History, Urbanism, Media, and Civil Rights Lecture Review

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering post-war architecture, urban planning, media strategies, polling methods, Cold War dynamics, semiotics, and the Civil Rights movement.

International Style

An architectural movement defined by minimal, functional, and utilitarian design, recognized as a symbol for progress, industry, and modernity.

"Form Follows Function"

An architectural principle coined by Louis Sullivan stating that the shape and design of a building should primarily relate to its intended function or purpose.

Secretariat Building

A United Nations building in NYC built in the early 1950s, led by the architectural firm Harrison & Abramovitz with supervising architects Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier.

Radiant City

A 1927 modern urban plan by Le Corbusier that integrated modern visions for work and living around automobiles, influencing modern architecture in the United States.

Robert Moses

The master planner of New York who built extensive highways, parks, and beaches, reshaping modern infrastructure while destroying countless neighborhoods before his career ended in the 1960s.

Cross-Bronx Expressway

Built between 1948 and 1972 under Robert Moses, it was the first automobile highway constructed through a densely populated urban area, displacing thousands of residents.

Technocracy

A form of governance where decision-making is led by technical experts using knowledge and expertise; in the 1950s planning profession, technocrats drove urban renewal.

National Interstate Highway & Defense Act (1956)

Legislation that funded and enforced highway construction across the United States, creating the "expressway world" and spurring suburban lifestyles while clearing urban "slums."

"Kill the Street"

An urban renewal concept aimed at eliminating traditional city street life, which planners viewed as filthy, chaotic, and crime-ridden.

Robert Taylor Homes

A public housing project in Chicago constructed between 1962 and 2007, originally designed to promote equality for displaced urban populations.

Wendell O. Pruitt Homes

A public housing complex operating from 1954 to 1972, designed by Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the World Trade Center Twin Towers.

Hard Sell

A direct, straightforward advertising style invented by Rosser Reeves that focuses on simple persuasion and visual demonstration of a product's utility, such as the Anacin headache ad.

Deep Sell

An advertising philosophy formulated by Tony Schwartz ("make people your work force") that uses emotional resonance and subconscious suggestion rather than simple product descriptions.

"Daisy" Ad

A controversial 1964 political commercial produced for Lyndon B. Johnson featuring a little girl counting daisy petals before an atomic explosion, attacking Barry Goldwater's stance on nuclear weapons without naming him.

The Orders

The formal rules and classical styles (such as Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian) mastered in traditional pre-war architecture to signify authority and hierarchy, seen in buildings like San Francisco City Hall.

White Flight

The mass migration of white urban residents to newly developed suburban communities during the 1950s, driven by racial prejudice against Black Americans and immigrants.

Redlining

A discriminatory 1930s federal housing practice where the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) graded neighborhoods with Black residents in red, blocking access to mortgage insurance and bank loans.

Underwriting Manual

The official Federal Housing Administration (FHA) document, considered the "bible" of the real estate industry since 1940, which mandated racial segregation to preserve property values.

Public Opinion

The collective preferences or views expressed by a population that bear upon the public interest or common good.

Convenience Sampling

A non-probabilistic polling method that surveys easily accessible populations, which caused the Literary Digest to falsely predict Alf Landon defeating FDR in the 1936 presidential election.

Random Sample

A polling sample where every individual in the broader population has an equal likelihood of selection, allowing accurate statistical inferences about the population.

Stratified Random Sample (SRS)

A probability sampling design that divides the population into distinct geographic or demographic strata (e.g., states, blocks, households) and samples randomly within each level.

Relational Power

The capacity of political Actor A to compel Actor B to perform an action that Actor B would not otherwise choose to do.

Material Power

The tangible military and economic resources of a state, including weaponry, economic assets, troop deployments, and territorial occupation capabilities.

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

A Cold War strategic doctrine in which both sides develop equal nuclear retaliation capabilities, creating a balance where neither party has an incentive to launch a first strike or disarm.

RAND Corporation

A Santa Monica think tank established in 1948 to connect theoretical research with military practice, playing a major role in developing Game Theory during the Cold War.

SALT Talks

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks held between the United States and the Soviet Union under Presidents Nixon and Carter to negotiate limits on nuclear arsenals.

Sonic Color Line

Racial segregation within the commercial recording industry, which historically divided releases into low-status "hill-billy" records and Black American "race records."

Great Migration

The mass movement between 1916 and 1930 of Black Americans fleeing Jim Crow conditions in the South to Northern, Midwestern, and Western urban centers, bringing regional blues traditions with them.

Signifier

The material form of a sign in semiotics, such as a specific sound, printed word, or visual image.

Signified

The mental concept, meaning, or idea invoked by a signifier, connected to it through an arbitrary relationship.

Referent

The physical object or real-world entity to which a linguistic or visual sign points.

Signifying Monkey

A trickster figure from African folklore (rooted in Esu-Elegbara) who uses cunning language and indirect insult to outmaneuver stronger adversaries; a foundational concept in African-American literary criticism.

Signifyin(g)

A rhetorical strategy in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) that highlights the arbitrary link between signifier and signified through wordplay, indirect critique, and irony as a tactic of resistance against power.

Second-Removism

A technique utilized in Bebop jazz and hipster culture to cap or outsmart "squares" by remaining intentionally abstract, unpredictable, and resistant to mainstream appropriation.

Federalism

A constitutional division of governing authority between national (federal) institutions and state/local entities, codified in part by the 10th Amendment.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

A $7-2$ Supreme Court ruling holding that the framers of the Constitution never intended Black Americans to be citizens, declaring them property with no federal rights.

14th Amendment

A Reconstruction amendment granting constitutional citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, guaranteeing due process and equal protection under the law.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A $7-1$ Supreme Court decision that upheld racial segregation in public accommodations under the "separate but equal" doctrine, arguing that social separation did not imply legal inequality.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

A unanimous $9-0$ Supreme Court decision ruling that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, overturning the doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson.

Southern Manifesto

A document signed in 1956 by 19 U.S. Senators and 82 Representatives expressing defiance against Brown v. Board of Education, encouraging Southern states to close public schools before desegregating them.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Landmark federal legislation signed by Lyndon B. Johnson that outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and empowered federal agencies to enforce desegregation following a Southern Senate filibuster.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Federal legislation passed after the "Bloody Sunday" march from Selma to Montgomery that prohibited discriminatory voting practices, dispatched federal voter registrars, and required targeted states to obtain preclearance from the Department of Justice before modifying election laws.