APUSH Term Sheet #12
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80 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 John Foster Dulles | Secretary of state under Eisenhower; he used the threat of nuclear war to deter Soviet agression through his idea of massive retaliation |
| massive retaliation | Term that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used in a 1954 speech, implying that the United States was willing to use nuclear force in response to Communist aggression anywhere. This was supposed to deter an initial attack in the first place |
| brinkmanship | Practice of seeking to win disputes in international politics by creating the impression of being willing to push a highly dangerous situation to the limit |
| Eisenhower Doctrine | Policy formulated by Eisenhower of providing military and economic aid to Arab nations in the Middle East to help defeat Communist-nationalistic rebellions |
| Sputnik | The first artificial satellite launched into space, it weighed 184 pounds; this feat by the Soviet Union in October 1957 marked the beginning of the space race. A month later, the larger Sputnik II was launched, weighing 1,120 pounds and carrying a dog named Laika |
| Suez crisis | July 26, 1956, Nasser (leader of Egypt) nationalized the Suez Canal. October 29, British, French and Israeli forces attacked Egypt. UN forced British to withdraw; made it clear Britain was no longer a world power |
| Dien Bien Phu | In 1954, Vietnamese rebels besieged a French garrison at Dien Bien Phu, deep in the interior of northern Vietnam. In May, after the United States refused to intervene, Dien Bien Phu fell to the communists |
| military industrial complex | Eisenhower first coined this phrase when he warned Americans against it in his last State of the Union Address. He feared that the combined lobbying efforts of the armed services and industries that contracted with the military would lead to excessive Congressional spending |
| U-2 incident | A conflict in which the Russians shot down a high altitude US spy plane over the Soviet Union; this incident exposed a secret US tactic for gaining information |
| Martin Luther King Jr. | Ordained Baptist minister, brilliant orator, and civil rights leader committed to nonviolence; he led many of the important protests of the 1950s and 1960s |
| Earl Warren | Chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1953 to 1969, under whom the Court issued decisions protecting civil rights, the rights of criminals, and First Amendment rights |
| Thurgood Marshall | African American civil rights lawyer who argued thirty-two cases before the Supreme Court and won twenty-nine; appointed to the federal court system by President Kennedy, he became the first African American justice of the Supreme Court in 1967 |
| Brown v. Board of Education | Case in 1954 in which the Supreme Court ruled that separate educational facilities for different races were inherently equal |
| Southern Manifesto | Statement issued by one hundred southern congressmen in 1954 after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, pledging to oppose desegregation |
| Freedom Riders | Civil rights protesters who by riding buses throughout the South in 1961 sought to achieve the integration of bus terminals |
| Jack Kerouac | The author of the best-selling book On the Road, which epitomized the Beat Generation of the late 1940s and early 1950s |
| beatniks | United States youth subculture of the 1950s that rebelled against the mundane horrors of middle class life |
| Little Rock Nine | Incident in which nine African-American students were prevented from attending Little Rock Central High in 1957 during the Civil Rights Movement |
| Jonas Salk | United States virologist who developed the Salk vaccine that is injected against poliomyelitis (born 1914) |
| Betty Friedan | Feminist who wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963 and helped found the National Organization for Women in 1966 |
| John F. Kennedy Jr. | Took oath of president in 1961, inspired Americans with "ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country." He funded Peace Corp, Bay of Pigs, He was assassinated in 1963 in Dallas |
| Fidel Castro | Cuban revolutionary leader who overthrew the corrupt regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and established a Communist state |
| Bay of Pigs | Site of a 1961 invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles and mercenaries sponsored by the CIA; the invasion was crushed within three days and embarrassed the United States |
| Cuban Missile Crisis | The Soviet Union was secretly building nuclear missile launch sites in Cuba, which could have been used for a sneak-attack on the U.S. The U.S. blockaded Cuba until the U.S.S.R. agreed to dismantle the missile silos |
| Berlin Wall | Barrier that the Communist East German government built in 1961 to divide East and West Berlin; it was torn down in November 1989 as the Cold War was ending |
| Malcom X | Black activist who advocated black separatism as a member of the Nation of Islam; in 1963 he converted to orthodox Islam and two years later was assassinated |
| Warren Commission | Commission made by Lyndon B. Johnson after the killing of John F. Kennedy. (Point is to investigate if someone paid for the assasination of Kennedy.) Conclusion is that Oswald killed Kennedy on his own. Commissioner is Chief Justice Warren. |
| Lyndon Johnson | President in 1960's who pushed through the Civil Rights act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 |
| Kerner Commission | Created in July, 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States |
| Immigration Act of 1965 | Replaced varying quotas with the limit of 20,000 immigrants per year from anyone outside the western hemisphere and 120,000 from the Western hemisphere |
| Woodstock | Free rock concert in Woodstock, New York, in August 1969; it attracted 400,000 people and was remembered as the classic expression of the counterculture |
| Domino theory | The idea that if one nation came under Communist control, then neighboring nations would also fall to the Communists |
| 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 Lyndon Johnson and more anti-war sentiment |
| Ho Chi Minh | Vietnamese communist statesman who fought the Japanese in World War II, the French until 1954 and South vietnam until 1975 (1890-1969) |
| National Organization of Women | Women's rights organization founded in 1966 to fight discrimination against women; to improve educational, employment, and political opportunities for women; and to fight for equal pay for equal work |
| New Frontier | Program for social and educational reform put forward by President John F. Kennedy; though charismatically presented, it was largely resisted by Congress |
| Great Society | Social program that Johnson announced in 1965; it included the War on Poverty, protection of civil rights, and funding for education. |
| Medicare | Program of health insurance for the elderly and disabled established in 1965; it provides government payment for healthcare supplied by private doctors and hospitals |
| Miranda v. Arizona | Supreme Court held that criminal suspects must be informed of their right to consult with an attorney and of their right against self-incrimination prior to questioning by police |
| Watts riots | Riots that occurred in a predominantly black neighborhood in Los Angeles. In August 1965 a race riot did $45 million in damage and took the lives of twenty-eight blacks |
| Gulf of Tonkin Resolution | Decree passed by Congress in 1964 authorizing the president to take any measures necessary to repel attacks against U.S. forces in Vietnam |
| Civil Rights Act of 1964 | This act made racial, religious, and sex discrimination by employers illegal and gave the government the power to enforce all laws governing civil rights, including desegregation of schools and public places |
| Voting Rights Act of 1965 | Law passed by Congress that outlawed literacy and other voting tests and authorized federal supervision of elections in areas where black voting had been restricted |
| 23rd Amendment | Amendment to the Constituiton that gave residents of Washington DC the right to vote |
| 24th Amendment | Amendment to the Constitution in 1964 that eliminated the poll tax as a prerequisite to vote in national elections |
| 25th Amendment | Amendment to the Constitution that clarifies an ambiguous provision of the Constitution regarding succession to the Presidency, and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President as well as responding to Presidential disabilities |
| 26th Amendment | Amendment to the Constitution that lowered the voting age to 18 |
| 27th Amendment | Amendment to the Constitution that regulates pay raises for members of Congress |
| Equal Rights Amendment | Proposed constitutional amendment, first advocated by the National Woman's Party in 1923, to give women in the United States equal rights under the law; Congress approved it in 1972, but it failed to achieve ratification by the required 38 states |
| Port Huron Statement | A 1962 critique of the Cold War and American materialism and complacency by Students for a Democratic Society; it called for "participatory democracy" and for universities to be centers of free speech and activism |
| Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) | Left-wing student organization founded in 1960 to criticize American materialism and work for social justice. It delivered the Port Huron Statement in 1962 |
| George Wallace | Conservative Alabama governor who opposed desegregation in the 1960s and ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1968 and 1972 |
| Henry Kissinger | German-born American diplomat who was President Nixon's national security adviser and secretary of state; he helped negotiate the cease-fire in Vietnam |
| detente | Introduced by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, this was the relaxing of tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the early 1970s, which led to increased diplomatic, commercial, and cultural contact |
| Paris Peace Accords | 1973 peace agreement between the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the Vietcong that effectively ended the Vietnam War |
| SALT | Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; negotiations between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics opened in 1969 in Helsinki designed to limit both countries' stock of nuclear weapons |
| OPEC | An organization of countries formed in 1961 to agree on a common policy for the production and sale of petroleum |
| Arab oil embargo | After the U.S. backed Israel in its war against Syria and Egypt, which had been trying to regain territory lost in the Six-Day War, the Arab nations imposed an oil embargo, which strictly limited oil in the U.S. and caused a crisis |
| Watergate | Apartment and office complex in Washington, D.C., that housed the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee; its name became synonymous with the scandal over the Nixon administration's involvement in a break-in there and the president's part in the cover-up that followed |
| Roe v. Wade | Supreme Court ruling (1973) that women have an unrestricted right to choose an abortion during the first three months of pregnancy |
| Yom Kippur War | On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria suddenly invaded Israel; after initial losses, the Israeli military defeated the Arab armies; with U.S. support, negotiations finally led to a cease-fire on October 22 |
| George McGovern | South Dakota senator who opposed the Vietnam War and was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president in 1972 |
| Gerald Ford | Nixon's Vice president, he was the only person not voted into the White House. He became president after Nixon resigned, serving from 1974-1977 |
| 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 |
| Camp David Accords | Treaty, signed at Camp David in 1978, under which Israel returned territory captured from Egypt and Egypt recognized Israel as a nation |
| Iranian hostage crisis | In 1979, Iranian fundamentalists seized the American embassy in Tehran and held fifty-three American diplomats hostage for over a year. The Iranian hostage crisis weakened the Carter presidency; the hostages were finally released on January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan became president |
| Panama Canal Treaty | 1978 - Passed by President Carter, this called for the gradual return of the Panama Canal to the people and government of Panama. They provided for the transfer of canal ownership to Panama in 1999 and guaranteed its neutrality |
| Ronald Reagan | President from 1981-1989,"Great Communicator" Republican, conservative economic policies, replaced liberal Democrats in upper house with consevative Democrats or "boll weevils" , at reelection time. Jesse Jackson first black presdiential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro as VP running mate (first woman) |
| stagflation | Persistent inflation combined with stagnant consumer demand and relatively high unemployment |
| glasnost | Policy of openness initiated by Gorbachev in the 1980s that provided increased opportunities for freedom of speech, association and the press in the Soviet Union |
| Mikhail Gorbachev | As Soviet General Secretary of the Communist Party assumed power in 1985, he introduced political and economic reforms and then found himself presiding over the breakup of the Soviet Union |
| supply side economics | Also called Reaganomics, this is the theory that reducing taxes on the wealthy and increasing the money available for investment will stimulate the economy and eventually benefit everyone |
| Three Mile Island | Site of a nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; an accident at the plant in 1979 led to a release of radioactive gases and almost caused a meltdown |
| George H.W. Bush | Republican, former director of CIA, oil company founder/owner, foreign policy (Panama, Gulf War), raised taxes even though said he wouldn't, more centrist than his son, NAFTA negotiation |
| Saddam Hussein | 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 |
| Desert Storm | The code name used by the United States and its coalition partners in waging war against Iraq in early 1991 to liberate Kuwait |
| Bill Clinton | 42nd President advocated economic and healthcare reform; second president to be impeached |
| George W. Bush | 43rd president of the US who began a campaign toward energy self-sufficiency and against terrorism in 2001 |
| War on terror | Initiated by President George W. Bush after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the broadly defined war on terror aimed to weed out terrorist operatives and their supporters throughout the world |
| Al-Qaeda | Established by Saudi Osama bin Laden in 1989 as a terrorist network that organizes the activities of militiant Islamic groups which seek to establish a global fundamentalist Islamic order |
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