Honors American History
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purplezebra2 on June 2, 2012
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165 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Harlem Renaissance | An african american literary awakening of the 1920's. |
| New Deal Programs | FDR's plan to help the US during the great depression. Included programs such as the; CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), NRA (National Recovery Act), WPA (Works Progress Administration), PWA (Public Works Administration), AAA (Agriculture Adjustment Act), SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) , and FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation). |
| FDR | Roosevelt, the President of the United States during the Depression and WWII. He instituted the New Deal. Served from 1933 to 1945, he was the only president in U.S. history to be elected to four terms |
| Amendments | 18th- Prohibition 19th- Womens suffrage 20th- Limited term length of government officials 21st- Repeal of prohibition |
| Speakeasy | A place where alcoholic drinks were sold and consumed illegally during Prohibition. |
| Brain trust | Group of expert policy advisers who worked with FDR in the 1930s to end the great depression |
| Bootleggers | People who smuggled alcohol into the u.s. during Prohibition. They were so named because they sometimes hid the alcohol in their boots. |
| Flappers | carefree young women with short, "bobbed" hair, heavy makeup, and short skirts. The flapper symbolized the new "liberated" woman of the 1920s. Many people saw the bold, boyish look and shocking behavior of flappers as a sign of changing morals. Though hardly typical of American women, the flapper image reinforced the idea that women now had more freedom. |
| Fireside chats | The informal radio conversations Roosevelt had with the people to keep spirits up. It was a means of communicating with the people on how he would take on the depression. |
| Hoovervilles | Shanty towns that the unemployed built in the cities during the early years of the Depression; the name given to them shows that thte people blamed Hoover directly for the Depression. |
| W.G. Harding | The republican candidate in the 1920 election, who eventually won the race against James Cox. He was seen as a dignified speaker who promised a return to normalcy after WWI. |
| Calvin Coolidge | became president when Harding died of pneumonia. He was known for practicing a rigid economy in money and words, and acquired the name "Silent Cal" for being so soft-spoken. He was a true republican and industrialist. Believed in the government supporting big business. |
| Herbert Hoover | Republican candidate who assumed the presidency in March 1929 promising the American people prosperity and attempted to first deal with the Depression by trying to restore public faith in the community. |
| Sacco andVenzetti | Two Italian immigrants who were accused of murder and later executed for it in the 1920's. It was a very controversial case because their accusation may have been partially due to the red scare and the fact that they were immigrants with radical beliefs. |
| Leopold and Loeb | (1904/1905-1971/1936): Two wealthy University of Chicago students who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks and received sentences of life plus 99 years. Their crime was notable in being largely motivated by an apparent need to prove their belief that they were capable of committing a perfect crime, and for its role in the history of American thought on capitol punishment. |
| Scopes Trial | 1925 court case argued by Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in which the issue of teaching evolution in public schools was debated |
| Laissez-Fairre | the government poilcy of not interfering with the economy |
| Babe Ruth | an American Major League baseball player from 1914 to 1935. Named the greatest baseball player in history in various surveys and rankings, his home run hitting prowess and charismatic personality made him a larger than life figure in the "Roaring Twenties" |
| R. Grange | ... |
| K Rockne | ... |
| Arnold Mitchell Palmer | U.S. attorney who in 1920 led the "Red Scare" and accused many people of being communist; head of the Witch hunt that was related to the red scare that occured around the time of the Russian revolution. He jailed anyone who spoke of communism or anarchy. |
| Genocide | systematic killing of a racial or cultural group |
| Hirohito | emperor of Japan who renounced his divinity and became a constitutional monarch after Japan surrendered at the end of World War II (1901-1989) |
| Adolf Hitler | Austrian born Dictator of Germany, implemenedt Fascism and caused WWII and Holocoust. |
| Joseph Stalin | Russian leader who succeeded Lenin as head of the Communist Party and created a totalitarian state by purging all opposition (1879-1953) |
| Benito Mussolini | Fascist dictator of Italy (1922-1943). He led Italy to conquer Ethiopia (1935), joined Germany in the Axis pact (1936), and allied Italy with Germany in World War II. He was overthrown in 1943 when the Allies invaded Italy. (p. 786) |
| Dwight Eisenhower | He was the U. S. general who led the attack in North Africa in Nov. of 1942.He was the master organizer of the D-Day invasion in Europe (June 6, 1944). He ran for the Republican ticket in the 1952 and the1956 elections and won. He was very well liked by the public. |
| Pearl Harbor | United States military base on Hawaii that was bombed by Japan, bringing the United States into World War II. Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. |
| Manhattan Project | code name for the secret United States project set up in 1942 to develop atomic bombs for use in World War II |
| Detention camps | camps Japanese-Americans were forced into after bombing of Pearl Harbor; had to leave home and jobs in short period of time to live in facilities lacking proper food, shelter, and other facilities |
| Holocost | mass slaughter of jews and other civilans carried out by nazi goverment before and during WWII |
| Francisco Franco | Spanish General; organized the revolt in Morocco, which led to the Spanish Civil War. Leader of the Nationalists - right wing, supported by Hitler and Mussolini, won the Civil War after three years of fighting. |
| Charles DeGaulle | French General who Led the French resistance. Organized the Free French military forces that battled the Nazis until France was liberated in 1944. |
| Nazi | Name of German National Socialist Party, which gained control of Germany in 1933 under the leadership of Adolf Hitler; members of this group also called this term |
| Operation Overlord | the code name for the Allied invasion of Europe at Normandy on June 6, 1944; also known as D-Day |
| United Nations | International organization founded in 1945 to promote world peace and cooperation. It replaced the League of Nations. |
| Allied Powers | WWI alliance of Britian, France, and Russia, and later joined by Italy, the United States, and others; fought against Axis Powers |
| Potsdam Conference | The final wartime meeting of the leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union was held at Potsdamn, outside Berlin, in July, 1945. Truman, Churchill, and Stalin discussed the future of Europe but their failure to reach meaningful agreements soon led to the onset of the Cold War. |
| J. Robert Oppenheimer | lead the Manhattan Project: the World War II effort to develop the first nuclear bomb. He was remembered as the "Father of the Atomic Bomb." |
| Atomic Bomb | Bomb that changed the world, ended WWII in Japan, created a nuclear arms race between U.S. and Soviet Union |
| Tojo | Japanese army officer who initiated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and who assumed dictatorial control of Japan during World War II |
| Kamikaze | Japanese suicide pilots who loaded their planes with explosives and crashed them into American ships during WWII |
| Appeasement | policy by which Czechoslovakia, Great Britain and France agreed to Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland in greement for not taking any additional Czech territory; used to keep peace and avoid war |
| Sudetenland | German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia, ceded to Germany in the Hitler- Chamberlain Munich meeting (September 1938). |
| Harry S Truman | The 33rd U.S. president, who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt upon Roosevelt's death in April 1945. led the country through the last few months of World War II; best known for making the controversial decision to use two atomic bombs against Japan in August 1945. After the war, was crucial in the implementation of the Marshall Plan, which greatly accelerated Western Europe's economic recovery. |
| Lend-Lease Act | Approve by Congress in March 1941; The act allowed America to sell, lend or lease arms or other supplies to nations considered "vital to the defense of the United States." |
| NATO | North Atlantic Treaty Organization; an alliance made to defend one another if they were attacked by any other country; US, England, France, Canada, Western European countries |
| Truman Doctrine | First established in 1947 after Britain no longer could afford to provide anti-communist aid to Greece and Turkey, it pledged to provide U.S. military and economic aid to any nation threatened by communism. |
| Marshall Plan | A plan that the US came up with to revive war-torn economies of Europe. This plan offered $13 billion in aid to western and Southern Europe. |
| Containment | American policy of resisting further expansion of communism around the world |
| Domino Theory | the political theory that if one nation comes under Communist control then neighboring nations will also come under Communist control |
| McCarthyism | The term associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy who led the search for communists in America during the early 1950s through his leadership in the House Un-American Activities Committee. |
| Rosenbergs | Husband and wife tried/excuted for treason under suspecision of communist influence and trading atomic bomb secrets with the Soviet Union |
| D. MacArthur | general in japan. took control of democratization of japan. japs cooperated. macarthur-dictated constitution- renounced militarism and introduced western-style democracy. was fired by president when he wanted to attack china at yalu river after korea. |
| Sputnik | First artificial Earth satellite, it was launched by Moscow in 1957 and sparked U.S. fears of Soviet dominance in technology and outer space. It led to the creation of NASA and the space race. |
| Montgomery Bus Boycott | In 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus, Dr. Martin L. King led a boycott of city busses. After 11 months the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public transportation was illegal. |
| Little Rock Nine | Nine black teenagers who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 and became the focus of a national crisis that required the intervention of federal troops to resolve. |
| Rock n Roll | musical style based on rhythm and blues that became popular in the 1950s |
| Brown v. Board of Education | 1954 - The Supreme Court overruled Plessy v. Ferguson, declared that racially segregated facilities are inherently unequal and ordered all public schools desegregated. |
| 38th parallel | Line that divided Korea - Soviet Union occupied the north and United States occupied the south, during the Cold War. |
| Kim II Sung | the leader of North Korea from its founding in 1948 until his death. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death. He was also the General Secretary of the Korean Workers' Party where he exercised autocratic power. |
| Mao Zedong | This man became the leader of the Chinese Communist Party and remained its leader until his death. He declared the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and supported the Chinese peasantry throughout his life. |
| Chiang Kai-shek | General and leader of Nationalist China after 1925. Although he succeeded Sun Yat-sen as head of the Guomindang, he became a military dictator whose major goal was to crush the communist movement led by Mao Zedong. |
| Rosa Parks | United States civil rights leader who refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery (Alabama) and so triggered the national civil rights movement (born in 1913) |
| Eleanor Roosevelt | FDR's Wife and New Deal supporter. Was a great supporter of civil rights and opposed the Jim Crow laws. She also worked for birth control and better conditions for working women |
| Elvis Presley | white singer born in 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi; chief revolutionary of popular music in the 1950s, fused black rhythm and blues with white bluegrass and country styles; created a new musical idiom known forever after as rock and roll |
| John Foster Dulles | United States diplomat who (as Secretary of State) pursued a policy of opposition to the USSR by providing aid to American allies (1888-1959) |
| JFK | 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. Also dealt with the Bay of Pigs. Other events, which were during his terms was the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, and early events of the Vietnamese War. Wrote a book about Pearl Harbor and was the first Catholic to be elected president, and youngest to ever be president. |
| Lyndon B. Johnson | signed the civil rights act of 1964 into law and the voting rights act of 1965. he had a war on poverty in his agenda. in an attempt to win, he set a few goals, including the great society, the economic opportunity act, and other programs that provided food stamps and welfare to needy famillies. he also created a department of housing and urban development. his most important legislation was probably medicare and medicaid. |
| Vietnam | a prolonged war (1954-1975) between the communist armies of North Vietnam who were supported by the Chinese and the non-communist armies of South Vietnam who were supported by the United States |
| Ho Chi Minh | 1950s and 60s; communist leader of North Vietnam; used geurilla warfare to fight anti-comunist, American-funded attacks under the Truman Doctrine; brilliant strategy drew out war and made it unwinnable |
| Ngo Dihn Diem | Corrupt leader of South Vietnam, supported by US until his unpopularity led us to approve a coup by the military |
| Cuban Missile Crisis | an international crisis in October 1962, the closest approach to nuclear war at any time between the U.S. and the USSR. When the U.S. discovered Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba, President John F. Kennedy demanded their removal and announced a naval blockade of the island; the Soviet leader Khrushchev acceded to the U.S. demands a week later. |
| Bay of Pigs | In April 1961, a group of Cuban exiles organized and supported by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency landed on the southern coast of Cuba in an effort to overthrow Fidel Castro. When the invasion ended in disaster, President Kennedy took full responsibility for the failure. |
| 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. |
| Hippies | members of the youthful counterculture that dominated many college campuses in the 1960s; rather than promoting a political agenda, they challenged conventional sexual standards, rejected traditional economic values, and encouraged the use of drugs. |
| Bob Dylan | A twentieth-century American folksinger and songwriter. His music, with its strong note of social protest, was especially popular during the 1960s, when he wrote songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind," "The Times They Are A-Changin'," and "Like a Rolling Stone." |
| Escobedo v. Illinois | 1964--Ruled that a defendant must be allowed access to a lawyer before questioning by police. |
| Chubby Checker | "The Twist": only record to reach #1 in U.S. in separate years when performed by original artist; culmination of more than 50 years of social dance; a solo dance which didn't require a partner; could be learned and done by anyone, anytime, anywhere; made a turning point in popular entertainment; rock n' roll could now have mass cross-generational appeal, |
| University of California v. Bakke | 1978 The supreme court ruled that a white man Allan Bakke had been unfairly denied admission to medical school on the basis of quotas. the court did not ruleout all forms of affirmative action, but it did strike down the quota system |
| Berlin Wall | A fortified wall surrounding West Berlin, Germany, built in 1961 to prevent East German citizens from traveling to the West. Its demolition in 1989 symbolized the end of the Cold War. This wall was both a deterrent to individuals trying to escape and a symbol of repression to the free world. |
| Robert F. Kennedy | He ran for President in 1968; stirred a response from workers, African Americans, Hispanics, and younger Americans; would have captured Democratic nomination but was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan after victory speech during the California primary in June 1968. |
| Geneva Conference (1954-55) | Conference deciding fate of Vietnam; created cease fire and divided Vietnam into communist north and democratic south at 17th parallel |
| Black Panthers | A black political organization that was against peaceful protest and for violence if needed. The organization marked a shift in policy of the black movement, favoring militant ideals rather than peaceful protest. |
| Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) | an organization formed in 1960 to coordinate sit-ins and other protests and to give young blacks a larger role in the civil rights movement |
| Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) | An organization founded by MLK Jr., to direct the crusade against segregation. Its weapon was passive resistance that stressed nonviolence and love, and its tactic direct, though peaceful, confrontation. |
| Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) | U.S. civil rights organization that played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century. Membership is stated to be open to "anyone who believes that 'all people are created equal' and is willing to work towards the ultimate goal of true equality throughout the world." |
| Vietnamization | President Richard Nixons strategy for ending U.S involvement in the vietnam war, involving a gradual withdrawl of American troops and replacement of them with South Vietnamese forces |
| Freedom Summer | a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi, which up to that time had almost totally excluded black voters. The project was organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of four established civil rights organizations: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), with SNCC playing the lead role. |
| Carl Stokes | elected mayor of Cleveland; became the first African American to be elected mayor of a major US city |
| George Wallace | A third party ticket candidate for the American Independent party in 1968 that lost against Nixon. He was a former governor of Alabama and had stood in the doorway to prevent black students from entering the University of Alabama. |
| the Beatles | Rock group from Liverpool, England, who dominated American popular music during the mid-1960s and started the "British Invasion." The band included John Lennon and George Harrison on lead and rhythm guitars and vocals, Paul McCartney on bass and vocals, and Ringo Starr on drums and occasional vocals. They wrote songs about what was going on in the world at the time |
| Tonkin Gulf Resolution | After the USS Maddox was "attacked" in the Gulf of Tonkin, LBJ pushed congress to pass this, which let him send more troops; This gave the president authority to take "all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States." |
| Martin Luther King Jr. | U.S. Baptist minister and civil rights leader. A noted orator, he opposed discrimination against blacks by organizing nonviolent resistance and peaceful mass demonstrations. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Nobel Peace Prize (1964) |
| Malcolm X | Black Muslim leader who said Blacks needed to have separate society from whites, but later changed his views. He was assasinated in 1965. |
| Cesar Chavez | Non-violent leader of the United Farm Workers from 1963-1970. Organized laborers in California and in the Southwest to strike against fruit and vegetable growers. Unionized Mexican-American farm workers. |
| Bobby Seale | (with Huey Newton) begin the Black Panther Party -demanded the government rebuild ghettos - "black is beautiful" 1960's. different because didnt believe in nonviolence, change from usual civil rights method. |
| Sirhan Sirhan | Assassinated Robert Kennedy on June 6, 1968 in Chicago after hearing pro-Israeli remarks in his victory statement after having won the California primaries. |
| Niel Armstrong | he was the first man to step on the moon. |
| John Glenn | made the first orbital rocket-powered flight by a United States astronaut in 1962 |
| Thurgood Marshall | American civil rights lawyer, first black justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. Marshall was a tireless advocate for the rights of minorities and the poor. |
| Alan Shepard | astronaut who made the first United States' suborbital rocket-powered flight in 1961 (1923-1998) |
| Tet Offensive | 1968; National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese forces launched a huge attack on the Vietnamese New Year (Tet), which was defeated after a month of fighting and many thousands of casualties; major defeat for communism, but Americans reacted sharply, with declining approval of LBJ and more anti-war sentiment |
| Agent Orange | a herbicide used in the Vietnam War to defoliate forest areas |
| James Earl Ray | convicted of killing Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and sentenced to 99 years in jail |
| Lee Harvey Oswald | On November 22, 1963, he assassinated President Kennedy who was riding downtown Dallas, Texas. Oswald was later shot in front of television cameras by Jack Ruby. |
| Jack Ruby | owned a night club; shoots Oswald on Nov. 24, 1963; dies of natural causes in jail, from Chicago |
| Charles Manson | He was a serial killer/ cult leader who murdered many people, including Sharon Tate. He was sentenced the death penalty, but his sentence was changed to life in prison after Furman v. Georgia |
| Gloria Steinem | she and several other women founded Ms. magazine in 1972. She decided to start the feminist magazine after her previous editors continually rejected her stories about the women's movement |
| Richard Nixon | President of the United States from 1969 to 1974 who followed a foreign policy marked by détente with the Soviet Union and by the opening of diplomatic relations with China. In the face of likely impeachment for the Watergate scandal, he resigned. |
| Integration | the inclusion of people of all races on an equal basis into society |
| Segregation | separation of people based on racial, ethnic, or other differences |
| Huey Newton | An American political and urban activist who founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The Black Panther Party worked for the right of self-defense for African-Americans in the United States. |
| Woodstock | a free music festival that attracted more than 400,000 young people to a farm in upstate New York in August 1969 |
| Betty Friedan | 1921-2006. American feminist, activist and writer. Best known for starting the "Second Wave" of feminism through the writing of her book "The Feminine Mystique". |
| Fidel castro | Cuban socialist leader who overthrew a dictator in 1959 and established a Marxist socialist state in Cuba (born in 1927) |
| Counterculture | a rebellion of teens and young adults against mainstream American society in the 1960s |
| Reies Lopez Tijerina | Worked to get land grants, and regain ancestral lands of the Chicano people. Was the Co-Sponsor of the poor people's march on Washington. |
| Watergate | 1972; Nixon feared loss so he approved the Commission to Re-Elect the President to spy on and espionage the Democrats. A security gaurd foiled an attempt to bug the Democratic National Committe Headquarters, exposing the scandal. Seemingly contained, after the election Nixon was impeached and stepped down |
| Spiro Agnew | Nixon's vice-president resigned and pleaded "no contest" to charges of tax evasion on payments made to him when he was governor of Maryland. He was replaced by Gerald R. Ford. |
| Alex Haley | United States writer and Afro-American who wrote a fictionalized account of tracing his family roots back to Africa (1921-1992) |
| Jimmy Carter | President who stressed human rights. Because of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, he enacted an embargo on grain shipments to USSR and boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow |
| Gerald Ford | the first president to be solely elected by a vote from Congress. He entered the office in August of 1974 when Nixon resigned. He pardoned Nixon of all crimes that he may have committed. The Vietnam War ended in 1975, in which Ford evacuated nerely 500,000 Americans and South Vietnamese from Vietnam. He closed the war. |
| Yom Kippur War | (RN), , This was a war fought by Israel and neighboring Arab nations where the Arabs launched a surprise attack during Yom Kippur. U.S. support for Israel during the war led to OPEC boycotting the U.S., creating an energy crisis. |
| Pentagon Papers | (RN), , a classified study of the Vietnam War that was carried out by the Department of Defense. An official of the department, Daniel Ellsberg, gave copies of the study in 1971 to the New York Times and Washington Post. The Supreme Court upheld the right of the newspapers to publish the documents. In response, President Richard Nixon ordered some members of his staff, afterward called the "plumbers," to stop such "leaks" of information. The "plumbers," among other activities, broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, looking for damaging information on him. r Defense Secretary Robert McNamara , revealed among other things that the government had drawn up plans for entering rthe war even as President Johnson promised that he would not send American troops to Viet. |
| Henry Kissinger | The main negotiator of the peace treaty with the North Vietnamese; secretary of state during Nixon's presidency (1970s). |
| Kent State Shooting | Incident in which National Guard troops fired at a group of students during an antiwar protest at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four people. |
| Roe v. Wade | established national abortion guidelines; trimester guidelines; no state interference in 1st; state may regulate to protect health of mother in 2nd; state may regulate to protect health or unborn child in 3rd. inferred from right of privacy established in griswald v. connecticut |
| 26th amendment | Lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 |
| Detente | relaxation of tensions between the United States and its two major Communist rivals, the Soviet Union and China |
| inflation | a general and progressive increase in prices |
| Stephen Wozniak | college dropout with Steven Jobs, worked for computer companies, founded Apple Computer Company who built the first practical, affordable home computer |
| Steven Jobs | college dropout with Stephen Wozniak, worked for computer companies, founded Apple Computer Company |
| Ronald Reagan | first elected president in 1980 and elected again in 1984. He ran on a campaign based on the common man and "populist" ideas. He served as governor of California from 1966-1974, and he participated in the McCarthy Communist scare. Iran released hostages on his Inauguration Day in 1980. While president, he developed Reagannomics, the trickle down effect of government incentives. He cut out many welfare and public works programs. He used the Strategic Defense Initiative to avoid conflict. His meetings with Gorbachev were the first steps to ending the Cold War. He was also responsible for the Iran-contra Affair which bought hostages with guns. |
| Supply-side Economics | An economic philosophy that holds the sharply cutting taxes will increase the incentive people have to work, save, and invest. Greater investments will lead to more jobs, a more productive economy, and more tax revenues for the government. |
| Sandra Day O'Connor | She was a laywer and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. She was the first woman to be a justice on the Supreme Court. |
| Strategic Defense Initiative | Popularly known as "Star Wars," President Reagan's SDI proposed the construction of an elaborate computer-controlled, anti-missile defense system capable of destroying enemy missiles in outer spaced. Critics claimed that SDI could never be perfected. |
| AIDS | a serious (often fatal) disease of the immune system transmitted through blood products especially by sexual contact or contaminated needles |
| Oliver North | One of the chief figures in the Iran-Contra scandal was Marine Colonel Oliver North, an aide to the NSC. He admitted to covering up their actions, including shredding documents to destroy evidence. IMP. Although Reagan did approve the sale of arms to Iran he was not aware of the diversion of money to the contras. This still tainted his second term in office. |
| Apartheid | Laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physically separated different races into different geographic areas. |
| Space Shuttle Challenger | NASA's second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service; exploded after takeoff; killed all onboard; used to compete with Soviet Union |
| Mikhail Gorbachev | Head of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991. His liberalization effort improved relations with the West, but he lost power after his reforms led to the collapse of Communist governments in eastern Europe. |
| Perestroika | a policy initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev that involved restructuring of the social and economic status quo in communist Russia towards a market based economy and society |
| Glastnost | Program leading to increased freedom of expression under Mikhail Gorbachev. |
| Geraldine Ferraro | In 1984 she was the first woman to appear on a major-party presidential ticket. She was a congresswoman running for Vice President with Walter Modale. |
| New Right | Conservative political movements in industrialized democracies that have arisen since the 1960's and stress "traditional values," often with a racist undertone. |
| Lech Walesa | A Polish politician, a former trade union and human rights activist, and also a former electrician. He co-founded Solidarity, the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995. |
| George Bush | Vice President under Reagan and 41st President of the United States (born in 1924) |
| Clarence Thomas | This man was an African American jurist, and a strict critic of affirmative action. He was nominated by George H. W. Bush to be on the Supreme Court in 1991, and shortly after was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill. Hearings were reopened, and he became the second African American to hold a seat in the Supreme Court. |
| Three Mile Island | 1979 - A mechanical failure and a human error at this power plant in Pennsylvania combined to permit an escape of radiation over a 16 mile radius. |
| Manuel Noriega | This dictator of Panama who was arrested and brought to trial in the USA for drug trafficking |
| Persian Gulf War | 1991, a war fought between a coalition led by the United States and Iraq to free Kuwait from Iraqi invaders |
| Bill Clinton | 42nd President advocated economic and healthcare reform; second president to be impeached |
| Hilary Clinton | Headed up President Clinton's efforts to reform US healthcare |
| Ruth Bader Ginsberg | Appointed by Clinton, Ginsberg was a judge known to believe that abortion was constitutional, to strengthen the Supreme Court majority in favor of upholding the landmark case of Roe vs. Wade. |
| Kosovo | 1990s; fall of USSR caused tensions between diverse ethnic groups in tis region of Yugoslavia; war broke out and Clinton's diplomacy failed and he sent in troops; illustrated struggles America faced as the world superpower trying to keep peace |
| Ross Perot | This billionaire was a third-party candidate in the 1992 presidential election won 19 percent of the popular vote. His strong showing that year demonstrated voter disaffection with the two major parties. |
| Bob Dole | WWII hero who was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for President in 1996 |
| Janet Reno | first female attorney general appointed by Clinton |
| Elizabeth Dole | First woman elected from NC to the US Senate. Worked to make workplaces safer, working conditions fair and improve education. |
| Saddam Hussein | - Was a dictator in Iraq who tried to take over Iran and Kuwait violently in order to gain the land and the resources. He also refused to let the UN into Iraq in order to check if the country was secretly holding weapons of mass destruction. |
| Colin Powell | Colin Powell was an American military general and leader during the Persian Gulf War. He played a crucial role in planning and attaining America's victory in the Persian Gulf and Panama.. He was also the first black four star general and chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff. |
| Norman Schwarzkopf | Commander of US Central Command in the Gulf War; Commander of the coalition forces. Led operation "Desert Storm" |
| Al Gore | President Clinton's loyal vice president who won the most popular votes but lost the election of 2000 |
| Goerge W. Bush | The president of the U.S during the time of the attacks of 9/11 |
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