Notes

Baby boomers: The Leading-Edge Baby Boomers are individuals born between 1946 and 1955, those who came of age during the Vietnam War era.

Birth Rate: The number of live births per thousand of population per year.

Equal Rights Amendment (ERA): a proposed amendment to the US Constitution stating that civil rights may not be denied on the basis of one's sex.

GI Bill of Rights: provided veterans of the Second World War funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing.

Interstate Highway System: according to Eisenhower, the new Interstate Highway System would eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes, traffic jams and all of the other things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel.”

Suburbs: A suburb is a residential district located on the outskirts of a city.

Women in the workforce: Women in the workforce earning wages or a salary are part of a modern phenomenon, one that developed at the same time as the growth of paid employment for men, but women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce.

Antiwar protests: An anti-war movement (also antiwar) is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause.

Arms Race: A competition between nations for superiority in the development and accumulation of weapons, especially between the US and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Conscientious Objector: a person who for reasons of conscience objects to serving in the armed forces.

Cuban Missile Crisis: a 13-day (October 16–28, 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba.

Demilitarized Zone (DMZ): An area in which treaties or agreements between nations, military powers or contending groups forbid military installations, activities or personnel. A DMZ often lies along an established frontier or boundary between two or more military powers or alliances.

Domino Theory: The idea that if one key nation in a region fell to control of communists, others would follow like toppling dominoes. The theory was used by many American leaders to justify American intervention in the Vietnam War.

Doves: People who typically try to resolve international conflicts without the threat of force.

Draft: A system for selecting young men for compulsory military service, administered in the United States by the Selective Service System.

Great Society: A domestic program in the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson that instituted federally sponsored social welfare programs.

Gulf of Tonkin Incident: An international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. On August 2, 1964, the U.S. destroyer Maddox exchanged shots with North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, the Maddox and another destroyer reported once again coming under fire.

Hawks: a hawk favors entry into war, or escalation into an existing one.

Immigration: The action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country.

Migration: The movement by people from one place to another with the intentions of settling, permanently or temporarily in a new location.

Nuclear Proliferation: Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Paris Peace Accords: Was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973 to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War.

Superpower: A very powerful and influential nation (used especially with reference to the US and the former Soviet Union when these were perceived as the two most powerful nations in the world).

Tet Offensive: was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam.

Vietnamization: the US policy of withdrawing its troops and transferring the responsibility and direction of the war effort to the government of South Vietnam.

Watergate: a gate of a town or castle opening on to a lake, river, or sea.

Civil Rights Movement: The civil rights movement was a struggle struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for blacks to gain equal rights under the law in the United States.

Black Power Movement: The Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was a political and social movement whose advocates believed in racial pride, self-sufficiency, and equality for all people of Black and African descent.

Black Panthers: A member of a militant political organization set up in the US in 1966 to fight for black rights.

Civil Rights Act of 1964: A landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE): An African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement.

Freedom Riders

March on Washington

Nation of Islam

National Urban League

Sit-ins

Social Activism

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Affirmative Action

Rights of the accused

Reproductive Rights

American Indian Movement (AlM)

Gray Panthers

Brown v Board of Education (1954)

Gideon v Wainwright (1963)

Regents of the University of California v Bakke (1978)

Roe v Wade (1973)

United Farm Workers (UFW)

Wounded Knee (1973)