APUSH Unit 7 Vocab

Axis Powers

military alliance made up of Germany, Japan, and Italy

Neutrality Act of 1935

made it illegal for Americans to sell arms to any country at war

Popular Front

A small, left-leaning coalition of Americans who pushed for greater U.S. intervention against fascism in Europe.

Munich Conference

1938 conference at which European leaders attempted to appease Hitler by turning over the Sudetenland to him in exchange for promise that Germany would not expand Germany's territory any further.

America First Committee (AFC)

Group formed in 1940 by isolationists to oppose the entrance of the United States into WWII

Four Freedoms

speech in which FDR warned that a German victory would challenge the freedoms of speech, religion, from fear, and from want

Lend-Lease Act

1941 law that authorized the president to aid any nation whose defense he believed was vital to American security

Atlantic Charter

Declaration of Principles issued by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt in August 1941 that called for economic cooperation, national self-determination, and guarantees of political stability after the war. This was the ideological basis for US involvement in the war

Pearl Harbor

Base in hawaii that was bombed by japan on December 7, 1941, which eagered America to enter the war.

War Powers Act (1941)

The law that gave President Roosevelt unprecedented control over all aspects of the war effort during WWII.

Revenue Act of 1942

raised corporation taxes and required nearly all Americans to pay income taxes.

Code talkers

Native American men who served in the military by transmitting radio messages in their native languages, which were undecipherable by German and Japanese spies.

"Double V" Campaign

An african american civil rights campaign during WWII that called for victory over nazism abroad and over discrimination in jobs, housing, and voting at home.

Executive Order 8802

In 1941 FDR passed it which prohibited discriminatory employment practices by fed agencies and all unions and companies engaged in war related work. It established the Fair Employment Practices Commission to enforce the new policy.

Bracero Program

Plan that brought laborers from Mexico to work on American farms

Servicemen's Readjustment Act

Legislation authorizing the government to provide WWII veterans with funds for education, housing, and health care, as well as loans to start businesses and buy homes

Zoot-suit riot

A series of riots in L.A. California during WW2, soldiers stationed in the city and Mexican youths because of the zoot suits they wore.

Executive Order 9066

FDR's order to place all Japanese Americans in Internment Camps for the remainder of the war

D-Day

Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944

Manhattan Project

A secret U.S. project for the construction of the atomic bomb.

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

Federal New Deal program established in 1935 that provided government-funded public works jobs to millions of unemployed Americans during the Great Depression in areas ranging from construction to the arts.

Keynesian Economics

The theory, developed by British economist John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s, that purposeful government intervention in the economy (through lowering or raising taxes, interest rates, and government spending) can affect the level of overall economic activity and thereby prevent severe depressions and runaway inflation.

fair labor standards act

new deal legislation passed in 1938 that outlawed child labor, standardized the forty-hour workweek, mandated overtime pay, and established a federal minimum wage

Indian Reorganization Act

A 1934 law that reversed the Dawes Act of 1887. Through the law, Indians won a greater degree of religious freedom, and tribal governments regained their status as semisovereign dependent nations.

dust bowl

An area including the semiarid states of OK, TX, NM, CO, AK, K that experienced a severe drought and large dust storms from 1930 to 1939

Tennessee Valley Authority

An agency funded by Congress in 1933 that integrated flood control, reforestation, electricity generation, and agricultural and industrial development in the Tennessee Valley area.

rural electrification administration

An agency established in 1935 to promote nonprofit farm cooperatives that offered loans to farmers to install power lines.

Federal Writers Project

A New Deal program, part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) that provided jobs for out-of-work writers, which included the collection of oral histories.

Smoot-Hawley Tariff

A high tariff on imports enacted in 1930, during the Great Depression, that was designed to stimulate American manufacturing. Instead it triggered retaliatory tariffs in other countries, which hindered global trade and led to greater economic contraction.

Bonus Army

A group of fifteen to twenty thousand unemployed World War I veterans who set up camps near the Capitol Building in 1932 to demand immediate payment of pension awards due in 1945.

Fireside chats

A series of informal radio addresses Franklin Roosevelt made to the nation in which he explained New Deal initiatives.

Hundred days

A legendary session during the first few months of Franklin Roosevelt's administration in which Congress enacted fifteen major bills that focused primarily on four problems: banking failures, agricultural overproduction, the business slump, and soaring unemployment.

Glass-Steagall Act

A 1933 law that created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insured deposits up to $2,500 (and now up to $250,000). The act also prohibited banks from making risky, unsecured investments with customers' deposits.

Agricultural Adjustment Act

New Deal legislation passed in May 1933 that aimed at cutting agricultural production to raise crop prices and thus farmers' income.

National Recovery Administration

Federal agency established in June 1933 to promote industrial recovery during the Great Depression. It encouraged industrialists to voluntarily adopt codes that defined fair working conditions, set prices, and minimized competition.

Public Works Administration

A New Deal construction program that was established by Congress in 1933. Designed to put people back to work, they built the Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam) and Grand Coulee Dam, among other large public works projects.

Civilian Conservation Corps

Federal relief program that provided jobs to millions of unemployed young men who built thousands of bridges, roads, trails, and other structures in state and national parks, bolstering the national infrastructure.

Federal Housing Administration

An agency established by the Federal Housing Act of 1934 that refinanced home mortgages for mortgage holders facing possible foreclosure.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

A commission established by Congress in 1934 to regulate the stock market. The commission had broad powers to determine how stocks and bonds were sold to the public, and to prevent insider trading

American Liberty League

A group of Republican business leaders and conservative Democrats who banded together to fight what they called the "reckless spending" and "socialist" reforms of the New Deal.

National Association of Manufactures

An association of industrialists and business leaders opposed to government regulation. In the era of the New Deal, the group produced radio programs, motion pictures, billboards, and direct mail campaigns to promote free enterprise and unfettered capitalism

Townsend Plan

A plan proposed by Francis Townsend in 1933 that would give $200 a month (nearly $4,000 today) to citizens over the age of sixty; stimulated mass support for old-age pensions

Welfare state

a term for industrial democracies that have adopted government-guaranteed social welfare programs

Wagner Act

A 1935 act that upheld the right of industrial workers to join unions and established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency with the authority to protect workers from employer coercion and to guarantee collective bargaining.

social security act

A 1935 act that provided old-age pensions for workers, a joint federal-state system of compensation for unemployed workers, and a program of payments to widowed mothers and the disabled.

Soft Power

The exercise of popular cultural influence abroad, as American radio and movies became popular around the world in the 1920s, transmitting American cultural ideals overseas.

Sheppard-Towner Federal Maternity and Infancy Act

The first federally funded health-care legislation that provided federal funds for medical clinics, prenatal education programs, and visiting nurses.

Eighteenth Amendment

The ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol that went into effect in January 1920. Also called "prohibition," the amendment was repealed in 1933.

Volstead Act

Officially the National Prohibition Act, passed by Congress in 1920 to enforce the provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment banning the sale of alcohol.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

An organization formed during the Red Scare to protect free speech rights.

Scopes trial

1925 trial of John Scopes, Tennessee teacher accused of violating state law prohibiting teaching of the theory of evolution; it became a nationally celebrated confrontation between religious fundamentalism and civil liberties.

National Origins Act (1924)

A federal law limiting annual immigration from each foreign country to no more than 2 percent of that nationality's percentage of the U.S. population as it had stood in 1890. The law severely limited immigration, especially from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Ku Klux Klan

Secret society that first undertook violence against African Americans in the South after the Civil War but was reborn in 1915 to fight the perceived threats posed by African Americans, immigrants, radicals, feminists, Catholics, and Jews.

Harlem Renaissance

A flourishing of African American artists, writers, intellectuals, and social leaders in the 1920s, centered in the neighborhoods of Harlem, New York City.

Jazz

Unique American musical form, developed in New Orleans and other parts of the South before World War I. Jazz musicians developed an ensemble improvisational style.

Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)

A Harlem-based group, led by charismatic, Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey, that arose in the 1920s to mobilize African American workers and champion black separatism.

pan-Africanism

The idea that people of African descent, in all parts of the world, have a common heritage and destiny and should cooperate in political action.

Red Scare

A term for anticommunist hysteria that swept the United States, first after World War I, and led to a series of government raids on alleged subversives and a suppression of civil liberties.

Palmer Raids

a series of raids ordered by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer on radical organizations that peaked in January 1920, when federal agents arrested six thousand citizens and aliens and denied them access to legal counsel.

Great Migration

the migration of 6 million African Americans from the South to the North and West between 1916 and 1970

Red Summer

Antiblack riots in the summer and fall of 1919 by white Americans in more than two dozen cities leading to hundreds of deaths. the worst riot occurred in Chicago, in which 38 people were killed (23 blacks, 15 whites)

American Plan

Strategy by American business in the 1920s to keep workplaces free of unions, which included refusing to negotiate with trade unions and requiring workers to sign contracts (known as "yellow dog" contracts) pledging not to join a union.

Welfare capitalism

A system of labor relations that stressed management's responsibility for employees' well-being.

Dollar diplomacy

the use of american foreign policy to stabilize the economies of foreign nations, especially in the carribean and south america, in order to benefit american commerical interests, between WWI and the early 1930s.

Teapot Dome

Nickname for scandal in which Interior Secretary Albert Fall accepted $300,000 in bribes for leasing oil reserves on public land in Teapot Dome, Wyoming. It was part of a larger pattern of corruption that marred Warren G. Harding's presidency.

Consumer credit

Forms of borrowing, such as auto loans and installment plans, that flourished in the 1920s and worsened the crash that led to the Great Depression.

Hollywood

The city in southern California that became synonymous with the American movie industry in the 1920s.

Flapper

A young woman of the 1920s who defied conventional standards of conduct by wearing short skirts and makeup, freely spending the money she earned on the latest fashions, dancing to jazz, and flaunting her liberated lifestyle.

Zimmerman Telegram

A telegram Germany Sent to Mexico to convince Mexico to attack the U.S.

War Industries Board (WIB)

this was essential to America having the weapons needed to fight during WWI

National War Labor Board (NWLB)

Government agency that imposed ceilings on wage increases; contested by many labor unions.

Sedition Act of 1918

added to Espionage Act to cover "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the American form of government, the Constitution, the flag, or the armed forces.

Great Migration

Movement of African Americans from the South to the North for jobs.

National Women's Party

A militant feminist group led by Alice Paul that argued the Nineteenth Amendment was not adequate enough to protect women's rights. They believed they needed a more constitutional amendment that would clearly provide legal protection of their rights and prohibit sex-based discrimination.

Fourteen Points

principles for a new world order as a basis for peace negotiations

League of Nations

an international organization formed in 1920 to promote cooperation and peace among nations

Treaty of Versailles

Treaty that ended WWI

American exceptionalism

The idea that the American experience was different or unique from others, and therefore America had a unique or special role in the world, such as a "city upon a hill."

Teller Amendment

Legislation that promised the US would not annex Cuba after winning the Spanish-American war

Insular Cases

Determined that inhabitants of U.S. territories had some, but not all, of the rights of U.S. citizens.

Platt Amendment

Legislation that severely restricted Cuba's sovereignty and gave the US the right to intervene if Cuba got into trouble

"Open door" policy

the claim that all nations seeking to do business in China should be able to freely do it

Root-Takahira Agreement

it confirmed the principles of free oceanic commerce and recognized Japan's control over Manchuria

Panama Canal

Ship canal cut across the isthmus of Panama by United States, it opened in 1915.

Roosevelt Corollary

the 1904 assertion that the US would act as a "policeman" in the Caribbean region and intervene in the affairs of nations that were guilty of "wrongdoing or impotence" in order to protect US interests in Latin America