APUSH Chapter 35 + 36 (DOMESTIC POLICY)

Harry Truman

• Served as an artillery officer in France during WWI

• Was in Missouri politics and rose to US Senate

• Had to deal with the problems of the postwar period

• Cocky guy

Taft-Harley Act

a federal law passed in 1947 that significantly curtailed power of labor unions by restricting their activities, including prohibiting certain types of strikes, and aimed to balance the power between unions and employers

Employment Act of 1946

 a piece of legislation that mandated the federal government to actively work towards maintaining high employment levels and price stability in the economy

GI Bill

a landmark piece of legislation that provided various benefits to returning WWII veterans

HUAC

“House Un-American Activities Committee” established by the US House of Representatives in 1938 to investigate alleged communist activity within the US

Fair Deal

Sought to address post WWII issues by providing universal healthcare, increased minimum wage, expanding social security, provide federal funding the support education, advocating for anti-discrimination measures,

McCarthyism

accusing people of being communists, the political practice of publicizing accusation of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence 

The Baby Boom

the significant surge in birth rates experienced in the US following WWII, primarily between the years 1946 and 1964, where a large generation of children were born due to factors like economic prosperity, returning soldiers eager to start families, and a desire for normalcy after wartime hardships 

Joseph McCarthy

notorious for his investigations and accusations of communist infiltration 

Election of 1952

•  is Eisenhower vs. Nixon, Eisenhower wins after saying he’ll stop the war in Korea

  • Eisenhower was already the most popular American of his time 

  • Nixon did a lot of campaigning compared to Eisenhower

  • True to his campaign pledge, Eisenhower flew to Korea for 3 days in December 1952

  • 7 bloody months later an armistice was finally signed

  • Korea remained divided at the 38th parallel, while the broader Cold War remained frigidly frozen

  • Both in the military and the civilian realms, Eisenhower had long cultivated a leadership style that self-consciously project and image of sincerity, fairness, and optimism

Jim Crow Laws

• Black people from the south have to follow these laws which kept them insulated from whites, economically inferior, and politically powerless 

• Trains and buses were segregated by seating - black people had to sit in the back

Rosa Parks

• In 1955, a college educated black seamstress who had long been a part of the NAACP, made history in Montgomery, Alabama

• She boarded a bus, took a seat in the “whites only” section, and refused to give it up

• Her arrest for violating the city’s Jim Crow statues sparked a yearlong black boycott of city buses and served notice throughout the South that blacks would no longer submit meekly to the absurdities and indignities of segregation

Montgomery Boycott

• Sparked by Rosa Parks

• US Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional 

• Demonstrated the success of a nonviolent protest

• Brought MLK 

MLK

• His oratorical skill, strategic savvy, mastery of biblical and constitutional conceptions of justice, and devotion to the nonviolent principles of Gandhi all thrust him to the forefront of the black revolution that soon pulsed across the South and the rest of the nation

Brown v. Board of Education

• of Topeka, Kansas, 1954

  • In forceful opinion, the justices ruled that segregation in public schools was “inherently unequal” and thus unconstitutional 

  • Revered the court’s declaration for Plessy v. Ferguson which was the “separate but equal” idea 

  • Desegregation, the justice now insisted, must go ahead with “deliberate speed”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

It aimed to mobilize the vast power of black churches on behalf of black rights

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

• Young black college students conducted sit-ins around America to protest segregation of restaurants 

Federal Highway Act of 1956

• Authorized a $26 billion plan to build 42,000 miles of sleek, fast motorways

• The president believed that such roads were essential to national defense, allowing US troops to mobilize anywhere in the country in the event in the Soviet invasion

• Created countless construction jobs

• Speeded suburbanization of America

• Robbing the railroads, especially passenger trains of business

• as a result = people migrate to the sun belt were WWII veterans seeking opportunities in the defense industry

John Dulles

his policy of boldness and the contaiment of communism

Nikita Khrushchev the secret speech

• This was a pivotal moment where Khrushchev denounced Stalin's personality cult and the abuses of his regime.  

• It led to the release of political prisoners and a period of relative liberalization.

Election of 1960

• JFK scored impressive victories in several primary elections - he was the first Roman Catholic to run for president since Al Smith, people thought he was attractive, at the time he was one of the youngest people to be nominated for president

• Lyndon B. Johnson accepted second place on the ticket

Beatniks

• Members of a social movement and literary subculture in the 1950s and 1960s 

• Known for their anti-materialistic style, artistic expression, rejection of mainstream American culture

• wrote poems that didn’t conform to society’s ideal image at the time

• example of mass culture

New Frontier

The New Frontier was intended to inspire Americans to embrace new challenges and opportunities. It emphasized a sense of national purpose and a willingness to tackle pressing issues. Addressing poverty and inequality, improving education, expanding civil rights, boosting the economy, and advancing scientific and technological progress.

Peace Corps

An army of idealistic and mostly youthful volunteers bringing American know-how to underdeveloped countries

Apollo Missions

• A multi-billion dollar project to get a man to land on the moon

• Two NASA astronauts triumphantly planted their footprints and the American flag on the moon’s dusty surface

• People watched the Apollo mission live, the world had never seemed so small and interconnected

Freedom Riders

• Set out to end segregation in facilities serving interstate bus passengers

• White mobs torched freedom buses near Alabama 

Kennedy’s Assassination

• While riding in an open limousine he was shot in the brain and died within seconds

• Johnson was sworn into presidency

• He was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald who was also shot on television

Executive Order 9981

signed by President Truman, mandated the desegregation of the US military, ensuring equality of treatment and opportunity for all service members regardless of race, color, religion, or national origin

Committee on Civil rights (during Truman’s presidency)

proposing measures to strengthen and safeguard civil rights in the United States, they examined existing laws, regulations and statues, and made recommendations for policy improvements

Southern Manifesto

also known as the “declaration of constitutional principles”, opposed the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional, and urged resistance to integration efforts. 

Orval Faubus

Governor of Arkansas, he was politically corrupt, he opposed integration and had the intention to defy a federal court order requiring desegregation, most remembered for his attempt to block the desegregation of Central High School in 1957

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage under the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917. Members of the communist party, the Rosenbergs were convicted of passing secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union in 1945.

Levittown

• construction of affordable housing in the suburbs

• mass production of identical housing

Civil disobedience

• puts pressure on society

• like sit-ins were when young black people would sit at lunch counters that were for whites only and demand service

• mass arrests air on television and are on the news and people are like - why are you sending kids to jail? what is wrong with you?

Bull Connor

Commissioner of public safety in Alabama, Georgia, he wanted to keep segregation, Connor’s police force used police dogs and fire hoses to harass peaceful protesters + this gained national attention, led to the passage of the civil rights act of 1964 and civil rights reform

Executive Order 9835

signed by President Harry S. Truman on March 21, 1947, established the first general loyalty program in the United States, designed to investigate and remove "subversive" individuals from government service, primarily targeting perceived communist influence. 

Alger Hiss

a former State Department official, became a key figure in the early Cold War, famously accused of being a Soviet spy and later convicted of perjury, fueling the Red Scare and sparking intense debate about communist infiltration in the US government.