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House un-american activities committee
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties. -
McCarthyism
McCarthyism definition. The extreme opposition to communism shown by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and his supporters in the 1940s and 1950s. -
Berlin Airlift
Berlin airlift definition. A military operation in the late 1940s that brought food and other needed goods into West Berlin by air after the government of East Germany, which at that time surrounded West Berlin ( see Berlin wall ), had cut off its supply routes. -
Rock n' Roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll or rock 'n' roll) is a genre of popular 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. -
G.I. Bill (Servicemens Readjustment Act 1944)
Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 22, 1944, this act, also known as the GI Bill, provided veterans of the Second World War funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing. -
Baby Boom generation
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. The first baby boomers reached the standard retirement age of 65 in 2011. -
Containment Policy
containment, policy of definition. A United States foreign policy doctrine adopted by the Harry S. Truman administration in 1947, operating on the principle that communist governments will eventually fall apart as long as they are prevented from expanding their influence. -
Truman Doctrine
the principle that the US should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or communist insurrection. First expressed in 1947 by US President Truman in a speech to Congress seeking aid for Greece and Turkey, the doctrine was seen by the communists as an open declaration of the Cold War. -
Marshall Plan
Marshall Plan definition. 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. It was proposed by the United States secretary of state, General George C. Marshall. -
Cold War
After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were the world's strongest nations. They were called superpowers. They had different ideas about economics and government. ... The Cold War began in Europe after World War II. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European countries based on the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949. -
Korean War
Korean War definition. A war, also called the Korean conflict, fought in the early 1950s between the United Nations, supported by the United States, and the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). The war began in 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea. -
Domino Theory
domino theory definition. The idea that if one key nation in a region fell to control of communists, others would follow like toppling dominoes. The theory was used by many American leaders to justify American intervention in the Vietnam War. (See policy of containment.) -
Vietnamization
(in the Vietnam War) 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
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age. -
1950's prosperity
The Decade of 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. -
Rust Belt vs Sun Belt
The post-war period, from the 1950s through the 1980s, was characterized by the migration of hundreds of thousands of Americans from the Northern and Midwestern Rust Belt to the Southern Sun Belt. -
Levittown
Levittown is the name of seven large suburban housing developments created in the United States of America by William Levitt and his company Levitt & Sons. -
Rosenberg Trail
A court case involving Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, an American couple who were executed in 1953 as spies for the Soviet Union. Some have argued that the Rosenbergs were innocent victims of McCarthy -era hysteria against communists or of anti-Semitism (they were Jewish). -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1955–75) was a Cold War conflict pitting the U.S. and the remnants of the French colonial government in South Vietnam against the indigenous but communist Vietnamese independence movement, the Viet Minh, following the latter's expulsion of the French in 1954. -
Ray Kroc
Ray Kroc. Businessman Ray Kroc was traveling around the United States selling milk shake mixers when he became inspired by a restaurant that was using many of his machines. ... Kroc's new company was named “McDonald's," after the McDonald brothers, and he opened his first store in Des Plaines, Illinois in 1955. -
Interstate Highway act
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. It took several years of wrangling, but a new Federal-Aid Highway Act passed in June 1956. The law authorized the construction of a 41,000-mile network of interstate highways that would span the nation. It also allocated $26 billion to pay for them. -
Space Race
The Space Race refers to the 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for dominance in spaceflight capability. -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The Eisenhower administration proposed legislation to protect blacks' right to vote. The goal of the 1957 Civil Rights Act was to ensure that all Americans could exercise their right to vote. By 1957, only about 20% of blacks were registered to vote. -
Sputnik
Sputnik. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit the Earth. In a single stroke, this 184-pound object brought into question the United States' pre-eminence in science, industry, and military power. -
Beatniks
Beatniks were part of a sociocultural movement in the 1950s and early 1960s that subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle in the wake of World War Two. Beatniks promoted spontaneity, stressed spirituality and the need for release from the world of money, and challenged traditional patterns of respectability. -
Bay of Pigs
Cuban-United States history. Bay of Pigs invasion, (April 17, 1961), abortive invasion of Cuba at the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs), or Playa Girón (Girón Beach) to Cubans, on the southwestern coast by some 1,500 Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro. The invasion was financed and directed by the U.S. government. -
John F kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban missile crisis definition. A confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962 over the presence of missile sites in Cuba; one of the “hottest” periods of the cold war. -
Betty Friedan
With her book The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan (1921-2006) broke new ground by exploring the idea of women finding personal fulfillment outside of their traditional roles. She also helped advance the women's rights movement as one of the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW). -
Anti-war movement
An anti-war movement (also antiwar) is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. -
Lyndon B. Johnson
Johnson, Lyndon Baines A Democratic party political leader of the twentieth century, who was president from 1963 to 1969. Johnson rose to power in the Senate. He was elected vice president in 1960, running with John F. Kennedy, and became president after Kennedy was assassinated. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution, Pub.L. 88–408, 78 Stat. 384, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. -
Great Society
a domestic program in the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson that instituted federally sponsored social welfare programs. -
Tet Offensive 1968
Tet offensive definition. A series of major attacks by communist forces in the Vietnam War. Early in 1968, Vietnamese communist troops seized and briefly held some major cities at the time of the lunar new year, or Tet. -
Moon landing
Noun. 1. Apollo program - a program of space flights undertaken by US to land a man on the Moon; "the first lunar landing was achieved by the Apollo program on July 20, 1969" -
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was an American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 until 1974, when he resigned from office, the only U.S. president to do so. -
War powers act
the War Powers Act. a US law passed in 1973 which 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. -
Iron curtain
the notional barrier separating the former Soviet bloc and the West prior to the decline of communism that followed the political events in eastern Europe in 1989. -
Jonas Salk
n United States virologist who developed the Salk vaccine that is injected against poliomyelitis (born 1914) Synonyms: Jonas Edward Salk, Salk Example of: virologist. a specialist in virology.
