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House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. It was originally created in 1938 in order to uncover citizens with Nazi ties inside the United States, but it concentrated its efforts instead on investigating possible Communist Party infiltration. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security". When the House abolished the committee in 1975,[1] its functions were transferred -
War Powers Act
The War Powers Act of 1941, also known as the First War Powers Act, was an American emergency law that increased Federal power during World War II. The act was signed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and put into law on December 18, 1941, less than two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. -
G.I. Bill (Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944)
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (P.L. 78-346, 58 Stat. 284m), known informally as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). Benefits included low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business, cash payments of tuition and living expenses to attend university, high school or vocational education, as well as one year of unemployment compensation. It was available to every veteran who had been o -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the imaginary 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. The term symbolized 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 Generation
Baby boomers are people born during the demographic post–World War II baby boom approximately between the years 1946 and 1964. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical hegemony 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. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave $13 billion (approximately $130 billion in current dollar value as of March 2016) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War -
Containment Policy
Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam. -
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Cold War
The Cold War was a state of political and military tension after World War II between powers in the Western Bloc and powers in the Eastern Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but 1947–91 is common. -
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Beatniks
Beatnik was 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. -
Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949. At the end of the Second World War, U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. -
North American Treaty Organization (NATO)
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO /ˈneɪtoʊ/; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord; OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. -
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Domino Theory
The domino theory was 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 -
1950's Prosperity (Suburbs)
The baby boom and the suburban boom went hand in hand. Almost as soon as World War II ended, developers such as William Levitt (whose “Levittowns” in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania would become the most famous symbols of suburban life in the 1950s) began to buy land on the outskirts of cities and use mass production techniques to build modest, inexpensive tract houses there. The G.I. Bill subsidized low-cost mortgages for returning soldiers, which meant that it was often cheaper to buy on -
1950's Culture
The Eisenhower era was a time of both squeaky-clean Disneyland and unkempt, edgy beatniks. It was a time when the defiantly sexual Elvis competed with the insufferably bland Perry Como. During the Fifties, mass culture began to dominate in the United States. This accounted for much of the blandness that critics lamented. Television network executives in particular wanted to cater to the largest audience possible, so they shaped their programs to offend the least number of viewers. -
1950s Prosperity (white flight)
Migration of middle-class white populations was observed during the 1950s and 1960s out of cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Oakland. White flight is a term that originated in the United States in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of people of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. The term has more recently been applied to other migrations by whites, from older, inner suburbs to r -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. -
Rock n' Roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll or rock 'n' roll) is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, from a combination of African-American genres such as blues, boogie-woogie, jump blues, jazz, and gospel music,together with Western swing and country music. Though 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 -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David Eisenhower was 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 Forces in Europe. He was responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45 from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first Supreme Commander of NATO. -
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). -
Ray Kroc
Raymond Albert "Ray" Kroc was an American businessman and philanthropist. He joined McDonald's in 1954 and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world. -
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is 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." -
Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful polio vaccine. -
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and known in Vietnam as Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a Cold War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955. to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War or known in Vietnam as Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a Cold War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies and the government of South Vietnam supported by the United States, Philippines and other anti-communist allies.The Viet Cong a South Vietnamese communist common. -
Interstate Hignway Act
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Public Law 84-627), was enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. -
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Space Race (Sputnik and moon landings)
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for supremacy in spaceflight capability. The Soviet Union beat the US to this, with the October 4, 1957 orbiting of Sputnik 1, and later beat the US to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. The Space Race peaked with the July 20, 1969 US landing of the first humans on the Moon with Apollo 11. -
1960s Culture
Bell-bottoms and incense, long hair, free love and psychedelic rock—the 1960s are commonly reduced to a set of easy-to-replicate images, phrases, and styles. No longer the harbinger of cultural meltdown, the “60s” have become a party theme. -
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. -
Bay of Pigs
The Bay of Pigs Invasion, known in Latin America as Invasión de Playa Girón, was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961 -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning Soviet ballistic missiles deployment in Cuba. -
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to as LBJ, was 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. -
Anti- War Movement
An anti-war movement (also antiwar) is 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. -
Great Society
The Great Society was 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
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. -
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan was 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 (NOW), which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men." -
Mirands v. Arizona
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court. In a 5-4 majority, the Court held that both inculpatory and exculpatory statements made in response to interrogation by a defendant in police custody will be admissible at trial only if the prosecution can show that the defendant was informed of the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning. -
Abbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was an American political and social activist and anarchist who co-founded the Youth International Party. -
Roy Benavidez
was a member of the United States Army Special Forces (Studies and Observations Group) and retired United States Army master sergeant who received the Medal of Honor for his valorous actions in combat near Lộc Ninh, South Vietnam on May 2, 1968. -
Tet Offensive 1968
The Tet Offensive 1968, or was 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, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian commands and control centers throughout South Vietnam -
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974 when he became the only U.S. president to resign the office. -
Vietnamization
Vietnamization was 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." -
Rust Belt and Sun Belt
The Rust Belt area is a region that consists of areas in the Midwestern and Northeastern United States. The areas are particularly defined by cities that have depleted populations and economies by 1970. This area includes the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, West Virginia, and Illinois.
The Sun Belt consists of the warm climate states that make up the Southern third of the Continental United States. These states include California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, -
1970s Culture
In the 1970s, social progressive values that began in the 1960s, such as increasing political awareness and political and economic liberty of women, and drugs continued to grow. The hippie culture, which started in the latter half of the 1960s, waned by the early 1970s and faded towards the middle part of the decade, which involved opposition to the Vietnam War, opposition to nuclear weapons, the advocacy of world peace, and hostility to the authority of government and big business. -
26th Amendment
The 26th Amendment changed a portion of the 14th Amendment. Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age. -
The Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon, or the Liberation of Saigon, depending on context, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People’s Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975 -
1980s Culture
Everything was neon and ugly. Color combinations were the worst. Fashion was weird, music was over-digitized and commercialism consumed everyone.
The Cold War ended, which was great. The Berlin Wall fell.
The best thing that came out of the 80s though? By far the movies. I mean, if you are in the mood for a cheesy comedy that’s actually funny, then nothing hits the spot quite like an 80s flick!
