Cold War and Civil Rights Vocab

Containment:

• U.S. foreign policy to stop the spread of communism.

The Truman Doctrine:

• U.S. claimed the right to interfere in any nation where democracy is threatened. (Greece and Turkey)

The Marshall Plan

• the U.S. gave any country that asked, huge sums of economic aid.

The Berlin Airlift:

• When the U.S. airlifted goods to West Berlin. West Berlin, remains democratic.

N.A.T.O.:

• (1949) North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Military organization, if anyone is invaded, the other countries will help defend—Collective Security. (U.S., Canada, U.K., France, West Germany, Portugal, Italy,)

Iron Curtain:

• fictitious line dividing Eastern Communist Europe and Western Democratic Europe.

Arms Race (nuclear):

• the U.S. and S.U. stockpiled nuclear weapons.

The Korean War:

• after WWII, N.Korea becomes communist, we create a democracy in South Korea. North Korea invades South Korea. The UN, steps in and backs the S.Koreans. N. Korean forces (aided by Russia and China) have to retreat north. We back off, and agree to keep Korea split, along the 38th parallel. (General

Douglas MacArthur).

The Space Race:

• race to be the first country to space/the moon. *Sputnik/*Apollo—bragging rights.

Domino Theory:

• our belief that if one country becomes communist, then it will spread to surrounding countries.

The Cuban Missile Crisis:

• In 1950’s Fidel Castro led a communist revolution in Cuba, against the U.S. backed Batista gov. (U.S. following policy of containment). Bay of Pigs Invasion—US sends in counter revolutionaries to fight Castro, they are slaughtered—sours US/Cuban relations. Cuba ties itself to Russia. USSR puts nuclear missile bases in Cuba, US demands they remove them, USSR backs down

The Vietnam War:

• Ho Chi Minh, unites Vietnam under a communist regime. Nationalist. We fail to ‘contain’ communism.

Racism

• Deeply rooted prejudice which may be expressed in the idea that one race is superior to another. Racism can take the form of private acts of racial discrimination or repression; or laws which segregate or in other ways deprive members of a race of civil and political rights and privileges. In varying degrees American Indians, persons of African descent, Chinese, and Japanese have been objects of racism in the United States.

Civil Rights

• The rights each person has as a citizen. The government can’t take them away. Most of our civil rights are in the Bill of Rights.

Segregate

• Separating one group of people from another group of people.

Integrate

• Removing all barriers and placing all groups of people together

Poll Tax

• A fee charged to voters. A method used to keep poor Blacks from voting

Literacy Tests

• Tests were given to people who were registering to vote. These were often unfair to Blacks

BPP (Black Panther Party)

• organized in 1965, after riots in Los Angeles, by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. The original purpose was to organize armed patrols to follow police and intervene if they got out of line. Over the years, the militant Panthers engaged in many shoot-outs with police. They wanted an independent, self-governing black community.

NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)

• this organization is the oldest of its kind. Their philosophy is that social change can be brought about by educating the public and by taking action through the courts. Though educated upper-class blacks run the organization, it speaks for all blacks. The organization operates on three levels—national, regional, and local.

Sit-ins

• started on February 1, 1960 when four college students walked into a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina and were refused service, they sat down and refused to move.

Freedom Rides

• in 1961, CORE organized a “Freedom Ride”—a bus trip to New Orleans—to test the recent Virginia court ruling that discrimination against interstate travelers in bus terminals was illegal. By the time they reached Alabama, they had split into two buses. A mob attacked one bus, destroying it with an incendiary bomb. They passengers barely escaped. They other bus continued to Birmingham where the passengers were beaten when they stepped off.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

• head of the SCLC. Influenced by Jesus and Gandhi, he believed in nonviolent direct resistance as the way to achieve black rights. He organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 march on Washington. His tireless work for black equality was cut short in 1968 when he was assassinated on the balcony of a Memphis motel.