Unit 3 Test U.S. History Study Guide

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Women Workers in WWII
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Terms in this set (25)
Women Workers in WWII
- women filled industrial jobs vacated by men
- OWI publications encourage women to go to work
- Hollywood films glorified the independent woman and private advertising celebrated the achievements of Rose the Riveter, the female industrial laborer depicted as muscular and self-reliant in Norman Rockwell's famous magazine cover
- in 1944, women made up more than one-third of the civilian labor force, and 350,000 served in auxiliary military units
- first time in history, married women in their thirties outnumbered the young and single among female workers
- many women hoped to remain in the labor force once peace returned
Four Freedoms
- Freedom of Speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear, as described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his January 6, 1941, State of the Union address
- became Roosevelt's favorite statement of Allied aims
- compared them to the ten commandments, the Magna Carta, and the Emancipation Proclamation
- first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post early in 1943
- WWII came to be remembered as the Good War, a time of national unity in pursuit of indisputably noble goals
- expressed deeply held american values worthy of being spread worldwide
- Freedom from want - "most ambiguous"
Good Neighbor Policy
- policy proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first inaugural address in 1933 that sought improved diplomatic relations between the U.S. and its Latin American neighbors
- had mixed results
- 1930s, the U.S. withdrew its troops from Haiti and Nicaragua
- FDR accepted Cuba's repeal of the Platt Amendment, which had authorized American military interventions on that island
- these steps offered a belated recognition of the sovereignty of America's neighbors
- "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch" : FDR said of Somoza
Lend-Lease Act
- 1941 law that permitted the U.S. to lend or lease arms and other supplies to the Allies, signifying increasing likelihood of American involvement in WWII
- U.S. became closely allied with those fighting Germany and Japan, with Britain virtually bankrupt, it could no longer pay for supplies
- authorized military aid so long as countries promised somehow to return it all after the way
- U.S. funneled billions of dollars' worth of arms to Britain and China, as well as the Soviet Union
- FDR froze Japanese assets in the US, halting virtually all trade between the countries, including the sale of oil vital to Japan
The Bracero Program
- system agreed to by Mexican and American governments in 1942 under which tens of thousands of Mexicans entered the United States to work temporarily in agricultural jobs in the Southwest; lasted until 1964 and inhibited labor organization among farm workers since braceros could be departed at any time
- the war set in motion changes that would reverberate in the postwar years
- program lasted until 1964
- more than 4.5 million mexicans entered the US under government labor contracts
- Braceros were supposed to receive decent housing and wages, but since they couldn't be citizens and could be deported at any time, they found it impossible to form unions or secure better working conditions
- reinforced the status of immigrants from Mexico as an unskilled labor force, wartime employment opened new opportunities fore second-generation mexican-americans
Executive Order 9066
- inspired by exaggerated fears of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast and pressured by whites who saw an opportunity to gain possession of Japanese-American property
- military persuaded FDR to issue Executive Order 9066
- promulgated in February 1942, this ordered the relocation of all persons of Japanese descent from the West Coast
- nearly two-thirds were american citizens
- did not apply to people of japanese descent living in hawaii
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- august 6, 1945 an american plane dropped an atomic bomb that detonated over Hiroshima, Japan - a target chosen because almost alone among major japanese cities, it had not yet suffered damage
- approx. 70,000 people died immediately, by the end of the year death reach 140,000, thousands more died over the next five years
- on august 9, the US exploded a second bomb over Nagasaki, killing 70,000 people
- on the same day, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria, within a week Japan surrendered
- Truman reasoned that the the bomb was a weapon, and weapons were created to be used
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, thought the bomb was unnecessary and later wrote "I hated to see out country be the first to use such a weapon"
Yalta Conference
- meeting of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin at a Crimean resort to discuss the postwar world on Feb. 4-11, 1945; Joseph Stalin claimed large areas in eastern Europe for Soviet domination
- stalin agreed to enter the war against japan later in 1945, to include noncommunist in the pro-soviet government of poland, and to allow "free and unfettered elections" there
- he was intent on establishing communism in eastern Europe
- resulted in conflict
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
- Civil rights organization founded in 1957, by the Reverend MLK Jr. and other civil rights leaders
- buoyed by success in Montgomery
- pressed for desegregation
- local action may not be enough to overturn Jim Crow
- the white south's refusal to accept the Brown decision reinforced the conviction that black citizens could not gain their constitutional rights without Washington's intervention
Southern Manifesto
- a document written in 1956 that repudiated the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and supported the campaign against racial integration in public spaces
- in 1956, 96 of 106 southern congressmen - and every other senator except Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, Albert Gore and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee - signed this
- some made it illegal for the NAACP to operate within their borders
- passed laws to block desegregation
- 1964, reopened shut down schools
- many states adopted "freedom of choice" plans that allowed white students to opt out of integrated schools
Brown v. Board of Education- 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down racial segregation in public education and declared "separate but equal" unconstitutional - Earl Warren played key role - momentous case that outlaws school segregationMontgomery Bus Boycott- Sparked by Rosa Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955, for refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger, a successful yearlong boycott protesting segregation on city buses; led by MLK Jr - the beginning of the mass phase of the civil rights movement in the South - within a decade, the civil rights revolution had overturned the structure of legal segregation and regained the right to vote for black southerners - in 2000, Time magazine named Rosa Parks one of the 100 most significant persons of the twentieth centuryTruman Doctrine- President Harry S. Truman's program announced in 1947 of aid to European countries - particularly Greece and Turkey - threatened by communism - March 1947, president officially embraced the Cold War as the foundation of American foreign policy and describe it as a worldwide struggle over the future of freedomMarshall Plan- pledged the US to contribute billions of dollars to finance the economic recovery of Europe - two years after the end of the war, food shortages were widespread, and inflation rampant, American policy makers feared that these countries might fall into the Soviet orbit - offered a positive vision to go along with containment - it aimed to combat the idea, widespread since the great depression, that capitalism was in decline and communism the wave of the future - it defined the threat to American security not so much as the soviet military power but as economic and political instability, which could be the breeding grounds for communism - "Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos" : Marshall - envisioned a New Deal for Europe, an extension to that continent of Roosevelt's wartime Four Freedoms - one of the most successful foreign aid programs in historyKorean War- Conflict touched off in 1950 when Communist North Korea invaded South Korea; fighting, largely by US forces, continued until 1953 - Korea had been divided in 1945 into Soviet and American zones - Communist north korea, anticommunist south korea, undemocratic but aligned with the US - june 1950, the north korean army invaded the south, hoping to reunify the country under communist control - Truman hoped to unite jorea under a pro-american government - there has never been a formal peace treaty ending the korean war - over 30,000 americans died in korea, asian death toll reached 1 million korean soldiers, and 2 million civilians, and hundreds of thousands of chinese troops - korea made it clear that the Cold War, which began in Europe, had become a global conflictAmerican National Exhibition, 1959- opened in Moscow - a showcase of consumer goods and leisure equipment, complete with stereo sets, a movie theater, home appliances, and twenty-two different cars, the exhibit, Newsweek observed, hoped to demonstrate the superiority of "modern capitalism with its ideology of political and economic freedom" - the exhibit's real message was not freedom but consumption or the equating of the twoBerlin Blockade- June 1948, the US, Britain, and France introduced a separate currency in their zones, a prelude to the creation of a new West German government that would be aligned with them in the Cold War - in response, the Soviets cut off road and rail traffic from the American, British, and French zones of occupied Germany to Berlin - an 11 month airlift followed, the Western planes supplying food to their zones of the city - Stalin lifted the blockade in may 1949 - Truman administration won a major victory - soon two new nations emerged, east and west germany, each allied with a side in the Cold War - berlin remained divided until 1991 when germany reunifiedThe Dixiecrats- Lower South delegates who walked out of the 1948 Democratic national convention in protest of the party's support for civil rights legislation and later formed the States' rights democratic (Dixiecrat) party, which nominated Storm Thurmond of South Carolina for president - called for the complete segregation of the races, campaign drew most of its support from those alarmed by Truman's civil rights initiatives, Thurmond denied charges of racism - would convert America into a Hitler stateHollywood Ten- a group called before the House Un-American Activities Committee who refused to speak about their political leanings or "name names" - that is, identify communists in Hollywood, some were imprisoned as a result - refused on the grounds that the hearings violated the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and political association - included prominent screenwriters, Ring Lardner Jr. and Dalton Trumbo, with contempt of Congress, and they served jail terms of six months to a year - Hollywood studios blacklisted them, along with more than 200 others who were accused of communist sympathies or who refused to name namesPolicy of Containment- the United States committed itself to preventing any further expansion of Soviet power - George Kennan's Long Telegram laid the foundationDesegregation of Central High School- 1957, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas used the National Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration of Little Rock's Central High School - Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to the city - soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division escorted nine black children into the school - the federal government would not allow the flagrant violation of court orders - because of massive resistance, the pace of the movement slowed in the final years of the 1950s - when Eisenhower left office, fewer than 2% of black students attended desegregated schools in the states of the old ConfederacyJoseph McCarthy- won election to the Senate in 1946, partly on the basis of a fictional war record - in a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, in Feb 1950, he announced that he had a list of 205 communists working for the state department - the charge was preposterous, the numbers constantly changed, he never identified a single person guilty of genuine disloyalty - used the Senate subcommittee he chaired to hold hearings and level wild charges against numerous individuals as well as the Defense Department, the Voice of America, and other government agencies - many Republicans initially supported his rampage as a weapon against the Truman administration - became an embarrassment to the party after the election of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower as president in 1952 - he did not halt his campaign, he questioned Eisenhower's anticommunism - Margaret Chase Smith of Main, the Senate's only woman member spoke up to McCarthy - she said it was a "campaign of hate and character assassination" - the term "McCarthyism" had entered the political vocab, a shorthand for character assassination, guilt by association, and abuse of power in the name of anticommunismHubert HumphreyEisenhower's Farwell Address- January 1961, shortly before leaving office, Eisenhower delivered a televised Farewell Address - modeled to some extent on George Washington's address of 1796 - He urged Americans to think about the dangerous power of what he called the military-industrial complex - A few years later, with the US locked in an increasingly unpopular war, Eisenhower's warning would come to seem propheticNATO- North Atlantic Treaty Organization - alliance founded in 1949 by ten western European nations, the US, and Canada to deter Soviet expansion in Europe - 1949 the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American monopoly of the weapon - pledged mutual defense against any future Soviet attack - west Germany became a crucial part of NATO - many Europeans feared German rearmament - was the first long term military alliance between the US and Europe since the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with France during the American Revolution - Soviets formalized their own eastern European alliance, the Warsaw Pact in 1995