Domestic Politics
LBJ’s dream of a wealthy nation meeting the needs of all of its citizens.
What is the Great Society?
The Cold War assumption that if one nation fell to Communism than many other nearby countries would subsequently also come under Moscow’s control.
What is the domino theory?
One of the most destructive outbursts of racial violence in the nation, this 1965 episode started in the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles triggered by police treatment of a black motorist and resulted in the destruction of many white-owned businesses in the area.
What is the Watts riot?
An elite antiguerrilla force used by the US to turn back insurgents in Third World countries.
What is the Green Berets?
Part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that included a ban on sex-based, as well as race-based, discrimination in employment.
What is Title VII?
The Kennedy administration’s ideal of patriotic service to one’s country.
What is the New Frontier?
The agency that represented the view that the United States had a special moral mission to save the world.
What is the Peace Corps?
Heated debate over the right to disseminate non-campus political literature on the University of California’s Berkeley campus.
What is the Free Speech Movement?
This statistic was used to verify US military claims of success in Vietnam.
What are body counts?
Great Society initiative that provided nutrition and intellectual stimulation to preschool children.
What is the Head Start Program?
Legislation LBJ got through Congress that provided basic protection of the franchise for African Americans in southern states.
What is the Voting Rights Act 1965?
This agreement limited the number of ICBMs the US and the USSR could have.
What is the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty or SALT?
This symbolic act of the Selective Service resistance movement defied what they considered a malicious authoritarian system.
What is burning draft cards?
National Security Council document that called for a 350 percent increase in military spending to meet the growing Soviet threat.
What is NSC-68?
Michael Harrington’s brilliant exposé of the systemic poverty that effected significant pockets of middle America.
What is The Other America?
Nixon’s political approach in the 1960s to swing conservative white Democrats to the
What is the southern strategy?
The down-scaling of tensions between the US and the Soviet Union in the early 1970s that emphasized peaceful coexistence instead of arms build ups and proxy wars.
What is détente?
Martin Luther King’s anti-poverty crusade that brought him to Memphis where he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
What is the Poor People’s Campaign?
A highly flammable sticky jelly used in incendiary bombs and flamethrowers.
What is napalm?
One of the worst American war atrocities perpetrated against a Vietnamese hamlet that killed more than 350 in March 1968.
What is My Lai?
The 1968 presidential candidate for the Youth International Party.
Who is “Pigasus”?
Eisenhower put forward this plan to allow both the US and the USSR to conduct surveillance of the other’s military potential especially nuclear weapons capabilities.
What is the open skies proposal?
Spinoff group from SDS, whose members advocated the use of terrorist violence to end American imperialism at home and abroad.
What is the Weathermen?
McArthur-led surprise counter attack against North Korea that led to a UN invasion of the North.
What is the Inchon invasion?
Described by those who experienced it as being grabbed by the lapels and having his face on top yours and being talked to incessantly.
What is the “treatment”?