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The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
The HUAC was created to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties. -
G.I. Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act 1944)
The G.I. Bill provided veterans of the Second World War funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing. It established hospitals, made low-interest mortgages available and granted stipends covering tuition and expenses for veterans attending college or trade schools. -
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Baby Boom Generation
The term "Baby Boom" is used to identify a massive increase in births following World War II. Baby boomers are those people born worldwide between 1946 and 1964, the time frame most commonly used to define them. Older Americans, who had postponed marriage and childbirth during the Great Depression and World War II, were joined in the nation's maternity wards by young adults who were eager to start families. -
Iron Curtain
A term popularized by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to describe the Soviet Union's policy of isolation during the Cold War. The barrier isolated Eastern Europe from the rest of the world. -
Containment Policy
It is best known as a Cold War foreign policy of the United States and its allies to prevent the spread of communism. As a component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to increase communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa, and Vietnam. -
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Cold War
After World War II, the long period of intense rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. " War of words and threats" It was a political and economic stuggle between these nations. -
Truman Doctrine
President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. -
Marshall Plan
was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. -
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Berlin Airlift
Major international crisis during the cold war. The soviet union blocked the western allies' railway and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under western control. they offered to stop the blockade if the allies removed the newly introduced Deutsche Mark.in response the western allies airlifted the supplies to people in west Berlin. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
NATO's primary purpose was to unify and strengthen the Western Allies' military response to a possible invasion of western Europe by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. -
1950's Prosperity
The economy overall grew by 37% during the 1950s.
Inflation, which had wreaked havoc on the economy immediately after World War II, was minimal, in part because of Eisenhower's persistent efforts to balance the federal budget. -
Levittown
Levittown utilized mass production techniques to build inexpensive homes in suburban New York to relieve postwar housing shortage. Levittown became the symbol of movement to suburbs, conformity of houses, diverse communities, and home for lower-middle class families -
Beatniks
A group of rebellious writers and intellectuals. They advocated spontaneity, use of drugs, and rebellion against social standards. -
Rock n' Roll
A genre of music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, from African American musical styles such as gospel, jump blues, jazz, boogie woogie, and rhythm and blues, along with country music. -
Domino Theory
The domino theory was a theory prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s that posited that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. Used by successive United States administrations during the Cold War to justify the need for American intervention around the world. -
Rust Belt vs Sun Belt
Before and immediately after the war, lots of Americans moved to industrial cities, many of which were in the North and Midwestern parts of the United States. The decline in the factories, the high unemployment, and the shift away from industrial production made the Rust Belt. The Sun Belt forced the national government to make Southern state governments end segregation. Their “states' rights” had to make way for national law. -
McCarthyism
to make accusations of treason without having solid evidence. term adopted when senator Joe McCarthy and chief counsel Roy Cohn interrogating suspected communists. At a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950, McCarthy proclaimed that he was aware of 205 card-carrying members of the Communist Party who worked for the United States Department of State. -
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Korean War
North Korea invaded South Korea across the 38th parallel. The US aided South Korea while the Soviet Union and China aided North Korea. -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
was an American Army general and statesman who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. -
Rosenberg Trail
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were United States citizens who were executed after being convicted of committing espionage for the Soviet Union. -
Ray Croc
The father of McDonalds. He purchased the rights from the McDonald brothers and spread the restaurant world wide. McDonald's was the worlds first ever franchise. -
Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. -
Interstate Highway Act
The law authorized the construction of a 41,000-mile network of interstate highways that would span the nation. -
Space Race
The Space Race Begins. It is 1957 and the U.S. and the Soviet Union are locked into the Cold War. The Soviet Union has just launched the world's first satellite, Sputnik. Fearful of Soviet military control of space, the Americans quickly ready a rocket. -
Sputnik
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. -
John F. Kennedy
president during part of the cold war and especially during the superpower rivalry and the cuban missile crisis. he was the president who went on tv and told the public about the crisis and allowed the leader of the soviet union to withdraw their missiles. other events, which were during his terms was the building of the Berlin wall, the space race, and early events of the Vietnamese war. -
Bay of Pigs
CIA operation to overthrow Fidel Castro by landing 1200 Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs. Fails miserably and is a huge embarrassment for Kennedy, who then vows to bring down Castro. Forces Cuba ever further into the arms of the USSR. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
Fearing that the U.S. would attempt another invasion, Castro quickly complied with a Soviet request to be allowed to construct nuclear missile sites in Cuba. The resulting crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962. -
Betty Friedan
American feminist best known for her book The Feminine Mystique, which explored the causes of the frustrations of modern women in traditional roles. -
Lyndon B. Johnson
Became president after Kennedy's assassination and reelected in 1964; Democrat; signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, promoted his "Great Society" plan, part of which included the "war on poverty", Medicare and Medicaid established; Vietnam: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and Tet Offensive -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin incident, also known as the USS Maddox incident, was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. -
Great Society
President Johnson called his version of the Democratic reform program the Great Society. In 1965, Congress passed many Great Society measures, including Medicare, civil rights legislation, and federal aid to education. -
Anti-War Movement
The Anti-War Movement was a student protest that started as the Free Speech movement in California and spread around the world. All members of the Anti-War Movement shared an opposition to war in Vietnam and condemned U.S. presence there. They claimed this was violating Vietnam's rights. This movement resulted in growing activism on campuses aimed at social reform etc. -
Tet Offensive 1968
In late January, 1968, during the lunar new year holiday, North Vietnamese and communist Viet Cong forces launched a coordinated attack against a number of targets in South Vietnam. -
Richard Nixon
Elected President in 1968 and 1972 representing the Republican party. He was responsible for getting the United States out of the Vietnam War by using "Vietnamization", which was the withdrawal of 540,000 troops from South Vietnam for an extended period. He was responsible for the Nixon Doctrine. Was the first President to ever resign, due to the Watergate scandal. -
Moon Landing
When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in 1969, America went down in popular history as the winner of the space race. -
Vietnamization
the US policy of withdrawing its troops and transferring the responsibility and direction of the war effort to the government of South Vietnam. -
26th Amendment
Prohibits the states and the federal government from using age as a reason for denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States who are at least eighteen years old. -
War Powers Act
allows Congress to limit the President's use of military forces. It states that the President must tell Congress within 48 hours if he sends armed forces anywhere, and Congress must give approval for them to stay there for more than 90 days.
