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Baby Boom


Keynesian economics

Theory based on the principles of John Maynard Keynes, stating that government spending should increase during business slumps and be curbed during booms.

Jimmy Hoffa

was president of the International Brotherhood of Teamseters. He was charged and indicted with fraudulent use of the union pension fund by jury tampering. The case showed the worried nature of the United States.





Dr. Benjamin Spock, Baby and Child Care

Was a 1950's doctor who told the whole baby boom generation how to raise their kids. He also said that raising them was more important and rewarding than extra $ would be.

Jonas Salk






Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954

Segregated schools were inherently unequal and did not uphold the 13th or 14th Ammendments, because they deprived children of equal protection under the laws, a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court, which overturned earlier rulings going back to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, by declaring that state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896

The Supreme Court case that upheld a Louisiana segregation law on the theory that as long as the accommodations between the racially segregated facilities were equal, the equal protection clause was not violated. The Court's ruling effectively established the constitutionality of racial segregation and the notion of "separate but equal."

"With all deliberate speed"

Schools were required to integrate with all deliberate speed. The Supreme Court realized that the change would be slow particularly in the South and did not want to set a concrete timeline.

"Massive resistance"


"White citizens' councils"

stated that the south would not be integrated. it imposed economical and political pressure against those who favorered compliance with the supreme courts decision., southerners dedicated to blocking school integration

Rosa Parks


bus boycott

Lasted 381 days, sparked by Rosa Parks, no blacks rode the bus, brough Martin Luther King (26) to fame and established him as a leader

Passive resistance

opposition to a government or to specific governmental laws by the use of non-cooperation and other nonviolent methods, as economic boycotts and protest marches, resisting the law in a nonviolent way, nonviolent resistance in order to make something change, like Gandhi's Salt March

Southern Christian Leadership


Conference (SCLC)

The SCLC brought together all the various strands of civil rights organisations and put them under one organisation. Originally called the 'Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Non-violent Integration', the organisation adopted the title Southern Christian Leadership Conference - by including the word 'Christian', it emphasised the spiritual nature of the organisation. SCLC called for three basic 'wants': 1)White Americans to not stand by and meekly watch while wrongs were being committed against the black community. This point emphasised the belief by the SCLC that not all white Southerners were racist and gave the opportunity to bring whites on board the cause of the SCLC. By using the word 'Negro' in its original title, the movement effectively blanked out any chance that white Southerners might help them. The change in title overcame this. 2)Black Americans were encouraged to "seek justice and reject all injustice." 3)All those associated with SCLC had to accept the philosophy of non-violence regardless of the provocation. The SCLC's 'motto' was "not one hair of one head of one white person shall be harmed."

Jackie Robinson


Federal Highway Act, 1956

The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Also known as Federal Highway Act of 1956), authorized the building of highways throughout the nation, which would be the biggest public works project in the nation's history., Signed by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, this act constructed over 41,000 miles of interstate highway, and was the biggest public works project of it's day

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."

Army-McCarthy Hearings

a series of hearings where Senator McCarthy accused people in the US military of being communists, The Trials in which Senator McCarthey accused the U.S. Army of harboring possible communists.These trials were one of the first televised trials in America, and helped show America Senator McCarthey's irresponsibility and meanness.p.889


space shuttle which exploded in 1986, A politician running for an office that he does not hold at the time of the election. Challengers run against incumbents or in open-seat elections.

National Defense Education Act

(NDEA) After the Russian satellite "Sputnik" was successfully launched, there was a critical comparison of the Russian to the American education system. The American education system was already seen as too easygoing. So in 1958 Congress made the NDEA, authorizing $887 million in loans to needy college students and in grants for the purpose of improving the teaching of the sciences and languages.


The idea that Americans should be well versed in many different subjects

William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man

He produced one of the most widely discussed books of the decade. His book attempted to describe the special mentality of the worker in a large, bureaucratic setting. He claimed that self-reliance was losing place to the ability to "get along" and "work as a team" as the most valued trait in the modern character.

David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd

Riesman's 1950 book, The Lonely Crowd, deals with modern sociology. In it Riesman wrote of the 'inner-directed' and 'other-directed' personalities. Riesman argues that the character of post WWII American society impels individuals to "other-directedness", the premier example being modern suburbia, where individuals seek their neighbors approval and fear being outcast from their community. This lifestyle has a coercive effect, which compels people to abandon "inner-direction" of their lives, and induces them to take on the goals, ideology, likes and dislikes of their community. Ironically, this creates a tightly grouped crowd of people that is yet incapable of truly fulfilling each other's desire for companionship. The book is considered a landmark study of American character.


a United States youth subculture of the 1950s, EX. rejected possessions or regular work or traditional dress; for communal living and psychedelic drugs and anarchism; favored modern forms of jazz (e.g., bebop)

Allen Ginsberg

beat poet; published a long poem named "Howl" that blasted US culture

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

He produced what may have been known the bible of the Beat Generation. His novel was an account of a cross-country automobile trip that depicted the rootless, iconoclastic lifestyle of Kerouac and his friends.

Saul Bellow

Perhaps the foremost among the American novelists who came into prominence after WWII, 1976 Nobel Prize winner Bellow is a part of the novelistic mainstream. His books have the rich flavor of his urban Jewish upbringing. Henderson the Rain King and Herzog are his two most famous works.

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

A book written by Salinger about a sixteen-year-old boy who goes to New York City where he reflects on the phoniness of adults and heads toward a nervous breakdown.

Michael Harrington, The Other America

As described in his book, the poor were trapped in a vicious cycle of want and a culture of deprivation. Because they could not afford good housing, a nutritious diet, and doctors, the poor got sick more often and for longer than more affluent Americans.

"Culture of Poverty"

the assumption that the values and behaviors of the poor make them fundamentally different from other people, that these factors are largely responsible for their poverty, and that parents perpetuate poverty across generations by passing these characteristics to their children

"Urban Renewal"


"Juvenile delinquency"

a term coined in the 1950's to describe illegal or undesirable behavior by teenagers

John Foster Dulles

Eisenhower's Sec. of State; harsh anti-Communist; called for more radical measures to roll back communism where it had already spread (containment too cautious), United States diplomat who (as Secretary of State) pursued a policy of opposition to the USSR by providing aid to American allies (1888-1959)

"Roll Back"


"Massive retaliation"

The "new look" defense policy of the Eisenhower administration of the 1950's was to threaten "massive retaliation" with nuclear weapons in response to any act of aggression by a potential enemy.


A 1956 term used by Secretary of State John Dulles to describe a policy of risking war in order to protect national interests

"More bang for the buck"

The idea that one should get more for whatever they put into something; The idea that one should be able to purchase more for a dollar

Thirty-eighth parallel

The line dividing Korea into two sections, north of the the parellel the communist Soviet Union was in charge and south of the parellel was democratic America was in charge. This line would become the demilitarized zone after the Korean conflict.

Ho Chi Minh


Dien Bien Phu

In 1954, Vietminh 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.


Jews who believed in a country of their own in Palestine

Shah of Iran

Great friend of the US for two and a half decades but Iranians want to nationalize their oil and improve economy, sparks Iranian Revolution and Shah is overthrown (1979)

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Arab leader, set out to modernize Egypt and end western domination, nationalized the Suez canal, led two wars against the Zionist state, remained a symbol of independence and pride, returned to socialism, nationalized banks and businesses, limited economic policies

Suez crisis


Fidel Castro


Third World

Term applied to a group of developing countries who professed nonalignment during the Cold War. (p. 846)

Hungarian Revolution

1956. Led by students and workers, installed Liberal Communist Imre Nagy. Forced soviet soldiers to leave and promised free election, renounced Hungary's military alliance with Moscow. Revolution was crushed by the Soviet Union.

Nikita Khrushchev


U-2 incident

The incident when an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. The U.S. denied the true purpose of the plane at first, but was forced to when the U.S.S.R. produced the living pilot and the largely intact plane to validate their claim of being spied on aerially. The incident worsened East-West relations during the Cold War and was a great embarrassment for the United States.

"Military-industrial complex"

Eisenhower first coined this phrase when he warned American 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.

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