Unit 8
Shelley v. Kramer
A 1948 Supreme Court decision that outlawed restrictive covenants on the occupancy of housing developments by African Americans, Asian Americans, and other minorities. Because the Court decision did not actually prohibit racial discrimination in housing, unfair practices against minority groups continued until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968.
The Affluent Society
A 1958 book by John Kenneth Galbraith that analyzed the nation's successful middle class and argued that the poor were only an "afterthought" in the minds of economists and politicians.
The Other America
A 1962 book by left-wing social critic Michael Harrington, chronicling "the economic underworld of American life." His study made it clear that in economic terms the bottom class remained far behind.
Robert Kennedy
A Democrat who after MLK's death gave speeches calling for peace and urging Americans to follow King's nonviolent legacy, but two months later he was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan.
Cesar Chavez and Colores Huerta
A Mexican American activist who worked for the Community Service Organization (CSO) and founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) and inspire the Chicano movement of the 1960s.
Joseph McCarthy
A Wisconsin senator who gave many charges of communists, with few names and evidence, and helped precipitate the Red Scare.
Rachel Carson
A biologist who published Silent Night, a stunning analysis of the pesticide DDT's toxic impact on the human and natural food chains and an impetus for the environmental movement in the 1970s.
Phyllis Schlafly
A conservative lawyer who created STOP ERA, whose purpose was to stop the Equal Rights Amendment from being passed. She believed it would create an unnatural "unisex society".
Thurgood Marshall
A member of the NAACP who was developing legal strategy to strike at racial segregation in the South.
George F. Kennan
American diplomat who believed the Soviet system was unstable and primitive and believed it could be stopped with opposition from America and its allies.
Miles Davis
An experimental, influential jazz trumpeter after World War II.
Billy Graham
Billy Graham: An evangelical who laid the groundwork for the Fourth Great Awakening through his radio program and nationwide revivals he called crusades.
Silent Spring
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.
James Farmer
He and three other African Americans founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which adopted the philosophy of nonviolent direct action.
Stokely Carmichael
He created the Black Power slogan, which advocated that African Americans should build economic and political power in their own communities, making them less dependent and connected with whites. This led to movements such as the Black Panther Party and for African Americans to work within the political system.
A. Philip Randolph:
He created the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which was the most prominent black trade union, and his threat to march on Washington caused creation of Order 880 ( prohibited racial discrimination in defense industries).
Fidel Castro
He overthrew the right-wing dictator in Cuba in 1959. Determined to keep Cuba from Soviet influence, Kennedy tried and failed in the Bay of Pigs incident to create and anti-Castro uprising.
Alfred Kinsey
He published two controversial studies (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female) that took a scientific approach on sex and broke numerous taboos. They confirmed and encouraged the sexual revolution that began to transform American society in the 50s.
William J. Levitt
He revolutionized suburban housing by applying mass-production techniques, and his Levittowns became popular.
Jack Kerouac
He was a Beat who wrote the culturally rebellious book On the Road.
Howard Jarvis
He was a Californian conservative anti-New Dealer politician and brilliant at mobilizing grassroots discontent. He proposed Proposition 13, which restricted taxes and was eventually passed becomes Californians flocked to it (but was not helpful).
Martin Luther King Jr.
He was a pastor in Montgomery who became one of the important leaders of the civil rights movement. He embraced Gandhi's nonviolent philosophy and believed that whites were necessary to achieving social justice.
George C. Wallace
He was the 1968 third-party candidate who was a segregationist and hoped to win by carrying the south, preventing an electoral majority, and forcing the election into the HOR (it didn't work...though it came close).
Ngo Dinh Diem
He was the dictatorial head of South Vietnam who America originally supported. But by the end of his presidency Kennedy had lost patience with him and acknowledged his support of a military coup. A coup did happen (America didn't do it), but expanded to his brother and brought chaos, uprisings, and several more coups to Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh
He was the leader of North Vietnam in the 60s. Kennedy tried to prevent his victory by providing military support to South Vietnam.
Allen Ginsberg
He wrote the poem "Howl", which became the manifesto of the Beat generation.
Malcolm X
In contrast to Martin Luther King, he emphasized black pride and self-help and criticized white supremacy. He formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity and was assassinated in 1965.
Harvey Milk
Openly gay, he won a city supervisor (city council) seat in San Francisco 1977 after three tries, the third openly gay elected official in the country. When his assassin in 1978 was convicted of manslaughter (not murder) five thousand gays and lesbians in San Francisco marched on city hall.
Rosa Parks
She was a civil rights activists who refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Her arrest inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Betty Friedan
She wrote the bestselling book The Feminine Mystique, which inspired women to find their life's purpose outside of the home.
Nikita Khrushchev
Stalin's successor, he started by denouncing Stalin and his crimes and blunders but proved to be true to the Soviet's communist agenda.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Supreme Court ruling that overturned the "separate but equal" precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The Court declared that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal and thus violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
Roe v. Wade
The 1973 Supreme Court 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 issue for decades to come.
Joseph Stalin
The leader of the Soviet Union during the beginning of the Cold War.
The Feminine Mystique
The title of an influential book written in 1963 by Betty Friedan critiquing the ideal whereby women were encouraged to confine themselves to roles within the domestic sphere.
Barry Goldwater
Third-party candidate in the 1964 election (he lost!) who was a conservative, was against civil rights, and called for a vigorous foreign policy.
Dr. Benjamin Spock
Wrote the extremely popular parenting book Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, which sent new, sometimes contradictory messages about parenting to mothers.