HIST 2057 Unit 4 - The Cold War at Home

• The Fair Deal was President Harry Truman's program of economic and social reform with the goal to improve wages, housing and healthcare along with protecting the rights of African Americans. The Fair Deal led to the Housing Act of 1949 and the Social Security Act of 1950 due to opposition in congress, resulting in a raised minimum wage, improved accessibility to housing, and extended old-age benefits.
• The House Un-American Activities Committee was established in 1938 to investigate claims of disloyalty and subversive activities among private citizens. The HUAC directed much of its attention to rooting out suspected communists in business, academia, and the media.
• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the first American Civilians to be executed for their espionage conspiracy to share United States secrets with the Soviet Union. The Rosenberg's were the first to suffer this penalty during peacetime.
• Joseph McCarthy was a Republican Senator for the state of Wisconsin who made claims that communist spies were in the United States Federal Government. McCarthy is known for being the founder of "McCarthyism."
• Dwight Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights bill since reconstruction, in addition, he ordered federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to end white supremacist violence and protest against the desegregation of local schools.
• The Interstate Highway System was designed to make it easier for suburbanites to commute to and from cities due to people moving to suburbs and having more automobiles. To finance this, states taxed gasoline and the Federal Government provided hundreds of thousands of dollars which resulted in less money for public transportation and often destroyed urban working-class neighborhoods.
• The GI Bill of Rights claimed that if you served in the military in some capacity, you get access to military exclusive benefits. The government aided veterans with education, job training, and buying houses which led to cheap and low interest home loans, tuition free college and healthcare.
• The Baby Boom marked an Increase in the United States birthrate during 1946-1964 following WWII due to a time of relative peace and prosperity. The peacetime conditions allowed for better education and job opportunities which encouraged high rates of both marriage and fertility.
• The White Flight occurred as white people left cities to move into suburbs. This occurred as a response to the great migration of African Americans to cities.
• Sun Belt was a migration from the north to California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona. The resulted due to the warmer states now having air conditioning therefore people could enjoy the weather with no more harsh winters.
• Urban Sprawl refers to the rapid expansion of the geographic extent of cities and towns often characterized by low-density residential housing. This imposed single-use zoning and increased reliance on the private automobile for transportation.
• Levittown was a neighborhood created by William Levitt in 1947 using mass production methods in an attempt to help relieve the postwar housing shortage. The neighborhood consisted of identical houses and had a strict standard of houses, yards, and inhabitants including an HOA and white-only policy while using a standard appearance to preserve property values.
• 'Crack in the Picture Window' was a 1956 work by American writer John Keats. The book had criticized uniformity of Levittown as "Postwar Hell."
• 'To Secure These Rights' was a ground breaking government report published in 1947. This report imposed basic things to bring spirit of equality to African Americans in the United States and was ultimately the liberal vision for expansion of civil rights in the years following WWII.
• Jackie Robinson was the first black baseball player to play in the MLB (Brooklyn Dodgers) who endured racial abuse from the team and fans. Robison had acquired many wins for his team and broke the color barrier in major league sports.
• Dixiecrats were conservative southern Democrats who arose due to a southern regional split in opposition to members of the Democratic party in the north. The Dixiecrats opposed integration and the other goals of the African American civil rights movement.
• Brown v. Board of Education was a court case in 1954 that overruled the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The case had declared racially segregated facilites as inherently unequal and ordered all public schools desegregated.
• 'Massive Resistance' was a collection of laws passed in response to the Brown v. Board of Education case that eventually turned into the third KKK. Parents kept their kids out of school and whites formed citizen councils under the idea that if everyone refused the integration, it could never happen.
• 'Southern Manifesto' was written by legislators opposed to integration stating that Brown v. Board of Education is wrong. The manifesto claimed a judicial overreach where the supreme court was overriding states rights. Most signatures came from Southern Democrats implementing that they would stand in the way of integration.
• Emmett Till was a fourteen year old African American boy who was brutally tortured and lynched by whites due to an alleged accusation that he flirted with a white woman (Carolyn Bryant). The people responsible for his death got off with no consequences due to the jury being all white males. His mother kept his casket open at this funeral so people could see the reality of what happed to Emmett to raise awareness of the reality of racism and its effects.
• Rosa Parks was a long time member of the NAACP and a leader in the Civil Rights movement who was upset with segregationist regime. She had sat in the white only section of the bus on the way home from work and refused to give up her seat for a white man causing her to be arrested which sparked an outrage.
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott was organized by Martin Luther King Jr. in attempt to desegregate the bus system by creating a carpool system for African Americans which lasted over a year. This resulted in the bus systems no longer being profitable and the supreme court ruling segregation of public transportation illegal which ultimately led to MLK's rise.
• Little Rock Nine is the nickname for the nine African American high school students who first integrated Little Rock's Central High School. The governor of Arkansas refused them access to the school therefore Eisenhower mobilized the 101st airborne division to force the school to admit the students.