Term | Definition |
Cuban Missile Crisis | Soviet placement of nuclear missiles on the island and the US naval blockade brought two countries to the brink of War |
Great Society | LBJ's civil rights and anti-poverty agenda that was limited by the costs of the Vietnam War |
Affirmative Action | policies designed to increase employment and educational opportunities for minorities and women |
Domino Theory | View during the Cold War that if Vietnam fell to communism, other countries in S. E. Asia would also fall |
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution | reported attacks against US ships off the waters of N. Vietnam allowed LBJ to escalate the US involvement in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war |
credibility gap | during the Vietnam War, Americans began to doubt government officials about the true progress of the war after viewing & reading news reports |
Tet Offensive | Massive N. Vietnamese & Vietcong surprise attack on villages and cities in S. Vietnam that was defeated, but undermined US officials claims that the enemy was near defeat |
Vietnamization | Nixon's policy to end the war slowly by replacing US troops with trained S. Vietnamese troops |
26th Amendment | lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 to ease protests over why young people were drafted for war but couldn't vote |
Pentagon Papers | a series of secret reports leaked to the press that detailed the American military actions in Vietnam and demonstrated that the government had misled the public |
War Powers Act | in 1973, Congress limited the president's power to use military force by requiring consultations and authorization to continue |
segregation | the separation of races that was established as legal by the Plessy v Ferguson case |
Plessy v Ferguson | Supreme Court case that determined "separate but equal" facilities for whites and blacks was constitutional |
NAACP | organization that was founded by WEB duBois to fight in the courts for equality for African Americans |
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka | Supreme Court case in 1954 that overturned the legality of "separate but equal" public schools, leading to integration |
Integration | the practice of removing racial barriers in society |
Civil Disobedience | non-violent policy of MLK Jr. to disobey laws considered unjust and immoral to bring about change in society |
Civil Rights Act | 1964 law that outlawed discrimination in all public places on the basis of sex or race |
Voting Rights Act | 1965 law that eliminated barriers to voting such as literacy tests or poll taxes |
feminism | movement of women to ensure equality with men and end gender discrimination |
NOW | organization dedicated to protect women's rights, such as opportunities in school, equal pay, and right to an abortion, and promote the Equal Rights Amendment |
LULAC | organization formed to fight discrimination in public for Latinos |
UFW | a labor union led by Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez to fight for better working conditions and pay for migrant farm workers |
AIM | movement by Native Americans with the goal of empowering them and demanding rights as citizens and tribal claims |