Chapter 38 - The Eisenhower Era 1952-1960

 

Major Themes

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• The Eisenhower years were characterized by prosperity and moderate conservatism at home and by the tensions of the Cold War abroad
• While Eisenhower and the majority of Americans held to a cautious, family oriented perspective on domestic social questions, an emerging civil rights movement and the influence of television and popular music presented challenges to the spirit of national consensus

Major Questions

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• Was the decade of the 1950s a time of triumph, or a period of suppression and conformity?

It was both. While at home, some of the civil rights movements gained attention, and managed to succeed. Women moved into business even more, the African-Americans finally got some rights, and corruption in labor was squished (a triumph-ish kind of suppression). However, many other countries (Hungary, Vietnam, Korea) suffered suppression at the hands of their communist parties. On top of that, Senator McCarthy managed to get people to spy on their neighbors, and everyone was worried about saying the wrong thing. Everyone had to fit into a mold in order to avoid being named as a Communist.

• Was the nonviolent civil rights movement a success?

Yes. Rosa Parks started a chain reaction with her refusal to stand up on a bus, and a bus boycott was enacted. (If I'm remembering correctly, blacks did get equality on buses shortly thereafter). The sit-in strikes worked wonders, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led people to fight peacefully for equality. Segregation was ended, athe government got involved to defend the integration.

• What were the causes of the Vietnam War?

The French owned Vietnam, and nationalists there were trying to become self-governing. There had originally been a hope of help from the US, but the Cold War changed things. The Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, was becoming communist, and the US wouldn't help him fight off the French. Now, the US had to help the French win in order to contain communism. Guerrilla warfare led to the French losing, and the Communists taking over Vietnam.

Outline

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The Advent of Eisenhower

• Democratic hopes for re-election of 1952 was hurt by the Korean War and the firing of General MacArthur
  • chose Adlai E. Stevenson
• Republicans chose Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon (the commie hunter) for p. and v.p.
  • Ike was already popular, perfect candidate for the new age of TV politics, was a hero due to his being the supreme Allied commander in Europe during WWII and being the first supreme commander of NATO
  • left the tough campaigning to Nixon who attacked the Democrats, but faltered when reports of tapping a secret “slush fund” and somehow saved face w/ his “Checkers speech” on TV

• this demonstrated the soon to be political importance of looking good on TV

• Ike reluctantly used this new medium, giving “answers” to a nonexistent crowd, questions were dubbed in later
• TV threatened the role of the political parties since now the candidates could now appeal directly to the people instead of bargaining w/ other political bosses
• Ike won by a landslide (helped by a last-minute pledge to personally end the war in Korea), broke the solid South, and ensured GOP control of Congress

 

“Ike” Takes Command

• Ike kept his promise and flew to Korea in December 1952, but peace was not made until 7 months later (after threatening to use atomic weapons), armistice was repeatedly broken in future decades
• Korean War lasted three years
  • 54,000 Americans dead plus millions more Chinese and North and South Koreans
  • billions of dollars spent
  • same conditions as before the war; division of Korea at 38th parallel
  • at least communism “contained” and no full-scale global conflict
• Ike’s leadership style was to be above the fray and bickering of those around him, he projected an image of sincerity, fairness, and optimism
  • greatest asset was popularity
  • was like a grandpa to America, so he was well suited to soothing the people
  • critics say he should have done more to better social justice instead of social harmony

The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy

• On of the first problems facing Ike was the growing popularity of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, who became popular when in a February 1950 speech he accused the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, of knowingly employing 205 commies
  • when pressed for names, he said there were only 57 fo sho commies
  • couldn’t prove anyone was a commie
  • was encouraged and became more bold
  • not the most effective commie hunter, but the most ruthless
    • did the most damage to American traditions of fair play and free-speech
    • ruined the careers of countless officials, writers, and actors
    • high approval rating by the people
    • feared by political enemies
• Ike hated him, but tried to stay out of his ways
  • appeased McCarthy by giving him control of personnel policy at the State Department
• Last straw when he attacked the U.S. Army
  • Army fought back w/ 35 days of TV hearings
  • downhill from there, McCarthy died a 3 years later due to chronic alcoholism

Desegregating the South

• America held about 15 million blacks, 2/3rds still in the South
• Jim Crow laws still separated blacks from whites everyday, keeping them economically inferior and politically powerless
• Everyday facilities were segregated
  • schools, public bathrooms, drinking fountains, restaurants, waiting rooms, trains and buses had different sections for each
  • Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife, Coretta had to spend their honeymoon[1953] in a blacks-only funeral parlor b/c hotels in Alabama didn't serve blacks
• 20% of southern blacks were registered to vote (fewer than 5% in Deep South states like Mississippi and Alabama)
• Some television networks blotted out black speakers so as to not offend southern stations
• Violence enforced these Jim Crow Laws
  • 6 black veterans were lynched in the summer of 1946 after claiming to have served
  • 15 yr old Emmett Till was lynched by a Mississippi mob in 1955 for leering at a white woman
• Swedish scholar Gunnar Myrdal exposed America's belief in all men created equal as contradictory b/c of their treatment towards blacks in hi s 1944 book An American Dilemma
• Jack Roosevelt ("Jackie") Robinson broke the barrier in big-league baseball when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed him in 1947
• African-Americans didn't suffer silently
  • NAACP pushed for dismantling of segregation for years
  • 1944 the Supreme Court ruled the "white primary" unconstitutional, un-labeling the Southern Democratic Party as a white person's club
  • 1950 Thurgood Marshall [NAACP chief legal counsel, later a supreme court justice] in the case ofSweatt v. Painter , pushed that separate is most definitely NOT equal
• December 1955, Rosa Parks would not give up her seat for a white person and was arrested
  • this sparked a yearlong boycott of the city buses and was a symbol to the South that blacks would no longer be submissive
• This boycott pushed young pastor Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. to popularity
  • seemed an unlikely champion of the downtrodden and disfranchised
  • raised in a prosperous black family in Atalanta; educated party in the North; was pretty much sheltered his whole life from the horrors of segregation
• His speaking skills, his devotion to the biblical and constitutional conceptions of justice, his devotion to Gandhi's philosophies on nonviolence threw him to the forefront of the black revolution

Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution

• "My God! I had no idea it was as terrible as that."- Truman after hearing about the lynching of the black veterans
• He quickly responded by commissioning a report: "To Secure These Rights"
  • 1948 he followed his report by ending segregation in federal civil service and ordered "equality of treatment and opportunity" in the armed forces
  • the military protested at first, but due to shortage of men they were forced to comply
  • Congress was stubborn about passing civil rights legislation
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower showed no real interest in the racial issue
• Civil rights progress was made by former governor of California, Chief Justice Earl Warren
  • Shocked many traditionalists incl. the President by judicially intervening in taboo social issues
  • was privately scorned by pres. Eisenhower but Warren persisted to encourage the Court to apply his populist principles
  • many protested, as shown by signs on the side of highways, but Warren 's defenders said the Court was doing the right thing by addressing important social issues seeing as how Congress just turned their backs on the issue
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas May 1954
  • unanimous decision of the Warren Court that segregation in public schools was "inherently unequal" therefore unconstitutional
  • this reversed the decision made in 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" is acceptable
  • conservatives were REEEAAALLLYY angry
  • justices insisted that desegregation must go ahead with "all deliberate speed."
• Border states complied reasonably but the Deep South strongly protested
  • "massive resistance" was organized
  • > 100 southern congressional representatives and senators signed the "Declaration of Constitutional Principles" in 1956 [pledged unyielding resistance to desegregation]
  • several states created "private" school to defy the Supreme Court decision that said only in PUBLIC schools
• 10 yrs after the Court's decision, < 2% of eligible blacks in the Deep South were in classrooms with whites
• Southern translation of "all deliberate speed" was apparently deliberately slow

Crisis at Little Rock

• Eisenhower did little to promote integration
  • he shied away from employing his vast popularity and the prestige of his office to educate white Americans about the need for racial justice
  • he had grown up in an all-white town, served in a segregated army and had advised against integration of the armed forced in 1948 and had criticized Truman's call for a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission
  • he complained the Brown v. Board of Education upset "the customs and convictions of at least two generations of Americans"
  • he refused to endorse the Court's decision
• Eisenhower was forced to face the Court's decision when in Sept. 1957 Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, mobilized the National Guard to prevent 9 black students from enrolling in Little Rock's Central High School
  • Eisenhower sent troops to escort the children to their classes
• Also in 1957, Congress passed the 1st Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction days
  • the President reassured a southern senator that the legislation represented "the mildest civil rights bill possible"
  • the bill set up a permanent Civil Rights Commission to investigate violation of civil rights & authorized federal injunctions to protect voting rights
• Blacks took the Civil Rights movement and ran w/ it
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) 1957
  • was to get the Many black churches power behind black rights
  • this was a smart move seeing as how the churches were the largest & best-organized black institutions that had been allowed to develop in segregated societies
• Feb 1, 1960 4 black college freshmen in Greensboro, North Carolina spark a spontaneous "sit-in" movement that swept across the south
  • w/o a real plan, they demanded service at a whites-only Woolworth's lunch counter, they kept their seats and came back the next day w/ 19 students, and the next with 85, and by the end of the week: 1000.
  • this sparked a wave of sit-ins , wade-ins, lie-ins, and pray-ins to get equal treatment in restaurants, transportation, employment, housing, and voting registration
• April 1960 black students form the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick") to give more focus and force to these efforts for civil rights
• SNCC members would later lose patience with the more stately tactics of the SCLC and the even more deliberate legalisms of the NAACP

Eisenhower Republicanism at Home

• "Dynamic conservatism" was the pledged philosophy of General Eisenhower's administration as he entered the presidency in 1953
  • "In all those things which deal w/ people, be liberal, be human" / "people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative" -Eisenhower
• Eisenhower wanted to balance the fed. budget & protect the Republic form, "creeping socialism"
  • Eisenhower stopped Truman's huge military buildup
  • Supported the change of control of offshore oil fields from the fed. gov't to the states
  • Wanted to curb the TVA, encouraged privated power companies to build generating plants to compete w/ the huge public utility of the New Deal
  • Considered the free distribution of the Salk antipolio vaccine as "socialized medicine"
• Mexican immigration
  • Mex. gov't worried illegal immigration to the US would undercut the bracero program of legally importing farmworkers
  • 1954, Operation Wetback: roundup of illegal immigrants, about 1 million Mexicans were caught & sent back to Mexico
• Eisenhower wanted to cancel tribal preservation policies of the "Indian New Deal" (1934)
  • as legal entities, he wanted to "terminate" the tribes & go back to the assimilationist goals of the Dawes Severalty Act(1887)
    • this policy was abandoned in 1961
• Eisenhower knew that many New Deal programs were legitamate & were permanently woven into US society
  • Social Security, unemployment insurance, & labor & farm programs
• Eisenhower supported the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, $27 billion plan to build 42,000 miles of highway, creating many construction jobs & speeded up the suburbanization of the US
  • The Highway Act offered benefits to trucking, auto, oil, & travel industries
  • negative for RRs, air quality, energy consumption, & downtown city areas
• Eisenhowerr balanced the budget 3x during his two terms in office & in 1959, he incurred the biggest peacetime deficit in US history

A New Look in Foreign Policy

• in 1952 the republicans were starting to turn away from just containment of communism
• Secretary of state Dulles said they would start to liberate captured peoples and limit military spending
• To do this he proposed to make a fleet of superbombers fitted with nukes
• if the communists got out of line we would use this massive retaliation against them
• This policy costed less but was really quite useless as shown in 1956 when the Hungarians tried to rise up against the soviets
• America could not use the nuke in this minor crisis you could not justify killing so many for such a small occurence so this policy failed

The Vietnam Nightmare

• Europe was becoming more secure due to the Marshall plan and NATO however Asia was different
• Many asian nations were becoming increasingly nationalistic and wanted to get rid of the imperialist yolks
• Many of these nations leaders became commiunist
• America was paying for 80% of the the french colonial war with Ho Chi Minh
• The French were backed up in the fortress Dienbienphu and Eisenhower decided not to assist them with bombers
• The fortress fell to the nationalists and at a multination conference in Geneva Vietnam was split down the middle
• Ho Chi Mihn agreed to this so in exchange for all vietnam elections in 2 years, these elections did not happen
• Eisenhower agreed to give military and economic aid to the government in Saigon so long as that government made social reforms
• This was not a great idea- backed a loser

A False Lull in Europe

• In 1955 the Germans were accepted into NATO against Frances wishes
• Also in 1955 the eastern European countries and the soviets signed the warsaw pact
• Even with the growing alliances the Cold was seemed to be coming to a close
• Eisenhower was trying to make an arms control agreement and the soviets agreed to leave Austria
• However in 1956 the soviets violently halted a revolt from the hungarians showed this was just a momentary lull

Menaces in the Middle East

• There was major concern about the Soviets being so close to the oil supply in the Mid. East
  • Iran started to resist the US
  • The CIA (1953) helped place Mohammed Reza Pahlevi as a dictator there
    • This would come back to bite the US later
• There was also a crisis in Egypt
  • Prez. Nasser (of Egypt) was a nationalist who wanted $ to put a dam on the Nile for irrigation and power
  • America and Britain wanted to help but Nasser was "makin' friends" with the communists, so the deal was off
  • Nasser quickly nationalized the Suez Canal
  • The US tried very hard to avoid conflict, but Britain and France went in and attacked (1956)
  • The French and British thought that the US would supply oil to them, but it didn't
  • The UN intervened
  • The US oil supplies were severely diminished
  • Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran along with Venezuela, made OPEC to control oil

Round Two for Ike

• Although Eisenhower had suffered a heartattack and abdominal surgery, he was pretty much the same as the last election
• The election was once again between Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson
  • Eisenhower got 35,590,472 (popular) and 457 (electoral)
  • Stevenson got 26,022,752 (popular) and 73 (electoral)
• Eisenhower didn't have the majority in any part of Congress
• For the beginning of his term, Eisenhower relaxed a bit and then later on got back on the saddle
  • He started with labor legislation
  • 1959- There was a new labor-reform bill, which focused on strikes and scandals
    • The Teamster Group (a part of the AF of L and CIO combination) was especially full of corruption
      • Read the details in the book, people. Don't be lazy.
• The Landrum-Griffin Act: was supposed to hold labor leaders who were guilty of corrupt acts responsible for their actions, but also had parts to prohibit "secondary boycotts" and picketing

The Race with the Soviets into Space

• Soviet scientists launches Sputnik I, weighing 184 pounds, into orbit on Oct. 4, 1957
• A month later the launched another, larger satellite called Sputnik II into orbit
• This breakthrough shattered American self-confidence
• The Sputniks gave credit to the Soviets claim that the shortcut to superior industrial production lay through communism
• Military implications of the satellites proved sobering, if they could fire heavy objects into outer space they they could certainly reach America with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMBs).
• "Rocket fever" swept the nation and Eisenhower established NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and directed billions of dollars to missile development.
• There were humiliating and well-advertised failures like the Vanguard missle that blew up on national television in 1957 just a few feet above the ground.
• Finally in Feb. 1958 the US managed to put a satellite weighing 2.5 pounds into orbit.
• By the end of the decade several satellites had been launched and the US had successfully tested its own ICMBs.
• The Sputnik success led to a critical comparison of the American education system to that of the Soviet Union
• A strong move developed in the US to replace "frills" with solid subjects.

The Continuing Cold War

• The nuclear race continued unabated
  • Scientists urged that nuclear tests be stopped before the atmosphere was so polluted that the future generations would be mutated
  • The Soviets proclaimed a suspension in testing in March 1958 after a series of intense trials
  • Washington followed in October 1958
• Thermo nuclear suicide seemed nearer in July 1958 when Egyptian and communist plottings threatened to engulf Lebanon
  • The US supplied Lebanon troops and restored order
• Khrushchev was eager to meet with Eisenhower for a conference
  • Arrived in NY in 1959 after US invitation
  • Khrushchev appeared before the UN and resurrected the proposal of complete disarmament
    • Without providing the means needed to achieve this
  • A meeting at Camp David ensued where Khrushchev extended his ultimatum concerning Berlin indefinitely
• Before the “summit conference” in Paris (May 1960) both Moscow and Washington publicly took a firm stand on the Berlin issue
  • On the eve of the conference an American plane was shot down over Russian soil
  • This caused the conference to collapse before it started

Cuba’s Castroism Spells Communism

• Latin Americans resented the United States' lavishing of billions of dollars on Europe while doling out only millions to the poor relations to the South.
• They also disliked Washington continuly intervening in Latin American affairs.
• On the other hand Washington continued to support dictators who claimed to be combating communism.
• Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had encouraged huge investments of American capital and Washington in turn had given him some support.
• When Fidel Castro engineered a revolution early in 1959, he denounced the Yankee imperialists and began to expropriate valuable American properties in pursuing a land-distribution program.
• The U.S. finally lost patiance and released Cuba from "imperialistic slavery" by cutting off the heavy U.S. imports of Cuban sugar.
• Castro retaliated with more whole-sale confiscations of Yankee property and made his left-wing dictatorship an economic and military satellite of Moscow.
• An exodus of Cubans headed for the U.S. and Washington broke diplomatic relations with Cuba early in 1961
• Americans talked seriously of invoking the Monroe Doctrine before the Soviets set up a communist base only 90 miles from their shores.
• Khrushchev proclaimed that the Monroe Doctrine was dead and indicated that he would shower missles upon the US if it attacked his good friend Castro.
• At San Jose, Costa Rica in Aug. 1960 the U.S. induced the Organzation of American States to condemn communist infilitration into the Americas.
• President Eisenhower hastily proposed a long-deferred "Marshall Plan" for Latin America. Congress responded to his recommendation with an initial authorization of $500 million.

Kennedy Challenges Nixon for the Presidency

• The VP Nixon was the Republican choice for the nomination
• Nixon had changed drastically from his old self
  • Old: No-holds-barred campaigner, ruthless
  • New: Mature statesman
  • Defended American democracy globally
  • Nominated unanimously
• In contrast the Democrats had a free-for-all battle for the nomination
  • John F. Kennedy- tall, youthful, millionaire senator
    • Won impressive victories in the primaries
  • Lyndon B. Johnson- southerly supported, leader of Texas
    • The South was angered when he took second for the nomination
  • JFK got the nomination

The Presidential Issues of 1960

• Senator Kennedy=Roman Catholic (the 1st since Al Smith's failed campaign in 1928)
  • Old charges about the Pope controlling the White House were revived
    • Kennedy used his 14year service in Congress as back-up & said he wouldn't be swayed by Rome
  • The Protestant South felt threatened by Kennedy's religion
  • The religion factor eventually canceled itself out
    • southern Democrats=against Kennedy
    • northern Democrats=for Kennedy
• Kennedy vs Nixon:
  • Kennedy charged that the Soviets were gaining on the US in power & prestige
  • Nixon had to defend the old administration, saying the US's prestige & power wasn't slipping, but Kennedy was causing it to w/ his unpatriotic talk
  • Nixon & Kennedy agreed to meet in 4 debates w/ approx. 60 million watching(TV)
    • nobody "won" the debates, they showed the importance of image in an age of TV
      • many viewers found Kennedy's youthful appearance more appealing than Nixon's tired, old appearance
  • Kennedy won by 303 electoral votes to 219 & 118,574 popular votes out of 68+ million total & had strong support from workers(African-Americans & Catholics) in industrial centers
  • The Democrats won both houses of Congress by a wide margin
  • Kennedy=1st Catholic & youngest pres. elected

An Old General Fades Away

• Eisenhower was still really popular, even at the end
• The Democratic party dominated the Congress for 6 yrs.
• Two states had been added (Alaska and Hawaii)
• The only negative thing about the General was that he didn't use his popularity to sway the public and reform labor
• However he did manage to limit the fighting type crap
• He only got more appreciated as time passed

Changing Economic Patterns

• the economic boom led to a dramatic increasein the number of homeowners nationwide
• scientific development bacame a primary driving force behind economic growth
  • the development and miniturization of computers brought about numerous new opportunities for labor
• air travel became popular and production boomed as war plane manufacturing companies began to produce passanger planes
• people with professional careers began to outnumber unskilled laborers in 1956
  • this trend has since continued
  • union membership has declined since its peak in 1954
• after the war most women returned to traditional roles but within a few years it became more and more customary for women to hold jobs

Consumer Culture in the Fifties

• The 1950s witnessed a huge expansion of the middle class and the blossoming of a consumer culture
  • The plastic credit card was introduced in 1950 by the Diner's club
  • 4 years after the credit card was introduced, the first McDonald's hamburger stand opened
  • 1955, Disneyland opened in California
• Televison:
  • There was a rapid rise in the new technology of television
  • 1946, only 6 TV stations were broadcasting
    • a decade later 442 stations were operating
  • 1951, 7 million TV sets were sold
    • by 1960, virtually every American home had a TV
  • Attendance at movies decreased
  • By the mid-1950s advertisers annually spent $10 billion to hawk their wares on television.
  • Critics fumed that the popular new mass medium was degrading the public's aesthetic, social, moral, political, and educational standards
  • Religion also capitalized on the TV
    • "televangelists" like Billy Graham(Baptist), Oral Roberts(Penticostal Holiness), & Fulton J. Sheen(Roman Catholic) took to the TV to spread the Christian gospel
  • TV also catalyzed the commercialization of professional sports
• Music:
  • Elvis Presley
    • combined black rhythm & blues w/ white bluegrass & country styles, thus creating rock & roll
    • singing/dancing to rock & roll became a sort of religious rite for the coming of age baby boomers in the 1950s
    • traditionalists were repelled by Presley
• Critics:
  • Books written by critics:
    • The Lonely Crowd (1950) - David Reisman(Harvard sociologist
    • The Organization Man - William H. Whyte, Jr.
    • The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit(1955) - Sloan Wilson(novelist)
    • The Affluent Society(1958) - John Kenneth Galbraith(Harvard economist)
    • The Coming of Post-Industrial Society(1973) - Daniel Bell(sociologist)
    • The Cultural Contradiction of Capitalism(1976) - Daniel Bell(sociologist)
    • The Power Elite(1956) - C. Wright Mills(radical sociologist)
• A new lifestyle of affluence & leisure was in full bloom by the end of the decade due to these new innovations

The Life of the Mind in Postwar America

• literature blossomed in the post war era
• there was little focus on realistic WWII literature
• poets and playwrights were especially active