Chapter 37 Terms and Definitions

Modern Republicanism: Eisenhower's governing philosophy, which balanced federal budgets and limited government growth while accepting most existing New Deal programs.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: Former Supreme Allied Commander in World War II and 34th President (1953–1961), whose immense personal popularity oversaw a decade of prosperity and Cold War tension.
Brown v. Board of Education: The 1954 Supreme Court case that declared racially segregated public schools unconstitutional, overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine.
Earl Warren: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who wrote the unanimous Brown decision and led the Court through a period of expanding civil rights and civil liberties.
"Separate but Equal": The doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) permitting racial segregation as long as facilities were nominally equal; overturned by Brown v. Board in 1954.
Rosa Parks: The Montgomery, Alabama seamstress whose December 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Montgomery Bus Boycott: A 381-day boycott (1955–1956) of Montgomery's segregated bus system that ended when the Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional.
Martin Luther King Jr.: The young Baptist minister who rose to national leadership during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and became the era's foremost advocate of nonviolent civil rights protest.
SCLC: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by Martin Luther King Jr. and other Black ministers in 1957 to coordinate nonviolent civil rights activism across the South.
Little Rock Nine: The nine Black students whose 1957 attempt to integrate Little Rock's Central High School triggered a constitutional crisis over federal versus state authority.
Orval Faubus: The governor of Arkansas who used the National Guard to block integration at Little Rock Central High, forcing Eisenhower to send federal troops.
Interstate Highway Act of 1956: Legislation funding 41,000 miles of interstate highways, justified partly as a national defense measure and partly to modernize American transportation.
Military-Industrial Complex: The term Eisenhower used in his 1961 farewell address to warn against the growing, mutually reinforcing power of the armed forces and defense industry.
Sputnik: The first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union in October 1957, which shocked Americans and touched off the space race.
NASA: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, created by Congress in 1958 to coordinate the American space program after Sputnik.
National Defense Education Act: A 1958 law funding improved science, math, and foreign-language education and providing college loans, passed in response to Sputnik-era fears of falling behind the Soviets.
Fidel Castro: The guerrilla leader who overthrew Cuba's Batista dictatorship in January 1959 and subsequently aligned his revolutionary government with the Soviet Union.
Cuban Revolution: The 1956–1959 uprising that toppled Fulgencio Batista and brought Fidel Castro to power, later provoking a major Cold War confrontation ninety miles from Florida.
U-2 Incident: The May 1960 downing of an American spy plane over the Soviet Union, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, which wrecked a planned Paris summit between Eisenhower and Khrushchev.
Nikita Khrushchev: The Soviet premier who clashed with Eisenhower over the U-2 incident, walking out of the 1960 Paris summit after demanding an apology that never came.