Unit 8: Period 8: 1945 to 1980

22 terms. Say what each one means, then open the card to check.

• Containment

  The Cold War policy of stopping the spread of Soviet and communist influence beyond the areas it already controlled, using aid, alliances and force.

  Example. The Berlin airlift of 1948 to 1949 kept West Berlin supplied without firing a shot, holding the line against Soviet pressure.

• Marshall Plan

  The U.S. program, begun in 1948, that sent about 13 billion dollars in aid to rebuild the economies of Western Europe after World War II.

  Example. Britain, France and West Germany were among the largest recipients, and Western European industry was well above prewar levels by the early 1950s.

• NATO

  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance formed in 1949 by the United States, Canada and Western European nations.

  Example. Members pledged that an armed attack on one of them in Europe or North America would be treated as an attack on all.

• McCarthyism

  Making public accusations of disloyalty or communist ties with little evidence; named for Senator Joseph McCarthy, the term covers the anticommunist fear of the early 1950s.

  Example. Hollywood studios refused to hire writers who would not answer questions about Communist ties before a committee of Congress.

• Sputnik

  The first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in October 1957, which made many Americans fear they were falling behind in science and missiles.

  Example. After the launch, high schools added science and math courses, and the space race became a measure of national strength.

• Cuban Missile Crisis

  The October 1962 standoff over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, the closest the two powers came to nuclear war.

  Example. For about two weeks, a U.S. naval quarantine of Cuba and secret talks led the Soviets to agree to withdraw their missiles.

• Domino theory

  The belief that if one nation fell to communism, its neighbors would soon fall too, used to justify U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

  Example. Eisenhower used the image of falling dominoes in 1954 to explain why losing Indochina could endanger all of Southeast Asia.

• Brown v. Board of Education

  The 1954 Supreme Court ruling that segregated public schools violate the equal protection clause, ending separate but equal in public education.

  Example. Linda Brown, a Black third grader in Topeka, Kansas, had to travel across town to a Black school though a white school was much closer.

• Montgomery bus boycott

  The 1955 to 1956 refusal of Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, to ride segregated city buses, which made Martin Luther King Jr. a national leader.

  Example. For about a year, most of the city's Black residents walked or shared rides rather than ride the buses.

• Civil Rights Act of 1964

  The law that banned discrimination in public accommodations and in employment and allowed federal funds to be cut off from programs that discriminated.

  Example. Title VII of the act barred job discrimination by race or sex and set up the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

• Voting Rights Act of 1965

  The law that suspended literacy tests in areas with low voter registration or turnout and let federal examiners register voters there.

  Example. Federal examiners went to counties in the Deep South to register Black citizens whom local officials had turned away.

• Black Power

  A call, popularized in 1966, for Black political and economic power, racial pride and self-reliance, often with less emphasis on integration and nonviolence.

  Example. Stokely Carmichael of SNCC used the phrase at a 1966 rally in Mississippi, and it spread quickly.

• Great Society

  Lyndon Johnson's program of the mid-1960s to use federal power to end poverty and racial injustice and to improve health, education and the arts.

  Example. Johnson also signed laws creating the National Endowment for the Arts and the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1965.

• Medicare and Medicaid

  Federal health programs created in 1965: Medicare insures people 65 and older, and Medicaid pays for care for many low-income people.

  Example. Former President Harry Truman received the first Medicare card when Johnson signed the law in Truman's hometown in 1965.

• Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

  The law that ended the national-origins quotas of the 1920s and favored family ties and skills, opening the way to large immigration from Asia and Latin America.

  Example. In the decades after 1965, newcomers from places such as Mexico, the Philippines, India and China made up a growing share of immigrants.

• Warren Court

  The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953 to 1969), known for rulings that expanded civil rights and the rights of people accused of crimes.

  Example. In Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), the Court required states to provide lawyers for poor defendants charged with felonies.

• Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

  The 1964 congressional resolution that approved the president's use of force in Southeast Asia without a declaration of war.

  Example. The House passed it without a single vote against, and only two senators opposed it.

• Tet Offensive

  The January 1968 surprise attack by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces on cities across South Vietnam, a military failure that still turned many Americans against the war.

  Example. After Tet, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite told viewers he believed the war would end in a stalemate.

• Vietnamization

  Nixon's policy of shifting the fighting to South Vietnam's army while withdrawing American troops.

  Example. U.S. troop numbers in Vietnam fell from over 500,000 in 1969 to under 30,000 by the end of 1972.

• Watergate

  The scandal that began with a 1972 break-in at Democratic headquarters and the White House cover-up, which led to Nixon's resignation in 1974.

  Example. In United States v. Nixon (1974), the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the president to turn over his taped conversations.

• Stagflation

  High inflation combined with slow economic growth and high unemployment, the economic trouble of the 1970s.

  Example. In 1980 prices rose more than 13 percent while unemployment topped 7 percent.

• Détente

  A relaxing of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and China in the 1970s, through summits, trade and arms limits.

  Example. Nixon's 1972 trip to Beijing and the SALT I agreement with the Soviets that year marked the high point of détente.