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1950s and 1960s
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Berlin airlift | U.S effort to deliver supplies including 2 million tons of food and coal by air to West Berlin in 1948-1949. |
Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka | 1954 Supreme Court decision that held that racially segregated education, which prevailed in much of the South, was unconstitutional. |
Fair Deal | President Harry Truman's 1949 program for expanded economic opportunity and civil rights. |
Marshall Plan | Use American Aid to rebuild war torn economies of Europe nations. |
Massive retaliation | Relying on nuclear weapons to inhabit communist aggression during the 1950s. |
Military-industrial complex | Concern of interests among the US military and its chief corporate contractors. |
New Frontier | Kennedy's term for a revitalized national agency. |
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) | A military mutual-defense pact. Includes: Canada, Europe, Great Britain, France, Germany, Soviet Union. |
NSC-68 | A secret policy, calling for a large, ongoing military. |
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) | Organization led mass protests to challenge segregation and discrimination. |
Taft-Hartley Act | 1947 Federal law that outlawed the closed shop and secondary boycotts and obliged union leaders to sign affidavits declaring that they were not communists. |
Truman Doctrine | A foreign policy articulated by President Truman in 1947, that provided financial aid to Greek and Turkish governments then under threat by communist rebels. |
Bay of Pigs fiasco | A military debacle in April 1961, during an American-organized effort to invade Cuba and drive Fidel Castro, the communist ruler, from power. |
Beat School | Aka "beats" nonconformists in the late 1950s who rejected conventional dress and sexual standards and cultivated avant-garde literature and music. |
Berlin Wall | Erected by East Germany in 1961 and torn down by a dutch company in 1989, the wall isolated West Berlin from the surrounding areas in communist controlled East Berlin and East Germany. |
Civil Rights Act of 1964 | Legislation outlawing discrimination, basis of race, skin, or gender. |
Cuban Missile Crisis | Showdown between US and Soviet Union during October 1962. |
Detente | A French term, meaning the relaxation of tensions. |
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) | A federal agency created in 1970 to oversee environmental monitoring and cleanup programs. |
Great Society | President Johnson, it sought to end poverty, promote civil rights, and improve housing, health care, and education. |
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution | Congressional action, undertaken President Johnson, authority to deploy US troops. |
Medicare | A Social welfare measure, enacted in 1965, providing hospitalization insurance for people over 65. |
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) | A treaty restricting the testing and development of nuclear ballistic missiles. |
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) | A civil rights organization, drew heavily on younger activist and college students. |
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) | An organization created by leftist college students in the early 1960s; it organized protest against racial bigotry. |
Tet Offensive | Wide-ranged offense, launched by North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops throughout South Vietnam in February 1968. |
United States V. Richard M. Nixon | Supreme Court ruling about Nixon and the Watergate burglary. |
Voting Rights of 1965 | Empowered federal registrars to intervene when southern states and municipalities refused to let African Americans register to vote. |
Watergate Scandal | A complex scandal involving attempts to cover up illegal actions, leading to resignation of President Nixon in 1974 |