The Affluent Society

Flashcards about The Affluent Society

John Kenneth Galbraith

Harvard economist and public intellectual, published 'The Affluent Society' in 1958, examining America's post-World War II consumer economy.

Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC)

A New Deal program that purchased and refinanced existing mortgages at risk of default, introducing the amortized mortgage.

Federal Housing Administration (FHA)

New Deal organization that increased access to home ownership by insuring mortgages and protecting lenders from financial loss.

Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill)

Act passed in 1944 that offered low-interest home loans, stipends for college, business loans, and unemployment benefits to veterans.

Levittown

The first prototypical suburban community, built in 1946 in Long Island, New York, offering affordable housing to veterans and their families.

Redlining

A practice where banks and other organizations demarcated minority neighborhoods on a map with a red line indicating areas unfit for their services, denying loans and other necessities.

Shelley v. Kraemer

A Supreme Court case in 1948 that declared racially restrictive neighborhood housing covenants legally unenforceable.

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson's 1962 book denouncing the excessive use of pesticides such as DDT, raising awareness about environmental destruction.

Plessy v. Ferguson

Supreme Court case in 1896, establishing the principle of "separate but equal," which was used to justify segregated schooling.

Brown v. Board of Education

Supreme Court case in 1954 that declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Brown II

An ambiguous order in 1955 from the Supreme Court that school districts desegregate "with all deliberate speed," leading to slow and ineffective desegregation.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

1964 act where the federal government finally implemented some enforcement of the Brown decision by threatening to withhold funding from recalcitrant school districts.

Sarah Keys

African American woman who publicly challenged segregated public transportation in 1953, leading to the landmark 1955 decision Keys v. Carolina Coach Company.

Keys v. Carolina Coach Company

1955 decision by the Interstate Commerce Commission that ruled "separate but equal" violated the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Emmett Till

Fourteen-year-old boy murdered in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman, galvanizing the civil rights movement.

Rosa Parks

Woman who refused to surrender her seat on a Montgomery city bus on December 1, 1955, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA)

An organization formed to coordinate an organized, sustained boycott of the city’s buses in Montgomery, Alabama, led by Martin Luther King Jr.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

The first such measure passed since Reconstruction, creating the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Commission to investigate claims of racial discrimination.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

An organization created to coordinate civil rights groups across the South in their efforts to organize and sustain boycotts, protests, and other assaults against Jim Crow discrimination.

Baby Boom

American fertility experienced an unprecedented spike starting in 1946 to 1964.

Big Three

The broadcasting companies—NBC, CBS, and the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)—used their technical expertise and capital reserves to conquer the airwaves.

Television

Shows of the 1950s idealized the nuclear family, “traditional” gender roles, and white, middle-class domesticity.

Beat Generation

The writers, poets, and musicians, disillusioned with capitalism, consumerism, and traditional gender roles, sought a deeper meaning in life.

Gay Rights Movement

Men established the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles as support groups.

Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

A key ideological factory, supplying businesses, service clubs, churches, schools, and universities with a steady stream of libertarian literature.

Mont Pelerin Society (MPS)

Brought together libertarian intellectuals from both sides of the Atlantic to challenge Keynesian economics—the dominant notion that government fiscal and monetary policy were necessary economic tools—in academia.

Ayn Rand

One of the decades’ best sellers, novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) helped move the ideas of individualism, “rational self-interest, ” and “the virtue of selfishness” outside the halls of business and academia and into suburbia.

Robert Taft

The more conservative faction, sought to take the party further to the right, particularly in economic matters, by rolling back New Deal programs and policies.

Dwight Eisenhower

Attempting to placate the conservatives in his party, picked California congressman and virulent anticommunist Richard Nixon as his running mate.

Bracero Program

Launched the Bracero (“laborer”) program to bring Mexican laborers into the United States.