AP US History Flashcards

Period 7: 1890-1945

The New Deal

• Federal Emergency Relief Association (FERA)
  • Goal: Relief
  • Description: Granted money to states to make relief programs for individuals.
• Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
  • Goal: Relief
  • Description: Created jobs for young men, often to build public works.
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
  • Goal: Reform
  • Description: Provided federal protection for bank deposits, building confidence in banks.
• Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)
  • Goal: Recovery
  • Description: Offered subsidies to farmers to limit crop production, aiming to reduce overproduction and raise crop prices.
• Works Progress Administration (WPA)
  • Goal: Relief
  • Description: Created work for millions of job seekers to carry out federal public works projects.
• Social Security Administration (SSA)
  • Goal: Reform
  • Description: Provided old-age insurance, unemployment relief, aid for dependent children, and assistance for the disabled.
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
  • Goal: Reform
  • Description: Regulated the stock market and aimed to prevent fraud and protect against abuse.

FDR's Indian New Deal

• Purpose: To undo the abuse of native's policies of the late 1800s.

Challenges to FDR's New Deal

• Huey Long: Believed the New Deal didn't do enough to help those in poverty.
• Francis Townsend: Wanted more help for the elderly in the form of age pensions, allowing them to retire.
• Father Coughlin: Called for monetary reforms to aid the economy.

America's Shift to WWII

• Cash and Carry Program: Adopted to avoid getting into another war and avoid lending out billions of dollars.
• Some said the lend-lease act was not neutral
• On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, killing over 2,000. FDR called this a "date which will live in infamy," and war was declared on Japan.

Post-War Policy

• Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points:
  • Goals: Open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, removal of economic barriers, and the establishment of a League of Nations.
• Reasons for Senate Rejection of the Treaty of Versailles (Henry Cabot Lodge):
  • The treaty punished Germany too much, potentially leading to resentment.
  • The treaty would make it easier for Europe to repair war reparations.
• Dawes Plan: Provided economic support to Germany to make it easier to pay war reparations.

Early Civil Rights

• NAACP: Worked on anti-lynching legislation, increasing voter participation, and eliminating discrimination and segregation.
• National Urban League: Helped African Americans who were moving to northern cities with employment and education.
• United Negro Improvement Association: Focused on black pride and a back-to-Africa movement.
• Harlem Renaissance Artists: Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Zora Neale Hurston.
• Tulsa Race Massacre: A white mob burned down a prosperous African American neighborhood known as "Black Wall Street" after a false report of a black man assaulting a white woman.

The Roaring 20's

• Household Appliances: Many bought vacuum cleaners, electric stoves, etc.
• Ford's Model T: Many bought it for transportation.
• The Radio: People listened to music and entertainment.
• Installment plans encourage credit.
• Scopes Trial: Represented the conflict between fundamentalism (teaching the Bible) and modernism (teaching Darwin's theory).
• Flappers: Represented changing roles for women, including freedom, more promiscuity, and challenging traditional values.
• "Lost Generation" writers came of age after WWI and criticized consumerism; included Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby).

America in WWII

• Tuskegee Airmen: First black military aviators who flew over Italy, escorting American allied members as they flew.
• Native American Code Talkers: Used native languages to transmit secret allied messages.
• Women's Army Corps: First females to serve as active members of the US military.
• Braceros: Mexican immigrants who worked on farms and railroads to provide food for allied troops.
• D-Day (Operation Overlord): On June 6, 1944, Allied forces, including over 70,000 American troops led by General Eisenhower, invaded France to regain territory from Nazi Germany, who surrendered within the year.

American Strategy in the Pacific

• Island-hopping: Gaining control of Pacific islands as stepping stones to get to Japan by advancing or neutralizing damaged islands.
• Battle of Midway: Damaged the Japanese Navy's hopes for victory in the Pacific.

Wartime Conferences

• Casablanca: Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to accept only unconditional surrender from the Axis Powers.
• Yalta: The "Big Three" developed a post-war plan for Europe that included self-determination.
• Potsdam: President Truman met with Allied leaders who agreed to split Germany into occupation zones after the war.

WWII Homefront

• Headline: Germany Surrendered to Soviets and Allies Victory in Europe day
• Selective Service Act of 1917 vs. Selective Training and Service Act of 1940: The 1940 act was passed before America had entered the confict
• The images was directed toward Women so they work in factories.
• War Production Board (1942): Marked continuity with World War I by coordinating and controlling production.
• Japanese internment camps: upheld I the U.S.
• Manhattan Project: A secret research and development program that produced the first atomic bombs. President Truman made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Big Picture Ideas

• American foreign policy changed from isolationism to imperialism with the annexation of Hawaii, involvement in the Spanish-American War, and taking control of territories in the Pacific such as the Philippines.
• Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson oversaw policy changes that addressed corrupt business and political practices, as well as social and economic inequalities. They are often considered the Progressive Presidents.
• America attempted to remain neutral as Europe went to war in 1914. Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram caused America to join WWI in order to protect democratic values.
• America saw social changes and economic prosperity during the "roaring 20s." Changes included flappers, the 19th Amendment expanding suffrage, and increased sales of Ford's Model T, but coincided with racism and nativism.
• Overspeculation and buying on margin caused the worst economic crisis called the Great Depression. The stock market crashed in 1929 under President Hoover. Despite FDR's New Deal, the Depression did not end until WWII began.
• America initially adopted policies like "cash and carry" and "lend-lease" but ultimately joined WWII after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. America fought in Europe and the Pacific, ending the war with the dropping of the atomic bomb.

American Imperialism

• Spanish-American War Causes:
  • De Lôme Letter: A letter written by a Spanish diplomat that criticized President McKinley, offending Americans.
  • Yellow Journalism: Published extremely exaggerated stories in newspapers (USS Maine).
  • The USS Maine.
• Anti-Imperialist Point of View:
  • Drew connections with parts of territories from other countries and made Americans debate imperialism
• Reasons for Imperialist Expansion:
  • New markets
  • Raw materials
• Reasons Against Imperialist Expansion:
  • Contradicted principles of republicanism.
  • Feared wars.

Foreign Policy

• Open Door Policy: To allow all countries to trade with China.
• After the Spanish-American War, America purchased the Philippines from Spain, causing the Philippine War. American troops defeated Filipino leader Emilio Aguinaldo's guerilla forces, and the territory remained under American control until after WWII.
• Gentlemen's Agreement:
  • Cause: Increase of unskilled Japanese in San Francisco leading to desegregate schools
  • Effect: Japanese immigration was limited.
• America took over the Panama Canal project from France in 1904 under President Theodore Roosevelt. Due to diseases and the dangerous excavation of land, it took 10 years to build the 50 mile canal, which opened in Panama to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
• Roosevelt Corollary:
  • Continuity with the Monroe Doctrine: That nations were not open to European colonization.
  • Change from the Monroe Doctrine: Showed increased American involvement in Latin American affairs.

Women's Rights

• NAWSA vs. National Woman's Party:
  • NAWSA would use petitioning and lobbying for rights at the state level.
  • The National Woman's Party used more aggressive tactics, like picketing, hoping for a constitutional amendment.
• Image depicting WWI and women without voting rights.
• Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921. This organization advocated for the legalization of contraception and promoted women's reproductive rights. The name was changed to Planned Parenthood in 1942.

Progressive Era

• Roosevelt's Response to the Coal Strike: Showed a change from previous responses to labor disputes because he supported the miners (first to side with strikers) where previous strikes would not garner any support.
• After the Panic of 1907, Americans began calling for banking reform. As part of Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom, the Federal Reserve System was created to establish economic stability by creating a central bank that oversaw monetary policy.
• Muckrakers:
  • Ida M. Tarbell: Wrote History of the Standard Oil Company, leading to investigation and trust-busting of Rockefeller.
  • Lincoln Steffens: Wrote The Shame of the Cities to criticize corruption and illegal actions of political machines and bosses.
  • Upton Sinclair: Wrote The Jungle to expose unsanitary conditions in the meat industry, leading to the Meat Inspection Act.
  • Ida B. Wells: Wrote Lynch Law in Georgia to raise awareness about racism and violence in the South, like the KKK.