Cold War Terms
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26 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Harry S. Truman | vice president who became president when FDR died in April 1945; he was elected on his own in 1948. He ordered the use of atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, set the course of postwar containment of communism in the Cold War, and created a Fair Deal program to carry on the New Deal's domestic agenda. |
| Fair Deal | Truman's extension of the New Deal that increased min wage, expanded Social Security, and constructed low-income housing |
| Cold War | This period of time following World War II is where the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as superpowers and faced off in an arms race that lasted nearly 50 years. |
| containment | American policy of resisting further expansion of communism around the world |
| 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. |
| 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 |
| Marshall Plan | a United States program of economic aid for the reconstruction of Europe (1948-1952) |
| Ethel and Julius Rosenberg | couple who was accused of giving atomic bomb secrets to Soviets and were executed for treason |
| Mao Tse-tung | was the leader of the communists (CCP) in China during the civil war. He helped established communist rule in China, causing a defeat for the U.S. |
| 38th parallel | Dividing line between North and South Korea |
| Korean War | The conflict between Communist North Korea and Non-Communist South Korea. The United Nations (led by the United States) helped South Korea. |
| Joseph McCarthy | United States politician who unscrupulously accused many citizens of being Communists (1908-1957) |
| brinksmanship | The principle of not backing down in a crisis, even if it meant taking the country to the brink of war. Policy of both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. during the Cold War. |
| arms race | Cold war competition between the U.S. and Soviet Union to build up their respective armed forces and weapons |
| H-bomb | hydrogen bomb invented in 1950's, MORE powerful than atomic bomb, example of Cold War arms race |
| space race | a competition of space exploration between the United States and Soviet Union |
| suburbs | residential areas surrounding a city |
| baby boom | the larger than expected generation in United States born shortly after World War II |
| rock n' roll | became a popular music genre in the fifties with the introduction of Elvis Presley |
| Thurgood Marshall | leading attorney for NAACP in 1940s and 1950s, who headed the team in Brown vs. Board of Education case; later, Lyndon Johnson appointed him the first black justice on the United States Supreme Court. |
| Brown v. Board of Education | The 1954 Supreme Court decision holding that school segregation in Topeka, Kans., was inherently unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. This case marked the end of legal segregation in the United States. |
| Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr | An African-American Civil Right's Activist who was peaceful. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his cause. He was assasinated in 1968 in Tennesee |
| Orval Faubus | He is best known for his 1957 stand against the desegregation of Little Rock public schools during the Little Rock Crisis, in which he defied the United States Supreme Court by ordering the Arkansas National Guard to stop African American students from attending Little Rock Central High School |
| sit-in | nonviolent protests in which a person sits and refuses to leave |
| 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. |
| Great Society | President Johnson's program to reduce poverty and racial injustice and to promote a better quality of life in the US |
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