Transcript Chapter 37 Eisenhower Era

Chapter 37
Eisenhower Era
1953-1961
Victory… Now What?
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Post-War Anxieties
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Would the Great Depression return?
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GNP fell
Prices rose 33%
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4.6 million workers went on strike
● Taft-Hawley Act made unions weaker (against
Truman’s wishes)
Veterans returning from war
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Readjustment Act of 1944 or GI Bill
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Sought to reintegrate 15 million veterans back into
society
● 1 year of unemployment benefits
● Financial Aid to go to college
● Veterans Administration provides $15 billion
in cheap loans to build houses
Economic Boom: 1950-1970
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America’s Golden Age
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Income shot up
6% of world’s population and
40% of world’s wealth
40 million new jobs in the
1950’s
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Shift from blue collar to white
collar jobs
Middle Class expanded
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Cars
TV’s: 90% had a TV by the end of
the decade
Women entered the workforce
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Service industry
“Pink Collar Ghetto”
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Cheap oil fed the boom
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90% of American children are in
school
Farm productivity skyrockets
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Europeans controlled the oil of
the Middle East
Only 2% of the nation are farmers
Permanent War Economy
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Aerospace, plastics, and
electronics
High tech innovations result from
military spending
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Passenger jets & Computers
Baby Boom: 1946-1964
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Millions of men had been gone for almost 4 years!!!
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Make up for lost time
Baby Boom: population explosion from 1946-1964
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78,000,000 Americans today are Baby Boomers
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26% of the population!!!!
Huge boost to the economy
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Imagine how much these extra people will absorb in
food, in clothing, in gadgets, in housing, in services.
Culture of the 1950’s: Consumerism
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Consumerism: buying as much as one could even
using credit to do so
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No more: “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
Americans spent money on lots of things
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New Conveniences
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Shopping malls began to sprout up
Americans also bought TV’s….
Fast Food
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Refrigerators, washers and dryers, and ovens
McDonalds
Disneyland
Impact of the Automobile
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By 1960 there are 60 million cars in
America
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Families are starting to have two cars per
family
Car Culture
# of Cars in 1945
26,000,000
# of Cars in 1960
60,000,000
1950’s Culture
Migrating to the Sunbelt
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Sunbelt States: states in the south and west
● During the 1950’s Americans began to flock to these states
● Reasons:
● Air Conditioning
● Lots of Jobs in South
● Oil, Space, and Defense Industries
● American economy is rolling… Americans made up just 6% of
the global population but produced 50 % of the world’s
products!!!! (rest of the world trying to rebuild)
● Major shift in political power
1950’s Celebrities
Presidency of
Highlights of Eisenhower’s Presidency
● Korean War was brought to an end
● Threatened atomic warfare
● International Highway System
● Advocated a middle way approach to
governing
● New Deal programs were kept and
strengthened
● Foreign Policy
Pitfalls of Eisenhower’s Presidency
● Never used his popularity to really get
anything done
● Social harmony trumped social change
(civil rights)
● Never took a strong stance against
McCarthyism
● Operation Wetback
● 1 million Illegal immigrants were sent
back to Mexico
● JFK beat Nixon when Ike stepped down
Interstate Highway System
Interstate Highway Act of 1956: 41,000 miles of highway built
Connect major American cities…
● Impact:
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Lots and Lots of jobs…
● Easier to vacation… Road trips…
● Disneyworld…
● Makes suburbs practical
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Cold War Paranoia and the 2nd
Red Scare
Truman "Loyalty" Program (1947)
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Gov't officials investigated
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Loyalty oaths required of gov't employees
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11 Communists thrown in prison for advocating the
overthrow of the US gov't
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1951)
● Convicted to giving atomic secrets to the Soviets
● Convicted of Treason and Executed!!!
● Guilt not proved until the 1990’s-Ethel probably not
guilty
HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) went after Hollywood
writers and directors who were suspected of being Communists
● Richard Nixon led the investigations
● Hollywood Ten: refused to answer questions (5th Amendment)
● School libraries were searched for un-American books
McCarthyism
● Wisconsin’s best claimed to have a list of Communists in the gov’t
● Went after people he suspected of being Communist
Major infringement on free speech
● Even went after General Marshall (also former Secretary of
State)
● Made America even more paranoid
● Ike let him have free reign
● Eventually goes after the military and gets burned
-June 1949What is the
Washington Post
cartoonist
portraying in his
drawing?
Civil Rights Movement Begins...
● Jim Crow Laws
● Segregation
● Voter Suppression
● Only 20% of African-Americans voted
● Intimidation
● Emmett Till was lynched for gazing at a white woman
(1955)
● Progress/Victories in the Civil Rights Movement
● Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in MLB (1947)
● Truman desegregated the the military (1948)
● Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954)segregated schools were not constitutional
● Overturned segregation (Plessy v. Ferguson (1896))
● Little Rock 9-Little Rock Central High School (1957)
● Ike called in troops to make sure they were
allowed to enter
● Rosa Parks and Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
● MLK
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Ike’s Foreign Policy
Sought to rollback Soviet gains and not contain them
Decreased military spending and relied on (cheaper) atomic
bombs
● Soviet crushing of the Hungarian uprising showed the
weakness of Eisenhower’s policy of Massive Retaliation
Eisenhower got America involved in Vietnam by supporting South
Vietnam after the French were overthrown
Suez Crisis (1956)
● US and USSR forced the French and British to withdraw
troops from Egypt. They wanted to control the Suez and
remove President Nassar from office. Signified end of GB as
a world power.
Eisenhower Doctrine
● Pledged American aid to Middle Eastern nations threatened
by Communism
Space Race Began
● Sputnik (1957)-first artificial Earth satellite-triggers Space
Race
● ICBM fears
● Ike created NASA (1957)
Cuba became Communist under Fidel Castro
U2 Incident (1960)-Pilot (spy) Francis Gary Powers shot down in
Soviet airspace. Very embarrassing to the US.
Farewell to Ike