A-62 ★ GLOSSARY
Englanders and the dispossession of the
region’s Indians.
Knights of Labor Founded in 1869, the
first national union; lasted, under the
leadership of Terence V. Powderly, only
into the 1890s; supplanted by the Ameri-
can Federation of Labor.
Know- Nothing Party Nativist, anti-
Catholic third party organized in 1854 in
reaction to large- scale German and Irish
immigration; the party’s only presidential
candidate was Millard Fillmore in 1856.
Korean War Conflict touched off in
1950 when Communist North Korea
invaded South Korea; fighting, largely
by U.S. forces, continued until 1953.
Korematsu v. United States 1944
Supreme Court case that found Execu-
tive Order 9066 to be constitutional. Fred
Korematsu, an American- born citizen of
Japanese descent, defied the military order
that banned all persons of Japanese ances-
try from designated western coastal areas.
The Court upheld Korematsu’s arrest and
internment.
Ku Klux Klan Group organized in
Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to terrorize
former slaves who voted and held political
offices during Reconstruction; a revived
organization in the 1910s and 1920s that
stressed white, Anglo- Saxon, fundamen-
talist Protestant supremacy; revived a
third time to fight the civil rights move-
ment of the 1950s and 1960s in the South.
Kyoto Protocol A 1997 international
agreement that sought to combat global
warming. To great controversy, the Bush
administration announced in 2001 that
it would not abide by the Kyoto Protocol.
Las Casas, Bartolomé de A Catholic mis-
sionary who renounced the Spanish prac-
tice of coercively converting Indians and
advocated their better treatment. In 1552,
he wrote A Brief Relation of the Destruction
of the Indies, which described the Spanish’s
cruel treatment of the Indians.systematically murdering members of
ethnic and religious minorities.
isolationism The desire to avoid for-
eign entanglements that dominated
the U.S. Congress in the 1930s; begin-
ning in 1935, lawmakers passed a series
of Neutrality Acts that banned travel on
belligerents’ ships and the sale of arms to
countries at war.
Japanese- American internment Policy
adopted by the Roosevelt administration
in 1942 under which 110,000 persons of
Japanese descent, most of them Ameri-
can citizens, were removed from the West
Coast and forced to spend most of World
War II in internment camps; it was the
largest violation of American civil liber-
ties in the twentieth century.
Jay’s Treaty Treaty with Britain nego-
tiated in 1794 by Chief Justice John Jay;
Britain agreed to vacate forts in the North-
west Territories, and festering disagree-
ments (border with Canada, prewar debts,
shipping claims) would be settled by
commission.
Kansas Exodus A migration in 1879 and
1880 by some 40,000–60,000 blacks to
Kansas to escape the oppressive environ-
ment of the New South.
Kansas- Nebraska Act 1854 law spon-
sored by Illinois senator Stephen A. Doug-
las to allow settlers in newly organized
territories north of the Missouri border
to decide the slavery issue for themselves;
fury over the resulting repeal of the Mis-
souri Compromise of 1820 led to violence
in Kansas and to the formation of the
Republican Party.
“King Cotton diplomacy” An attempt
during the Civil War by the South to
encourage British intervention by ban-
ning cotton exports.
King Philip’s War A multiyear conflict
that began in 1675 with an Indian upris-
ing against white colonists. Its end result
was broadened freedoms for white New