Chapter 35 Flashcards
From its incorporation in 1911, computer manufacturer rose to the pinnacle of America’s soaring postwar economy. It became the very emblem of managerial capitalism and technological innovation. Boasting five Nobel Prize winners among its employees, IBM helped to catalyze the transition to a computerized world.
IBM
Best-selling book by feminist thinker Betty Friedan. This work challenged women to move beyond the drudgery of suburban housewifery and helped launch what would become second-wave feminism.
The Feminine Mystique
“Crossover” musical style that rose to dominance in the 1950s, merging black rhythm and blues with white bluegrass and country. Featuring a heavy beat and driving rhythm, rock ‘n’ roll music became a defining feature of the 1950s youth culture.
Rock ‘n’ roll
Nationally televised address by vice-presidential candidate Richard Nixon during which he defended himself against allegations of corruption. Using the new mass medium of television shortly before the 1952 election, the vice-presidential candidate saved his place on the ticket by saying the only campaign gift he had received was a cocker spaniel named Checkers.
Checkers Speech
Protest by black Alabamians against segregated seating on city buses, sparked by Rosa Parks’s defiant refusal to move to the back of the bus. The bus boycott lasted from December 1, 1955, until December 26, 1956, and became one of the foundational moments of the civil rights movement. It led to the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr., and ultimately to a Supreme Court decision opposing segregated busing.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Landmark Supreme Court decision that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and abolished racial segregation in public schools. The Court reasoned that “separate” was inherently “unequal,” rejecting the foundation of the Jim Crow system of racial segregation in the South. This decision was the first major step toward the legal end of racial discrimination and a major accomplishment for the civil rights movement.
Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
Youth organization founded by southern black students in 1960 to promote civil rights. Drawing on its members’ youthful energies, SNCC in its early years coordinated demonstrations, sit-ins, and voter registration drives.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “snick)
A government program to round up and deport as many as 1 million illegal Mexican migrant workers in the United States. The program was promoted in part by the Mexican government and reflected burgeoning concerns about non-European immigration to America.
Operation Wetback
Federal legislation signed by Dwight D. Eisenhower to construct thousands of miles of modern highways in the name of national defense. Officially called the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, this bill dramatically increased the move to the suburbs, as white middle-class people could more easily commute to urban jobs.
Federal Highway Act of 1956
Foreign-policy objective of Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state John Foster Dulles, who believed in changing the containment strategy to one that more directly engaged the Soviet Union and attempted to roll back communist influence around the world. This policy led to a buildup of America’s nuclear arsenal to threaten “massive retaliation” against communist enemies, launching the Cold War’s arms race.
Policy of boldness
Series of demonstrations in Hungary against the Soviet Union. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev violently suppressed this pro-Western uprising, highlighting the limitations of America’s power in Eastern Europe.
Hungarian uprising
Military engagement in French colonial Vietnam in which French forces were defeated by Viet Minh nationalists loyal to Ho Chi Minh. With this loss, the French ended their colonial involvement in Indochina, paving the way for America’s entry.
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
International crisis launched when Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, which had been owned mostly by French and British stockholders. The crisis led to a British and French attack on Egypt, which failed without aid from the United States. The Suez crisis marked an important turning point in the post-colonial Middle East and highlighted the rising importance of oil in world affairs.
Suez Crisis
Cartel comprising Middle Eastern states and Venezuela first organized in 1960. OPEC aimed to control access to and prices of oil, wresting power from Western oil companies and investors. In the process, it gradually strengthened the hand of non-Western powers on the world stage.
Organization of Petroleum Exportation Countries (OPEC)
Soviet satellite first launched into earth orbit on October 4, 1957. This scientific achievement marked the first time human beings had put a man-made object into orbit and pushed the USSR noticeably ahead of the United States in the space race. A month later, the Soviet Union sent a larger satellite, Sputnik II, into space, prompting the United States to redouble its space exploration efforts and raising American fears of Soviet superiority.
Sputnik
Televised exchange in 1959 between Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and American vice president Richard Nixon. Meeting at the American National Exhibition in Moscow, the two leaders sparred over the relative merits of capitalist consumer culture versus Soviet state planning. Nixon won applause for his staunch defense of American capitalism, helping lead him to the Republican nomination for president in 1960.
Kitchen debate
Term popularized by President Dwight Eisenhower in his 1961 Farewell Address, referring to the political and economic ties between arms manufacturers, elected officials, and the U.S. armed forces that created self-sustaining pressure for high military spending during the Cold War. Eisenhower also warned that this powerful combination left unchecked could “endanger our liberties or democratic process,” favoring defense concerns over more peaceful goals that balanced security and liberty.
Military-industrial complex
An experimental style of mid-twentieth-century modern art exemplified by Jackson Pollock’s spontaneous “action paintings,” created by flinging paint on canvases stretched across the studio floor.
Abstract expressionism
Archetypal, post–World War II modernist architectural style, best known for its “curtain-wall” designs of steel-and-glass corporate high-rises.
International Style
A literary outpouring among mid-twentieth-century southern writers, begun by William Faulkner and marked by a new critical appreciation of the region’s burdens of history, racism, and conservatism.
Southern Renaissance
A small coterie of mid-twentieth-century bohemian writers and personalities, including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, who bemoaned bourgeois conformity and advocated free-form experimentation in life and literature.
Beat Generation
