U.S.

Culture Terms
The Civil War: also called War Between the States, it is the four-year war (1861–65)
between the United States and 11 Southern states that drop out of the Union and
formed the Confederate States of America.

Abraham Lincoln: was an American lawyer who served as the 16th president of the
United States. He led the nation through the American Civil War and succeeded in
preserving the Union, abolishing slavery, strengthen the federal government and
modernizing the U.S. economy.

The Emancipation Proclamation: an edict issued by U.S. president Abraham

Lincoln on January 1, 1863, that freed the slaves of the Confederate states in rebellion
against the Union.

The Roaring Twenties: refers to the decade of the 1920s in Western society and
culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in the
United States and Europe.

Prohibition: was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation,

transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933.

Flappers: were a subculture of young Western women in the 1920s, they were seen
as brash for wearing excessive makeup; drinking alcohol… they are icons of
the Roaring Twenties and were reckless and unintelligent.

The Great Depression: was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place
mostly during the 1930s, beginning in the United States after a major fall in stock
prices and it had devastating effects such as the failing of the international trade by
more than 50%.

The new deal: was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms,
and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939.
New Deal programs provide Support for farmers, the unemployed, youth and the
elderly, also new constraints on the banking industry were included.

The Declaration of Sentiments: a document, outlining the rights that American

women should be entitled to as citizens, it emerged from the Seneca Falls Convention
in New York in July 1848.

The American dream: is a national belief of the United States, the set of ideals in
which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, it is rooted in
the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims that all men are created equal.
The American Revolution: was an ideological and political revolution that occurred
in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen
Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American
Revolutionary War.

The Declaration of Independence: is the decree adopted by the Second

Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. it explains why the Thirteen Colonies at war
with the Kingdom of Great Britain and regarded themselves as thirteen
independent states.

The Reconstruction era: was a period in American history following the Civil War,
during which the black people became equal to those of white.

Jim Crow Laws: were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in
the Southern United States.

Amendment: is a formal change made to a law. Amendments can add, remove, or

update parts of these laws; they are often used when it is better to change the
document than to write a new one.

Martin Luther King: was an activist who became the most visible spokesman and
leader in the American civil rights movement , he advanced civil rights through
nonviolence and civil disobedience and he gave his famous speech ‘ I have a dream ‘
which was about equality and freedom.

The Chicano Movement: was a social and political movement in the United States
inspired by prior acts of resistance among people of Mexican descent.

Monroe doctrine: was a United States foreign policy position that opposed
European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It held that any intervention in
the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act
against the U.S.

Cold war : was a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and
the Soviet Union and their respective allies which began following World War II.

Continental Congress: is the body of delegates who spoke and acted collectively for
the people of the colony-states that later became the United States of America.