Bootlegging This term refers to the illegal Prohibition-era business of making liquor and transporting it using camouflage or stealthy means.
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Boss Tweed This New York politician rose to fame as the "boss" of Tammany Hall, the political machine that controlled politics, voting, and business in late 19th century New York.
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Boxer Rebellion This was a violent movement against non-Chinese political, religious and technological influence in China in the late 19th century.
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Brain Trust This is the term used for a group of advisors to President Roosevelt. Most of them were experts in their particular fields.
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Brinkmanship This is the practice of threatening an enemy with massive military retaliation for any aggression.
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Brown V Board Of Education This Supreme Court case, decided in 1954, declared that the segregation doctrine of "separate but equal," was not Constitutional when applied to the public school system.
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Bryan He was a Democratic candidate for President three times, supporter of American farmers, the US Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, and a fighter of evolution.
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Bull Connor He was the Public Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s, becoming a symbol of bigotry and police brutality when he infamously used fire hoses and police attack dogs against protest marchers.
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Bull Run This was the location for two battles during the Civil War. The first was the first major land battle of the war, and the second was one of the most decisive of the entire Civil War, directed by Robert E. Lee. Both were victories for the Southern forces.
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Buying On Margin This term refers to the practice of buying stocks or securities with cash borrowed from a stock broker, in the hopes of paying back the borrowed money with profits from the purchased stocks.
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Cabinet This is a group of presidential advisers that includes the heads of the executive departments.
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Cambodia This is the country was secretly and illegally bombed by the United States during the course of the Vietnam War in 1969 and 1970.
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Capitalism an economic system where the factors of production are privately owned
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Carnegie This Scottish-born American industrialist made his fortune in the steel industry.
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Carpetbaggers People who moved to the South during or following the Civil War and became active in politics, they helped to bring Republican control of southern state governments during Reconstruction and were bitterly resented by most white Southerners.
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Carrie Nation Born before the Civil War, she became a leading proponent of not just temperance but the complete prohibition of alcohol.
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Cash And Carry Prior to World War II, this was President Roosevelt's revision of the Neutrality Acts: participants in the war in Europe could purchase war materiel from the U.S. but only if they paid for them full up front and arranged for the transport of the goods themselves.
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Catt She was a major proponent of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the founder of the League of Women Voters in 1920.
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CCC This was a New Deal program established to relieve unemployment during the Great Depression by providing national conservation work primarily for young unmarried men.
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Central Pacific In the building of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s, this railroad company began construction in California and built to the east, using a large labor force of mostly Chinese immigrants.
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Central Powers This is the name given to the alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
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Cesar Chavez He was the founder of the National Farm Workers' Association, seeking better working conditions and equal rights for his union members. Like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., he used non-violent protest tactics to win advances for his members.
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Charles Lindbergh He was the first man to pilot the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927 aboard his airplane, The Spirit of St. Louis.
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Charter Colony One of three types of British Colonies. These were created through private petitions from the King by private companies or groups of settlers.
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Checkpoint Charlie This was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Germany and West Germany during the Cold War.
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Checks And Balances This is the system of overlapping powers among judicial, executive, and legislative branches to allow each branch to oversee the actions of the others.
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Cherokee War This conflict took place in the 1750s between British forces in the Southeast and an Indian tribe that would, decades later, be forced to the Oklahoma on the "Trail of Tears."
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Cherokee This group of people is native to what is now the Southeastern United States. The eastern portion of the group still resides in North Carolina, while many were forcibly relocated west in the 1830s on what became known as the Trail of Tears.
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Chicano This civil rights movement of the 1960s was formed to guarantee equal rights to Mexican Americans.
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Chickamauga This Civil War battle took place in northwest Georgia in September 1863, and, following over 30,000 casualties in just two days, resulted in a Confederate victory.
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Chief Executive In this role, the President acts at the head of the branch of government that is responsible for enforcing laws passed by Congress.
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Children's March This is the name given to the protest of hundreds of young people in Birmingham in 1963 who were against the city's segregation policies.
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China This modern-day asian country was the site of one of the first ancient civilizations. Historical record goes back to the 15th Century BCE with the Shang Dynasty, who developed some form of written communication.
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Chinese Exclusion Act This law, passed in 1882, forbade any laborers from China to enter the United States for 10 years.
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Churchill He was a British statesman and leader during World War II.
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Civil Liberties These are basic rights, such as freedom of speech and assembly, that are protected from government interference.
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Civil Rights Act Of 1866 This piece of Reconstruction-era legislation was passed by Congress- over the veto of Andrew Johnson- in order to protect the rights of newly freed former slaves, guaranteeing such things as citizenship and equal legal rights as white citizens.
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Civil Rights Act Of 1866 This piece of Reconstruction-era legislation was passed by Congress- over the veto of Andrew Johnson- in order to protect the rights of newly freed former slaves, guaranteeing such things as citizenship and equal legal rights as white citizens.
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Civil Rights Act Of 1957 This act, passed during the Eisenhower Administration, sought to protect the voting rights of African Americans, established the federal Commission on Civil Rights, and established a Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department.
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Civil Rights Act Of 1968 This act signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson provided for equal housing opportunities regardless of race, creed, or national origin.
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Civil Rights Act Signed into law by President Johnson, this bill protected African Americans and women from job discrimination and any discrimination in public places.
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Civil Rights This term refers to the laws that protect citizens from undue or unwarranted government intrusion into their lives, either personal or as an organization.
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Civil Rights This term refers to the laws that protect citizens from undue or unwarranted government intrusion into their lives, either personal or as an organization.
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Civil War This was the war between the North and South in the United States (1861-1865), also known as the War Between the States.
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Clean Air Act Since the 1960s Congress has passed several laws by this name in order to keep smog under control.
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Clean Water Act Since the 1970s Congress has passed numerous versions of this law in order to help prevent water pollution.
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Cleveland He was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States in the late 19th century.
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Closed Shop This term refers to the situation in some states in which union membership may be required as a condition to employment.
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Code Talkers This term refers to Native Americans who served in the United States Marine Corps during World War II whose job was to encode, transmit, and decode radio messages in the Navaho language.
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Cohn He was an American attorney who was Chief Counsel to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy during the early-1950s.
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Cold War This was a name given to the relations between the U.S. & the Soviet Union in the second half of the 20th century which saw the buildup of nuclear arms.
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Collective Bargaining when labor union leaders negotiate a contract by representing all union members
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Colonization This is the act, by a militarily strong country, of invading and taking over the sovereignty of another area. Many times by placing a settlement or settlements of its own people to live in the new land.
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Committee On Public Information This is the name given to the independent agency in the U.S. government that attempted to influence Americans into supporting the country's entrance into World War I.
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Communism This is an economic system proposed by Karl Marx in which all means of production are owned by the proletariat, but are controlled by the government when practiced by countries such as the Soviet Union and China.
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Communist Bloc This is the name given to European countries during the Cold War who were allied with the Soviet Union and its mutual defense organization, The Warsaw Pact.
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Compromise Of 1850 This was an agreement that California would be admitted to the Union, the slave trade in the District of Columbia would be restricted, and the Fugitive Slave Law would be enforced.
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Compromise Of 1877 This was the solution to the contested Presidential election of 1876 and furthermore brought an end to the period of Reconstruction following the Civil War.
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Concentration Camps This term refers to over 1200 facilities run by Nazi Germany during World War II where the enemies of the Nazis were enslaved, starved, tortured and killed.
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Confederacy This was the group of southern states that seceded from the United States from 1860-1865.
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Confirm When the President appoints a new member to the Cabinet, the Senate must ____ the person before that person gets the job.
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Congress Of Industrial Organizations This was a federation of unions created to organize industrial workers in the U.S. and Canada between 1935 and 1955.
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Consent Of The Governed This is a condition of democracy; the government is based on the will of the people as expressed in elections.
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Conservation Movement This is a plan for the protection of plant and animal species as well as the habitats they live in from human influences. This became an important issue in America in the late 1800s.
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Constitution This is the system by which the main institutions of a nation's government are arranged and kept in place. It may be written down (as in the United States) or it may be unwritten (as in Great Britain).
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Containment This was a foreign policy designed to stop the spread (domino effect) of communism in Southeast Asia.
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CORE This group was founded in 1942 by James Farmer to coordinate a non-violent resistance movement to Jim Crow laws.
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Cotton Gin Mechanical device invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 to separate the seed from the cotton fibers. This allowed for the large-scale profitability and harvest of cotton.
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Cotton This soft fiber was THE primary agricultural output of the southern colonies and early southern states, and continues to be a significant crop there to this very day
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Court Packing Bill This was a bill sponsored by Roosevelt that would have given the President power to appoint an extra Supreme Court Justice for every sitting Justice over 70 1/2.
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Cox He was a lawyer who served as U.S. Solicitor General under President John F. Kennedy, but became most well known when Richard Nixon fired him as the first special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal.
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Crazy Horse This Lakota Sioux chief led a group of approximately 1,500 warriors to victory against George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.
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Credit Ability to obtain goods and services before payment, or money lent or made available, both with specific guidelines for repayment.
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Cross Of Gold Speech This was a speech given by William Jennings Bryan in Chicago at the 1896 Democratic National Convention. It promoted the use of the silver standard for the US over the gold standard.
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Cuba This Caribbean country lies to the south of Florida and is the only Communist government in the Western Hemisphere.
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Cuban Missile Crisis This was a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over nuclear missiles the Soviets had allegedly deployed to Cuba.
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Cuban Revolution This event took place in the Western Hemisphere from July 26, 1953, to January 1, 1959, resulting in the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista and the creation of a communist government.
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Danzig This port city on the Baltic, now Gdansk in Poland, was in East Prussia. After World War I it was separated from the rest of Germany by a strip of land called the "Polish Corridor."
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De Facto This means segregation that comes from personal choice or choices, such as living in certain areas or attending certain places of worship. Courts have not become involved in this kind of segregation.
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De Jure This means segregation that is mandated by law. This kind of segregation is unconstitutional.
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Dean He was White House Counsel (1970-1973) under Richard Nixon, was partially responsible for attempting to cover up information during the Watergate Scandal, and was convicted of felonies for his role in that coverup.
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Death Camp This is the precise term given to six Nazi installations during the Holocaust that were designed solely to kill people deemed "undesirable" by the Nazi government of Germany.
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Declaration Of Independence This was an act passed by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 declaring the thirteen American Colonies independent of British rule.
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Deficit Spending This is a government spending more money than it is taking in as revenue.
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Delegated Powers Powers specifically given to the government by the Constitution.
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Demilitarized Zone This is the name given to the strip of land that runs roughly along the 38th Parallel in Asia and serves as the dividing line between North Korea and South Korea.
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Demobilization This is the process of reducing a nation's armed forces after wartime.
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Democracy In this type of government, political and governmental power is held by the citizens of the country, who choose leaders from among themselves.
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Demographics These are statistics and categories used to describe a specific population.
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Denazification This term refers to the program put in place by the Allied powers in 1945 to rid German society and culture of any remaining traces of the ideologies of the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler.
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Depression A prolonged period with large numbers of unemployed, declining incomes, and general economic hardship.
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Deregulation This is the process of reducing or eliminating government regulations on an industry, allowing for more laissez-faire business practices. This has been a major issue in the airline, automobile, and power industries since the 1980s.
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Detente This is the name given to the general reduction in the tension between the Soviet Union and the United States that occurred from the late 1960s until the start of the 1980s.
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Dewey He was an admiral of the U.S. Navy, best known for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.
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Dictatorship A government in which absolute power is exercised by one ruler.
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