Studied by 0 peopleNew Deal
Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaign promise, in his speech to the Democratic National Convention of 1932, to combat the Great Depression with a "new deal for the American people"; the phrase became a catchword for his ambitious plan of economic programs.
National Recovery Administration
Controversial federal agency created in 1933 that brought together business and labor leaders to create "codes of fair competition" and "fair labor" policies, including a national minimum wage.
Civilian Conservation Corps
1933 New Deal public work relief program that provided outdoor manual work for unemployed men, rebuilding infrastructure and implementing conservation programs. The program cut the unemployment rate, particularly among young men.
Public Works Administration
A New Deal agency that contracted with private construction companies to build roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and other public facilities.
Tennessee Valley Authority
Administrative body created in 1933 to control flooding in the Tennessee River valley, provide work for the region's unemployed, and produce inexpensive electric power for the region.
Dust Bowl
Great Plains counties where millions of tons of topsoil were blown away from parched farmland in the 1930s; massive migration of farm families followed.
Works Progress Administration
Part of the Second New Deal, it provided jobs for millions of the unemployed on construction and arts projects.
Wagner Act
Law that established the National Labor Relations Board and facilitated unionization by regulating employment and bargaining practices.
Scottsboro Case
Case in which nine black youths were convicted of raping two white women; in overturning the verdicts of this case, the Court established precedents in Powell v. Alabama (1932) that adequate counsel must be appointed in capital cases, and in Norris v. Alabama (1935) that African-Americans cannot be excluded from juries.
House Un-American Activities Committee
Committee formed in 1938 to investigate subversives in the government and holders of radical ideas more generally; best-known investigations were of Hollywood notables and of former State Department official Alger Hiss, who was accused in 1948 of espionage and Communist Party membership. Abolished in 1975.
Four Freedoms
Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear, as described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his January 6th, 1941, State of the Union Address.
Good Neighbor Policy
Policy proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first inaugural address in 1933 that sought improved diplomatic relations between the United States and its Latin American neighbors.
Lend-Lease Act
1941 law that permitted the United States to lend or lease arms and other supplies to the Allies, signifying increasing likelihood of American involvement in World War II.
Axis Powers
In World War II, the nations of Germany, Italy, and Japan, which had formed an alliance in 1936.
D-Day
June 6, 1944 - Led by Eisenhower, over a million troops (the largest invasion force in history) stormed the beaches at Normandy and began the process of re-taking France. The turning point of World War II.
Holocaust
Systematic racist attempt by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews of Europe, resulting in the murder of over 6 million Jews and more than a million other "undesirables."
Bracero Program
System agreed to by Mexican and American governments in 1942 under which tens of thousands of Mexicans entered the United States to work temporarily in agricultural jobs in the Southwest; lasted until 1964 and inhibited labor organization among farm workers since braceros could be deported at any time.
Japanese-American Internment
Policy adopted by the Roosevelt administration in 1942 under which 110,000 persons of Japanese descent, most of them American citizens, were removed from the West Coast and forced to spend most of World War II in internment camps; it was the largest violation of American civil liberties in the twentieth century.
Korematsu v. United States
1944 Supreme Court case that found Executive Order 9066 to be constitutional. Fred Korematsu, an American-born citizen of Japanese descent, defied the military order that banned all persons of Japanese ancestry from designated western coastal areas. The Court upheld Korematsu's arrest and internment.
Manhattan Project
Secret American program during World War II to develop an atomic bomb; J. Robert Oppenheimer led the team of physicists at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. The two aerial bombings together killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.
United Nations
Organization of nations to maintain world peace, established in 1945 and headquartered in New York.
Atlantic Charter
Agreement issued August 12, 1941, following meetings in Newfoundland between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that signaled the Allies' cooperation and stated their war aims.
Cold War
Term for tensions, 1945-1989, between the Soviet Union and the United States, the two major world powers after World War II.
Containment
General U.S. strategy in the Cold War that called for containing Soviet expansion; originally devised by U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan.
Iron Curtain
Term coined by Winston Churchill to describe the Cold War divide between western Europe and the Soviet Union's eastern European satellites.
Truman Doctrine
President Harry S. Truman's program announced in 1947 of aid to European countries—particularly Greece and Turkey—threatened by communism.
Marshall Plan
U.S. program for the reconstruction of post-World War II Europe through massive aid to former enemy nations as well as allies; proposed by General George C. Marshall in 1947.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Alliance founded in 1949 by ten western European nations, the United States, and Canada to deter Soviet expansion in Europe.
Korean Conflict
Conflict touched off in 1950 when Communist North Korea invaded South Korea; fighting, largely by U.S. forces, continued until 1953.
Decolonization
The process by which African and Asian colonies of European empires became independent in the years following WWII
Totalitarianism
The term that describes aggressive, ideologically driven states that seek to subdue all of civil society to their control, thus leaving no room for individual rights or alternative values.
Taft-Hartley Act
1947 law passed over President Harry Truman's veto; the law contained a number of provisions to weaken labor unions, including the banning of closed shops.
McCarthyism
Post-World War II Red Scare focused on the fear of Communists in U.S. government positions; peaked during the Korean War; most closely associated with Joseph McCarthy, a major instigator of the hysteria.
Levittown
Low-cost, mass-produced developments of suburban tract housing built by William Levitt after World War II on Long Island and elsewhere.
Urban Renewal
A series of policies supported by all levels of government that allowed local governments and housing authorities to demolish so-called blighted areas in urban centers to replace them with more valuable real estate usually reserved for white people.
Interstate Highway System
National network of interstate superhighways; its construction began in the late 1950s for the purpose of commerce and defense. The interstate highways would enable the rapid movement of military convoys and the evacuation of cities after a nuclear attack.
Sputnik
First artificial satellite to orbit the earth; launched October 4, 1957, by the Soviet Union.
Massive Retaliation
Strategy that used the threat of nuclear warfare as a means of combating the global spread of communism.
Geneva Accords
A 1954 document that had promised elections to unify Vietnam and established the Seventeenth Parallel demarcation line that divided North and South Vietnam
Dorothy E. Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County
One of the five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education, the famous case in which the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1954, officially overturned racial segregation in U.S. public schools. The Davis case was the only such case to be initiated by a student protest. The case challenged segregation in Prince Edward County, Virginia.
Brown v. Board of Education
(1954) U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down racial segregation in public education and declared "separate but equal'' unconstitutional.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Sparked by Rosa Parks's arrest on December 1, 1955, for refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger, a successful year-long boycott protesting segregation on city buses; led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Civil rights organization founded in 1957 by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders.
Military-Industrial Complex
The concept of "an immense military establishment" combined with a "permanent arms industry," which President Eisenhower warned against in his 1961 Farewell Address.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Organization founded in 1960 to coordinate civil rights sit-ins and other forms of grassroots protest.
Freedom Rides
Bus journeys challenging racial segregation in the South in 1961.
March on Washington
Civil rights demonstration on August 28, 1963, where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
U.S. mission in which the CIA, hoping to inspire a revolt against Fidel Castro, sent 1,500 Cuban exiles to invade their homeland on April 17, 1961; the mission was a spectacular failure.
Cuban Missile Crisis
Tense confrontation caused when the United States discovered Soviet offensive missile sites in Cuba in October 1962; the U.S.-Soviet confrontation was the Cold War's closest brush with nuclear war.
Civil Rights Act
Law that outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment.
Voting Rights Act
Law passed in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Selma-to-Montgomery March in 1965; it authorized federal protection of the right to vote and permitted federal enforcement of minority voting rights in individual counties, mostly in the South.
Great Society
Term coined by President Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1965 State of the Union address, in which he proposed legislation to address problems of voting rights, poverty, diseases, education, immigration, and the environment.
War on Poverty
Plan announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1964 State of the Union address; under the Economic Opportunity Bill signed later that year, Head Start, VISTA, and the Jobs Corps were created, and programs were created for students, farmers, and businesses in efforts to eliminate poverty.
Black Power
Post-1966 rallying cry of a more militant civil rights movement.
New Left
Radical youth protest movement of the 1960s, named by leader Tom Hayden to distinguish it from the Old (Marxist-Leninist) Left of the 1930s.
Students for a Democratic Society
Major organization of the New Left, founded at the University of Michigan in 1960 by Tom Hayden and Al Haber.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Legislation passed by Congress in 1964 in reaction to supposedly unprovoked attacks on American warships off the coast of North Vietnam; it gave the president unlimited authority to defend U.S. forces and members of SEATO.
Counterculture
"Hippie" youth culture of the 1960s, which rejected the values of the dominant culture in favor of illicit drugs, communes, free sex, and rock music.
National Organization for Women
Organization founded in 1966 by writer Betty Friedan and other feminists; it pushed for abortion rights, nondiscrimination in the workplace, and other forms of equality for women.
Stonewall Inn
A gathering place in Greenwich Village for New York's queer community and the site of the 1969 police raids and resulting riots that launched the modern gay rights movement. The riots drew national attention and introduced sexual orientation to conversations surrounding rights and identity.
American Indian Movement
Movement founded in 1963 by Native Americans who were fed up with the poor conditions on Indian reservations and the federal government's unwillingness to help. In 1973, AIM led 200 Sioux in the occupation of Wounded Knee. After a ten-week standoff with the federal authorities, the government agreed to reexamine Indian treaty rights and the occupation ended.
Wounded Knee Occupation
Beginning on February 27, 1973, approximately 200 Oglala Lakota and followers of the American Indian Movement seized and occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, United States, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
United Farm Workers Union
Union formed by Cesar Chavez that fought for better pay and working conditions for migrant farm workers; included a protest against grape growers
Silent Spring
A 1962 book by biologist Rachel Carson about the destructive impact of the widely used insecticide DDT that launched the modern environmentalist movement.
Loving v. Virginia
Landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Roe v. Wade
1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to permit first-trimester abortions.
Tet Offensive
Surprise attack by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese during the Vietnamese New Year of 1968; turned American public opinion strongly against the war in Vietnam.
Affirmative Action
Policy efforts to promote greater employment opportunities for minorities.
Title IX
Part of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972 that banned gender discrimination in higher education.
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
1972 talks between President Nixon and Secretary Brezhnev that resulted in the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (or SALT), which limited the quantity of nuclear warheads each nation could possess, and prohibited the development of missile defense systems.
Detente
Period of improving relations between the United States and Communist nations, particularly China and the Soviet Union, during the Nixon administration.
Pentagon Papers
Informal name for the Defense Department's secret history of the Vietnam conflict; leaked to the press by former official Daniel Ellsberg and published in the New York Times in 1971.
War Powers Act
Law passed in 1973, reflecting growing opposition to American involvement in Vietnam War; required congressional approval before president sent troops abroad.
Watergate
Washington office and apartment complex that lent its name to the 1972-1974 scandal of the Nixon administration; when his knowledge of the break-in at the Watergate and subsequent cover-up was revealed, Nixon resigned the presidency under threat of impeachment.
Oil Embargo
Prohibition on trade in oil declared by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, dominated by Middle Eastern producers, in October 1973 in response to U.S. and western European support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The rise in gas prices and fuel shortages resulted in a global economic recession and profoundly affected the American economy.
Helsinki Accords
1975 agreement between the USSR and the United States that recognized the post-World War II boundaries of Europe and guaranteed the basic liberties of each nation's citizens.
Three Mile Island
Nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, site of 1979 accident that released radioactive steam into the air; public reaction ended the nuclear power industry's expansion.
Camp David Accords
Peace agreement between the leaders of Israel and Egypt, brokered by President Jimmy Carter in 1978.
Reaganomics
Popular name for President Ronald Reagan's philosophy of "supply side" economics, which combined tax cuts with an unregulated marketplace.
Iran-Contra Affair
Scandal of the second Reagan administration involving sales of arms to Iran in partial exchange for release of hostages in Lebanon and use of the arms money to aid the Contras in Nicaragua, which had been expressly forbidden by Congress.
New World Order
President George H.W. Bush's term for the post-Cold War world.
Gulf War
Military action in 1991 in which an international coalition led by the United States drove Iraq from Kuwait, which it had occupied the previous year.
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
President Clinton's compromise measure that allowed gay people to serve in the military incognito, as officers could no longer seek them out for dismissal but they could not openly express their identity. "Don't ask, don't tell" was ended under the Obama administration, when gay military service was allowed.
North American Free Trade Agreement
Approved in 1993, the agreement with Canada and Mexico that allowed goods to travel across their borders free of tariffs. Critics of the agreement argued that American workers would lose their jobs to cheaper Mexican labor.
Oslo Accords
1993 roadmap for peace between Israel and the newly created Palestinian Authority, negotiated under the Clinton administration.
Rwandan Genocide
1994 Genocide conducted by the Hutu ethnic group upon the Tutsi minority in Rwanda.
Ethnic Cleansing
The systematic removal of an ethnic group from a territory through violence or intimidation in order to create a homogeneous society; the term was popularized by the Yugoslav policy brutally targeting Albanian Muslims in Kosovo.
Balkan Crisis
A series of ethnic and political crises that arose following the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Many atrocities were committed during the conflict, and NATO, the United Nations, and the United States intervened several times.
Globalization
Term that became prominent in the 1990s to describe the rapid acceleration of international flows of commerce, financial resources, labor, and cultural products.
Americans with Disabilities Act
1990 law that prohibited the discrimination against persons with disabilities in both hiring and promotion. It also mandated accessible entrances for public buildings.
Culture Wars
Battles over moral values that occurred throughout the 1990s. The Culture Wars touched many areas of American life—from popular culture to academia. Flashpoints included the future of the nuclear family and the teaching of evolution.
Defense of Marriage Act
1996 law that barred gay couples from receiving federal benefits. Ruled unconstitutional in 2013.
Bush v. Gore
U.S. Supreme Court case that determined the winner of the disputed 2000 presidential election.
Kyoto Protocol
A 1997 international agreement that sought to combat global warming. To great controversy, the Bush administration announced in 2001 that it would not abide by the Kyoto Protocol.
Bush Doctrine
President George W. Bush's foreign policy principle wherein the United States would launch a war on terrorism.
9/11
Four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by the militant Islamist extremist network al-Qaeda against the United States on September 11, 2001.
War on Terrorism
Global crusade to root out anti-American, anti-Western Islamist terrorist cells launched by President George W. Bush as a response to the 9/11 attacks
War in Afghanistan
War fought against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan following the attacks of September 11, 2001. It remains the longest war in American history.
Iraq War
Military campaign in 2003 in which the United States, unable to gain approval by the United Nations, unilaterally occupied Iraq and removed dictator Saddam Hussein from power.
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