YAWP Chapter 26: The Affluent Society - Key Terms and Definitions

The "Affluent Society"

-describes the United States after WWII

-general level of economic well-being has been achieved by most members of society

-Established by John Kenneth Galbraith

New Deal Housing Policies

The National Housing Act of 1934 was part of the New Deal passed during the Great Depression in order to make housing and home mortgages more affordable.

Levittown

In 1947, William Levitt used mass production techniques to build inexpensive homes in surburban New York to help relieve the postwar housing shortage. This became a symbol of the movement to the suburbs in the years after WWII.

Redlining

A process by which banks draw lines on a map and refuse to lend money to purchase or improve property within the boundaries.

Racial Exclusion

Restrictions certain people would have because of their race.

Educational Segregation

Diving white children and colored children and putting them into separate schools, and not allowing the other to go to the opposite school.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

1954 - The Supreme Court overruled Plessy v. Ferguson, declared that racially segregated facilities are inherently unequal and ordered all public schools desegregated.

Enforcement of Integration

Many places had to start integrating like schools and public transportation, but many chose to do it very slowly.

Emmett Till

Murdered in 1955 for whistling at a white woman by her husband and his friends. They kidnapped him and brutally killed him. His death led to the American Civil Rights movement.

Rosa Parks

United States civil rights leader who refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery (Alabama) and so triggered the national civil rights movement (born in 1913)

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

In 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus, Dr. Martin L. King led a boycott of city busses. After 11 months the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public transportation was illegal.

Martin Luther King Jr.

U.S. Baptist minister and civil rights leader. A noted orator, he opposed discrimination against blacks by organizing nonviolent resistance and peaceful mass demonstrations. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Nobel Peace Prize (1964)

Television

1950s-1960s

*Invented in the 1930s

*FDR was the first president to appear on TV; he gave a speech in 1939 at the New York World's Fair, where the television was being officially introduced to the mass public

*Seminal shows during the 1950s and 1960s included The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, and The Ed Sullivan Show

*By 1960, over forty million homes had televisions

The Nuclear Family

-A married couple and their unmarried children living together

-Idealized by television

-Traditional gender roles, and white, middle-class domesticity

The "Reproductive Consensus"

New cult of professionalism that pervaded postwar American culture, including the professionalization of homemaking.

The Baby Boom

the larger than expected generation in United States born shortly after World War II

Rock 'n' Roll

-Became a popular music genre in the fifties with the introduction of Elvis Presley

-Loved by American youth and ushered those in rebellion

Libertarians and the "Free Market"

Libertarians believe that all people have the right to freely offer goods and services on the market and that free-market approaches are the most effective at improving people's lives.

Dwight Eisenhower

United States general who supervised the invasion of Normandy and the defeat of Nazi Germany

Consensus Politics

Politics where the parties are in broad agreement over an issue or the handling of something.

Federal spending created more economic growth

What was the relationship between the federal government and economic growth in the aftermath of World War II?

Increased production that lowered prices, Use of installment plans, Mass-distribution of credit cards(All of the above)

Which of the following enabled the rising purchase of consumer goods?

Redlining neighborhoods that included Americans of color, Claiming that Americans of color were at a greater risk of defaulting on FHA loans, Creating self-fulfilling prophecies that racially integrated neighborhoods would have depreciating home value(All of the above)

How did federal housing programs discriminate against Americans of color?

Ruled against segregated public schools, Overturned the legal logic of Plessy v. Ferguson, Extended the reach of the Fourteenth Amendment(All of the above)

What was the result of Brown v. Board of Education?

Sarah Keys

Who first challenged segregation on buses?

Allegedly whistling at a white woman

Why was Emmett Till murdered?

Created a Civil Rights Commission in the Department of Justice to investigate claims of racial discrimination

What did the Civil Rights Act of 1957 accomplish?

Finding programming that would appeal to the widest possible audience

Which of the following best describes the marketing techniques of early television executives?

Americans of all races, classes, and social order

What groups experienced the increased fertility rates associated with the baby boom?

Beats

What was the name of the 1950s counterculture that rejected the values of conformity and domesticity?

Economic Individualism

The churches most common in suburban America tended most frequently celebrated which of the following cultural values?

The leadership of the National Association of Manufacturers who created advertising campaigns supporting free enterprise.

Who were the "Brass Hats?"

Foundation for Economic Education, Mont Pelerin Society(Both of these)

Which of the following right wing think tanks were created in the first decade following WWII?

Milton Friedman

What is the name of the University of Chicago economist who helped to develop the intellectual position of libertarian economics?

Liberal Democrats, Conservative Republicans (Both)

Congressional opposition from which faction plagued Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration?