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| State Department official accused in 1948 of spying for the Soviet Union; Richard Nixon became famous for his pursuit of Hiss, which resulted in a perjury conviction and prison for Hiss. Although long seen as a victim of Nixon's ruthless ambition and the Red Scare, recent scholarship suggests that Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent. |
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| unsuccessful presidential candidate against Lyndon Johnson in 1964; he called for dismantling the New Deal, escalation of the war in Vietnam, and the status quo on civil rights. Many see him as the grandfather of the conservative movement of the 1980s. |
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| rallying cry for many black militants in the 1960s and 1970s; it called for blacks to stand up for their rights, to reject integration, to demand political power, to seek their roots, and to embrace their blackness. |
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| Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) |
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| Supreme Court decision that overturned the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision (1896); led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court ruled that "separate but equal" schools for blacks were inherently unequal and thus unconstitutional. The decision energized the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. |
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| proposed by John Kennedy and signed by Lyndon Johnson; it desegregated public accommodations, libraries, parks, and amusements and broadened the powers of federal government to protect individual rights and prevent job discrimination. |
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| sometimes called Voting Rights Act, it expanded the federal government's protection of voters and voter registration; it also increased federal authority to investigate voter irregularities and outlawed literacy tests. |
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| controversial Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1953-1969); he led the Court in far-reaching racial, social, and political rulings, including school desegregation and protecting rights of persons accused of crimes. |
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| Truman's legislative program; it was largely an extension of the New Deal of the 1930s, and Truman had little success convincing Congress to enact it. |
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| Federal Highway Act (1956) |
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| largest public works project in United States history; Eisenhower signed the law, which built over 40,000 miles of highways in the United States at a cost of $25 billion and created the interstate highway system. |
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| civil rights campaign of the Congress of Racial Equality in which protesters traveled by bus through the South to desegregate bus stations; white violence against them prompted the Kennedy administration to protect them and become more involved in civil rights. |
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| Alabama governor and third-party candidate for president in 1968 and 1972; he ran on a segregation and law-and-order platform. Paralyzed by an attempted assassination in 1972, he never recovered politically. |
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| House Un-American Activities Committee |
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| congressional committee formed in the 1930s to investigate perceived threats to democracy; in the 1940s, the committee laid foundation for the Red Scare as it investigated allegations of Communist subversion in Hollywood and pursued Alger Hiss. |
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| liberal senator from Minnesota and Lyndon Johnson's vice president who tried to unite the party after the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; he narrowly lost the presidency to Richard Nixon that year. |
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| president, 1961-1963, and the youngest president ever elected, as well as the first Catholic to serve; he had a moderately progressive domestic agenda and a hard-line policy against the Soviets. His administration ended when Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated him. |
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| junior senator from Wisconsin who charged hundreds of Americans with working for or aiding the Soviet Union during the cold War; he had no evidence but terrorized people from 1950 to 1954, ruining their lives and careers with his reckless charges until Senate censured him in December 1954. |
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| Julius and Ethel Rosenberg |
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| an engineer and his wife who were accused, tried, and executed in the early 1950s for running an espionage ring in New York City that gave atomic secrets to the Soviet Union; long considered unjustly accused victims of the Red Scare, recent evidence suggests that Julius was indeed a Soviet agent. |
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| president, 1963-1969, who took over for Kennedy and created the Great Society, a reform program unmatched in the twentieth century; however, his Vietnam policy divided the country and his party, and he retired from politics in 1969. |
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| militant black leader associated with the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims); he questioned martin Luther King's strategy of nonviolence and called on blacks to make an aggressive defense of their rights. He was assassinated by fellow Muslims in 1965. |
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| America's greatest civil rights leader, 1955-1968; his nonviolent protests gained national attention and resulted in government protection of African American rights. He was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. |
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| National Defense Education Act (1958) |
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| law that authorized the use of federal funds to improve the nation's elementary and high schools; inspired by Cold War fears that the United States was falling behind the Soviet Union in the arms and space race, it was directed at improving science, math, and foreign-language education. |
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| controversial vice president, 1953-1961, and president, 1969-1974, who made his political reputation as an aggressive anti-Communist crusader; his presidency ended with his resignation during the Watergate scandal. |
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| John Kennedy's brother who served as attorney general and gradually embraced growing civil rights reform; later, as senator from New York, he made a run for the Democratic presidential nomination. An assassin ended his campaign on June 6, 1968. |
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| NAACP member who initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 when she was arrested for violating Jim Crow rules on a bus; her action and the long boycott that followed became an icon of the quest for civil rights and focused national attention on boycott leader martin Luther King, Jr. |
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| protests by black college students, 1960-1961, who took seats at "whites only" lunch counters and refused to leave until served; in 1960 over 50,000 participated in sit-ins across the South. Their success prompted the formation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. |
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| Soviet satellite launched in September 1957; the launch set off a panic that the Communists were winning the space race and were superior in math and science education. It gave impetus for the National Defense Education Act of 1958 to improve schools. |
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| Democratic governor of South Carolina who headed the States' Rights Party (Dixiecrats); he ran for president in 1948 against Truman and his mild civil rights proposals and eventually joined the Republican Party. |
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| antilabor law passed over Truman's veto; it provided a "cooling off" period wherein the president could force striking workers back to work for 80 days. It also outlawed closed shops and allowed states to pass right-to-work laws. |
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| twice-defeated Republican candidate for president (1944, 1948); his overconfidence and lackadaisical effort in 1948 allowed Truman to overcome his large lead and pull off the greatest political upset in American history. |
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| leading attorney for NAACP in 1940s and 1950s, who headed the team in Brown v. Board of Education case; later, Lyndon Johnson appointed him the first black justice on the United States Supreme Court |
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