APUSH U10: Part 3 Terms

Baby Boom

Baby Boom

A large increase in birthrate from the beginning of the World War II until the end of the Korean War caused the nation's population to rise by about 20 percent.

• This growth in population caused a major increase in consumer demand and helped make the economy thrive.

NASA

America's space program that was created in order to rival the Soviet's achievements in space exploration.

• It's main objectives were to send manned rockets into space and orbit around the planet much like Sputnik did.

• Later it's main mission would be to send a man to the moon. This agency created many useful technologies for the public as a result of scientific research

Levittown

Inexpensive suburban areas that many young couples would buy together to start out their lives.

• These towns were originally created in New York, but then spread to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

• All the houses in this town were extremely similar to each other because of the mass production techniques used.

Elvis Presley

One of the greatest rock 'n 'roll stars of all time that symbolized America's changing youth culture.

• His music was created based upon mostly African American rhythm and blues as well as country and gospel music.

• His popularity skyrocketed because of his god looks, rebellious style, and open sexuality in his music.

• Many young Americans idolized him for decades to come.

Brown v Board of Education

The court case that overruled Plessy v Ferguson and deemed racial segregation in schools to be illegal.

• This case was centered around a girl who had to walk miles to an African American high school even though she lived very close to an all white school.

• The justices concluded that school segregation detrimentally effected all those effected by it and that segregation relating to education needed to end.

Little Rock Nine

After Brown v Board of Education deemed academic segregation as unconstitutional, a high school in Arkansas was forced to desegregate.

• Many whites there blockaded the entrances to the school to prevent African American students from entering.

• This caused the national guard to be sent to the high school and make the school follow the court orders.

• Only then did the high school allow the admission of nine African American students.

Rosa Parks

A civil rights leader that refused to move seats on a bus for a white person.

• This led to the woman being arrested which sparked public outrage from the African American communities.

• Eventually the opposition of the bus system by African Americans because of the incident involving this woman and many others caused buses to become desegregated.

Federal Highway Act

The largest public works project ever created in American history; this project created over 40,000 miles of highways and took 25 billion dollars to complete.

• Money for this project came from new taxes on gasoline, automobiles and tires

Nikita Khrushchev

A Soviet Premier during the cold War who was willing to negotiate with the United States about the issue of joint occupation of Berlin.

• The meetings were going well between this man and Eisenhower until the Soviet Union shot down an American military plane that was flying over their country.

• This man got extremely angry and stopped meeting with Eisenhower almost immediately which once again increased the problems occurring between the United States and Soviet Union.

U2 Incident

The Soviet Union had shot down an American plane that was illegally trespassing over Soviet territory.

• The Soviets imprisoned the pilot of the plane. Soviets became infuriated by America's provocation and Soviet-American relations became worse and worse from his point on.