Berlin airlift U. S. effort to deliver supplies including 2 million tons of food and coal by air to West Berlin in 1948-1949 in response to the Soviet blockade of the city, 743
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka The 1954 Supreme Court decision that held that racially segregated education, which prevailed in much of the South, was unconstitutional. The ruling overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” that had provided the legal justification for racial segregation ever since the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision, 757
Fair Deal President Harry Truman’s 1949 program for expanded economic opportunity and civil rights, 744
Marshall Plan A proposal, propounded in 1947 by Secretary of State George Marshall, to use American aid to rebuild the war-torn economies of European nations. Adopted by Congress in 1948 as the European Recovery Program, it pumped some $13 billion into Europe during the next five years, 741
Massive retaliation The “New Look” military policy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles relying on nuclear weapons to inhibit communist aggression during the 1950s, 750
Military-industrial complex A term, popularized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address, for the concert of interests among the U. S. military and its chief corporate contractors, 761
New Frontier President John F. Kennedy’s term for a revitalized national agenda, particularly in relation to foreign policy and space exploration, 761 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) A military mutual-defense pact, formed in 1948, by the United States, Canada, and ten European nations, including Great Britain, France, and West Germany; the Soviet Union countered with the formation of the Warsaw Pact among communist regimes in Eastern Europe, 744 NSC-68 A secret policy statement, proposed by the National Security Council in 1950, calling for a large, ongoing military commitment to contain Soviet communism; it was accepted by President Harry Truman after the North Korean invasion of South Korea, 745
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) A civil rights organization, founded in 1957 by Martin Luther King, Jr. and his followers, that espoused Christian nonviolence but organized mass protests to challenge segregation and discrimination; it played a major role in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 758 Taft-Hartley Act A 1947 federal law that outlawed the closed shop and secondary boycotts and obliged union leaders to sign affidavits declaring that they were not communists, 739 Truman Doctrine A foreign policy, articulated by President Harry Truman in 1947, that provided financial aid to Greek and Turkish governments then under threat by communists rebels, 741
World History
