Benjamin Spock

An American pediatrician whose book Baby and Child Care, published in 1946, is one of the biggest best-sellers of all time. Its revolutionary message to mothers was that "you know more than you think you do.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

An American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States, and he has become a human rights icon. He raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.

Earl Warren

14th Chief Justice of the United States and the only person elected Governor of California three times. Before holding these positions, he served as a district attorney for Alameda County, California and Attorney General of California.

Beats

A term used to describe a group of American writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, and the cultural phenomena that they wrote about and inspired. Central elements of this culture include a rejection of mainstream values, experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality, and an interest in Eastern spirituality.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

A voting rights bill, was the first civil rights legislation enacted by Congress in the United States since Reconstruction. After it was proposed to Congress by then-President Dwight Eisenhower, Senator James Strom Thurmond sustained the longest one-person filibuster in history in an attempt to keep it from becoming law.

Civil Rights Act of 1960

A United States federal law that established federal inspection of local voter registration polls and introduced penalties for anyone who obstructed someone's attempt to register to vote or actually vote.

Domino Theory

A foreign policy theory during the 1950s to 1980s, promoted at times by the government of the United States, that speculated that if one land in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect.

Eisenhower Doctrine

A country could request American economic assistance and/or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state. Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of U.S. forces "to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.

Rosa Parks

An African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress later called the "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement."On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.

Sputnik

The first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, and was the first in a series of satellites collectively known as the Sputnik program. The unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1's success precipitated the Sputnik crisis in the United States and ignited the Space Race within the Cold War.

Allen Ginsberg

An American poet best known for the poem "Howl" (1956), in which he celebrates fellow members of the Beat Generation and critiques what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States.

Jack Kerouac

An American novelist and poet. Alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, he is considered a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Held as an important writer both for his spontaneous style and for his content which consistently dealt with such topics as jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel.

Orval E. Faubus

The 36th Governor of Arkansas, serving from 1955 to 1967. He is best known for his 1957 stand against the desegregation of Little Rock public schools during the Little Rock Crisis, in which he defied a unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court by ordering the Arkansas National Guard to stop African American students from attending Little Rock Central High School.

Southern Manifesto

A document written in February-March 1956 by legislators in the United States Congress opposed to racial integration in public places.

John Foster Dulles

U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world. He also played a major role in the Central Intelligence Agency operation to overthrow the democratic Mossadegh government of Iran in 1953 (Operation Ajax) and the democratic Arbenz government of Guatemala in 1954 (Operation PBSUCCESS).

Interstate Highway Act

A network of limited-access highways (also called freeways or expressways) in the United States that is named for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who championed its formation. The entire system, as of 2006, has a total length of 46,876 miles, making it both the largest highway system in the world and the largest public works project in history.