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48 Cards in this Set
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acid rain
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Precipitation charged with toxic chemicals from emissions of factories and automobiles which kills fish, corrodes building surfaces, and damages plants and trees. This is symbolic of how the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels created changes in and threats to the environment in the second half of the 20th century.
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baby boom
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The population increase which was the result of high birthrates in the U.S. between 1946 and 1957. The number of people in that generation made it the largest single group in the society, and beginning in the 1950s, American society in the late 20th century was influenced more by it and its interests than by any other single group. Family life in the suburbs became central to society in the 1950s. In the 1960s, the U.S. became a youth-oriented society. The 1970s reflected their interests as young adults, and the 1980s and 1990s reflect their interest in making money and then investing for retirement.
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Berlin Airlift
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Western response to the U.S.S.R.'s refusal to allow land access to West Berlin beginning in June 1948. The response was to send supplies to the city by plane until the U.S.S.R. lifted the blockade in May 1949. The U.S.S.R. blocked access to West Berlin when the western powers decided to unite their zones in Germany to form a single West German republic and allow Germany to rebuild as a nation. The U.S.S.R. saw this action as a threat and wanted all western influence within the eastern or Soviet zone removed. This development contributed to the growing support in Congress to abandon the policy of isolationism in favor of a policy of international cooperation and containment.
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Berlin Wall
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The structure which the U.S.S.R.'s Premier Nikita Khrushchev ordered built in August 1961 to separate East and West Berlin. It was built to stop the flow of refugees from East Berlin to the West and to test the will of the Kennedy Administration. Khrushchev proceeded to pressure the West and use aggressive tactics including the resumption of the testing of nuclear weapons and the deployment of missiles in places such as Cuba.
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Brown v. Board of Education
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Supreme Court decision in 1954 which overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1895) and ruled that separate facilities are inherently unequal. That led to a court order in 1955 to desegregate public schools "with all deliberate speed." The ruling also served as an impetus for the civil rights movement and the effort to end the legal basis for the system of second class citizenship which had been applied to blacks. The decision and the court order to desegregate and the whole civil rights movement, however, were strenuously resisted by many, especially Southerners, who used social and economic pressure, legal and ideological arguments, and violence to prevent equal rights from being granted to all Americans. Many schools were not desegregated until the 1970s when the courts decided it would happen only with court orders.
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Civil Rights Act of 1964
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The legislation passed under Lyndon Johnson which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and institutions and banned discriminatory hiring on grounds of race, gender, religion, or national origin. This and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 formed the climax of the first or nonviolent phase of the Civil Rights Movement. This act became after 1964 the fundamental basis for equal civil rights for all.
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Cuban Missile Crisis
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The incident in October 1962 which brought the world closer to nuclear war than any other point in the Cold War. It developed when U.S. aerial photographs revealed that Soviet missiles were being deployed in Cuba. After 10 days of discussion, on October 22 Kennedy announced to the nation that the missiles had to be removed from Cuba and that the U.S. would impose a selective blockade on Cuba to stop the importation of any more missiles. On October 28 Khrushchev agreed in substance to Kennedy's demands and removed the missiles in return for a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba.
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Dixiecrats
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The popular name for the States' Rights Democratic Party, formed by southern Democrats in 1948 because the Democratic Party platform plank called for civil rights reform, indicating they supported the continuation of segregation of blacks. Waving confederate flags, they nominated Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president (later the Republican senator from South Carolina, Thurmond died in 2003 at age 100) and hoped to send the election into the House of Representatives. (Note: Senator Majority Leader Trent Lott, in his eulogy of Thurmond, was so positive about his record, including his leadership of the Dixiecrats, that Lott was forced from his position by fellow Republicans.)
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domino theory
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The belief that if one country in a region falls to Communism, all the rest will fall, too. This became one of dogmas of U.S. foreign policy after being first suggested by President Eisenhower in April 1954 in reference to the impending defeat of the French in Vietnam. It was based on an analogy with the western powers' failure to resist Hitler in the 1930s--the lesson of appeasement at the Munich Conference. This theory led to the argument that the U.S. must support the anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam or risk losing all of southeast Asia to monolithic Communism.
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entitlements
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Programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that provide assistance to Americans on the basis of need. They are mandated by law and constitute a significant portion of the annual budget. Some, such as Medicaid, are available only to those who meet need-based criteria. Others, such as Social Security retirement income and Medicare, are available to all, but cost more or may be taxed at a higher level depending on the income of the recipient.
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escalator clause
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Agreement first negotiated with General Motors in 1948 and subsequently a part of many union contracts to ensure that wages reflected changes in the cost of living. These automatic pay raises were granted in accordance with rises in the consumer price index as measured by the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics, and this practice was soon applied to the whole economy including government workers. This provision initially was one of a series of improvements for labor (another was the guaranteed annual wage in 1953) as a result of negotiations led by Walter Reuther, the president of the United Automobile Workers from 1946 to his death in 1970. These changes in the labor-management relationship are sometimes referred to as corporate welfare as the corporations began to provide measures to improve conditions for the workers including pensions and vacations.
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ethnic cleansing
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The elimination, by killing or removal, of an ethnic group from a particular area or country. Examples are provided by the Hutu attacks on Tutsis in Rwanda and by the clashes of different ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia including Bosnian Serb attacks on Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serb attacks on Albanian Muslims in Kosova.. Ethnic cleansing is an aspect of the tribalism and ethnic nationalism which has sprung up around the world since the end of the Cold War in 1989, and it indicates that the world has reverted to or exceeded nationalistic, militaristic attitudes and actions prevalent in the years before World War I.
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franchise
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A method of business expansion involving the selling of an idea to entrepreneurs, thereby creating a chain of similar firms which are individually owned but operate according to the same methods and standards. This method became popular in the 1950s, contributing to one of the principal characteristics of that decade: conformity. Franchises were the same everywhere, and they often eliminated the local competitor who was different and therefore an unknown quantity to travelers. As incomes rose and vacations became longer and more people traveled, franchises grew in popularity because people knew what to expect. McDonald's Hamburgers was one of the first, followed by Holiday Inn and many others. By the 1970s, the franchise had become one of the ways in which the U.S. was exporting its culture around the world, reducing diversity at home and abroad and promoting what became known as globalization in the 1990s.
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freedom rides
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Civil Rights Movement effort in 1961 which sent integrated groups of blacks and whites into the South to ride buses and thereby test a Supreme Court decision which outlawed segregation in bus, train, and air travel. Organized by SNCC and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), the freedom riders suffered attacks by mobs, arrest, and jail time or removal from the state. The Kennedy Administration sent federal marshals to keep order and obtained a ruling from the Interstate Commerce Commission to remove White Only signs. The attacks revealed the level of violent hatred which existed and increased the activity of the government in support of the Civil Rights Movement.
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G.I. Bill
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The Servicemen's Readjustment Act, also known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, a measure passed in 1944 which gave servicemen returning from World War II priority for many jobs, educational benefits such as financial aid for training programs and college, low-interest home mortgages, and a year of unemployment insurance while they found employment. This was significant because the government did not simply release the servicemen on the economy, as it had at the end of World War I, but instead invested in them so that, by gaining training and obtaining college educations and buying homes, they became more productive members of society, contributing to the prosperity of the following decades.
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Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
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The Congressional act of August 1964 which, in response to reports that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked the U.S. destroyers, U.S.S. Maddox and U.S.S. Turner Joy, gave Johnson (as he requested) the authority to take "all necessary steps" to "repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." This was a virtual blank check allowing Johnson to conduct a war without a declaration of war. Hence, the Vietnam War was officially only a police action conducted under presidential prerogative, a development which contributed to the theory of the imperial presidency and efforts by Congress in the 1970s to reassert some Congressional control over foreign policy and war making. Following the passage of the resolution, Johnson ordered more troops to Vietnam and more bombing campaigns so that the likelihood of escalating involvement by the U.S. increased.
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Alger Hiss
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Former New Dealer and State Department official who had been a member of a Communist cell in the 1930s and was accused of being a Communist spy by Whittaker Chambers in 1948 before the House Un-American Activities Committee (formed in 1938). Hiss denied the charges, sued, and was found guilty of perjury in 1950. This shocked the nation and contributed to the Second Red Scare and the fear that the Communists were subverting the U.S. government from within. Hiss also represents the tendency during the 1930s when Fascism was on the rise and capitalism seemed doomed by the Great Depression to idealize the U.S.S.R. and Communism. This led some idealists to join the Communist Party or to become "fellow travelers" when the Communist International called for a united front with socialists and social democrats to defeat Fascism. In the postwar period with the beginning of the Cold War, any such association or hint of association led to accusations of disloyalty and subversion.
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Interstate Highway Act
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The measure passed in 1956 under Eisenhower which provided for the largest public works expenditure in history to be used to construct roads or, more specifically, an interstate highway system. The justification for it was that it would be part of a national missile defense system, necessary for the evacuation of the cities in case of a nuclear attack. It is significant not only as a sign of the level of public insecurity from the threat of nuclear attack during the Cold War but also as an indication of how the New Deal continued under Eisenhower. This act involved massive government spending and hence support for a cause national in scope and considered in the nation's interest which the private sector was unlikely to undertake alone.
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Iran-contra affair
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The effort by the National Security Council under Reagan in 1986 to free U.S. citizens held as hostages in Lebanon by secretly selling arms to Iran (contrary to the Reagan Administration's announced policy of not dealing with terrorists) and then to use the funds to aid the contras in Nicaragua in violation of the law (Butler Act of 1984) and the will of Congress which became a major scandal of the Reagan years. This is significant as examples of the imperial presidency and of the effect of ideological thinking. The presidency misled the public and acted contrary to the law, suggesting that the president, through the Executive Office of the President, could act on his own without answering to the public or that the president had lost control of this government-within-the-government allowing people such as Oliver North to act as they wished without reference to the public's elected representatives. The effect of ideological thinking was to see foreign affairs in simple black and white terms and ignore the ambiguities of the situation and see any action--even one lifting the president above the law--as good and justifiable if it could be construed as fighting Communism. Acting arbitrarily above the law is good in order to defeat an enemy which is defined as spreading government which is arbitrary, above the law, and totalitarian.
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Kent State
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The Ohio university which on May 4, 1970 was the site of the killing of four students by National Guard troops who had been sent to the campus to control anti-war protests. The protests were in reaction to Nixon's announcement (April 1970) that U.S. forces were invading neutral Cambodia to remove Vietnamese sanctuaries in that country and expanding the bombing campaign on North Vietnam. This expansion of the war, after Nixon had earlier announced the Vietnamization of the war was progressing rapidly, caused a severe reaction around the country. When students showered the Guardsmen in Kent with stones, they opened fire. Two of the victims were young women who were simply passing by on the way to class. The incident reveals the high emotional feeling in the U.S. about the war and suggests that the public was so badly divided as to force an end to U.S. involvement. To some, it showed how their own government was prepared to use deadly force against its own citizens, even innocent ones. Rights to free speech seemed endangered by the demands for unity in support of the war effort. Such incidents during the war contributed to a loss of respect for and belief in the government.
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Kinsey Reports
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"The popular name for the books, Sexual Behavior and the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior and the Human Female (1958), which shocked the nation with statistics on premarital, extramarital, and other questionable sexual activity and opened the door to subjects previously considered taboo, contributing to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. (See gay liberation. The effort to provide equal rights and open lives for male and female homosexuals. This movement emerged in the late 1960s as part of the sexual revolution which challenged traditional standards and led to the acceptance of the idea that sexual practices could and did vary among different people. Several factors contributed to the sexual revolution including the counterculture, the development of the pill preventing pregnancy, and academic studies such as Alfred C. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1958) which showed that sexual practices among men and women diverged from society's stated norms to a much greater extent than many people wanted to believe. Kinsey suffered a storm of abuse, but by suggesting that sex could be looked at simply in physical rather than moral terms, he opened the door to wider acceptance of different practices. Homosexuals began to admit their feelings openly and demand an end to harassment and discrimination.)
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Levittown
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Suburban, inexpensive, single-family housing developments built from precut and preassembled materials using assembly line methods. Using methods he had developed to mass produce military barracks during World War II, William Levitt built the first Levittown on Long Island, New York in 1947 and thereby started a massive building program in suburbs across the nation in response to the demand for inexpensive housing by the young families producing the baby boom. The movement to the suburbs became one of the most important population shifts in U.S. history, shaping American society and allowing more people (but not the poorest or most minorities) to own their own home and join the middle class. The Levittowns were also representative of the conformity of the 1950s (similar houses, all white, emphasis on the local in suburbs) and of the emerging mass society (individual and sectional differences fade in the face of mass built subdivisions, nationally franchised businesses, mass culture through the media), although the suburbs were generally anti-national in their localism and provincialism.
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Marshall Plan
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The popular name of the European Recovery Program, one of the most successful foreign policy efforts in U.S. history. This was the U.S. plan for economic reconstruction of Europe after World War II which involved massive U.S. aid to help those nations which were willing to help themselves and cooperate with others in rebuilding their economies and societies. Suggested by Secretary of State General George Marshall in 1947, it became a reality in April 1948 and within two years had begun to convert the participating European nations including West Germany into economically expanding states with stable societies and democratic governments. One of the objectives was to promote European cooperation and reduce the possibility of more inter-European wars such as World War I and World War II, and to that end, it helped lead to the European Union. A more immediate and intense goal was to remove the conditions favoring Communism. Frustrated by the economic suffering and social disorder in postwar Europe, many western Europeans had begun voting for the Communist party in their respective countries. This aid program was one of the best investments the U.S. ever made because it provided prosperous trading partners for the U.S. and stable governments in western Europe.
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massive retaliation
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Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's policy under Eisenhower which depended on atomic weapons for national defense and containment, and threatened all-out nuclear response to any aggression by the U.S.S.R. (See John Foster Dulles (1888-1959) Statesman and expert on international law, he served as Eisenhower's Secretary of State (1953-1959). He advocated a hard-line policy toward the Communists and argued that the U.S., rather than simply containing Communism, should "liberate" Communist-held areas while using a "New Look" diplomacy which would engage in "brinkmanship" and threaten aggressors with the use of nuclear weapons and "massive retaliation" rather than rely on conventional forces. Relying on nuclear weapons would allow a reduction in the military budget and provide "more bang for the buck." Dulles represents the views of the hawks in the 1950s and would seem to have promoted Cold War fear and distrust, but Eisenhower usually followed a more moderate policy, perhaps using Dulles' statements to appease the more fearful and aggressive elements in the U.S.)
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military-industrial complex
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The military, corporate, scientific, and political groups which became connected in the 1940s and 50s by their mutual interest in promoting national defense and the national security state which the U.S. became during the Cold War. Using the theories of scholars such as C. Wright Mills in his book, The Power Elite, social critics in the 1950s began to note that the defense industry, the Pentagon, and the politicians favoring the military were all interconnected and formed an elite which influenced not only government decision making but the economy and society. Hence, President Eisenhower in 1960 warned the country not to allow the military-industrial complex to have too much influence but keep the goal of security balanced by the national ideals of peace and liberty. The term is significant as a sign of the inordinate power of the defense industry and the military during the Cold War.
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Miranda v. Arizona
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Case in 1966 in which the Supreme Court ruled that suspects, when arrested, had to be warned that their statements could be used against them, that they could remain silent, and that they had a right to have an attorney present while being questioned. This case is representative of one part of the Warren Court's "rights revolution" by which the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren from 1954 to 1969 issued decisions which provided more federal protection for the civil and political rights of all individuals. Miranda v. Arizona was one of several cases which provided protection for the accused in an attempt to prevent the abuse of power by the state and thereby insure fair trials for all and limit punishment to the guilty.
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monolithic communism
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the theory that international communism was a single movement which the U.S.S.R. controlled and directed so that all communist movements and states were acting together to take over the world. This is significant because the U.S., during much of the Cold War, devised policy in accordance with this theory and therefore responded to international crises in a set manner. The assumption was that if the U.S. did not oppose (anywhere and at any time) any movement which was identified as Communist, then the U.S.S.R. would expand its control of the world. This theory ignored or blinded people to the facts that communism differed from country to country, that communist nations disagreed with each other and even saw each other as potential threats (e.g., Vietnam and China or the U.S.S.R. and China), that national liberation movements may have become identified with communism because it espoused anti-colonialism rather than because the movement was dedicated to communist doctrine. As a result, the U.S. was drawn into efforts to maintain colonies, protect dictators, suppress independence movements, assassinate leaders of the poor, and stop civil wars in the name of containing communism and the U.S.S.R., and in the process, the U.S. often worked against self-determination, freedom, and democracy.
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
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The protest, begun by Rosa Parks, against segregated seating on city buses in Montgomery, Alabama from December 1955 through 1956. This refusal to ride the buses by the black community marked the beginning of the first or non-violent phase of the Civil Rights Movement (1955-1965) and the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr. as its leader. The boycott officially ended when the Supreme Court declared the segregation law unconstitutional.
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Nader, Ralph
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Consumer activist and author of Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) who became the leader of the consumer protection movement after 1965. Nader's book which attacked the automobile industry for building death traps brought Senate hearings in 1966 and federal highway and safety acts with federal standards to be met by 1968. `There followed seat belts, padded dash boards, collapsible steering columns, flasher lights, and general concern for safety. By the 1970s young professionals and reformers, known as Nader's Raiders, were advocating consumer and environmental protection in a wide array of areas including pipeline and coal mine safety, land use, pension funds, mercury poisoning, insecticides, banking, meat adulteration, and private-interest influence in federal regulatory agencies. In 1996 and 2000 the Green Party nominated Nader as its presidential candidate. He is representative of the reform mentality which appeared in the 1960s and of the loss of dominance in the economy by the automobile industry as the industrial society in the U.S. began in the 1960s to give way to a postindustrial economy.
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NATO
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Acronym for North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a collective security organization formed in April 1949 by the U.S. and eleven other nations under which each vowed that an attack against one member would be considered an attack against all. The members also agreed to cooperate on economic and political matters.
The original twelve members of NATO in 1949 were the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg. NATO formed largely in response to the Berlin Blockade (June 1948-May 1949) and the possibility of an attack on Western Europe by the U.S.S.R. Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg had signed the Brussels Treaty in March 1948, in April 1949 they were joined by Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, and the U.S. to form NATO. (Turkey and Greece joined in 1952; West Germany in 1955; the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1999.) This was one of three major policy shifts made by the U.S. between 1947 and 1949 (NATO, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan). When the U.S. joined NATO, it placed internationalism (accepting some responsibility for world affairs) over isolationism and adopted the position which Woodrow Wilson had advocated at the end of World War I, that national security and peace would be more likely maintained by cooperation with other states rather than through unilateral action and withdrawal. |
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New Federalism
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The plan initiated by Richard Nixon and later extended by Ronald Reagan to reduce the role of the federal government in national life by cutting funds available to the federal government and by shifting responsibilities from the federal government to the states. The objectives of the New Federalism were to reduce the size of the federal government, stop its efforts at social reform, free businesses from governmental regulations, and return power to localities. Nixon proposed to accomplish these goals through "revenue sharing." Enacted in 1972, revenue sharing gave the states a $30 billion grant to spend as they wished over a five year period. This influx of money to the states and localities brought an expansion of government at those levels so that by the 1980s and 90s, politicians talked of retiring from Washington and returning to the states where the action was. Reagan's primary method for accomplishing these goals was to lower taxes thereby forcing the federal government to become smaller and spend less, both on economic regulations and on social or welfare programs (while military spending was expanded enormously). The results included an expanding economy but also a tripling of the national debt, business scandals such as in the Savings & Loan industry, and a widening gap between the rich and poor with more people falling into poverty. (By 1989, the standard of living of the poorest fifth had fallen 9% since 1979 while that of the wealthiest fifth had risen 20%.) The New Federalism was the beginning of the Republicans' successful drive in the late 20th century to reduce the role of government, an effort helped significantly by the end of the Cold War.
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NSC-68
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National Security Council paper drafted by Paul Nitze (after George Kennan resigned from the policy planning staff) and delivered to Truman in April 1950 which provided a more militaristic, black-white basis for the rhetoric and strategy of future U.S. Cold War policy. Stimulated by evidence that the U.S.S.R. had detonated an atomic bomb in September 1949, it stated that conflict between East and West was unavoidable, that negotiation was useless as the leaders of the U.S.S.R. could not be trusted, and that the U.S. military capability should be expanded to carry out containment. It called for the development of a hydrogen bomb, a tax increase to finance a massive increase in the military including conventional forces, and a strong system of alliances around the globe. The Korean War which started two months later helped make these recommendations a reality, pushing the U.S. into becoming a national security state prepared to fight wars against communism anywhere anytime.
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OPEC
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Acronym for Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, an association formed by oil-producing nations from the Third World in 1960 to gain a voice for themselves in setting prices and production quotas for petroleum. OPEC became a major player in world affairs in 1973 when it declared an embargo on the U.S., Europe, and Japan (1973-1974) and raised the price of a barrel of oil from $3 in 1973 to a peak of $34 by 1979. This set off inflation in the industrialized nations, raised the cost of living, and threatened modern western civilization because it had become based on burning hydrocarbons and petroleum in particular. OPEC was able to declare the embargo and raise prices because world consumption had more than tripled between 1949 and 1972, U.S. production had dropped from 66% to 22%, the West's colonies and protectorates had gained their independence following World War II (becoming the "Third World"), and the OPEC nations (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela) by 1972 were producing 80% of the world's supply of petroleum. OPEC is significant as a sign of the rising costs of industrialization and the West's lifestyles as natural resources were exploited and exhausted, a sign of the desire of the Third World to have what the West had, and an indication that beneath the bipolar conflict of the Cold War, there was a world of multiple conflicts (OPEC had declared the embargo partly in retaliation against the West for the aid it gave to Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973). All could be seen as warnings for the 21st century.
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"paperback revolution"
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The development in publishing in the 1950s which made books inexpensive and available to the masses. This is representative of the postwar developments which made it possible for more people to have access to more amenities, a higher standard of living, and the middle class.
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Peace Corps
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The program created by John F. Kennedy (executive order) in March 1961 to train American volunteers to offer educational and technical service in Third World countries at the local level in practical ways. It became a huge success, partly because it was enthusiastically embraced by both young Americans and Third World countries. By 1964 10,000 Americans were at work in 46 countries. The program was part of Kennedy's effort to win over the Third World in the worldwide fight against communism, but its biggest impact was probably on American youth who became more knowledgeable about the rest of the world, rejected traditional U.S. isolationist, provincial, exceptionalist attitudes and policies, and were more open to foreign aid efforts.
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reverse discrimination
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The phrase adopted by white males in the 1970s in reaction to affirmative action programs which improved the opportunities for minorities usually at the expense of white males. The admittance of blacks or Latinos to professional schools (law, medicine) usually meant fewer white males who felt that they were being discriminated against because they were white especially if the school set quotas. In Bakke v. University of California (1978), Allan Bakke sued the university for rejecting him in favor of minority candidates with lesser qualifications leading to the Supreme Court decision that strict quotas were illegal but that race had to be considered when admitting students. In the 1990s the debate over affirmative action increased, and the regents of the University of California system ended affirmative action. This attack on affirmative action is part of a general politics of resentment and reaction which began in the late 1970s and continued into the 1990s especially among white males but also among conservative groups generally.
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Roe v. Wade
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Supreme Court decision of 1973 which legalized abortion. It declared state laws making abortion illegal to be violations of a woman's right to privacy and ruled abortions legal during the first trimester (3 months) of a pregnancy. During the second trimester, states could regulate, and during the third trimester, abortions were illegal. Written by Harry Blackmun, the decision was an extension of the posthumous Warren Court's emphasis on protecting rights (the right to privacy) but it also presented abortion as a medical issue since during the first 3 months a fetus cannot survive outside the womb. The decision is important as a representative both of the sexual revolution and the strides made by women to gain equal rights and of the politics of reaction which sees such decisions as a threat to traditional values and which created a powerful anti-abortion or "right to life" movement. This issue became one of the most divisive in the country and the strong feelings it engendered contributed to the rise of a politics of personal destruction and a decline in civility in society and the culture generally by the 1990s.
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service economy
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The type of economy in which the majority of individuals do not produce goods but instead provide their expertise or services to others in the work force. By 1960, the U.S. was developing an economy in which the service sector was larger than the production sector and by the 1980s 75% of the jobs were in the service sector. This was the result of several developments including automation of industrial production, the creation of new industries in electronics and computers, the increased number of women in the workforce and two income households which needed and could afford services, and the increased costs of production which motivated many firms to move their operation abroad thereby eliminating factory jobs in the U.S. and forcing people to retrain, take part-time positions, contract out their skills as individuals without benefits, or take a lower paying "McJob" in areas such as fast food. The effects were several. The economy became more stable with fewer severe swings in the business cycle, but Unions lost members and became weaker and the earning capacity of workers remained level or declined while in the last two decades of the 20th century, the income of the wealthiest 20% (especially the top 5%) went up significantly. That meant families needed two incomes, and it meant that the old industrial areas in the Northeast lost population to the Sun Belt of the South and West.
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Silent Spring
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Best-selling book (1962) by Rachel Carson (biologist and pioneer environmentalist) which became one of the first clear explanations of how the widespread and careless use of industrial and chemical products can endanger the environment. The book became one of most influential, early works stimulating the environmental protection movement. Carson explains how pesticides such as DDT endanger life by being ingested and becoming part of the food chain. (See Rachel Carson Author and environmentalist whose book Silent Spring (1962) became one of the first clear explanations of how the widespread and careless use of industrial and chemical products to increase production of goods and food can endanger the environment. The book became one of most influential, early works stimulating the environmental protection movement. Carson explains how pesticides such as DDT endanger life by being ingested and becoming part of the food chain.
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sit-ins
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One of the first and most effective methods used by younger civil rights activists beginning in 1960 to practice nonviolent civil disobedience and protest segregation by occupying lunch counters, parks, restaurants, and other public establishments. The first sit-in occurred on February 1,. 1960 at Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina when four black college students took seats in a white-only section and refused to move. They were arrested, but the movement spread. SNCC was organized that year by the SCLC to organize student sit-ins across the country. There had been civil rights sit-ins in the 1940s by CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), but they had not caught the attention of the nation.
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Spock, Benjamin
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The physician and author of Baby and Child Care (1946), the most influential book on the subject of childrearing in the 1950s. Spock and his book are significant as representatives of the postwar era's renewed emphasis on family life, the role of the woman as wife and mother, the relative isolation and newness of the suburbs (so that mothers turned to experts rather than to their mothers), and the importance placed on success and happiness as shown by the attention lavished on children and the greater parental leniency in accordance with Spock's admonition that children's psychological development was crucial to their happiness and success.
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Sputnik
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The first man-made satellite to circle the globe, launched by the U.S.S.R. October 4, 1957. This shocked the American public and set off new concerns about national security and, hence, an energetic effort to overtake the U.S.S.R. in space and in missile technology. As a result, Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 and advocated more federal support for education (NDEA fellowships), for research and development, for veterans' benefits, housing, unemployment compensation, Social Security. Under Kennedy, the space race led to Apollo missions and the effort to put a man on the moon.
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Tet Offensive
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The North Vietnamese assault on the major urban areas in the South beginning January 30, 1968 which showed that U.S. reports of imminent victory were misleading. Named for the lunar new year holiday (for which a truce had been called), the Tet offensive struck 36 of 44 provincial capitals, five of the six major cities (including Saigon and the U.S. embassy there), the South Vietnamese presidential palace, and various military bases including the South Vietnamese general staff headquarters. Lasting two weeks, Tet was technically and militarily a defeat for the North Vietnamese--the North suffered heavy casualties, the South Vietnamese did not rise up en masse to support the offensive, the South Vietnamese government did not fall, ARVN soldiers did not surrender, and the North was unable to maintain control of the cities. But strategically and politically, Tet was a victory for North Vietnam because it discredited Washington's argument that a U.S. victory was inevitable and imminent. It undermined U.S. morale, and in the U.S., it increased opposition to the war. Johnson refused to grant General Westmoreland's request for 206,000 more troops, and then on March 31, Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. Reducing U.S. involvement became a near necessity politically, affecting Nixon's policies in 1969 and after.
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The Feminine Mystique
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Betty Friedan's book (1963) attacking the idea that women are properly limited to the home, a concept which had dominated the 1950s as the government, magazines, advertisers, public opinion shapers of all kinds argued after 1945 that women, who during World War II had joined the work force in large numbers and gained independence, properly should be in the home, raising children and caring for their husbands. Friedan argues that many women cannot find fulfillment through the lives of their husbands and children and instead need work of their own in order to develop fully as human beings and contribute fully to the society and economy. This book became a best seller and helped stimulate the feminist movement which called for equality between men and women in every possible way.
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The Other America
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Michael Harrington's book of 1962 which detailed the widespread but largely unnoticed existence of poverty amidst the affluence of the 1950s. When the middle classes moved to the suburbs, the problems of the inner cities simply became less visible and could be more easily ignored. The book was a call to action to society as a whole to fight conditions which, unlike earlier periods of U.S. history when people were poor because they were new arrivals and would soon work their way out of poverty, seemed chronic and permanent as people became trapped by circumstances and gave up. Harrington, a democratic socialist in the line of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas, advocated government action to achieve social justice for all and, in Socialism (1972), to stop a system which allowed the exploitation of technology for private profit often at the public's expense.
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Third World
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The countries during the Cold War not aligned with either the U.S. and its allies (the "Free World") or the Soviet Union and its allies (the Communist World). These non-aligned nations were generally less industrialized with lower standards of living (hence, underdeveloped), often former European colonies which had gained their independence since 1945, and usually located in the southern hemisphere on the continents of Asia, Africa, and South America. They became objects of Cold War competition as each side tried to gain their support and remove governments and leaders perceived as favoring the other side. Third World nations, in turn, often played the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. off against each other in order to promote their own interests such as economic development, regional or religious identity, or national independence.
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Truman Doctrine
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The U.S. policy, developed in 1947 in response to conditions in Greece and Turkey plus the self-declared inability of the European Powers to maintain global order and announced by Harry Truman, which promised U.S. support to people resisting armed subjugation. This was one of the first and most important expressions of the idea of containment, a doctrine which became fundamental to U.S. foreign policy through most of the Cold War. It is significant for marking in 1947, along with the Marshall Plan and the CIA and later NATO, the shift in U.S. policy from a traditionally isolationist position to one of international cooperation and leadership. Moreover, the Truman Doctrine had an ideological tone, committing the U.S. to resisting communism everywhere, all the time. The effect of that was to make the U.S. into a national security state with a permanent military (which it had never had before), to give the president much more power as the commander-in-chief and director of foreign policy (contributing to the Imperial Presidency), to identify revolutionary efforts in Third World states with monolithic communism, and to involve the U.S. in revolutions and civil wars around the globe through armed intervention or covert action (such as CIA conducted coups).
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Watergate
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The apartment complex and location of the Democratic National Committee headquarters which on June 17, 1972 was the site of a break-in financed by CREEP and which gave its name to the crisis in government that led to Nixon's resignation from the presidency on August 9, 1974. The break-in was part of the Nixon campaign's underhanded (and illegal) methods to assure Nixon's re-election, although he was running far ahead of George McGovern, the Democratic candidate. The cause of Nixon's ultimate resignation was not the break-in itself but Nixon's obstruction of justice, the result of his attempts to prevent the investigation from uncovering the connection between the break-in and the White House and himself. Watergate is significant because it brought the first resignation of a president, because it contributed to the American people's disillusionment (both generally and with government specifically), and because it contributed to the partisan atmosphere in Washington and the politics of personal destruction which became common in the 1980s and 1990s and which had a new tool in the form of the special prosecutor who, created by Congress, had almost unlimited power to investigate members of the executive branch for wrongdoing, which soon became political, personal, and moral wrongdoing as well as legal wrongdoing. Watergate was one of several developments in the 1970s which promoted (among the general public) cynicism, self-interest, and a decline in participation in social activities in the 1980s and 1990s.
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