A state of political hostility between countries characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare, in particular.the state of political hostility that existed between the Soviet bloc countries and the US-led Western powers from 1945 to 1990.

The notional barrier separating the former Soviet bloc and the West prior to the decline of communism that followed the political events in eastern Europe in 1989.

the principle that the US should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or communist insurrection. First expressed in 1947 by US President Truman in a speech to Congress seeking aid for Greece and Turkey, the doctrine was seen by the communists as an open declaration of the Cold War.

The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value as of June 2016) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War...

Berlin airlift definition. A military operation in the late 1940s that brought food and other needed goods into West Berlin by air after the government of East Germany, which at that time surrounded West Berlin ( see Berlin wall ), had cut off its supply routes.

containment, policy of definition. A United States foreign policy doctrine adopted by the Harry S. Truman administration in 1947, operating on the principle that communist governments will eventually fall apart as long as they are prevented from expanding their influence.

Mao Ze. · ... (mou′ dzŭ′dŏng′) also Mao Tse-tung (tsŭ′to͝ong′) 1893-1976. Chinese Communist leader and theorist. A founder of the Chinese Communist Party (1921), he commanded troops in the Chinese Civil War (1927-1949) and proclaimed the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Korean War definition. A war, also called the Korean conflict, fought in the early 1950s between the United Nations, supported by the United States, and the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). The war began in 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea.

each of a series of Soviet artificial satellites, the first of which (launched on October 4, 1957) was the first satellite to be placed in orbit.

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a committee (1938–75) of the U.S. House of Representatives, created to investigate disloyalty and subversive organizations. Its first chairman, Martin Dies, set the pattern for its anti-Communist investigations.

A court case involving Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, an American couple who were executed in 1953 as spies for the Soviet Union. Some have argued that the Rosenbergs were innocent victims of McCarthy -era hysteria against communists or of anti-Semitism (they were Jewish).

The following list of Americans in the Venona papers is a list of names deciphered from codenames contained in the Venona project, an American government effort from 1943-1980 to decrypt coded messages by intelligence forces of the Soviet Union.

a vociferous campaign against alleged communists in the US government and other institutions carried out under Senator Joseph McCarthy in the period 1950–54. Many of the accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs, although most did not in fact belong to the Communist Party.

Vaccine, Salk: Vaccine against poliomyelitis named for Dr. Jonas Salk who developed and introduced it in 1955. It was the first type of polio vaccine to become available. It was made by cultivating three strains of the virus separately in monkey tissue.

The civil rights movement was a struggle by African Americans in the mid-1950s to late 1960s to achieve Civil Rights equal to those of whites, including equal opportunity in employment, housing, and education, as well as the right to vote, the right of equal access to public facilities, and the right to be free of ...

Plessy v. Ferguson is a U.S. Supreme Court case from 1896 that upheld the rights of states to pass laws allowing or even requiring racial segregation in public and private institutions such as schools, public transportation, restrooms, and restaurants.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice.

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister who first rose to prominence as leader of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott challenging segregated public transportation.

Parks, Rosa definition. A black seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, who, in 1955, refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus to a white person, as she was legally required to do.

Orval Faubus (1910 - 1994) was the Democratic Governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967, famously known for his vigorous stand against the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. In 1957, Governor Faubus deployed National Guardsmen to block Supreme Court-ordered school integration.

Lester Garfield Maddox, Sr. (September 30, 1915 – June 25, 2003) was an American politician who served as the 75th Governor of the U.S. state of Georgia from 1967 to 1971.

George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician and the 45th Governor of Alabama, having served two nonconsecutive terms and two consecutive terms as a Democrat: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987.

Civil Rights Act of 1964 definition. A federal law that authorized federal action against segregation in public accommodations, public facilities, and employment.

an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education; positive discrimination.

William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. (born November 7, 1918) is an American evangelical Christian evangelist, ordained as a Southern Baptist minister, who rose to celebrity status in 1949 reaching a core constituency of middle-class, moderately conservative Protestants.