admit qualified African American students (Marshall himself had been rejected by the law school and had enrolled at the all black Howard University.) In 1950, Marshall won another victory when the SCOTUS ruled in *McLaurin v. Oklahoma* that universities could not segregate black students from others on campus. One of his biggest victories came in the case of *Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka* which overturned *Plessy v. Ferguson* and the doctrine of "separate but equal." In the late 1960s, he was appointed to the Supreme Court by Lyndon B. Johnson. He was the first African American Supreme Court Justice.

Mexican American Civil Rights

In the 1940s, they endured a "caste" system not unlike the Jim Crow system in the South. In Texas, poll taxes kept most Mexican American citizens from voting. Decades of discrimination in the manufacturing and agricultural industries, made possible by the constant supply of cheap immigrant labor from Mexico, kept wages low and kept the majority of Mexican Americans barely above poverty. Many lived in *colonias* or *barrios, neighborhoods separated from Anglos and often lacking sidewalks, reliable electricity and water, and public services. Labor activism in the 1930s and 1940s helped set the stage for the civil rights fight for Mexican Americans in the 1940s. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions with large numbers of Mexican Americans improved wages and working conditions and produced a new generation of leaders. More than 400,000 Mexican Americans fought in WW II and upon their return were determined to challenge their second-class citizenship. Additionally, a new Mexican American middle class began to take shape in major cities, such as Los Angeles, San Antonio, El Paso, and Chicago, which, like the African American middle class, gave leaders and resources to the cause. Mexican Americans created new civil rights organizations in the postwar years. One such group was the Community Service Organization (CSO) founded in Los Angeles and another was the American GI Forum in Texas. While these groups initially arose to address specific local injustices, they quickly broadened their scope to encompass political and economic justice for the larger community.

Japanese American Civil Rights

Japanese Americans also went to the courts to challenge discrimination. While wartime cases had upheld the imprisonment of Japanese American citizens, civil rights leaders in the Japanese community pushed forward with the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) filing lawsuits in the late 1940s to regain property lost during the war. The JACL also challenged the constitutionality of California's Alien Land Law, which prohibited Japanese immigrants from owning land. They successfully lobbied Congress to allow Japanese immigrants to become citizens, a right denied to the Japanese for 50 years.

Other Great Society Programs

Johnson oversaw the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); won funding for public housing and rapid transit (Washington, DC Metro system and BART in Northern California); ushered new child safety and consumer protection laws, through Congress; and helped to create the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the work of artists, writers, and scholars. He also helped to push through the Immigration Act of 1965, which abandoned the quota system that favored northern Europeans.

Bay of Pigs

Kennedy followed through on Eisenhower's plan to send Cuban exiles to incite an anti-Castro uprising. By doing this he intended to keep the Soviets from supporting communism there. These exiles were trained by the CIA but they were not up to the challenge. The 1400 men sent to the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961 was crushed by Fidel Castro's troops. The CIA wanted a U.S. air strike but Kennedy rejected that idea and instead admitted defeat and apologized to the American people.

Ho Chi Minh

Leader of the Vietminh, the nationalist movement that led the resistance against the Japanese in Vietnam during WWII and the French before that. After the Japanese troops surrendered to China in the north and Britain in the south, the Vietminh seized control in the north. Ho Chi Minh was a Communist and because of this, the U.S. and Britain opposed nationalist self-determination in Vietnam despite stated policies favoring it. When France moved to regain control of the country, the U.S. and Britain supported it and ignored Ho's plea to support the Vietnamese fight for nationhood.

counterculture

Many other Americans embarked upon a general revolt against authority and middle class respectability. The "hippie", identified by ragged blue jeans or army fatigues, tie-dyed T-shirts, beads, and unkempt hair, symbolized the new counterculture. With roots in the 1950s Beat culture of New York's Greenwich Village and San Francisco's North Beach, the 1960s counterculture turned to folk music for its inspiration. Musicians such as Peter Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez wrote music reflecting the impatience of people whose faith in America was wearing thin. As American youth embraced this music, and then the music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Doors, the generational divide between the young and their elders deepened. The recreational use of drugs, such as marijuana and LSD, also deepened this divide. While few young people had any interest in an all out revolt, media coverage of the counterculture, especially during the *Summer of Love* in 1967, with large crowds gathering together, media attention made it seem as though American youth was rejecting the nation's social and cultural norms.

Mexican American Civil Rights Organizations

Mexican Americans had been politically active since the 1940s. While they shared some civil rights concerns with African Americans, they also had unique concerns, such as the status of Spanish language in the schools and immigration policy. Groups such as the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDF), and the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project mobilized Mexican Americans into a powerful voting bloc. Younger Mexican Americans grew impatient with these civil rights groups and, like the Black Panthers, adopted a more militant philosophy. In Los Angeles, militant groups such as the Brown Berets, modeled on the Black Panthers, rejected their elders' assimilationist approach (that is a belief in adapting to Anglo society). In fact the term Chicano was adopted by the youths to replace the term Mexican American. These Chicano youth organized the political party, La Raza Unida (The United Race) to promote Chicano interests much like the black freedom movement adopted Black Power.

Dr. Benjamin Spock

Middle class parents began to rely upon the advice of experts to keep their children happy. Dr. Benjamin Spock's book, *Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care* sold 1 million copies every year after its publication in 1946. Spock urged parents to abandon rigid feeding and baby-care schedules of earlier generations. Spock argued both that mothers should not be too protective in order to avoid hampering their children's preparation for adult life. But he also discouraged women from working because they needed to be constantly available for their children. These messages made American mothers feel that they had to aim for perfection. Some began to question these mixed messages, ultimately inspiring the resurgence of feminism in the 1960s.

Economic Opportunity Act

More than civil rights, what drove Johnson the hardest was his determination to "end poverty in our time." Johnson believed it was a national disgrace that while most Americans lived with plenty, one-fifth of all Americans lived in poverty, out of sight in Appalachia, urban ghettos, migrant labor camps, and Indian reservations. He believed for the first time in America's history it was possible to conquer poverty. His plan was set forth in the *Economic Opportunity Act* of 1964, which created a series of programs to help the poor - or what he termed the War on Poverty. The legislation included Head Start to provide free nursery schools to prepare disadvantaged preschoolers for kindergarten and The Job Corps and Upward Bound to provide young people with training and employment. VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) was a domestic program modeled on the Peace Corps programs abroad that offered technical assistance to the urban and rural poor. An array of regional development programs focused on spurring economic growth in impoverished areas. The 1964 Economic Opportunity Act focused more on services to the poor, rather than on jobs, with critics charging that the war on poverty was doing to little.

Freedom Rides

Motivated by the SNCC's sit-in tactics, in 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized a series of what were call freedom rides on interstate bus lines through the South. The aim was to call attention to the blatant violations of recent Supreme Court rulings against segregation in interstate commerce. Young activists, both black and white, signed on to participate. As civil rights activists across the country had started to do, they sang songs with lyrics expressing the cause. "I'm taking a ride on the Greyhound bus line .... Hallelujah, I'm traveling down freedom's main line!" The buses were attacked by violent KKK members when the buses stopped in small towns. One bus was firebombed, with the riders escaping only moments before it exploded. Some riders were brutally beaten. Despite the violence, state authorities refused to intervene. While the new president John F. Kennedy had committed to civil rights during his campaign, he had already failed to deliver on a civil rights bill, believing that he could not afford to lose the support of powerful southern senators. But with the violence against the Freedom Riders, which was shown nightly on the news, Attorney General Robert Kennedy was forced to dispatch federal marshals to quell the violence. Civil rights activists thus learned the value of nonviolent protest that provoked white resistance.

Henry Kissinger

National Security Advisor under Richard Nixon. Kissinger greatly influenced Nixon's foreign policy who believed that the Cold War impasse with the Soviet Union could be broken and that the U.S. and the Soviets could engage in a productive dialogue.

Kennedy assassination

November 1963

Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 22, 1962, Kennedy made a televised address disclosing that U.S. reconnaissance planes had spied Soviet-built bases from intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. Some weapons had already been installed with more on their way. Kennedy announced that the U.S. would impose a "quarantine on all offensive military equipment" on its way to Cuba. The world nervously watched to see if the conflict would turn into a war. On October 25th, ships carrying Soviet missiles turned back. During negotiations, both Kennedy and Khrushchev made concessions, with Kennedy promising not to invade Cuba and Khrushchev promising to disassemble the missile bases. Kennedy also secretly order the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey as another concession to Khrushchev. The risk of the nuclear war was the greatest during this incident.

Black Panther Party

One of the most radical black nationalist groups. It was founded in Oakland, CA by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. It was a militant organization dedicated to protecting African Americans from police violence. Much of what they believed in were from the teachings of Malcolm X. They opposed the Vietnam War and declared their admiration for Third World revolutionary movements and armed struggle. The organization spread to other cities where members undertook a wide range of community organizing projects. They had free breakfast programs for children and testing for sickle-cell anemia. *Panthers' radicalism and belief in armed self-defense led to violent clashes with the police.* Newton was charged with murdering a police officer. Several Panthers were killed by police and many went to prison. The FBI had also begun disrupting party activities.

teenager

One of the most striking developments in American life in the postwar decades was the emergence of the teenager as a cultural phenomenon. This phenomenon first started to develop in the 1920s with its roots in the lengthening years of education, the role of peer groups, and the consumer tastes of young people. Postwar market research revealed a distinct teen market to be exploited. Hollywood movies played a large role in fostering teenage culture. The success of films like *The Wild One*, *Blackboard Jungle*, and *Rebel Without a Cause* convinced movie executives that films directed at teenagers were worthy investments. By the early 1960s, Hollywood had shifted its business model emphasizing teenagers as the moviegoers (away from adults and families). The "teenpic" soon included multiple genres: horror, rock and roll, dangerous youth, and beach party.

Medicare

Passed in 1965, this legislation established a health plan for the elderly funded by a surcharge on Social Security payroll taxes.

Ethics in Government Act

Passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the 1978 act forced political candidates to disclose financial contributions and limited the lobbying activities of former elected officials.

affirmative action

Policies established in the 1960s and 1970s by governments, businesses, universities, and other institutions to overcome the effects of past discrimination against specific groups such as racial and ethnic minorities and women. Measures to ensure equal opportunity include setting goals for admission, hiring, and promotion of minorities; considering minority status when allocating resources; and actively encouraging victims of past discrimination to apply for jobs and other resources.

Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill)

Popularly known as the GI Bill, this legislation authorized the government to provide WWII veterans with funds for education, housing, and health care, as well as loans to start businesses and buy homes. Middle-class status in the postwar years was more accessible than ever before because of the GI Bill. In the years following the war, more than half of all U.S. college students were veterans attending class at the expense of the government. By the middle 1950s, 2.2 million veterans had attended college and another 5.6 million had attended trade school with government financing. Prior to the GI Bill, a college education was not attainable for many of these men. This government financing of education helped to make the U.S. workforce the best educated in the world during the 1950s and 1960s. American colleges, universities, and trade schools expanded to accommodate the flood of students. In the 1960s, as the children of these students (baby boomers) reached college age, these schools expanded yet again. Better education meant higher earning power and higher earning power meant more consumer spending that drove the postwar economy. Additionally, the GI bill increased home ownership. By 1966, one in every five single-family homes built in the U.S. was financed through a GI Bill mortgage. The Veteran's Administration helped soldiers to purchase homes with no down payment, which in turn sparked a building boom that created jobs in the construction industry and fueled consumer spending in home appliances and automobiles.

baby boom

Postwar, the American middle class celebrated the idea of the nuclear family. Children were prized and women's caregiving roles were highly valued. This view of family life was bolster by Cold War politics; Americans who deviated from prevailing gender and familial norms were sometimes thought to be subversive. Marriages became remarkably stable and married couples were intent on having babies, with everyone expected to have several children. After a century and a half of decline, the birthrate shot up. More babies were born between 1948 and 1953 than in the previous thirty years. One of the reasons for this *baby boom* was that people were having children at the same time. Couples were marrying younger and with the depression over, couples stopped limiting the number of children they had. The baby boom peaked in 1957 but remained at a high level until the early 1960s. From the perspective of the 20th century, the 1950s and 1960s stand out as exceptions to declining birthrates, rising divorce rates, and the steadily rising marriage age. The baby boom had long term effects. When baby boomers competed for jobs in the 1970s, the job market became tight. The baby boom gave the nation's educational system a boost. Baby boomer parents placed a high value on education and school bond issues were approved 90% of the time in the 1950s. By 1970, expenditures on schools became 7.2% of the gross national product, double the level in 1950. In the 1960s, college enrollment dramatically increased as these boomer babies came of age. Then when career-oriented baby boomers began belatedly having children in the 1980s, the birthrate jumped. As baby boomers begin to retire soon, huge funding problems will threaten to overwhelm Social Security and Medicare.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

President Eisenhower coined the term military-industrial complex. While Eisenhower's administration had fostered this defense establishment, he nevertheless feared the influence it could have over the government stating, "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. By 1961, when Eisenhower made this speech, this complex employed 3.5 million Americans.

Eisenhower Doctrine

President Eisenhower's 1957 declaration that the United States would actively combat communism in the Middle East.

domino theory

President Eisenhower's theory of containment, which warned that the fall of a non-Communist government to communism in Southeast Asia would trigger the spread of communism to neighboring countries.

Truman Doctrine

President Harry S. Truman's commitment to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures." Specifically started to end the conflicts in Greece and Turkey in the 1947 in an effort to stop the spread of communism. It later became the justification for U.S. intervention into several countries during the Cold War.

Fast food

Ray Kroc established the McDonald's franchise of drive-in restaurants transforming the way Americans consumed food. His chain of restaurants was inexpensive, quick, and allowed families to eat in the restaurant, in the car, or at home.

Birmingham bombing

September of 1963, white supremacists bombed a Baptist church in Birmingham, killing four black girls attending Sunday school.

Nikita Khrushchev

Stalin's successor in the Soviet Union after an intra-party struggle following Stalin's death. He surprised communists around the world by denouncing Stalin and detailing his crimes and mistakes. He also called for "peaceful coexistence" with the West and for dealing more flexibly with dissent in communist countries. However, when in 1956 Hungarians rose up to demand independence from Moscow, Khrushchev crushed the emerging revolution.

Sunbelt

Suburban living, while a nationwide phenomenon, was even more prevalent in the Sunbelt, the southern and southwestern states, where taxes were low, the climate was mild, and open space allowed for sprawling subdivisions. Florida's population rose, with many moving there for retirement. Texas's petrochemical and defense industries encouraged people to move there. The most dramatic growth was in California, where the state's booming defense-related aircraft and electronics industries spurred relocation to the state. By 1970, California contained one-tenth of the nation's population and surpassed New York as the most populous state. *A distinctive feature to the Sunbelt suburbanization was its close relationship to the military-industrial complex*. Military bases were rapidly built in the South and Southwest, particularly in Florida, Texas, and California. Aerospace, defense, and electronics industries were based largely in Sunbelt metropolitan regions. Thousands of jobs were created, giving Sunbelt politicians incentives to support federal defense spending in their regions. Orange County, California was one of the best examples of this, making it a great place for Walt Disney to build Disneyland.

Gerald Ford

Sworn in as president after Nixon's resignation, Gerald Ford was the former Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives, who had replaced Spiro Agnew as the vice president when Agnew had resigned for accepting kickbacks as governor of Maryland. A month after taking office, Ford stunned the nation by granting Nixon a "full, free, and absolute pardon."

Chicano Moratorium Committee

Taking up the antiwar cause, the Chicano Moratorium Committee saw the Vietnam War as an unjust war against other people of color. They organized demonstrations against the war, chanting "Viva la Raza, Afuera Vietnam". Meaning long live the Chicano movement, get out of Vietnam. Along with Cesar Chavez, the movement argued that the draft was biased against the poor, as were most wars in history.

Watergate

Term referring to the 1972 break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., by men working for President Nixon's reelection campaign, along with Nixon's efforts to cover it up. The Watergate scandal led to President Nixon's resignation. The Watergate incident was not an isolated episode but was part of a broad pattern of an abuse of power by the White House obsessed with its enemies. The two masterminds were G. Gordon Liddy (former FBI agent) and E. Howard Hunt (former CIA agent).

My Lai

The 1968 execution by U.S. Army troops of nearly five hundred people in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai, including a large number of women and children.

Roe v. Wade

The 1973 SCOTUS ruling that the Constitution protects the right to abortion, which states cannot prohibit in the early stages of pregnancy. The decision galvanized social conservatives and made abortion a controversial policy for decades to come.

*The Affluent Society*

The American economy grew significantly in the postwar era. Annual GDP jumped from $213 billion in 1945 to $500 billion in 1960 to over $1 trillion in 1970. Along with this sustained economic growth (25% rise in real income between 1946 and 1959) there was low inflation making Americans even better off. With more disposable income, Americans were able to spend more. By 1940, 43% of Americans owned their homes and by 1960, 62% did. Income inequality dropped sharply as well, making America both more prosperous and more egalitarian. However, in his book *The Affluent Society*, John Kenneth Galbraith argued that the poor were only an afterthought in the minds of economists and politicians, who were busy celebrating economic prosperity. In fact, one in thirteen families earned less than $1000 a year ($7,500 in today's dollars).

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

The Berlin crisis convinced Western European nations to form a pact with the United States. For the first time since the American Revolution, the United States entered into a peaceful military alliance in April 1949. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization included twelve nations - Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United States. The treaty stated that an armed attack against any of these nations would "be considered an armed attack against them all." In May of 1949, these same nations agreed to the creation of the Republic of Germany (West Germany), which joined NATO in 1955.

Black activism against the war

The Black Panther Party and the National Black Antiwar Antidraft League spoke out against the war, pointing out that black Americans were going to fight in another country for the freedom that they did not yet have for themselves. Muhammad Ali, the most famous boxer in the world, refused his army induction and was sentenced to prison, although he was eventually acquitted on appeal. The action cost him his heavyweight boxing title and for years he could not box professionally in the United States.

religion in response to communism

The Cold War and the Russian denial of God, drew Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together, downplaying the doctrinal differences. The phrase "under God" was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 and U.S. coins carried the phrase "In God We Trust" after 1956. However, religion took a moderate tone compared with the politicized evangelism of later years beginning in the 1960s and 1970s.

Postwar Immigration

The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 permitted the entry of approximately 415,000 Europeans, many of them Jewish refugees. In a gesture to an important war ally, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed. Then in 1952 the McCarran-Walter Act, ended the exclusion of Japanese, Koreans, and Southeast Asians. Mexican immigration continued to grow. The Bracero Act, which allowed Mexican workers to migrate to the U.S. as workers to fill wartime labor shortages, ended in 1964 but Mexican immigration continued as Mexicans came to the U.S. to escape poverty and to earn money to return home to purchase land for farming. Migrants also came from Puerto Rico, settling in New York, and Cuba, with those migrants flocking to Miami. The end result was a major influx of Spanish speaking migrants, who changed the landscape of many major American cities, creating neighborhoods where bilingualism flourished. These Spanish speaking communities remained largely segregated from white neighborhoods, as well as from African American neighborhoods.

The Great Society's Success (or not)

The Great Society enjoyed mixed results. The proportion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 20% to 13%. Medicare and Medicaid were among its most enduring programs helping millions of elderly and poor citizens afford necessary health care. As more and more African Americans moved into the middle class, the black poverty rate fell by half. The Great Society dramatically improved the financial situation of the elderly, reached millions of children, and increased the racial diversity of American society and workplaces. However, entrenched poverty remained, racial segregation in the largest cities worsened, and the national distribution of wealth remained highly skewed. In relative terms, the bottom 20% remained far behind.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed by Congress after Johnson received reports that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had fired on a U.S. destroyer. In fact, one attack had left only a single bullet hole and the report of the second attack was actually a misread radar sighting. Based upon this, Johnson sought authorization to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." With only two senators voting against it, the resolution gave President Johnson the freedom to conduct operations in Vietnam as he saw fit.

International Monetary Fund

The IMF was set up to stabilize currencies and provide predictable monetary environment for trade, witht he U.S. dollar serving as the benchmark.

Korean War

The North Korean and South Koreans had waged a low level war since 1945 but neither Kim (North) or Rhee (South) could launch an all out offensive without the support of their sponsor (Soviet Union for the North and U.S. for the South). In late spring of 1950, Kim convinced Stalin to allow him to go to war to reunify the nation. In June, the North Koreans launched a surprise attack across the 38th parallel. Truman asked for and received permission from the UN Security Council approve a "police action" against the North Korean invaders. At the time, the Soviet Union was boycotting the Council to protest the UN's refusal to admit China. Thus, the Soviet Union could not veto Truman's request. The Security Council authorized a "peacekeeping force." Truman then sent American troops to Korea as part of the UN Army. Most of the troops were actually U.S. soldiers. The American troops were led by General *Douglas MacArthur*. After gaining control of Seoul and almost all of the territory up to the 38th parallel, General MacArthur ordered the troops across the 38th parallel and led them all the way up to the Yalu River at the Chinese border, which was certain to draw China into the war. In fact, a Chinese counterattack was launched and forced MacArthur's troops to retreat back down the Korean peninsula. A stalemate then ensued. MacArthur denounced this stalemate stating, "there is no substitute for victory." Because of MacArthur's aggressive actions leading to China's entry into the war, along with the resulting retreat and stalemate, Truman relieved MacArthur of his command. While Truman's decision was unpopular, it likely saved the United States from a war with China. The 38th parallel thus remained as the line of demarcation between North and South Korea. *This was the first major proxy battle of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.*

Warren Court

The SCOTUS under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953-1969), which expanded the Constitution's promise of equality and civil rights. It issued landmark decisions in the areas of civil rights, criminal rights, reproductive freedom, and separation of church and state. The Warren court established some of the most far-reaching liberal jurisprudence in U.S. history.

NSC-68

The United State's National Security Council's report known as NSC-68 proposed that the West develop a "bold and massive program of rebuilding the West's defensive potential to surpass that of the Soviet world." It proposed the development of a hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear bomb that would be a thousand times more destructive than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. It also proposed significant increase in conventional military forces. In order to pay for these, the report proposed that Americans pay higher taxes. Initially President Truman was reluctant to commit to such a large buildup of defense due to concerns over increasing the national budget. But later events in Asia, caused him to change his mind.

World Bank

The World Bank was created at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire in July 1944. It was created to provide loans for the reconstruction of war-torn Europe and for the development of former colonized nations, which came to be known as Third World or developing nations.

containment

The basic United States policy of the Cold War, which sought to *contain* communism within its existing geographic boundaries. Initially it focused on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but in the 1950's it included China, North Korea, and other parts of the developing world.

Robert Kennedy

The brother of John F. Kennedy, and the attorney general of the United States during the Kennedy administration. He sought the Democratic Party nomination in 1968, running against sitting President LBJ. Kennedy was seen as a unifying force in the party. Following riots which ensued after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., Kennedy advocated for love instead of violence arguing that polarization was not the answer and that whites and blacks could seek to understand each other through compassion and love. While sympathizing with blacks outrage at white Americans, he begged them not to strike back in retribution. His assassination in June of 1968 was a disaster for the Democratic Party, as he seemed to be the only candidate who could unify the party.

*Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka* (1954)

The case was brought by Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers on behalf of Linda Brown, a black pupil in Topeka, Kansas, who had been forced to attend a distant segregated school rather than a nearby white elementary school. Marshall argued that such segregation was unconstitutional because it violated "equal protection of the laws" as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In a unanimous decision the SCOTUS agreed, overturning the separate but equal doctrine. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Ngo Dinh Diem

The dictatorial head of South Vietnam, whom the United States had supported since 1955. In 1963, President Kennedy let it be known that he would support his overthrow by a military coup in order to establish a more stable government.

deindustrialization

The dismantling of manufacturing - especially in the automobile, steel, and consumer-goods industries, in the decades after WW II, representing a reversal of the process of industrialization that had dominated the American economy from the 1870s through the 1940s.

Fair Deal

The domestic policy agenda announced by Truman in 1949. It included civil rights, health care, education reform, a housing program, expansion of social security, a higher minimum wage, and a agricultural program. Its attention to civil rights reflected the growing role of African Americans in the Democratic Party. It was only partially successful in Congress. It did improve the minimum wage, Social Security, and established the National Housing Act of 1949, which authorized the construction of low-income housing units.

détente

The easing of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Nixon administration, which was achieved by focusing on issues of common concern, such as arms control and trade. It also sought a new openness with China. Détente was part of Nixon's strategy to achieve peace with honor in Vietnam. In a series of meetings between 1970 and 1972, Nixon and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev resolved tensions over Cuba and Berlin and signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) to start to end the Cold War's arms race. Nixon also visited China, becoming the first U.S. sitting president to do so. The president declared that the two nations could peacefully coexist. By engaging in these activities, Nixon hoped that by befriending both the Soviet Union and China that he could play one against the other and strike a better deal over Vietnam.

Economic Crisis

The economic downturn of the 1970s was the deepest slump since the Great Depression. Every major economic indicator turned negative - employment, productivity, and growth. By 1973, the economy was in a tailspin. Inflation, brought about in part by military spending in Vietnam was very difficult to control.

New Left

The founders of the SDS movement referred to themselves as the *New Left* to distinguish themselves from the old left - communists and socialists of the 1930s and 1940s. As the New Left spread, it hit major university towns first. One of the first major demonstrations erupted in the fall of 1964 at the University of California at Berkeley after administrators banned student political activity on university grounds. In protest, student organizations formed the *Free Speech Movement* and organized a sit-in at the administration building. Emboldened by the Berkeley movement, students across the nation were soon protesting their universities' academic policies and then, more passionately, the Vietnam War.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

The keystone of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was Title VII, which outlawed discrimination in employment on the basis of race, religion, national origin, and sex. Another section guaranteed equal access to public accommodations and schools. The law granted new enforcement powers to the U.S. attorney general and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to implement the prohibition against job discrimination.

Rock 'n' Roll

The major force behind defining the youth culture was rock 'n' roll. It originated in African American rhythm and blues. Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed took the lead in introducing white America to the black-created sound by playing what were called "race records." Soon after, Elvis Presley was discovered... a white man with a "Negro" sound. Between 1953 and 1959, record sales increased from $213 million to $603 million, with rock 'n' roll as the driving force. While some adults denounced the new music, fearing it would lead to interracial dating, rebellion, and sex, this condemnation only increased its popularity among teens - youth rebellion sold tickets.

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

The most prominent black trade union.

Rust Belt

The once heavily industrialized regions of the Northeast and Midwest that went into decline after deindustrialization. By the 1970s and 1980s, these regions were full of abandoned plants and distressed communities.

silent majority

The term used by Richard Nixon in a 1969 speech to describe those ordinary Americans who supported his positions but did not publicly assert there voices, in contrast to those involved in the antiwar, civil rights and women's movements.

evangelicalism

The trend in Protestant Christianity that stresses salvation through conversion, repentance of sin, and adherence to scripture; it also stresses the importance of preaching over ritual. Divorce rates, social unrest, and challenges to family values were what led people to seek the stability of faith. Additionally, many Americans regarded feminism, the counterculture, sexual freedom, homosexuality, pornography, and legalized abortion as a collective sign of moral decay. To seek answers and find order, more and more people turned to evangelical ministries and preachers such as Graham. The use of television by "televangelists", evangelical preachers, brought their messages into the living room and helped them to build huge media empires, making the 1970s and 1980s the era of Christian broadcasting. Evangelicals believed that the nuclear family not the individual represented the fundamental unit of society, with the father as breadwinner and disciplinarian and the mother as nurturer and supporter.

Tet Offensive

Timed to coordinate with *Tet, the Vietnamese new year*, the Vietcong unleashed a massive well-coordinated assault in South Vietnam. The offensive struck 36 provincial capitals and 5 of the 6 major cities, including Saigon, where the Vietcong nearly overran the U.S. embassy. While the Vietcong suffered very heavy losses, the psychological effect was devastating. Americans saw on television that the American embassy was under siege and also saw the Saigon police chief place a pistol to the head of a Vietcong suspect and execute him. The Tet Offensive made it clear to Americans that the U.S. was not winning the war. Public opinion about the war shifted dramatically, a shift to non-supporters outnumbering supporters. Will many Americans did not embrace the peace movement, they also concluded that the war was unwinnable. The Tet offensive undermined Johnson and discredited his war policies.

March on Washington

To get support for Kennedy's bill, civil rights leaders adopted a tactic that A. Philip Randolph had first advanced in 1941, a massive demonstration in Washington, D.C. Under the leadership of Randolph and other civil rights leaders, thousands of volunteers across the country coordinated car pools, freedom buses, and freedom trains and on August 28, 1963 delivered 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial for the officially named *March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom*. While others planned the march, MLK Jr. was its public face. It was his "I Have a Dream" speech that captured the nation's imagination. It was during this time that there was a split forming in the movement with some activists beginning to call for more violent action. SNCC member John Lewis had been prepared to give a more militant speech but the nonviolent leaders begged him to tone it down for fear of alienating white supporters. While he did, it was a sign of a split in the movement. While the march helped public opinion, Southern senators continued to block Kennedy's legislation.

National Organization of Women

To seek compliance with the Civil Rights Act, Betty Friedan and other feminists founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. Modeled on the NAACP, it intended to be a civil rights organization for women, not only for job and educational equality but to allow women to fully participate in American society with the full range of privileges and responsibilities that men had. The organization quickly grew and NOW, like the NAACP, became a powerful voice for equal rights.

Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Vice president Johnson assumed the presidency upon Kennedy's death. Johnson was a southerner and a former Senate majority leader who was renowned for is fierce persuasive style and tough political bargaining. He made passage of the civil rights bill a priority. Using moral leverage and the memory of JFK and his hard ball politics, Johnson overcame a filibuster and in June of 1964 Congress passed the most far-reaching civil rights law since Reconstruction.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Vice president under JFK, he became President when Kennedy was assassinated. Lyndon Johnson was a seasoned politician and longtime Senate leader. Johnson was most comfortable in the back rooms of power. He had some rough edges and had fought his way up to wealth and prominence. *He never forgot his modest, hill-country Texas origins or lost his sympathy for the downtrodden*. He had been a teacher in a poor rural area in Texas and he believed in supporting education, especially for the poor. Johnson had amazing amounts of energy and was a master of negotiations. He applied this energy and his skills to revive several of Kennedy's stalled programs and many more of his own in the ambitious Great Society. Upon assuming the presidency, Johnson promptly pushed for civil rights legislation as a memorial to Kennedy. As a southerner who had previously opposed civil rights for African Americans, Johnson wished to prove that he was more than a regional figure and that he would be the president to all the people. He also wanted to make his mark on history.

Kerner Commission

While white middle-class citizens flocked to the suburbs, an opposite stream of working-class migrants, many of them southern African Americans, moved into the cities. In the 1950s, the nation's 12 largest cities lost 3.6 million whites, while gaining 4.5 million nonwhites. These urban newcomers inherited a declining economy and a decaying infrastructure. A 1968 report by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (informally known as the *Kerner Commission* warned that "our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal."

William J. Levitt

William J. Levitt, a building contractor, revolutionized suburban housing by applying mass-production techniques which allowed new homes to be produced at a very fast pace. His basic house was four rooms and was fully equipped with kitchen appliances. Each of his developments was named Levitttown and they were built in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. Buyers went flocking to these new developments and other developers soon followed suit.

Equal Pay Act 908

Women had been pushing for equal pay for equal work through the 1950s and 1960s and in 1963 were able to win congressional passage of the *Equal Pay Act*, which established the principle of equal pay for equal work.

Institutional changes in Education

Women's opportunities in education expanded as dozens of formerly all male schools, including the U.S. military academies, began to admit women undergraduates for the first time. Colleges started women's studies programs as well. The proportion of women attending graduate and professional schools rose markedly.

Yalta Conference

a meeting in the Pacific between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin at the end of WWII. Roosevelt focused on maintaining the unity of the Allies and securing Stalin's commitment to enter the war against Japan. While Stalin insisted Russian national security needed Eastern Europe to be Pro-Soviet, Roosevelt desired a self-determined democracy in the region. The three leaders also agreed to divide Germany into four administrative zones, each one controlled by one of the four allied powers. Additionally, they agreed to establish the United Nations.

white-collar army

a new generation of corporate leaders. Companies turned to universities to provide these white-collar workers. Critics argued that the obedience demanded of white collar workers was stifling creativity. Books on the subject contrasted the independent businessmen and professionals of the earlier years with the managerial class of the postwar years.

George C. Wallace

a third party candidate in the 1968 presidential election, who was an unapologetic segregationist governor from Alabama. He had tried to stop the federal government from desegregating Alabama in 1963. Hoping that by carrying the South, he could deny a major candidate an electoral majority and force the election into the House of Representatives, Wallace's platform was to appeal to whites in the North and South, calling for law and order and, blaming Johnson's Great Society, claiming that mothers on public assistance were "breeding children as a cash crop." While failing to capture much of the vote, he defined *hot button issues - liberal elitism, welfare policies, and law and order - all of which became hallmarks for the next generation of mainstream conservatives*.

United Nations

an international body that replaced the League of Nations. It would have both a General Assembly, in which all nations would be represented, and a Security Council, composed of the five major Allied Powers- the US, Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union- and seven other nations elected on a rotating basis. The five powers have veto power over decisions of the General Assembly

mechanization

another important factor in the postwar boom was the mechanization or automation of jobs, with American factories replacing manpower with machines. While industries could turn out more products efficiently and at a lower cost, the social costs were the loss of high-wage manufacturing jobs as machines replaced workers.

Sharon Statement

drafted in Sharon, Connecticut) two years before the Port Huron Statement, it set forth the fundamental principles of YAF and inspired young conservatives, many of whom would play important roles in the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

rights liberalism

the notion that individuals require state protection from discrimination. This version of liberalism focused on identities - such as race or sex - rather than on general social welfare. It would prove to be an expansion of the nation's ideals but at the same time a divisive force that produced political backlash.

cultural dissenters

youth rebellion was part of a broader discontent with the sometimes shallow consumer culture of the 1950s. Many artists focused on personal, introspective art forms. Postwar jazz was thoughtful and individualistic in contrast to the dance oriented swing bands of the 1930s and 1940s. Some of the Black jazz musicians led the charge and found fans among white youth, such as the *Beats.*