Transcript File

James L. Roark ● Michael P. Johnson
Patricia Cline Cohen ● Sarah Stage
Susan M. Hartmann
The American Promise
A History of the United States
Fifth Edition
CHAPTER 27
The Politics and Culture of
Abundance,
1952-1960
Copyright © 2012 by Bedford/St. Martin's
I. Eisenhower and the Politics of the “Middle Way”
A. Modern Republicanism
1. A new way
•
contrast to the Old Guard conservatives in his party who wanted to repeal
much of the New Deal and preferred a unilateral approach to foreign
policy, Eisenhower preached “modern Republicanism”; meant resisting
additional federal intervention but not turning the clock back to the
1920s; overall maintained the course charted by both Roosevelt and
Truman.
•
•
•
2. Decline of McCarthyism
—Eisenhower attempted to distance himself from the anti-Communist
fervor that plagued the Truman administration; but he refused to
denounce Senator McCarthy, who finally destroyed himself by going after
the U.S. Army.
3. Expanding the welfare state
4. The interstate highway
Eisenhower’s greatest domestic initiative was the Interstate Highway and
Defense System Act of 1956; facilitated the expansion of people and
goods across the country; also brought unforeseen costs of air pollution,
energy consumption, and urban decay.
5. Restraining federal activity
Eisenhower cut taxes to benefit business and the wealthy; he also resisted
a larger federal role in health care, education, and civil rights.
I. Eisenhower and the Politics of the “Middle Way”
B. Termination and Relocation of Native Americans
1. A new Indian policy
•
reversed the emphasis on strengthening the tribal governments and preserving Indian culture established by
the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.
2. Toward assimilation
3. Compensation
•
1960, the government had implemented a three-part program of compensation, termination, and relocation; in
1946, Congress established a commission to discharge, once and for all, any claims by Indians for lands taken
from them by the government; by 1978, it had settled 285 cases with compensation exceeding $800 million.
4. Termination
•
1953, Eisenhower signed bills transferring jurisdiction over tribal lands in several states to state and local
governments; the loss of federal hospitals, schools, and other special arrangements devastated Indian tribes.
5. Relocation
•
—Indian Relocation Program began in 1848 and involved more than 100,000 Native Americans; government
encouraged Indians to move to cities, providing one-way bus tickets and relocation centers to help with
housing, job training, and medical care; about one-third of the Indians who were relocated eventually went
back to the reservation; those who stayed faced great difficulties, such as racism, lack of adequately paying
jobs for which they had skills, poor housing in what became Indian ghettos, and above all, the loss of their
traditional culture.
C. The 1956 Election and the Second Term
1. The Democrats in Congress
•
defeated Adlai Stevenson in the election of 1956; Democrats, however, won significant gains in the midterm
election of 1958.
2. Challenges
•
Eisenhower faced more serious leadership challenges in his second term, including a major recession; did
agree on symbolic civil rights legislation and extending the federal government’s role in education.
3. Eisenhower’s legacy
•
the first Republican administration after the New Deal left the size and functions of the federal government
intact, though it tipped policy somewhat more in favor of corporate interests.
II. Liberation Rhetoric and the
Practice of Containment
A. The “New Look” in Foreign Policy
1. Defense strategy
• To meet his goals of balancing the federal budget and cutting
taxes, Eisenhower was determined to control military expenditures
• feared massive defense spending would hurt the economy
• Eisenhower’s defense strategy concentrated military strength in
nuclear weapons along with the planes and missiles needed to
deliver them; instead of spending huge amounts for large ground
forces of its own, the United States gave friendly nations American
weapons and backed them up with a nuclear arsenal.
2. Mutually assured destruction
• Nuclear weapons could not stop a Soviet nuclear attack, but in
response to one, they could inflict enormous destruction on the
USSR; this nuclear standoff became known as mutual assured
destruction, or MAD.
3. The problem of nuclear war
• when Hungarian freedom fighters revolted against the Sovietcontrolled government, the United States did not offer support.
II. Liberation Rhetoric and the Practice of Containment
B. Applying Containment to Vietnam
1. Vietnamese independence
•
major challenge to the containment policy came in Southeast Asia; in 1945, a nationalist
coalition called the Vietminh, led by Ho Chi Minh, proclaimed Vietnam’s independence
from France; America supported France; self-determination took a backseat to
anticommunism.
2. Domino theory
•
Eisenhower viewed communism in Vietnam much as Truman had regarded it in Greece
and Turkey, an outlook known as the “domino theory”; the United States was
contributing 75 percent of the cost of France’s war, but Eisenhower resisted a larger role;
refused to send American ground troops to aid the French.
•
Vietminh defeated French forces at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954; two months later, France
signed a truce; the Geneva Accords temporarily divided Vietnam at the seventeenth
parallel, separating the Vietminh in the north from the puppet government established by
the French in the south; the Vietnamese were to vote in elections to unify the
government within two years.
•
•
3. The Geneva Accords
4. U.S. involvement in southeast Asia
officials warned against U.S. involvement in Vietnam; nonetheless, Eisenhower and
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles moved to join the Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization (SEATO) to defend Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam; between 1955 and
1961, the United States provided $800 million to the South Vietnamese army.
5. Guerrilla warfare and insurgency
Army of the Republic of Vietnam was grossly unprepared for the guerrilla warfare that
began in the late 1950s; unwilling to abandon containment, Eisenhower handed over the
deteriorating situation—along with a firm commitment to defend South Vietnam against
communism—to his successor.
II. Liberation Rhetoric and the Practice of Containment
C. Interventions in Latin America and the Middle East
1. Toppling unfriendly governments
•
While supporting friendly governments in Asia, the Eisenhower administration, through the
increasingly important foreign policy work of the CIA, also worked to topple unfriendly ones in Latin
America and the Middle East.
•
Guatemalan government was not Communist or Soviet controlled but accepted support from the local
Communist Party; in 1953, the reformist president Jacobo Arbenz sought to nationalize land owned
but not used by a U.S. corporation, the United Fruit Company; Eisenhower authorized the CIA to carry
out covert operations destabilizing Guatemala’s economy and assisting in a coup that ultimately led to
decades of destructive civil wars.
•
United States tried to pursue a similar policy in Cuba, working against rebel Fidel Castro, who in 1959
drove out the U.S.-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista.
•
Middle East, as in Guatemala, the CIA intervened to support an unpopular dictatorship and maintain
Western access to Iranian oil; Eisenhower authorized CIA agents to instigate a coup against the
nationalist head of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, by bribing army officials and paying Iranians to
demonstrate against the government; poisoned U.S.-Iranian relations into the twenty-first century.
•
Eisenhower administration shifted from Truman’s all-out support for Israel to fostering friendships with
Arab nations; in 1955, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles began talks with Egypt about American
support to build the Aswan Dam on the Nile River; but in 1956, Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser,
sought arms from Communist Czechoslovakia, which had formed a military alliance with other Arab
nations, recognizing the People’s Republic of China.
•
Unwilling to tolerate such independence, Dulles called off the deal for the dam; Nasser responded by
seizing the Suez Canal, then owned by the British; Israel responded by attacking Egypt with the help
of France and Britain; Eisenhower opposed the intervention; recognized that the Egyptians had
claimed their own territory; despite staying out of the Suez crisis, Eisenhower made it clear that the
United States would actively combat communism in the Middle East, invoking the “Eisenhower
Doctrine.”
2. Guatemala
3. Cuba
4. Iran
5. Israel and Egypt
6. The Suez Crisis and the Eisenhower Doctrine
II. Liberation Rhetoric and the Practice of Containment
D. The Nuclear Arms Race
1. Nikita Khrushchev
•
Khrushchev, Stalin’s more moderate successor, met in Geneva in 1955 at the first
summit conference since the end of World War II; the summit produced no new
agreements.
•
•
•
•
2. Missiles and satellites
August 1957, the Soviets test-fired their first intercontinental ballistic missile; two
months later, they beat the United States into space by launching Sputnik, the first
artificial satellite to circle the earth; Eisenhower tried to diminish public panic by
creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and signing the
National Defense Education Act, providing assistance for students in math, foreign
languages, and science.
3. Stockpiling nuclear weapons
stockpile of nuclear weapons in the United States more than quadrupled during
Eisenhower’s presidency; but American nuclear superiority did not guarantee
security because the Soviet Union possessed sufficient nuclear weapons to
devastate the United States.
4. The U-2 incident
1960, the two sides were within reach of a ban on nuclear testing; to avoid
jeopardizing the summit, Eisenhower cancelled espionage flights over the Soviet
Union; but his order came one day too late, as a Soviet missile shot down a U-2
spy plane over Soviet territory, dashing prospects for a nuclear arms agreement.
5. The military-industrial complex
As he left office, Eisenhower warned about the growing influence of the “military
industrial complex” in American government and life.
III. New Work and Living Patterns in an Economy of
Abundance
A. Technology Transforms Agriculture and Industry
1. Agribusiness
• 1940 and 1960, the output of American farms greatly increased, while the number
of farmworkers declined by nearly one-third; farmers achieved nearly miraculous
productivity through greater crop specialization, more intensive use of fertilizers,
and, above all, mechanization.
•
•
•
•
•
•
2. The persistence of poverty
Family farms declined and agribusinesses grew; many of the small farmers who
hung on constituted a core of rural poverty often overlooked in the celebration of
1950s affluence; southern landowners replaced sharecroppers with machines; as a
result, thousands of African Americans moved to cities and faced urban poverty.
3. Industrial production
New technology, cheap oil, ample markets abroad, and little foreign competition
also increased industrial production.
4. Labor successes and a private welfare state
Unions enjoyed their greatest success during the 1950s
real earnings for production workers rose 40 percent
success of unions created a private welfare state; the private welfare state meant
that workers who were not represented by unions were severely disadvantaged and
did not enjoy many of the benefits and programs guaranteed to union members
percentage of unionized workers began to decline as the economy shifted in the
1950s from production to service, as most service industries resisted unionization.
5. Women in the workforce
III. New Work and Living Patterns in an Economy of
Abundance
B. Burgeoning Suburbs and Declining Cities
1. The expansion of the suburbs
•
Although suburbs had existed since the nineteenth century, nothing
symbolized the affluent society more than the tremendous expansion of
suburbs during the 1950s; by 1960, one in four Americans lived in the
suburbs.
•
•
•
2. Government subsidies
government subsidized home ownership with low-interest mortgage
guarantees through the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans
Administration and by making interest on mortgages tax deductible;
federal interstate highways indirectly subsidized development.
3. Criticism of suburbia
—By the 1960s, suburbs came under attack for bulldozing the natural
environment, creating groundwater contamination, disrupting wildlife
patterns, and further adding to the polarization of society, especially along
racial lines: whites in Levittown were not allowed to sell houses to
nonwhites.
4. Urban migrants
—As white residents joined the suburban migration, blacks moved to cities
in search of economic opportunity, increasing their numbers in most cities
by 50 percent during the 1950s; but migrants arrived in cities already in
decline.
III. New Work and Living Patterns in an Economy of
Abundance
C. The Rise of the Sun Belt
1. Moving west
2. The defense industry
•
the defense industry to the South and West that those regions later were referred to as
the “Gun Belt”; by the 1960s, nearly one in three California workers had a defenserelated job.
3. Environmental threat
•
providing water to cities and agribusinesses necessitated building dams and reservoirs on
previously free-flowing rivers; lack of public transit contributed to air pollution.
•
permanent Mexican immigration was not as welcome as Mexicans’ low-wage labor; more
than three million Mexicans were deported during “Operation Wetback.”
•
Mexican American citizens gained a small victory in their ongoing struggle for civil rights
in Hernandez v. Texas (1954); the Supreme Court ruled that the systematic exclusion of
Hispanics from juries violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.
4. Mexican labor
5. Mexican American struggle for civil rights
D. The Democratization of Higher Education
1. More students
•
Between 1940 and 1960, college enrollment in the United States more than doubled;
more than 40 percent of young Americans attended college by the mid-1960s; more
families could afford to keep their children in school longer, and tax dollars spent on
higher education more than doubled from 1950 to 1960.
•
African American college enrollment surged from 37,000 in 1941 to 90,000 in 1961; still
constituted only 5 percent of all college students; educational gap between white men
and white women grew; in 1940, women had earned 40 percent of undergraduate
degrees; down to 25 percent in 1950 and only 33 percent in 1960.
2. Unequal gains
IV. The Culture of Abundance
A. Consumption Rules the Day
1. Consumer values
•
consumption became a reigning value, vital for economic prosperity and essential to
individuals’ identity and status; encouraged satisfaction and happiness through the
purchase and use of new products; by 1960, four out of every five families owned a
television and nearly all had a refrigerator.
•
2. Creating abundance
3. Women and consumerism
increased due to the need to support themselves and their families, but also because of
the desire to secure some of the new consumer products.
B. The Revival of Domesticity and Religion
1. Celebrating family life
•
the dominant ideology celebrated traditional family life and gender roles; emphasis on
home and family life reflected anxieties about the Cold War and nuclear menace.
2. The Feminine Mystique
•
feminist Betty Friedan gave a name to the idealization of women’s domestic roles in her
1963 book The Feminine Mystique; criticized scholars, advertisers, and public officials for
prescribing gender roles based on the assumption of biological differences.
•
the glorification of domesticity clashed with married women’s increasing participation in
the labor force, most Americans did embody the family ideal; prosperity led to more
children, producing the baby boom generation.
•
3. The family ideal
4. Religious crusades
1950s witnessed a surge of interest in religion; offered reassurance and peace of mind in
the nuclear age; ministers such as Billy Graham turned the Cold War into a holy war,
labeling communism “a great sinister anti-Christian movement masterminded by Satan”;
critics, however, questioned the depth of the religious revival.
IV. The Culture of Abundance
C. Television Transforms Culture and Politics
1. Escape and conformity
• television offered Americans a welcome respite from Cold War
anxieties
• audiences watched comedies like I Love Lucy that projected the
family ideal and the feminine mystique into millions of homes.
2. Political influence
• Television began to affect politics in the 1950s
• viewers tuned in to debates, and candidates were forced to spend
huge sums of money for TV spots
• put a premium on personal appearance.
3. Private enterprise
• Unlike government-financed television in Europe, American TV was
paid for by private enterprise
• made television the major vehicle for hawking the products of the
affluent society and creating a consumer culture
• advertisers in the mid-1950s spent $10 billion to push their
products.
IV. The Culture of Abundance
D. Countercurrents
1. Criticizing conformity
•
Pockets of dissent underlay the complacency of the 1950s; some
intellectuals took exception to the politics of consensus and to the
materialism and conformity celebrated in popular culture.
•
•
•
•
2. Questioning masculinity
consumption itself was associated with women; Playboy began publication
in 1953 and demonstrated that consumption, traditionally associated with
women, could also be masculine.
3. Deviating sexuality
Alfred Kinsey’s studies on sexual behavior showed that men’s and
women’s sexual conduct frequently departed from the family ideal of the
postwar era; illuminated the prevalence of sex before marriage, adultery,
and homosexuality.
4. Changing music
Fewer direct challenges to mainstream standards, such as rock-and-roll
music, appeared in the everyday behavior of large numbers of Americans,
especially youth.
5. The Beat generation
—Most blatant revolt against cultural conventionality came from the selfproclaimed Beat generation, a small group of literary figures based in New
York City’s Greenwich Village and in San Francisco.
6. Defying artistic traditions
V. The Emergence of a Civil Rights Movement
A. African Americans Challenge the Supreme Court and the President
1. The causes of black protest
•
migration from the South to areas where they could vote and exert political pressure,
Cold War concerns raised by white leaders, and an organizational structure for blacks in
the segregated South all spurred black protest in the 1950s.
2. The Brown decision
•
legal strategy of the NAACP reached its crowning achievement with the Supreme Court
decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954; unanimous Supreme Court declared
that separate education was inherently unequal and violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
•
responsibility for enforcement of the decision lay with Eisenhower; he refused to endorse
Brown, choosing instead to keep his distance from civil rights issues; inaction fortified
southern resistance to school desegregation and contributed to the gravest constitutional
crisis since the Civil War.
•
•
•
•
3. Limited federal intervention
4. The Little Rock Nine
crisis came in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957
the state’s governor, Orval Faubus, ordered National Guard troops to block the
enrollment of nine black students at Central High School
Eisenhower was forced to send regular army troops to enforce desegregation at Little
Rock; the first federal military intervention in the South since Reconstruction.
5. Modest gains
Eisenhower ordered the integration of public facilities in Washington, D.C., and on
military bases, and he supported the first federal civil rights legislation since
Reconstruction; but the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 were little more than
symbolic.
Brown vs Board
• Brown v. Board of Education was filed against the Topeka, Kansas
school board by representative-plaintiff Oliver Brown, parent of one
of the children denied access to Topeka's white schools. Brown
claimed that Topeka's racial segregation violated the Constitution's
Equal Protection Clause because the city's black and white schools
were not equal to each other and never could be
• Thanks to the astute leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the
Court spoke in a unanimous decision written by Warren himself.
The decision held that racial segregation of children in public
schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment, which states that "no state shall make or enforce any
law which shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws."
V. The Emergence of a Civil Rights Movement
B. Montgomery and Mass Protest
1. The modern civil rights movement
•
•
•
•
•
masses of people involved, their willingness to confront white institutions
directly, and the use of nonviolence and passive resistance to bring about
change.
2. Rosa Parks
first sustained protest to claim national attention began in Montgomery,
Alabama, on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks violated a local
segregation ordinance, triggering a city-wide boycott of buses; Parks had
long been active in the local NAACP, led by E.D. Nixon; the Women’s
Political Council, headed by Jo Ann Robinson, had also discussed a
potential bus boycott; such local individuals and organizations laid critical
foundations for the black freedom struggle throughout the South.
3. Montgomery bus boycott
Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) organized a bus boycott,
which began on December 5 and lasted for 381 days until the Supreme
Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional
leading the MIA was Martin Luther King Jr., a pastor at the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church
Montgomery’s blacks summoned their courage and determination in
abundance, demonstrating that blacks could sustain a lengthy protest and
would not be intimidated.
4. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• January 1957, black clergy from across the
South met to coordinate local protests against
segregation and disenfranchisement; founded
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
5. An incomplete story
• ministers obscured the substantial contributions
of black women like Ella Baker and Jo Ann
Robinson; King’s prominence and the media’s
focus on the South also hid the national scope
of racial injustice.