U.S. History Exam 4 Study Guide

Truck bombing in OKC
Click the card to flip 👆
1 / 26
Terms in this set (26)
Truck bombing in OKC
???
After the Gulf War, Osama bin Laden declared "war" on the U.S. Terrorists associated with Al Qaeda exploded a truck-bomb at the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six persons, and set off blasts in 1998 at American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which more than 200 people, most African embassy workers, died. Thus, raising terrorist threat was visible before Sept. 11. Nonetheless, the attack came as a complete surprise. With the end of the Cold War in 1991, most Americans felt more secure
Cuban Missile Crisis
- Tense confrontation caused when the United States discovered Soviet offensive missile sites in Cuba in October 1962; the U.S-Soviet confrontation was the Cold War's closest brush with nuclear war
- Kennedy imposed a blockade or "quarantine" of the island and demanded the missiles' removal
- for 13 days the world teetered on the brink of all-out nuclear war
- Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles, Kennedy pledge that US would not invade Cuba and secretly remove American Jupiter missiles from Turkey
- lessened Kennedy's passion for the Cold War
- resulted in a treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere and in space
The Freedom Rides
- Bus journeys challenging racial segregation in the South in 1961
- the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched the Freedom Rides
- integrated groups traveled by bus into the Lower South to test compliance with court orders banning segregation on interstates buses and trains and in terminal facilities
- violent mobs assaulted them, many were arrested
- their actions led the Interstate Commerce Commission to order buses and terminals desegregated
Letters from a Birmingham Jail
- local blacks in Birmingham had been demonstrating with no result, for greater economic opportunities and an end to segregation by local businesses
- MLK served a 9 day prison term in April 1963 for violating a ban on demonstrations, composed his most eloquent pleas for racial justice
- MLK related the litany of abuses faced by black southerners, from police brutality to the daily humiliation of having to explain to their children why they could not enter amusement parks or public swimming pools
- made the bold decision to send black schoolchildren into the streets of Birmingham
- Police chief Eugene "Bull" Connor unleased his forces against the thousands of young marchers
- the images broadcasted on tv produced a wave of revulsion throughout the world and turned the Birmingham campaign into a triumph for the civil rights movement
- forced white Americans to decide whether they had more in common with fellow citizens demanding their basic rights or with violent segregationists
Civil Rights Act, 1964
- Lyndon B. Johnson shocked the world when his first move as president was the passage of civil rights
- five days after Kennedy's assassination, Johnson called on Congress to enact the civil rights bill as the most fitting memorial to his slain predecessor
- 1964, congressed pass the civil rights act
- law that outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment
- prohibited racial discrimination in employment, institutions like hospitals and schools, and privately owned public accommodations such as restaurants, hotels, and theaters
- it also banned discrimination on the grounds of sex - a provision added by opponents of civil rights in an effort to derail the entire bill and embraced by liberal and female members of congress as a way to broaden its scope
Freedom Summers
- because the right to vote wasn't passed in the south, a coalition of civil rights groups, SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP launched a voter registration drive in Mississippi
- lots of violence, included 35 bombings and numerous beatings of civil rights workers
- led directly to one of the most dramatic confrontations of the civil rights era - the campaign by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
- between 1961-1965 an estimated 25 black civil rights workers paid with their lives
- Fannie Lou Hamer of the MFDP held a national audience spellbound with her account of growing up in poverty in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta and of the savage beatings she had endured at the hands of the police
- Hamer believed that Christianity rested on the idea of freedom and that the movement had been divinely inspired
War on Poverty
- during the 1960s an expanding economy and government programs assisting poor produced a steady decrease in the percentage of Americans living in poverty
- plan announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1964 State of the Union address; under the Economic Opportunity Bill signed later that year, Head Start, VISTA, and the jobs Corps were created, and programs were created for students, farmers, and businesses in efforts to eliminate poverty
- Michael Harringtons book in 1962 "The Other America" revelated that 40 to 50 million Americans lived in poverty, civil rights movement heightened the urgency, whites made up a majority of the nation's poor
- food stamps was the most popular and successful components
- concentrated on equipping the poor with skills and rebuilding their spirit and motivation
- VISTA - a domestic version of the Peace Corps for the inner cities
- Head Start - an early childhood education program
- required that people play a leading part in the design and implementation of local policies, a recipe for continuing conflict with local political leaders accustomed to controlling the flow of federal dollars
- contributed to an upsurge of local radical activism
- succeeded in reducing the incidence of poverty from 22% to 13% of American families during the 1960s
Malcolm X
- insisted that blacks must control the political and economic resources of their communities and rely on their own efforts rather than working with whites
- was converted in jail to the teachings of the nation of Islam, or Black Muslims, who preached a message of white evil and black self-discipline
- Malcolm dropped his "slave surname" in favor of "X", symbolizing blacks' separation from their African ancestory
- on his release from prison he became a spokesman for the Muslims and a sharp critic of the ideas of integration and nonviolence, and of King's practice of appealing to American values
- "I don't see any American dream, I see an American nightmare"
- members of the Nation of Islam assassinated him in February 1965 after he had formed his own Organization of Afro-American Unity
Black Panthers
- founded in Oakland, California, in 1966
- it became notorious for advocating armed self-defense in response to police brutality
- demanded the release of black prisoners because of racism in the criminal justice system
- alarmed whites by wearing military garb, although they also ran health clinics, schools, and children's breakfast programs
- internal disputes and a campaign against them by police and the FBI, left several leaders dead in shootout, and destroyed the organization
- Bobby Rush, Charles Barron, and Marion Barry were former members who made the transition to electoral politics
Feminine Mystique
- publication in 1963 by Betty Friedan
- Friedan had written pioneering articles during the 1940s on pay discrimination against women workers and racism in the workplace for the newspaper of the United Electrical workers' union
- now took as her themes the emptiness of consumer culture and the discontents of the middle class
- for Friedan, invoking the era's most powerful symbol of evil, it was a "comfortable concentration camp"
- the book widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the U.S. focused on college-educated women, arguing that they would find fulfillment by engaging in paid labor outside the home
- 1966 formation of the National Organization for Women
Silent Spring- a 1962 book by biologist Rachel Carson about the destructive impact of the widely insecticide DDT that launched the modern environmentalist movement - insecticide widely used by home owners and farmers against mosquitos, gypsy moths, and other insects - DDT killed birds and animals and caused sickness among humans - chemical and pesticide companies launched a campaign to discredit herMiranda v Arizona- 1966, 5-4 ruling that held that an individual in police custody must be informed of the rights to remain silent and to confer with a lawyer before answering questions and must be told that any statements might be used in court - made "Miranda warnings" standard police practiceGulf of Tonkin- resolution imposed because in August 1964, North North Vietnamese vessels encountered an American ship on a spy mission off its coast. When North Vietnamese patrol boats fired on the American vessel, Johnson proclaimed that the United States was a victim of "aggression." - legislation passed by Congress in 1964 in reaction to supposedly unproved attacks on American warships off the coast of North Vietnam; gave the president unlimited authority to defend U.S. forces and members of SEATO - Senators Ernest Gruening of Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon voted against giving Johnson this blank check - the nearest the U.S. ever came to a formal declaration of war, resolution passed without any discussion of American goals and strategy in VietnamTet Offensive- surprise attack by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese during the Vietnamese New Year of 1968 - Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops launched well-organized uprisings in cities throughout South Vietnam, completely surprising American military leaders - The U.S. drove back the offensive and inflicted heavy losses - shattered public confidence in the Johnson administration, had claimed victory to just around the corner - Eugene McCarthy, antiwar senator from Minnesota, announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for presidentMy Lai Massacre- New York Times published details of the My Lai Massacre in 1969 - massacre of 347 Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai by Lieutenant William Calley and troops under his command. U.S. army officers covered up the massacre for a year until an investigation uncovered the events. Eventually 25 army officers were charged with complicity in the massacre and its cover-up, but only Calley was convicted. He served little time for his crimes. - company of American troops killed some 350 South Vietnamese civilians - My Lai undermined public support for the warTitle IX- during Nixon years, women made inroads into areas from which they had long been excluded - in 1972 Congress approved Title IX - banned gender discrimination in higher education, and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which required that married women be given access to credit in their own name - part of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972 - AT&T agreed to pay millions of dollars to workers who had suffered gender discrimination and to upgrade employment opportunities for women - in 1960, only 20% of women with young children had been in the workforce, it reached 40% in 1980, and 55% in 1990 - some women sought careers in professions and skilled jobs previously open only to men - others spurred by the need to bolster family income as the economy faltered, flooded into the traditional, low-wage, "pink collar" sectors, working as cashiers, secretaries, and telephone operatorsVietnamizationA war policy in Vietnam initiated by Nixon in June of 1969. This strategy called for dramatic reduction of U.S. troops followed by an increased injection of S. Vietnamese troops in their place. A considerable success, this plan allowed for a drop in troops to 24,000 by 1972. . This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called "Nixon Doctrine". As applied to Vietnam, it was labeled "Vietnamization".Stagflation- 1973, war broke out between Israel, Egypt, and Seria - oil emargo, long lines of cars appeared at American gas stations which either ran out of fuel or limited how much a customer could buy - rising oil prices contributed to the stagnant economic growth and high inflation known as stagflation - a combination of stagnant economic growth and high inflation present during the 1970s - between 1973 and 1981, the rate of inflation in developed countries was 10% per year, and the rate of economic growth only 2.4%, a sharp deterioration from the economic conditions of the 1960s - by the end of the decade, Japan had become the world's leading automobile producer, and imports account for nearly 25% of car sales in the U.S.Carter's foreign policy centered on what issue?Human rightsReagan's foreign policy centered on what issue?- free West and unfree East - called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and sponsored the largest military buildup in American history, including new long-range bombers and missiles - 1983 - Strategic Defense Initiative - nuclear war? - determined to overturn the "Vietnam Syndrome" - embraced the idea in 1979 by neoconservative write Jeane Kirkpatrick, that the U.S. should oppose "totalitarian" communists but assist "authoritarian" noncommunist regimesClinton's foreign policy centered on what issue?- disintegration of Yugoslavia, a multiethnic state in southeastern Europe that had been carved from the old Austro-Hungarian empire after WWI - formed the Balkan Crisis - human rightsMoral majority- 1979, Jerry Falwell, a Virginia minister, created the self-styled Moral Majority - devoted to waging a "war against sin" and electing "pro-life, pro-family, pro-America" candidates to office - Falwell identified supporters of abortion rights, easy divorce, and "military unpreparedness" as the forces of Satan - Christian conservatives opposed thisReagan revolution- Ronald Reagan emerged in the 1950s as a spokesman for the General Electric Corporation, preaching the virtues of unregulated capitalism - His speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964 brought Reagan to national attention - two years later, California voters elected him as governor - his victory in 1980 brought to power a diverse coalition of old and new conservatives: Sunbelt suburbanites and urban working class ethnics; antigovernment crusaders and advocates of a more aggressive foreign policy; and libertarians who believed in freeing the individual form restraint and the Christian Right, which sought to restore what they considered traditional moral values to American life - Jimmy Carter's failed presidency in 1980 launched the Reagan Revolution - THE rightward turn of American politics following the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. This made individual "freedom" a rallying cry for the rightVelvet RevolutionThe term given to the relatively peaceful overthrow of communism in Czechoslovakia; the label came to signify the collapse of the East Bloc in general in 1989 to 1990.NAFTA- North American Free Trade Agreement - Clinton approved this in 1993, the agreement with Canada and Mexico that allowed goods to travel across their borders free of tariffs. Critics of the agreement argued that American workers would lose their jobs to cheaper Mexican labor - a treaty negotiated by Bush that created a free-trade zone consisting of Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. - Clinton asked Americans to accept economic globalization as an inevitable form of progress and the path to future prosperity - "There will be no job loss" he promised, things did not work out that wayChristian Coalition- founded by evangelical minister Pat Robertson, became a major force in Republican politics - it launched crusades against gay rights, abortion, secularism in public schools, and government aid to the arts - Pat Buchanan's Republican convention speech of 1992 calling for a "religious war for the soul of America," mentioned earlier, alarmed many voters. But cultural conservatives hailed it as their new rallying cry