Ho Chi Minh
Communist leader of North Vietnam
Dien Bien Phu
City in North Vietnam that fell from French control to North Vietnamese
Viet Minh
North Vietnamese military forces
Jacobo Arbenz
Democratically elected president of Guatemala overthrown in a CIA coup
Cuban Revolution
Eisenhower enacted a trade embargo after Fidel Castro overthrew the dictator and set up a Communist totalitarian state. With communism only 90 miles off the shores of Florida, Eisenhower authorized the CIA to train anticommunist exiles to retake their island, but nothing ever happened.
U-2 Spy Plane Incident
Russians shot down a high-altitude U.S. spy plane over the Soviet Union. The incident exposed a secret U.S. tactic for gaining information. The U.S. had decided to conduct regular spy flights over Soviet territory to find out about
its enemy’s missile program. Eisenhower took full responsibility after they were exposed. Khrushchev denounced Eisenhower and called off the Paris summit.
1st Arab-Israeli War
Resulted in failure of the two-state solution
Two-State Solution
Engineered by the United Nations as a compromise to Create Israel and Palentine
Shah of Iran
Authoritarian king of Iran supported by the US
Suez Crisis
led by the Arab nationalist General Gamal Nasser, Egypt asked the U.S. for funds to build the ambitious Aswan Dam project on the Nile River. The U.S. refused; in part b/c Egypt threatened Israel’s security. Seeking another source of funds, Nasser precipitated an international crisis by seizing and nationalizing the British- and French- owned canal. Britain, France, and Israel carried out a surprise attack against Egypt and retook the canal.
Eisenhower Doctrine
The President proposed and obtained a joint resolution from Congress authorizing the use of U.S. military forces to intervene in any country that appeared likely to fall to communism.
Military Industrial Complex
Eisenhower first coined this phrase when he warned Americans against it in his last State of the Union Address. He feared that the combined lobbying efforts of the armed services and industries that contracted with the military would lead to excessive Congressional spending.
Keynesian Economics
demand side economics
Conglomerates
Corporate Mergers
AFL-CIO
skilled and unskilled labor union
Federal-Aid Highway Act
authorized the construction of 42,000 miles of interstate highways linking all the nation’s major cities.
Brown vs Board of Education
argued that segregation of black children in the public schools was unconstitutional b/c it violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws”.
Massive Resistance
southern whites, especially in the Deep South, vehemently opposed the ruling. (political and social)
Emmett Till
a 14 year old African American boy from Chicago, was murdered (lynched) by whites while on a visit to family in the South in 1955
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks’ arrest sparked a massive African American protest in the form of a boycott against riding the city buses. Martin Luther King, Jr. soon emerged as the inspiring leader of a nonviolent movement to achieve integration.
Little Rock Nine
in Arkansas in 1956, Governor Orval Faubus used the state’s National Guard to prevent 9 African American students from entering the Central High School, as ordered by a federal court. While the president didn’t actively support desegregation, he understood his constitutional responsibility to uphold federal authority. He ordered federal troops to stand guard and protect black students as they walked to school.