Review of 1920s to Civil Rights Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards based on lecture notes about the 1920s, the Great Depression/New Deal, WW2, Post War Culture, Cold War/Vietnam, and Civil Rights.

Nativism

A policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants. Manifested as strong anti-immigrant sentiment in the 1920s.

Prohibition

A nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933, enacted by the 18th Amendment.

Organized Crime

Criminal enterprises that operate in a hierarchical structure, often engaging in illegal activities like bootlegging, gambling, and racketeering.

Red Scare

A period of intense anti-communist hysteria and political repression in the United States, particularly from 1919 to 1920, fueled by fears of Bolshevism and anarchism.

Teapot Dome

A major political scandal during the administration of President Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923, involving the secret leasing of federal oil reserves to private oil companies.

Welfare Capitalism

A system in which companies voluntarily offer benefits to their employees to improve worker loyalty and deter unionization.

Stock Market Speculation

Engaging in risky financial transactions to profit from short-term fluctuations in stock prices, often with borrowed money (margin).

19th Amendment

An amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified in 1920, which granted American women the right to vote.

NAACP

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; a civil rights organization that works to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights.

Immigration Acts

Series of federal laws passed in the 1920s that severely restricted immigration to the United States, reflecting nativist sentiments.

Scopes Trial

A famous legal case in 1925 where John T. Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution, symbolizing the battle between modernism and religious fundamentalism.

Great Depression

A severe worldwide economic depression in the 1930s caused by a complex interplay of factors. Key causes include the stock market crash of 1929, banking panics and monetary contraction, the gold standard, agricultural overproduction, uneven distribution of wealth, and high tariffs.

Bonus Army

World War I veterans and their families who marched on Washington, D.C., in 1932 to demand immediate payment of bonuses promised to them for their service.

FDR

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, who led the U.S. through the Great Depression and most of World War II.

Fireside Chats

A series of evening radio addresses given by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944 to communicate directly with the American people.

Buying on Margin

The practice of borrowing money from a broker to purchase stocks, using the purchased stocks as collateral.

AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act)

A New Deal program enacted in 1933 that sought to boost agricultural prices by paying farmers to reduce crop production.

SSA (Social Security Act)

Landmark legislation passed in 1935 that created a system of old-age insurance, unemployment insurance, and aid to dependent children and the disabled.

EBA (Emergency Banking Act)

Legislation passed in 1933 that authorized the Treasury Department to inspect and reopen banks that were financially sound and to provide federal assistance.

WPA (Works Progress Administration)

A New Deal agency established in 1935 that employed millions of unemployed people to carry out public works projects.

CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps)

A New Deal program established in 1933 that employed young, unemployed men in manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources.

Aid Programs (WWII)

Various forms of assistance provided by the United States to Allied nations before and during World War II.

Pearl Harbor

A surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.

Douglas MacArthur

A highly decorated American five-star general who played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II.

Island Hopping

A military strategy employed by the Allies in the Pacific theater during World War II, involving bypassing heavily fortified Japanese islands and instead seizing strategically important islands.

Doolittle's Raids

An air raid on April 18, 1942, by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on the island of Honshu during World War II.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Two Japanese cities that were targeted by atomic bombs dropped by the United States in August 1945.

Executive Order 9066

A U.S. presidential executive order signed during World War II authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones, leading to the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans.

GI Bill of Rights

Officially the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, this law provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans.

Suburbs

Residential areas located outside of central cities, often characterized by single-family homes, planned communities, and reliance on automobiles.

Fair Deal

A set of domestic reform proposals put forth by President Harry S. Truman after World War II, building on the legacy of the New Deal.

Interstate Highway System

A nationwide network of controlled-access highways established by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, championed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

White Flight

The large-scale migration of people of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions.

JFK

John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, who served from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.

LBJ

Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, who served from 1963 to 1969, assuming the presidency after Kennedy's assassination.

Great Society

A set of domestic programs in the United States launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65.

CIA

The Central Intelligence Agency, an independent agency of the United States federal government responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating foreign intelligence and for covert actions.

NASA/Apollo Space Program

NASA is the U.S. government agency responsible for the civilian space program; The Apollo program was its human spaceflight program aimed at landing humans on the Moon.

McCarthyism

The practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence, primarily associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s.

Bay of Pigs

A failed landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by Cuban exiles who were covertly financed and trained by the U.S. government.

Cuban Missile Crisis

A 13-day confrontation in October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning Soviet ballistic missiles deployed in Cuba.

Geneva Peace Accords

A set of agreements reached in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1954, following the First Indochina War between France and the Viet Minh.

Ngo Dinh Diem

The first President of South Vietnam, serving from 1955 until his assassination in 1963.

Gulf of Tonkin

Refers to two alleged confrontations between U.S. naval forces and North Vietnamese forces in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964.

Search and Destroy

A military strategy used by the U.S. in the Vietnam War, involving ground forces searching out the enemy, destroying their supplies, and then withdrawing.

Tet Offensive

A major military campaign during the Vietnam War that began on January 30, 1968, where North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched a series of surprise attacks.

Vietnamization

A policy of the Richard Nixon administration during the Vietnam War to gradually withdraw U.S. troops and transfer the responsibility of fighting the war to the South Vietnamese army.

Cambodia Invasion

A military incursion into Cambodia by the United States and South Vietnam in April 1970, ordered by President Richard Nixon.

Pentagon Papers

A top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

A political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama, that began on December 5, 1955, and lasted 381 days.

Selma March

A series of three protest marches in 1965 from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery, led by civil rights activists.

Redlining

A discriminatory practice by which banks and other financial institutions would draw red lines on maps around areas to identify them as high-risk and therefore deny services.

Black Panther Party

A revolutionary Black nationalist and socialist organization founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.

Eric Garner

An unarmed African American man who died in Staten Island, New York, on July 17, 2014, after being put in a chokehold by a police officer.