Walter Reuther: Address before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Glossary

• ghettoes districts or sections of a city occupied almost exclusively by members of a particular ethnic group—usually as a result of laws preventing them from living among the general population; a term often associated with poor areas
• H-bomb the so-called hydrogen bomb, first successfully tested in 1952, which was considerably more lethal than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945
• man’s … inhumanity to man a phrase coined by the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785 and widely used in the 1950s and 1960s
• Negro at the time, the most common and “politically correct” term for African Americans
• totalitarianism a political system characterized by total government control over every aspect of life and society
• We’re not clearing the slums … a reference to urban renewal, a controversial program involving reclamation of allegedly blighted urban neighborhoods by replacement of old buildings and environments with new ones