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House Un-American Activities Commitee
An investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. The HUAC was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties. -
Rock N' Roll
A genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, from musical styles such as gospel, jazz, boogie woogie, and rhythm and blues, and country music. While elements of rock and roll can be heard in blues records from the 1920s and in country records of the 1930s, the genre did not acquire its name until the 1950s. -
G.I. Bill
A law passed in 1944 that provided educational and other benefits for people who had served in the armed forces in World War II. Benefits are still available to persons honorably discharged from the armed forces. -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. A term symbolizing the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas. -
Baby Boom
A "baby boom" happens when the number of annual births exceeded 2 per 100 women. During the post WWII era, an estimated 78.3 million Americans were born during this period. -
Containment Policy
It is best known as the Cold War policy of the United States and its allies to prevent the spread of communism. Containment is a geopolitical strategy to stop the expansion of an enemy. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to increase communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa, and Vietnam. -
Levittown
The seven large suburban developments created in the United States of America by William Levitt and his company Levitt & Sons. Built after World War II for returning veterans and their new families, the communities offered attractive alternatives to cramped central city locations and apartments. -
Truman Doctrine
An American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey. American military force was usually not involved, but Congress appropriated free gifts of financial aid to support the economies and the militaries of Greece and Turkey. -
McCarthyism
The practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare. -
Cold War
A state of geopolitical tension after World War II between the Soviet Union and the United States, its NATO allies and others. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. -
Marshall Plan
An American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning April 8, 1948. -
Berlin Airlift
One of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche mark from West Berlin. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
An intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on April 4, 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. Three NATO members are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and are officially nuclear-weapon states. -
Domino Theory
A theory prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s, that speculated that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. The domino theory was used by successive United States administrations during the Cold War to justify the need for American intervention around the world. -
Beatniks
A media stereotype prevalent throughout the 1950s to mid-1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s. Elements of the beatnik trope included pseudo-intellectualism, drug use, and a cartoonish depiction of real-life people along with the spiritual quest of Jack Kerouac's autobiographical fiction. -
Korean War
Lasting until July 27, 1953, the Korean war began with Communist North Korea invading non-Communist South Korea. As Kim Il-sung's North Korean army, armed with Soviet tanks, quickly overran South Korea, the United States came to South Korea's aid. Korea was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War II. -
Rosenberg Trial
The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins in New York Southern District federal court. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presides over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians. Treason could not be charged because the United States was not at war with the Soviet Union. -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
An American politician and decorated military general who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. -
Ray Kroc
An American businessman who joined McDonald's in 1954 and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world. After the Second World War, Kroc found employment as a milk shake mixer salesman for Prince Castle. When Prince Castle Multi-Mixer sales plummeted because of competition from lower-priced Hamilton Beach products, Kroc took note of the McDonald brothers who had purchased six of his Multi-Mixers. -
Jonas Salk
An American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. Until 1955, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered one of the most frightening public health problems in the world. -
Space Race
A 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and the United States, for supremacy in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations that occurred following World War II, aided by captured German missile technology and personnel from the Aggregat program. The technological superiority required for such supremacy was seen as necessary for national security, and symbolic of ideological superiority. -
Vietnam War
A war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from November 1, 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies and the South Vietnamese army was supported by the United States, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies. -
Interstate Highway Act
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law with an original authorization of US$25 billion for the construction of 41,000 miles of the Interstate Highway System supposedly over a 10-year period, it was the largest public works project in American history through that time. -
Vietnamization
A policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops. The policy referred to U.S. combat troops but did not reject combat by the U.S. Air Force, as well as the support to South Vietnam, consistent with the policies of U.S. foreign military assistance organizations. -
Sputnik
The first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on October 4, 1957. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennae to broadcast radio pulses. It was visible all around the Earth and its radio pulses were detectable. -
Moon Landing
The arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon. This includes both manned and unmanned missions. The first human-made object to reach the surface of the Moon was the Soviet Union's Luna 2 mission, on September 13, 1959. -
John F. Kennedy
An American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January, 1961 until his assassination in November, 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the Peace Corps, developments in the Space Race, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Trade Expansion Act to lower tariffs, and the Civil Rights Movement all took place during his presidency. -
Bay of Pigs
A failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on April 17, 1961. A counter-revolutionary military, trained and funded by the United States government's Central Intelligence Agency, Brigade 2506 fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front and intended to overthrow the increasingly communist government of Fidel Castro. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
A 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. The confrontation, elements of which were televised, is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. -
Betty Friedan
An American writer, activist, and feminist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book 'The Feminine Mystique' is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century. In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women, which aimed to bring women into the mainstream of American society now fully equal partnership with men. -
Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ)
An American politician who served as the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after serving as the 37th Vice President of the United States under President John F. Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. A Democrat from Texas, he previously served as a United States Representative from 1937 to 1949 and then as a United States Senator from 1949 to 1961. -
Great Society
A set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Otherwise known as the Southeast Asia Resolution, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia. -
Anti-War Movement
A social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. -
Tet Offensive
One of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. -
Richard Nixon
An American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until 1974, when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office. He had previously served as a U.S. Representative and Senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. -
26th Amendment
Prohibits the states and the federal government from using age as a reason for denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States who are at least eighteen years old. The drive to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 grew across the country during the 1960s, driven in large part by the broader student activism movement protesting the Vietnam War. -
War Powers Act
The War Powers Act is a federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. -
Rust Belt vs Sun Belt
The Rust Belt is a term for the region of the United States from the Great Lakes to the upper Midwest States. The Sun Belt runs from the southern US from California to Florida, noted for resort areas and for the movement of businesses and population into these states from the colder northern states.
