AH U7

Vocab

Great Society

Created by President LBJ to improve the social welfare safety net in the USA.

Nuclear Weapons

Vastly more powerful than atomic bombs. Capable of destroying entire cities and permanently irradiating countries.

Atomic Bomb

Significantly more powerful than past weapons. First used in Hiroshima.

Domino Theory

Belief that if one country becomes Communist its neighbors would also become communist.

Warsaw Pact

Military alliance between countries in Eastern Europe and the USSR.

United Nations

Successor to the League of Nations. Exists to solve the world’s political problems.

Bretton Woods System

Created the World Bank and IMF to solve the world’s economic problems.

Brown v. Board

Supreme Court Case that ended the segregation of schools.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Theory that if one country uses nuclear weapons other countries will use them as well effectively ending the world as we know it.

Containment

Theory that communism must be prevented from spreading to other countries and that the USA must use military force to stop it if necessary.

Iron Curtain

Named by Winston Churchill. This is the metaphorical demarcation between communism and democracy in Europe.

International Organizations

Globally centered groups that try to solve world problems.

Holocaust

The death and destruction of six million Jews and five million other people by the Nazis during WWII.

NATO

Military alliance primarily between the USA and Western Europe.

Cuba

Island country located about 90 miles from Florida. Positioned USSR nuclear weapons towards the USA.

Inchon

Location of the last great amphibious landing. Turning point of the war.

Berlin

Split up by the allies and USSR after WWII. Was saved by the USA via air dropped supplies.

Turkey

Asian NATO member. The USA withdrew its nuclear weapons from this country to end the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Vietnam

War executed because of containment theory. USA’s first real war loss.

Murder of Emmett Till

A 14-year-old African American, brutally murdered in 1955 in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

Greensboro Sit-Ins

Nonviolent protests at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in 1960, challenging segregation.

Assassination of MLK Jr.

Killed April 4, 1968, in Memphis on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

USA Withdraws from Vietnam

Marked the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam after the Paris Peace Accords.

Civil Rights Act of 1968

Addressed housing discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin.

Assassination of JFK

Killed November 22, 1963, in Dallas while riding in a motorcade.

Watergate Scandal

Break-in at the DNC HQ leading to Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

March on Washington

Over 200,000 gathered at Lincoln Memorial advocating for civil rights.