APUSH Give Me Liberty - Ch 24

consumer culture

a culture in which personal worth and identity reside not in the people themselves but in the products with which they surround themselves

Levittown

Name of the development built by the most famous suburban developer of the 50's

White Flight

working and middle-class white people move away from racial-minority suburbs or inner-city neighborhoods to white suburbs - A side effect of suburbanization & Americanization. Residents cut off from urban ethnic communities. Process of racial exclusion became self-reinforcing w/ poor blacks & immigrants in ghettos.

Baby Boom

A term coined for a period in the 50's through mid 60's when families had an average of 3.2 children.

Sputnik

First artificial earth satellite launched by the Soviets. Created fear of surveillance.

National Defense Education Act

Govt. subsidized school loan program started as a direct result of Sputnik. Funding for higher education.

Taft-Hartley Act

Passed over Truman's veto, this act in effect castrated unions and made them weak / less militant.

Hydrogen Bomb

US exploded this in 1952, USSR exploded one in 1953.

Massive Retaliation

John Foster Dulles' new policy of containment. Any attack by Soviets on our allies, we will attack Soviets directly.

Mutual Assured Destruction

The reality that an all out war would result in this succeeded in making both great powers cautions in their dealings with one another.

Eisenhower Doctrine

Promise by US that a country could request American economic assistance/aid military if it was being threatened aggressively by another state. (Specifically Soviets)

Rock and Roll

Considered an "agent" of Soviets in the 50's. was "contributing" to the decay of the youth.

Geneva Agreement

Temporarily divided Vietnam into northern and southern districts. Elections never held. War ensued later.

Jim Crow Laws

Considered the embodiment of legal segregation in the South. Based on the concept of "separate but equal".

Brown v. Board of Education

Legal end of Plessy v. Ferguson. 3rd grader cross RR tracks to get to school. Separate public schools for blacks & whites violated 14th Amend. INSPIRED HOPE.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Lead by MLK. Pressed for desegregation. Pushed for Washington to intervene, esp. in South.

Southern Manifesto

Southern congressman denounced Brown decision as abuse of power. Passed laws to block desegregation. Was similar to color blind laws. Closed public schools and funded private school tuition for whites.

Little Rock Central High School

Governor of AK used national guard to block desegregation. Fed. gov. walked 9 black kids into school. Shows govt. not allowing blatant violation of court order.

"In God We Trust"

A phrase that Congress made mandatory on all American currency in 1954, to strengthen American resistance to communism

Libertarian Conservatives

To this group, freedom meant individual autonomy, limited govt., and unregulated capitalism.

the Beats

This cultural group/movement supported bohemianism and harsh critiques of U.S. society; critical of 1950 conformism and materialism

miltary-industrial complex

Eisenhower was concerned about the informal alliance between a nation's military and the defense industry that supplies it, seen together as a vested interest which influences public policy.