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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". -
G.I. Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act 1944)
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944(the G.I. Bill), was a law that provided a range of benefits for returning World War 2 veterans (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. -
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. Referenced in Winston Churchill's famous speech "a hypothetical" divide that separated Germany and Europe into two hostile camps. -
Baby Boom generation
Baby boomers are people born during the demographic post–World War II baby boom approximately between the years 1946 and 1964. This includes people who are between 53 and 71 years old in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. -
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. -
Truman Doctrine
American policy of providing economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey because they were threatened by communism. United States promised to provide money to countries that claimed they were threatened by Communist expansion. Issued by President Truman as a response to the weakening of GB and possibility of Soviet expansion. -
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.The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides. -
Levittown
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. -
Berlin Airlift
an attempt by the Soviet Union to secure all of Berlin and to stop the creation of a West German government; Soviets blockaded any traffic from entering West Berlin through the East; the Allies responded by sending supplies by plane to the citizens of Berlin -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Formed by Allies to provide mutual assistance if one was attacked. Intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty. Communists responded with Comecon. -
1950’s Prosperity
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. -
Beatniks
A young person in the 1950s and early 1960s belonging to a subculture associated with the beat generation. 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. -
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
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. Characterized by a heavy beat and simple melodies. -
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 Trail
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). -
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." -
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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. -
Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful polio vaccine. It was made by cultivating three strains of virus separately in monkey tissue. -
Ray Kroc
An American businessman and philanthropist. He joined McDonald's in 1954 and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world. He also lied himself in the Army at age 15 as the first World War was coming to end. He opened his first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. -
Interstate Highway Act
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Public Law 84-627), was enacted in June when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. -
Sputnik and space race
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 orbiting of Sputnik 1, and later beat the US to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. -
John F. Kennedy
John F. 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. 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
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. -
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. -
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." -
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
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. -
Anti-War Movement
Anti-war movement 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 -
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 -
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. Lyndon B. Johnson halted bombing operations over the northern portion of the North Vietnam (Operation Rolling Thunder), in order to encourage Hanoi (the perceived locus of the insurgency) to begin negotiations. -
Moon Landing
The Space Race peaked with the July 20, 1969 US landing of the first humans on the Moon with Apollo 11. A Moon landing is 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 13 September 1959 -
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 vs 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. -
26th Amendment
Amendment 26, Right to Vote at Age 18. Passed by Congress March 23, 1971. 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. -
Richard Nixon
Richard 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. President Richard M. Nixon arrived in China for an official trip. He was the first U.S. president to visit the People's Republic of China since it was established in 1949. -
War Powers Act
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.
