HIST 2050 Readings VOCAB

The New Deal

Rapidly constructed an ambitious and diverse program of legislation.

Fireside Chats

Where Franklin Roosevelt explained his programs and plans to the people in simple terms

Emergency Banking Act

A generally conservative bill designed primarily to protect the larger banks from being dragged down by the weakness of smaller ones

Economy Act

This was designed to convince the public that the federal government was in safe, responsible hands. The act cut salaries of government employees and reduced pensions for veterans.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

This guarantees all bank deposits up to $2,500

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

This act, established in 1934, was primarily used to police the stock market.

Agricultural Adjustment Act

Producers of seven basic commodities (Wheat, Corn, Cotton, Hogs, Rice, Tobacco, and Dairy Products) would impose production limits on their crops to keep up the prices for those products.

• The Agricultural Adjustment Administration would then tell them how much they should produce.

Farm Security Administration

This provided loans to help farmers cultivate submarginal soil to relocate to better lands.

National Recovery Administration (NRA)

Under the direction of Hugh S. Johnson, he called on every business establishment in the nation to accept a temporary “Blanket Code”: A minimum wage of between 30 and 40 cents per hour, and the abolition of child labor.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

This is an agency that aims to face problems such as flooding, provide electricity to homes and businesses, and replant forests. This agency also encouraged the growth of local industries.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

The CCC created camps in national parks and forests and in other rural and wilderness settings.

Liberty League

This had a specific goal to arouse public opposition to what its members called the “dictatorial” policies of the New Deal and to what they considered its attacks on free enterprise.

Townshend plan

All Americans over the age of sixty would receive monthly government pensions of $200, provided they retired and spent the money in full each month

Charles E. Coughlin

A Catholic priest achieved even greater renown through his weekly national radio sermons. He proposed monetary reforms to restore prosperity and ensure economic justice.

Huey P. Long

This person rose to power because of his strident attacks on the banks, oil companies, utilities and the conservative political oligarchy allied with them.

Second New Deal

This was launched in the spring of 1935 because of growing political pressure and to the continuing economic crisis.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

This could compel workers to recognize and bargain with legitimate unions.

John L. Lewis

The leader of the United Mine Workers and heavily involved in the AFL, but then broke off and started the CIO, Congress of Industrial Organizations, and became its first president.

Congress of Industrial Organizations

This expanded the constituency of the labor movement. It was more receptive to women and African Americans than the AFL.

Sit-Down Strike

Employees in several General Motors plants in Detroit simply sat down inside the plants, refusing to either work or leave, thus preventing the company from using strikebreakers.

Social Security Act

This established several distinct programs. For older people, there were two types of assistance. The destitute could receive up to $15 a month in federal assistance. More importantly for the future, many Americans were incorporated into a pension system, to which they and their employers would contribute through a payroll tax.

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

Like the Civil Works Administration, the WPA established a system of work relief for the unemployed.

“Court-Packing plan”

A derogatory nickname for one aspect of president Roosevelts proposal to overhaul the federal court system

Good Neighbor Policy

This expanded on the Hoover administration's changes toward Latin America.

Isolationism

A movement where many Americans chose to isolate themselves from the rest of the world.

Neutrality Acts

A series of laws between 1925 and 1937 that created a mandatory arms embargo against both sides in any military conflict and legislated other inhibitors to American involvement in another foreign war.

Appeasement

The Munich Agreement, which Roosevelt supported at the time, was the most prominent element of a policy that came to be known as the __________.

Josef Stalin

A Soviet leader and communist dictator who is responsible for the death or exile of millions of Soviet citizens

John Collier

The head of the Office of Indian Affairs advanced the idea of cultural relativism, a theory that every culture should be accepted and respected on its terms.

Baby Boom

 Not surprisingly, the national birthrate jumped, replacing a long pattern of decline with what is now commonly called this.

AFL-CIO

In December 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations ended their twenty-year rivalry and merged to create the powerful ______, under the leadership of George Meany.

DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloro-ethane)

This new type of pesticide aimed to protect crops from insect destruction and humans from such insect-borne diseases.

UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)

This was the first significant computer of the 1950s and was developed for the U.S. Bureau of the Census by the Remington Rand Company.

ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles)

These were missiles that were able to make it across oceans and continents to reach distant targets.

Apollo Program

This purpose was to land astronauts on the moon.

“Levittowns”

These were relatively inexpensive developments that popped up in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and eventually throughout the country

Echo Park

This was a spectacular valley in the Dinosaur National Monument on the border between Utah and Colorado and near the southern border of Wyoming.

“Beats”

 The most derisive critics of bureaucracy in middle-class society were a group of young poets, writers, and artists known as the beats.

The Other America

A book written by the socialist writer Micheal Harrington that chronicled the persistence of poverty in the United States.

Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka

This was a supreme court trial that declared that segregating public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional.

Rosa Parks

An African American seamstress was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama when she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger as required by the Jim Crow Laws throughout most of the South.

Claudette Colvin

This person sat in the front of a bus, ignored the driver’s command to move back, and squared off against two police officers. She was then arrested.

Browder V. Gayle

The federal case that overturned bus segregation laws in Montgomery in 1956 and, along with the boycott, compelled buses to abandon their discriminatory policies.

Martin Luther King Jr.

He was a powerful orator, brilliant intellectual, and talented community leader. He also advocated for civil rights on the doctrine of nonviolent resistance to injustice, even in the face of attack.

John Foster Dulles

The most important figure in the Eisenhower administration next to the president himself.

Brinksmanship

An approach that pushed the Soviet Union to the brink of war in order to exact congressions.

Ho Chi Minh

These were powerful nationalist forces determined to win their nation's independence.

Fidel Castro

In 1957, a popular movement of resistance to the Batista regime began to gather strength under the leadership of Fidel Castro.

John Kennedy

35th president of the United States. Young, Catholic, Wealthy Background, served in WWII

Lyndon Johnson

36th president of the United States. Great Society - Johnson’s domestic program - largest since the New Deal

“New Frontier”

A campaign made by John Kennedy promising a set of domestic reforms.

“Great Society”

Lyndon Johnson introduced a series of social programs that were far more comprehensive and far-reaching than anything Kennedy had articulated.

Medicare

A new social welfare program created during the 1960s provided federal aid to elderly individuals for medical expenses.

Medicaid

A social welfare program that extended federal medical assistance to welfare recipients and other indigent people of all ages.

Community Action Programs

This provided jobs for many poor people and gave them valuable experience in administrative and political work.

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

This eliminated the “national origins” system, which only allowed a limited number of newcomers (170,000) per year and mostly opened the doors to all people from Europe, Asia, and Africa.

“Freedom rides”

A group formed by interracial students working with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

“Freedom Summer”

A movement where civil rights workers, black and white, northern and southern spread throughout the South, but primarily in Mississippi to work on increasing black voter registration and participation.

• This helped birth the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)

Voting Rights Act of 1965

This provided federal protection to African Americans attempting to exercise their right to the ballot.

Affirmative Action

This is a concept where employers should adopt positive measures to recruit minorities.

Black Power

This was a goal to shift away from the goals of assimilation and toward appreciation of racial distinctiveness and the promotion of Black-run institutions.

Malcolm X - “X”

Was one of the most celebrated of the “Black Muslims,” was imprisoned at 20 for larceny. This person advocated for Black separatism, even encouraging Black Americans to move to Africa.

Bay of Pigs

A failed invasion of Cuban exiles supported by the United States to overthrow the Castro regime in 1961.

Cuban Missile Crisis

This was a crisis where there were Soviet technicians and equipment in Cuba, and military construction was in progress. To the Soviets, placing missiles in Cuba probably seemed a reasonable and relatively inexpensive way to counter the presence of American missiles in Turkey. Americans saw this as an act of naked aggression. It ended in a deal where the missiles in Cuba would be removed, but America had to pledge not to invade Cuba.

National Liberation Front (NLF)

This was a group of southern communists.

Viet Cong

An organization allied with the North Vietnamese government and which shared Ho Chi Minh’s desire to unify Vietnam under communist rule.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

This authorized the president to “take all necessary measures” to protect American forces and “prevent further aggression” in Southeast Asia.

My Lai Massacre

American Soldiers deliberately murdered civilians believed to have harbored the Viet Cong, who themselves often came from or could blend into the villages of South Vietnam.

Tet Offensive

A large coordinated attack on January 31, 1968, of American strongholds in South Vietnam by communist forces that led to loss of support for the Vietnam War in America.

Richard Nixon

This was the 37th president of the United States, representing the Republican Party.

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

This was the most prominent organization of the New Left.

Counterculture

This was closely related to the New Left and was a new youth culture openly scornful of the values and conventions of middle-class society.

Woodstock

A powerful symbol of the fusion of rock music and the counterculture.

American Indian Movement (AIM<)

This drew support from urban areas and reservations alike and promoted the idea of native nationalism and unity.

Indian Civil Rights Act

This guaranteed reservation residents protection through the Bill of Rights but also recognized the legitimacy of native laws within the reservations.

Cesar Chavez

This person created an effective union of largely Mexican itinerant farm workers.

Stonewall Riot

This marked the growth of the gay liberation movement, one of its most controversial challenges to traditional values and assumptions.

Betty Friedan

 She wrote the book titled The Feminine Mystique which was often cited as one of the first events of modern feminism.

National Organization for Women (NOW)

This was to become the nation’s largest and most influential feminist organization.

Roe VS. Wade

This was a Supreme Court case that mainly challenged abortion laws in 1973.

Rachel Carson

He wrote a book titled Silent Spring, which revealed the dangers of pesticides.

Earth Day

The first participation of this was on April 22, 1970, and started as a series of tech-ins on college campuses.

Vietnamization

A term used by President Nixon to describe transferring the responsibility for fighting the Vietnam War to the South Vietnamese.

Detente

This was a French word that favored diplomacy over militarism.

Nixon Doctrine

A foreign policy plan under President Nixon to continue to support allies’ military defense needs while cutting back on the commitment of American forces to those needs.

“Silent Majority”

This was Nixon’s believed demand for his constituency. These were the mostly middle-class people who he believed wanted to reduce federal interference in local affairs.

Watergate

An office building in Washington D.C. This was mostly associated with the Watergate Scandal.

Gerald R. Ford

This person inherited the presidency under difficult circumstances. He desperately tried to rebuild confidence in the government in the wake of the Watergate scandals.

Stagflation

High unemployment and High Inflation

Jimmy Carter

A former governor of Georgia who appealed to the general unhappiness with Washington by offering honesty, piety, and outsiders skepticism

Camp David Accords

The white house announces an agreement on a “framework” fir the Egyptian-Israel peace treaty

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

This was a zealous religious leader who was fiercely anti-western and anti-American.

Sagebrush Rebellion

This advocated privatizing large swaths of federal land or transferring ownership of it to individual states so that it could be opened for commercial development.

Christian Coalition

This was an organization that opposed federal interference in local affairs, such as denounced abortion, divorce, feminism, and homosexuality.

Ronald Reagan

Once a moderately successful actor, he had moved into politics in the early 1960s. 40th US president.

Neoconservatives

This was a new group that gave the new right something it had not had in many years-a firm base among “opinion leaders” or people with access to the most influential public forums of ideas.

Reaganomics

Also known as “Supply-side” economics, operated from the assumption that the woes of the American economy were largely due to excessive taxation.

Deregulation

This was an idea many Republicans had begun to embrace in the Carter years, and it became almost a religion in the Reagan administration.

Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

Also known as “Star Wars.” Reagan claimed that SDI could provide an effective shield against incoming missiles and make nuclear war obsolete.

Reagan Doctrine

This was designed to help resist communism and anti-Americanism in the third world.