hey everyone today we're going to explain the key terms for period 8 of ap us history this would be a great way to either start the unit or review before a test many of these terms come directly from the college board framework so are likely to be seen as vocabulary on ap exams ok let's go first we're going to start off with the united nations the idea for the international body was agreed upon at the alta conference during world war ii unlike the previous league of nations this one the united states will stick with and even locate the united nations within its borders in new york the general assembly consists of all member nations and the most important subgroup of the united nations is the security council in the security council are five permanent members which were on the victorious side of world war ii they are the united states soviet union now today russia china which flipped between the nationalists and the communists france and great britain there are seven other positions on the security council as well which rotate between countries containment is the overarching us cold war policy during the entirety of the cold war there are different doctrines and strategies within containment itself the first implemented truman doctrine was to support free peoples from succumbing to communism this led directly to aid in turkey and greece the marshall plan directed american aid towards countries like west germany and france to help them recover from world war ii and keep radical elements within their own societies at bay the north atlantic treaty organization was established as a military alliance and mutual defense pact to deter communist soviet union aggression another part of containment is the domino theory which comes in as a huge cause of the vietnam war it is the idea that if the u.s allows one small country in a region of the world to fall to communism neighboring countries will soon follow as well finally the important us government policy paper nsc 68 provided an overarching cold war strategy for more context and information on that document i have a short video about it in the link below as cold war tensions between the united states and soviet union increased in the aftermath of world war ii it had a great impact on the home front there was hysteria that communists had infiltrated american society and government there was some truth to it as there were soviet spies and they had caused real issues as nuclear secrets from the manhattan project were stolen and given to the soviets allowing them to develop a nuclear weapon far ahead of u.s expectations the house on american activities committee was active going all the way back to before world war ii however it increased its activity during the second red scare many americans who were suspected of being communists were blacklisted and then had trouble finding work it affected many industries but hollywood in particular was in the spotlight the leading anti-communist crusader was wisconsin senator joseph mccarthy whose side note is from my hometown his grave is only a few miles from my house well he had a run of destroying people's careers and lives through public congressional hearings and interviews he had even started to target military leaders however the media and government officials pushed back which led to mccarthy being censured in the senate and he lost all of his influence even with mccarthy censured in the hysteria abating there was always a heightened anti-communist sentiment throughout the cold war of course you have to keep in mind nuclear annihilation was hanging over everyone's head dwight eisenhower was a popular world war ii general who brought to the office of the presidency significant experience and ideas a part of his foreign policy doctrine was to secure u.s influence in the middle east which had grown to be a strategically important region because of oil eisenhower was also very cognizant of the concerns around nuclear weapons and sought to de-escalate tensions with the soviets especially with the opening provided after the death of stalin but he saw nuclear weapons as also a way to save money by relying on a large arsenal to deter communist aggression so as to save money on conventional military equipment and personnel another idea of his was to reframe nuclear technology as a means towards peace and a betterment of humanity with the promise of nuclear energy in an earlier speech some of his ideas can be summed up with this line quote every gun that has made every warship launched every rocket fired signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed those who are cold and are not clothed end quote in his farewell address eisenhower warned the nation of the military-industrial complex which is the continued growth of the government military spending towards private military contractors creating more and more weapons and always lobbying congress for more funds a central theme of the cold war was the space race between the united states and soviet union the soviets were successful in launching the first artificial saturn satellite in 1957 called sputnik in the u.s that had lots of effects with the us worrying about that they were falling behind the soviets and so the government put a lot more money into stem education science technology engineering and math in 1961 the soviets again beat the u.s as they were the first to put a man into space yuri gregaron seen there on the right these developments lead president kennedy to make the bold claim that the united states will be the first person to put a man on the moon and they will achieve that before the end of the 1960s and up to today are the only nation to do so a lot of what we just discussed in the first few key terms lead to this event and term the cuban missile crisis cuba is a large island fairly close to the u.s coast of florida cuba came under the united states influence following the spanish-american war in 1898 and by the time of the late 1950s the united states supported cuban dictator bautista a war broke out in cuba between batista and communists led by fidel castro who would be victorious the united states sought to remove castro and cuban communists and so they supported an invasion by exiled cubans known as the bay of pigs however the united states supported invasion failed and castro became paranoid he successfully sought support and military aid from the soviets who began covertly building nuclear missile sites in cuba the united states could not stand for nuclear missiles to be located so close to its territory with the ability to strike major targets in minutes the united states threatened to bomb and invade cuba which could provoke a nuclear exchange between the soviets and the united states eventually the u.s president john f kennedy and soviet premier nikita khrushchev reached an agreement that soviets would dismantle the missile sites in cuba and the u.s would dismantle their nuclear missile sites in turkey okay we'll move to more domestic concerns now suburbanization occurred over the entirety of period 8 and was influenced by a couple of developments first the interstate highway act actually passed with a primary purpose of national defense it ended up having a huge influence on the developments of suburbs as people could commute to work over greater distances more efficiently meaning they could move out of the city for the cleaner country air along with the highway projects the post-world war ii automobile industry rebounded and expanded another major factor was bringing mass production to the housing industry william levitt took assembly line and economies of scale principles and applied them to housing construction which aided by fha loans allowed many middle class families the ability to purchase a new home in the suburbs these suburbs though were racially mostly white some even had specific rules against my own minorities as an example of mass production the many suburban homes and neighborhoods were physically very uniform which also went along with a push for conformity in the era and the return of traditional family values like the call to domesticity in post-world war ii 1940s to 1960s there was a group that rebelled against conformity and that was the beats or beatniks they were a group of literary figures based in new york and san francisco they rejected everything in mainstream culture including patriotism consumerism technology conventional family life and discipline and they celebrated spontaneity personal freedom including drug consumption and free willing sex some of the famous beats were alan ginsberg and jack kerouac and a couple of their famous works are ginsberg's hull and in my opinion the overrated novel on the road by kerouac the baby boom refers to the post-world war ii birth rate surge that lasted until 1964. it had all sorts of both short-term and long-term effects one of the most immediate effects that went along with new scientific research was on child rearing itself books on parenting became a hot commodity and the most famous one was written by dr spock no relation to the vulcan who in his child care book discussed a more permissive approach to parenting that required a mother's full-time involvement instead of the traditional emphasis on strictness and rigid schedules consumer goods and media were geared toward the baby boom generation and along with abundant job and college opportunities no generation ever had it so good the sun belt refers to the southern half the united states previous time periods had seen a migration to the north for work in factories however that process will start to reverse in period eight led by the booming population of california people flock to the warm climates of the south as the advent of air conditioning made the hot summers tolerable aerospace industries also were centered in both florida and texas bringing high pain and high-tech jobs to the area there was also a continuing migration from the southern border as mexicans supplied labor for much of california's vast and growing agribusiness the government bracero program allowed for legal travel back and forth between the u.s and mexico for the seasonal work however that became threatened and scaled back because of white nativist sentiment against the migrant workers the nativists organized raids against the mexican immigrants in an attempt to shut off the cross-border flow of migrants okay i'm just going to very briefly attempt to review the civil rights movement i'm sure you'll be going much further and more in depth in your own class but here we go going back to world war ii there was a double v campaign that had the idea that if african americans helped to bring down tyranny abroad they would also earn a victory against discrimination and segregation at home aside from truman desegregating the military in 1948 the victory at home did not occur the 1950s and 60s saw a concerted civil rights movement that made gains and had setbacks an early gain was the famous brown verse board supreme court ruling that said schools needed to desegregate however local and state governments were slow to do so with little rock even shutting down their public schools to avoid it another hard-fought victory came with the montgomery bus boycott which also inspired many non-violent protests including sit-ins at businesses like restaurants and retail stores also freedom riders on interstate buses and many marches martin luther king jr and his southern christian leadership conference played an integral role in the push for civil rights when president lyndon johnson seceded the assassinated president kennedy he was able to push through congress and sign two integral pieces of legislation the civil rights act of 1964 banning many forms of discrimination the voting act rights act of 1965 which would end poll taxes and impossible to pass literacy tests that have kept african americans from voting for decades there are also several other movements in this era as well including the united farm workers led by cesar chavez and dolores huerta they sought to empower the mostly mexican-american migrant farm workers who face discrimination and exploitative conditions the american indian movement or aim was an organization that sought to address the problems american indians faced in american cities including poverty and police harassment they also raised awareness of treaty rights that had been taken away and land that was stolen aim organized american indians protests of relocation and termination of treaty rights policies and sought to win greater control over their cultures and communities a few of their famous demonstrations included the temporary taking over the wounded knee site in montana and they occupied alcatraz island for 18 months with the feminist movement we're going to wrap several key terms into one first the national organization for women or now organized in the early 1960s it was led by famous feminist author betty friedam who wrote the feminine mystique the group advocated for women's rights and ended discrimination they helped push for several goals and achieve considerable success with the equal pay act of 1963 title ix and roe versus wade however their ultimate goal and push was for the equal rights amendment which failed the amendment passed congress which was no easy feat however it fell short of required three quarters of state legislature's approval now met pushback from the stop era movement led by anti-feminist phyllis schlafly who argued the amendment would hurt laws that are meant to protect women like the exclusion of women from the military draft the students for a democratic society or sds was a leftist political group active on college campuses in the 1960s they advocated for free speech and more say in governing within their college and society as a whole they involved themselves in many demonstrations from civil rights to women's rights and anti-war protests overall they criticized the cold war nuclear weapons racial discrimination and economic inequality later in the late 1960s and early 1970s some of the members of sds became further radicalized and orchestrated a series of bombings across the united states president lyndon johnson was a deep admirer of franklin roosevelt and his new deal johnson felt a final push of new deal-style progressive government programs could alleviate poverty of which his great society program would declare war on he passed a series of major pieces of legislation including health insurance for the poor and elderly in medicare and medicaid he also passed a domestic peace corps called americorps the great society effort also included new cabinet offices and departments in transportation and housing urban development head start programs were funded to help educate underprivileged children in a food stamp program to help them with necessities for poor families while the programs are still with us today and in many cases have been expanded they have fallen short of their goal of alleviating poverty there was a hope that the civil and voting rights act would ease racial tensions and help the country make progress with racial issues however that failed to materialize the civil rights movement became radicalized with groups like the black panthers and corps protests turning into riots turned urban cities into war zones president johnson appointed a commission to investigate the issues the commission reported a quote our society is moving towards two societies one black and one white separate and unequal end quote the report did not excuse the rioters but it put their hopelessness into context and called for a massive expansion of aid to black families turning back now to foreign policy issues the vietnam war still looms large in the american psyche one of its roots can be traced back to the gulf atomic resolution before 1964 the u.s had a small but growing presence in vietnam the country had been split in two with the u.s support south vietnamese against the communist north vietnamese also in the south were many viet cong communist guerrilla groups causing havoc in that half of the nation in the gulf of tonkin off the shores of north vietnam the u.s alleged that the north vietnamese gunboats fired upon u.s ships congress responded with a resolution that gave the president nearly unlimited authority to conduct a war in vietnam without officially declaring a war after seven years of conflict the senate would eventually terminate the resolution and two years after that curtailed the president's powers with war powers act of 1973 which we'll get back to later the vietnam war was controversial and opinion was divided in 1968 the end of the war was nowhere in sight and lbj had enough of it and decided not to run for re-election nixon ran on a secret plan for an honorable end to the vietnam war two years after nixon took office the pentagon papers were leaked which detailed the doubts among civilian and military officials of a victory in vietnam this further helped to erode the public's trust in government nixon's plan ended up being a long and ultimately failed process of vietnamization this policy saw the u.s delegate more and more of the ground fighting to the south vietnamese it to slowly decrease american troop levels eventually the u.s totally disengages from south vietnam and signs accords with the communist north it would not take long for the south to completely fall in vietnam to be unified under a communist regime many people wonder with the loud dissent over the vietnam war in all of the rights movements along with hippies how the heck did nixon win the 1968 election well there are a lot of reasons but nixon himself posed the idea of the silent majority of americans who were not out there protesting and being subversive nixon asserted that they were patriotic family oriented and conservative americans the final foreign policy term that is a need to know for period eight is the nixon policy of daetant while vietnam ended in failure nixon actually saw some incredible progress with the rival superpower the soviet union he focused on easing tension between the two countries and tackling issues that were a common concern including arms control and trade nixon even did what many thought was impossible and that was to engage with and establish ties the communist chinese nixon made a famous trip to china where he met with chinese leaders mao zedong and chu and lay this also helped loosen up the communist block of countries as there was a growing divide and distrust between the soviets and chinese ok a few more domestic items to wrap up here first is environmentalism the movement began in the 1960s and was concerned with protecting the environment with action items like conservation pollution control measures and public awareness campaigns rachel carson's book silent spring brought to light the problems with the chemical that was being sprayed all over to kill mosquitoes the chemical was ddt and was working its way at the food chain and killing the birds it was banned shortly after there were other high profile environmental disasters as well including cleveland's polluted cuyahoga river catching fire in a neighborhood in niagara new york called the love canal was shown to be incredibly toxic because of a seepage from a nearby dump also everyone living in cities could visibly see and feel the terrible smog from factories and automobiles no more so than in los angeles to top it off a nuclear accident three mile island nearly made a chunk of pennsylvania uninhabitable both republicans and democrats push for solutions some of the pieces of legislation include the superfund clean air act clean water act and the environmental protection agency to enforce the new rules the heavily industrialized regions of the northeast and midwest was once the target of internal and overseas migrants for work in factories this region went into decline after deindustrialization many companies move to the less unionized southern part of the us or to foreign countries with cheap labor and few regulations like mexico and china from the 1970s and continuing on to today these regions are full of abandoned factories and have left behind distressed communities as mentioned briefly before with the gulf of tonkin resolution the war powers act would be an inverse of that 1964 resolution it limited the president's ability to deploy u.s forces without congressional approval congress passed this law in 1973 to fight the abuses of the nixon administration as it became known military operations had expanded to cambodian laos without approval this is also in context with watergate watergate refers to the 1972 break-in at the democratic party headquarters in washington dc by men working for president nixon's re-election campaign nixon also attempted to cover it up and lied about it eventually the scandal led to president nixon's resignation early in his second term in the mid to late 1970s economic growth had stagnated a variety of factors played a role in that along with two separate oil shocks as middle eastern countries protested u.s support of israel at the same time there was high inflation which meant that money was rapidly losing its value they put the government in a difficult position in how to resolve the economic issues because if the government increased spending to stimulate the economy that may increase inflation however less government spending may further hurt economic growth we'll have to wait till period 9 to see how this all plays out to be a little spoiled it will take huge tax cuts that will balloon the debt and the federal reserve hiking interest rates astronomically high our final term is affirmative action this term stands for a series of policies established in the 1960s and 1970s by governments businesses universities and other institutions to overcome the effects of past discrimination against specific groups such as racial and ethnic minorities and women some of the measures to ensure equal opportunity include setting goals for the admission hiring and promotion of minorities considering minority status when allocating resources and encouraging victims of past discrimination to apply for jobs and other resources ok that does it for period 8 key terms i hope this video helps to either introduce you to the time period or as a review before a big exam [Music] you