A.p. Us History Flashcards From Chapter 29

Front 1

Levittown

Back 1

~ in 1947, William Levitt used mass production techniques to build inexpensive homes in suburban New York to help relieve the postwar housing shortage
~ levittown became a symbol of the movement to the suburbs in the years after World War II

Front 2

Baby Boom

Back 2

~ post-WWII Americans idealized the family
~ the booming birth rate after the war led children born to this generation to be commonly referred to as "baby boomers"

Front 3

Sputnik

Back 3

~ in OCtober 1957, the Soviet Union suprised the world by launching sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth
~ the resulting outcry in the United States, especially fears that the Soviets were ahead in both space exploration and military missiles, forced the Eisenhower administration to increase defense spending and accelerate America's space program

Front 4

Highway Act of 56

Back 4

~ a significant legislative achievement of Eisenhower's presidency, the Highway Act created the interstate highway system
~ the system, built over twenty years, provided jobs in construction, shortened travel times, and increased dependence on the automobile while weakening the railroads

Front 5

Commision on Civil Rights

Back 5

~ in 1957, the Eisenhower administration proposed the first general civil rights legislation since Reconstruction
~ senate majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson overcame strong southern resistance to avoid a filibuster, but at the expense of weakening the measure considerably
~ commission for civil rights, one of Truman's original goals
~ it also provided for federal efforts aimed at securing and protecting the right to vote

Front 6

Explorer

Back 6

~ President Eisenhower approved plans to let an army team, led by German scientist Wernher Von Braun, attempt to put a satellite into orbit using the reliable intermediate range jupiter rocket
~ on january 31, 1958, Explorer, the first American satellite, successful orbited the earth
~ Explorer did carry a more sophisticated set of instruments to send back data from space

Front 7

Brown v. BOE

Back 7

~ in 1954, the supreme court reversed the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that established the "separate bu equal" doctrine
~ the brown decision found segregation in school inherently unequal and initiated a long and difficult effort to integrate the nation's public schools

Front 8

Plessy v Ferguson

Back 8

~ a supreme court case in 1896 that established the doctrine of"separate but equal" and upheld a Louisiana law requiring that blacks and whites occupy separate rail cars
~ the court applied it to schools in Cumming v. County Board of Education
~ the doctrine was finally overturned in 1954, Brown v. BOE

Front 9

MLK JR

Back 9

~ the massive protest movement sparked the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr., as an eloquent new spokesman for African Americans
~ the son of a famous Atlanta preacher, he had recently taken his first church in Montgomery after years of studying theology while earning a Ph.D. at Boston University
~ king agreed to lead the subsequent bus boycott
~ the boycott ended in victory a year later when the Supreme Court ruled the Alabama segregated seating law unconstitutional
~ the protest movement had triumphed, not only in denting the wall of southern segregation, but in featuring the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr.
~ he had emerged as the charismatic leader of a new civil rights movement- a man who won acclaim not only at home but around the world
~ a year after the successful bus boycott, king founded the Southern Christian leadership Conference to direct the crusade against segregation
~ king had a strategy and message that fitted perfectly with the plight of his followers
~ drawing on sources as diverse as Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau, King came out of the bus boycott with the concept of passive resistance
~ his remarkable voice became familiar to the entire country
~ unlike many african american preachers, he never shouted, yet he captured his audience by presenting his ideas with both passion and a compelling cadence
~ his ultimate goal was to unite the broken community through bonds of Christian love
~ he hoped to use nonviolence to appeal to middle-class white America

Front 10

SCLC

Back 10

~ an organization founded by Martin Luther King, Jr., to direct the crusade against segregation
~ its weapon was passive resistance that stressed nonviolence and love, and its tactic direct, though peaceful, confrontation

Front 11

FEPC

Back 11

~ one of the reform measures in Truman's plan for a Fair Deal
~ it proposed establishing a compulsory Fair Employment Practices Commission to open up employment opportunities for African American

Front 12

Presidential Election 1956

Back 12

~ overall, the Eisenhower years marked an era of political moderation
~ the american people, enjoying the abundance of the 1950s, seemed quite content with legislative inaction
~ Eisenhower won the 56 election in a landslide beating stevenson

Front 13

Modern Republicanism

Back 13

~ President Eisenhower characterized his views as "Modern Republicanism."
~ claiming he was liberal toward people but conservative about spending public mondy, he helped blance the federal budget and lower taxes without destroying existing social programs

Front 14

Little Rock Nine

Back 14

~ in 1957, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the national guard to prevent the integration of Little Rock's Central High School on grounds of a threat to public order
~ after 270 armed troops turned back 9 young African American students, a federal judge ordered the guardsmen removed; but when the black students entered the school, a mob of 500 jeering whites surrounded the building
~ Eisenhower sent in 1000 paratroopers to ensure the rights of the Little Rock Nine to attend Central High
~ the students finished the school year under armed guard
~ then Little Rock authorities closed Central High School for the next two years; when it reopened, there were only three African Americans in attendance

Front 15

Orville Faubus

Back 15

~ governor of Arkansas
~ he called out the national guard to prevent the integration of Little Rock's Central High School on grounds of a threat to public order

Front 16

C Wright Mills

Back 16

~ was a far more caustin commentator on American society in the 1950s
~ anticipating government statistics that revealed white-collar workers now outnumbered blue-collar workers, Mills described the new middle class in ominous terms in his books White Collar and Power Elite
~ the corporation was the villain for Mills, depriving office workers of their own identities and imposing an impersonal discipline through manipulation and propaganda

Front 17

David Riesman

Back 17

~ the most influential social critic of the 1950s was Harvard sociologist David Riesman
~ his book The Lonely Crowd appeared in 1950 and set the tone for intellectual commentary about suburbia for the rest of the decade
~ Riesman described the shift from the inner-directed Americans of the past who had relied on such traditional values as self-denial and grugality to the other-directed Americans of the consumer society who constantly adapted their behavior to conform to social pressures
the consequence produced a bland and tolerant society of consumers lacking creativity and a sense of adventure

Front 18

John Keats

Back 18

~ one striking feature of the 1950s was the abundance of self-criticism
~ a number of widely read books explored the flaws in the new suburbia
~ one of those was john keat's The Crack in the Picture Window described the endless rows of tract housed vomited up by developers as identical boxes spreading like gangrene
~ their occupants lost any sense of individuality in their obsession with material goods

Front 19

Katherine Gordon

Back 19

~ Katherine Gordon was more concerned about the psychological toll of suburban lifei n the 1960 book The Split Level Trap
~ she labeled the new lifestyle Disturbia and bemoaned the haggard men, the tense and anxious women, and the gimme kids it produced

Front 20

Rosa Parks

Back 20

~ a black seamstress hwo had been active in the local NAACP chapter
~ on december 1, 1955, Parks violated a city ordinance by refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a local bus
~ her action grew out of a long tradition of black protest against the rigid segregation of the races in the South
~ Rosa Parks herself had been ejected from a bus a decade earlier for refusing to obey the driver's command
~ in montgomery, Rosa Parks arrest sparked a massive protest movement
~ her actions led to a citywide bus boycott that brought in MLK

Front 21

Earl Warren

Back 21

~ was the chief justice on the supreme court
~ warren wrote the landmark opinion flatly declaring that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal
~ to divide grade school children solely because of their race, warren argued, generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone
~ despite this sweeping language, warren realized it would be difficult to change historic patterns of segregation quickly

Front 22

Thurgood Marshall

Back 22

~ leading civil rights advocate for the NAACP
~the lawyers then took on the broader issue of segregation in the country's public schools
~ challenging the 1896 Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of separate but equal public facilities, Marshall argued that even substantially equal but separate schools did profound psychological damage to African American children and thus violated the 14 amendment

Front 23

Jack Kerouac

Back 23

~ his novel On the Road, published in 1957, set the tone for the new movement called beats

Front 24

Beatniks

Back 24

~ they were easily identified by their long hair and bizarre clothing; they also had a penchant for sexual promiscuity and drug experimentation
~ they were conspicuous dropouts from a society they found senseless
~ they were writers of the beats age, literary groups that rebelled against the materialistic society of the 1950s

Front 25

Fair Deal

Back 25

~ a series of reform measures proposed by President Truman in 1949, including federal aid to education, civil rights measures, and national medical insurance
~ a bipartisan conservative coalition in Congress blocked this effort to move beyond the New Deal reforms of the 1930s

Front 26

SNCC

Back 26

~ a radical group advocating plack power
~ SNCC's leaders, scornful of integration and interracial cooperation, broke with Martin Luther King Jr., to advocate greater militancy and acts of violence

Front 27

Taft-Hartley Act

Back 27

~ congress refused to repeal the act
~ this 1947 anti union legislation outlawed the closed shop and secondary boycotts
~ it also authorized the president to seek injunctions to prevent strikes that posed a threat to national security

Front 28

John Birch Society

Back 28

~ the society, an extreme anticommunist group, demanded the impeachmetn of chief justice warren

Front 29

NASA

Back 29

~ another important congressional action came with the creation of NASA in 1958
~ its sponsors insisted on a new civilian agency to oversee the nation's space program
~ NASA was able to develop its own agenda for space exploration and started a program that would eventually place astronauts in orbit around the earth and land them on the moon by the end of the next decade

Front 30

Segregation

Back 30

~ is the separation of different kinds of humans (like black and white people) into racial groups in daily life
~ it was enforced at all places of public entertainment, including libraries, auditoriums, and circuses
~ there was segregation in the hospitals, prisons and even ambulances

Front 31

Montgomery bus boycott

Back 31

~ in late 1955, African Americans led by Martin Luther King, Jr., boycotted the buses in Montgomery, Alabama, after seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus
~ the boycott, which ended when the Supre Court ruled in favor of the protestors, marked the beginnin of a new, activist phase of the civil rights movement

Front 32

Adlai Stevenson

Back 32

~ he ran against Eisenhower for the second time in 56 for the presidential election
~ he was democrat

Front 33

NDEA

Back 33

~ the 1958 National Defense Education Act, passed in response to Sputnik, provided an opportunity and stimulus for college education for many Americans
~ it allocated funds for upgrading studies in the sciences, foreign languages, guidance services, and teaching innovations

Front 34

Dr. Benjamin Spock

Back 34

~ wrote a 1946 bestseller Baby and Child Care
~ it became a fixture in million of homes

Front 35

Will Herberg

Back 35

~ was an American Jewish writer, intellectual and scholar. He was known as a social philosopher and sociologist of religion, as well as a Jewish theologian.
~ he was opposed to the civil rights movement