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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
A Cold War foreign policy of the United States and its allies to prevent the spread of communism. This policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, 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
The Truman Doctrine was informally extended to become the basis of American Cold War policy throughout Europe and around the world. It shifted American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union from détente (a relaxation of tension) to a policy of containment of Soviet expansion as advocated by diplomat George Kennan. -
Marshall Plan
President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan on April 3, 1948, granting $5 billion in aid to 16 European nations. A program by which the United States gave large amounts of economic aid to European countries to help them rebuild after the devastation of World War II. -
Berlin Airlift
As a result of the Soviet blockade, the people of West Berlin were left without food, clothing, or medical supplies. Some U.S. officials pushed for an aggressive response to the Soviet provocation, but cooler heads prevailed and a plan for an airlift of supplies to West Berlin was developed. Truman ordered a massive airlift of supplies into West Berlin on June 26,1948. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. -
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. -
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. -
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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. -
Korean War
The Korean War began when North Korea, supported by the Soviet Union and China, invaded South Korea, which was supported by the United States .There was no conclusive winner emerged. Instead, Korea returned to the way things were before the war and North and South Korea remained divided. -
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. -
Domino Theory
the theory that a political event in one country will cause similar events in neighboring countries, like a falling domino causing an entire row of upended dominoes to fall. -
Ray Kroc
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. -
The 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. -
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. -
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. -
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
A federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The War Powers Act of 1973, put limits on the ability of the President to send American troops into combat areas without Congressional approval.
