Chapter 24
Cold War America
S
M
I
T
H
,
Learning Outcomes
J
O
S
H
U
A
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do6 the following:
8
24-1 Explain the causes of the Cold War between the United States
and the Soviet Union, and discuss some of the9more serious
incidents between the two superpowers.
0
the 1950s,
24-2 Describe American life as it developed during B
Uand evaluate
including social, economic, and political issues,
the significance of the Cold War in these changes.
24-3 Explain the rise and effects of McCarthyism in American life.
24-4 Describe the breakthroughs forged by African Americans in the
1950s and the retaliatory movement that came to be called
“massive resistance.”
428
C h apte r 21
The Continued Move West
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
“
Affluence and consumerism
promoted a new style of life in America,
as people moved to the suburbs, drove
automobiles in massive numbers, and
stayed home to watch television.
”
Two impulses ran through the
America that emerged from
the Second World War. The
first was the distrust, suspicion, and hostility engendered
The United States was just as responsible as the Soviet
by the Cold War. The Cold
Union for starting the Cold War.
War began when the United
Strongly Disagree
Strongly Agree
S the
States, without question
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
most powerful country
in
the
M
world following World War II,
tried to use its powerI to proclaim a new global order based on
Cold War
democracy and capitalism.
T Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, which The postwar ideological,
economic, and military
undeniably bore the brunt of the fighting during the war, with an
contest between the
H
astounding 23 million dead, rejected the American world order,
United States and the
favoring instead communism
and a world revolution in the name
,
Soviet Union
of the worker. It also more simply wanted to create a buffer of
United Nations (UN)
countries friendly to its communist system. After all, Germany
International organization
J Union twice in thirty years, and used that fosters discussions
had invaded the Soviet
among the world’s nations
Poland and other countries of eastern Europe to do so. But where
O
and monitors the wellthe Soviets saw a protective barrier of friendly states, the United
being of almost all indiS on a revolutionary march to dethrone viduals in the world
States saw communism
capitalism. The result was an ideological, economic, and military
H
contest known as the Cold War that shaped American politics,
U its cultural and social developments throughout the 1940s,
economic life, and even
1950s, and 1960s.
A
The second impulse running through postwar America was a far-reaching optimism
that the world could be made a better, safer place and that the quality of life for most
people in the world could
6 fulfill Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, which had promised material
and spiritual freedom after a decade and a half of struggle. In this optimistic spirit, the
8 Powers created the United Nations (UN) in 1945, an internaUnited States and its Allied
tional organization that
9 would foster discussions among the world’s nations and monitor the well-being of almost all individuals in the world. The first meeting of the UN took
0
place in San Francisco on April 25, 1945. In 1948, the UN adopted its Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, which
B still today outlines the UN’s view of inalienable rights reserved
for all people, including life, liberty, security of person, and equal protection of the law. It
U
also outlaws slavery, servitude, and torture. The UN was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vision for
extending the Four Freedoms throughout the world, and, after he died in office in 1945,
his wife Eleanor helped shepherd through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
On the home front, such optimism appeared less ideological and more material.
Stoked by the rapid conversion to a peacetime economy and American consumers’
eagerness to devour more and more goods after fifteen years of depression and war,
The Advertising Archives
What do you think?
The decade-and-a-half after the Second World War witnessed a dramatic expansion of America’s car culture,
>
a German girl handing flowers of gratitude to an American soldier, in
commemoration of the Berlin airlift, the first “battle” of the Cold War.
432
C h apte r 2 4
met in London to plan the economic reconstruction
of their zones, and, on June 23, 1948, they announced
the extension of the West German currency, the
Deutschmark, into West Berlin in an effort to sew
together the nation in the name of Western democracy and capitalism. Fearing too much Western
influence, Stalin was not prepared to allow this currency into the heart of the Soviet zone, so on June 24,
the Soviets blockaded West Berlin, preventing food
and supplies from entering the non-Soviet sections
of the city. This was the first “battle” of the Cold War.
Breaking the Blockade
The two sides were now directly opposed. But
Truman had no desire to initiate actual fighting. He
opted instead for a massive, peaceful air operation,
authorizing an airlift of food and supplies for eleven
months. In the end, the United States and its allies
flew more than 200,000 flights over Berlin, dropping 4,700 tons of daily necessities. It was a major
endeavor. It was also filled with tension. Truman
knew that the Soviet Union would have a massive
military advantage in any European conflict (the
United States had largely demobilized its army after
the Second World War). On the other hand, at the
time of the blockade, the United States was still
the only nation with the atomic bomb. Meanwhile,
an embargo placed on eastern European goods by
Western nations convinced the Soviets to back
down. The Soviet Union ended the blockade of West
Berlin in May 1949. Truman’s Berlin airlift had been
a success.
NATO
The events of the Berlin Crisis pushed American
allies to formalize their commitment to one another
in order to counter the growing power of the Soviets.
They did so through a pact called the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. Its key provision, Article V, declared that an attack against one or
more treaty partners “shall be considered an attack
against them all.” NATO cemented an alliance of
Western nations, a project that grew more urgent
after Truman announced that the Soviet Union had
successfully tested an atomic bomb of its own in
1949. Churchill’s “iron curtain” had fallen into place,
and both sides were armed with nuclear weapons.
Historians still debate which side bears the most
responsibility for the advent of the Cold War. Some
see Stalin’s aggressive stances in central Europe
and Berlin as indications that Kennan’s predictions
might have been correct and that the Soviet Union
was on a long-standing aggressive march to defeat
capitalism. Others see Stalin’s attempts to control
Cold War America
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20˚W
Arctic Circle
0˚
20˚E
F I N L AN D
N ORWAY
$
IC EL AN D
$
U.S. loan of $3.5 billion, 1946
Exploded first atomic bomb, 1952
Joined Common Market, 1973
Reykjavik
$
Reykjavik
20˚W
North
Sea
IRELAND
$
Dublin
Joined Common
Market, 1973
B a ltic
Copenhagen Sea
Amsterdam
NETHERLANDS
$
Brussels
BELGIUM
AT L A N T I C
$
Paris LUX.
N
WEST
GERMANY
$
$
Exploded first atomic bomb, 1960
Withdrew from NATO, 1966
F R A N CE
$
Joined Common Market, 1986
Joined NATO, 1955
Bern
SWITZ.
Prague
CZE
CHO
SL
OVA
Vienna
Potsdam
Zones of occupation
ended, 1955
Participants in the Marshall Plan
ROMAN IA
Revolution, 1956
YU GOSL AV IA
ITALY
Rome
Left COMECON, 1961
Withdrew from WP, 1968
J
O
Iron Curtain
S
H
U
Map 24.1. Europe in the Cold War
A
Member of the European
Common Market, formed in 1958
Tiranë
* North Atlantic Treaty Organization
** Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
$
Cengage
Learning
. Cengage
Learning 2014
Ms00464a
Divided Europe
6
Trimcentral
51p0 x Europe
39p6 as understandable considering
the
Final: 9/3/09
8 They
events of the first half of the twentieth century.
instead see American actions as misguided
9 and
overly reactionary. A subtler approach than armed
0 amicontainment, they say, might have led to more
cable relations, without both nations having
B to see
the other as enemies.
U
24-1e Conflicts in Asia
Despite the continued debate, by 1949, the two sides
had consolidated their positions on either side of
the iron curtain. But after the Berlin Crisis, the Cold
War stalled in Europe; the iron curtain was largely
in place. Instead, the focus of the Cold War was
Athens
400 Km.
200
Truman Doctrine, 1947
Joined NATO, 1952
Truman Doctrine, 1947
Joined NATO, 1952
Joined Common Market, 1981
a
0
40˚N
TURKEY
Sicily
200
S e a
Ankara
ALBANIA
$
0
Airport
French zone
B U LG A R IA
Sofia
G R E EC E
e
Soviet zone
British zone
B l a c k
Danube R.
Tito-Stalin schism, 1948
$
U.S. zone
Bucharest
Belgrade
S
Berlin Wall
(1961–1989)
Budapest
H U N G A RY
$
East
Berlin
West
Berlin
KIA
n
$
EAST
GERMANY
Communist coup, 1948
U.S.S.R. invasion, 1968
A U ST R IA
$
S
PORTUGAL
M
S PAI N
$
Madrid
Lisbon
Corsica
I
Joined NATO, 1982
T
Joined Common Market, 1986
Sardinia
Balearic Is.
H
M editerr
ane
a ,
Member of NATO,*
formed in 1949
Member of COMECON,** formed in
1949, and the Warsaw Pact,
organized in 1955
BERLIN
Warsaw
East Berlin
See inset
EAST
POLAND
map
GERMANY
Bonn
Moscow
Exploded first atomic bomb, 1949
Berlin blockade,
1948–1949
West
Berlin
40˚E
UNION OF SOVIET
SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
$
London
OCEAN
Stockholm
DENMARK
$
60˚N
Helsinki
SWEDEN
$
Joined Common
Market, 1973
UNITED
KINGDOM
Oslo
CYPRUS
(Gr. Br.)
Nicosia
400 Mi.
shifted elsewhere. Asia was the first stop. Britain
and France had huge colonial possessions in Asia
Full page map
and
Africa,
but
after
Bleeds
top,
right,
leftWorld War II they no longer had
thePosition
money
to
maintain
those
Moreover,
top map trim at top
pageempires.
trim
theAlign
Atlantic
Charter
had
plotted
thetrims
Allied Powers
left and
right map
trims
on page
at least rhetorically against colonialism. This fact
allowed an opening for Soviet-backed revolutionary
movements. Would these colonial holdings in Asia
become communist? Would the United States allow
them to?
“Losing” China
As nationalist battles in Vietnam, Laos, and
Cambodia threatened Western colonial power (and
would later lead to the Vietnam War), more immediate issues loomed in China. Although China had
been on the winning side in World War II, the war
had damaged its stability, and immediately after
the war the country fell into civil war between
The Cold War
433
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NSC-68
Chinese Communists (under
Mao Zedong) and Chinese
Nationalists (under Chiang
Kai-shek). The United States
funneled billions of dollars
to the Nationalists even
though America’s diplomats
warned that a communist
takeover was inevitable. In
October 1949, Mao completed his conquest; China
was now controlled by a communist ruler. Mao
soon signed a treaty with Stalin, while the Chinese
Nationalists were forced to withdraw to the island
of Taiwan.
The situation in China sent shock waves
through the United States. Truman was accused of
having “lost” China to comRead Mao
munism, and some peopleS
Zedong’s
even hinted that there wereM
account of the
communist agents within
Chinese Communist Party.
the State Department. Mao’sI
victory raised the stakes of containment. Not onlyT
was communism potentially on the march, but
it had taken over the largest Asian nation in theH
world. It looked like the United States was losing,
the Cold War.
Classified paper written
by American diplomats
that portrayed an uncontrollably aggressive
Soviet Union and recommended stopping the
threat through a massive
military buildup, the
creation of hydrogen
bombs, and the rooting
out of all communists on
American soil
J
O
American leaders were determined to prevent
other states from “falling.” In a classified paperS
known as NSC-68, American diplomats portrayed
H
an uncontrollably aggressive
Read excerpts
Soviet Union whose pro-U
from NSC-68.
gram for “world dominaA
24-1f American Rearmament
tion” required the “ultimate
elimination” of any opposition. NSC-68’s sweeping
recommendations to stop the threat included a6
massive military buildup, the creation of hydrogen
bombs, and the rooting out of all communists on8
American soil.
9
To critics, NSC-68 seemed out of proportion to
the threat. But on June 25, 1950, communist powers0
in North Korea invaded South Korea, thus begin-B
ning the Korean War. Afraid of what this meant for
U
the march of communism, the National Security
Council adopted NSC-68 as official policy. To prepare to impede communist progress, it embarked
on a vast rearmament plan, increasing the 1951
defense budget from $13.5 billion to $48.2 billion.
The Korean invasion had made the incredible—a
worldwide communist takeover—suddenly seem
plausible.
434
C h apte r 2 4
24-1g The Korean War
Korea seemed an unlikely place for World War III to
break out. It was remote, and it did not possess vital
natural resources. But “losing” China had taken its
psychological toll on American leaders. Plus, just
as with Berlin, Korea, which had been controlled
by Japan during the war, was divided between the
Allies after the war, with the Soviets controlling
the northern half and the United States controlling
the southern half. The country was to be reunified in 1948, but the deadline passed without the
nation coming together. Tensions between the
north and the south simmered, and when North
Korean forces (aided by Soviet planners) attacked
and easily took the South Korean capital of Seoul,
Americans felt the need to respond (see Map 24.2).
The American Response
Truman immediately ordered troops into Asia. He
also ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb
and secretly dispersed atomic bombs and shortrange missiles to American air and naval bases all
over the world. At home, leaders drew up plans of
what to do in case of nuclear war. With the Soviet
Union now armed with a bomb of its own, the threat
seemed imminently plausible.
Despite these preparations, by late September
1950, things looked bad for the South Korean and
American forces (who were led by the United
Nations). Then a surprise attack led by the American
general and UN commander-in-chief for Korea,
Douglas MacArthur, at Inchon, a port near Seoul,
helped turn the tide. Taking the North Koreans
by surprise, UN troops cut their supply lines. The
North Korean war machine collapsed, and UN forces
recaptured Seoul. UN troops pursued the North
Korean remnants all the way up the Korean peninsula, and by November they were positioned close
to the Chinese border, along the Yalu River. Would
they now invade China, almost certainly sparking
World War III?
China Intervenes
As the UN troops approached the Chinese frontier,
Mao grew concerned. Truman had decided against
invading China, but Mao did not know this. On
November 27, 1950, Chinese forces, officially called
“volunteers” for the North Korean cause, crossed
the Korean border and attacked UN forces. Caught
by surprise, UN forces reeled southward, and on
January 4, 1951, communist troops recaptured Seoul.
As the situation worsened, Truman wondered aloud
about using the atomic bomb. But as winter gave
Cold War America
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way to spring, the UN troops again took the offensive, retaking Seoul in March 1951.
United States and United Nations forces
Stalemate
Intervention by Chinese forces, Oct. 1950
R.
u
Chosan
R.
en
Hyesanjin
Kanggye
Chosin
Res.
Farthest U.S. advance,
Oct.–Nov. 1950
R.
Angtung
Sinuiju
Unsan
o
Taed
NORTH
KOR EA
Pyongyang
Hungnam
Sea of Japan
(East Sea)
Nan R.
Armistice line,
July 7, 1953
Kaesong
38°N
38th Parallel
Panmunjom
Inchon
g
din
l a n 19 5 0
.
S
,
U. . 15
pt
Se
Farthest Chinese/
North Korean
advance, Jan. 1951
Seoul
.
U.N. advance,
Sept.–Nov. 1950
jo
Taejon
36°N
Yongdok
Pohang
g
Ye l l o w
Sea
SOU TH
KOR EA
Taegu
R.
the U.S. federal government’s belief that left-wing
governments might be susceptible to communist
influence, even if these governments had been
democratically elected. The governments of Iran and
Guatemala were both overturned covertly, and the
United States repeatedly resisted getting involved
in situations that would have to be made public.
U
kton
Na
8
In this environment, one approach that maximized
9
the effectiveness of American foreign policy was
0
overthrowing uncooperative foreign governments
through agencies like the CIA. The patternB
was set
in 1953, in Iran, and in 1954, in Guatemala. In both
U
countries, the CIA and its functionaries acted on
Covert Operations
CH
Chongjin
A
R
on open warfare and instead emphasized (1) covert
operations, (2) formal alliances, and (3) the presence
of nuclear weapons.
6
AN
RI
ng
M
ties (including both North Korean and South Korean
casualties).
J
24-1h A Cold War, Not a Hot OneO
In the wake of the Korean War, many Americans
S
concluded that the United States could not afford
H
another land war against the Soviet Union and its
U startallies. While still committed to containment,
ing in the mid-1950s the United States relied less
A
m
Tu
n
Ha
S
M
In late July 1953, North Korea, exhausted by the high
casualties associated with the stalemate,I agreed
to an armistice. The armistice brought theTKorean
War to an end almost exactly where it had begun—
but only after 35,000 American deaths,H114,000
Chinese deaths, and roughly 300,000 Korean
, fataliArmistice
U.S.S.R.
C H I N A
42°N
Ya
l
Once UN forces reached the original dividing line
between North and South (the 38th parallel), Truman
halted the offensive. He was intent on avoiding
an open conflict with China and the Soviet Union.
General MacArthur, however, determined to carry
the fight to China for a final showdown, publicly
raged against the president, writing to congressional
Republicans, “There is no substitute for victory.” In
April 1951, Truman relieved MacArthur of command
for his insubordination. Addressing the American
people, Truman said, “We are trying to prevent a
third world war.” A long stalemate settled along
the 38th parallel, and many frustrated Americans
treated MacArthur as a hero.
North Korean forces
Farthest North Korean
advance, Sept. 1950
Pusan
St
Ko
34°N
0
0
50
ra
it
rea
N
100 Km.
50
100 Mi.
126°E
Map 24.2.
128°E
The Korean War
. Cengage Learning 2014
Cengage Learning Ms00469
There
was
a 1950–1953
negative side to these No
covert
The
Korean
War,
bleedsoperations,
Ms00469
however. For instance, the political instability that
Trim 26p6 x 39p6
the CIA forced on these countries led to a forty-year
Final: 4/25/08
civilOT:
war
in Guatemala and a twenty-five-year dictaFinal
5/16/08
Revision
restore
dotswas
7/13/09—cm
torshipto in
Irancity
that
so authoritarian during the
Revision 7/29/09—cm: Sea of Japan (East Sea)
Read the
National Security
Administration’s briefing book on the
Iranian coup.
period of American sponsorship that it generated the
conditions of its own downfall. In 1979 these conditions
would lead to a civil war
The Cold War
435
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that empowered the Islamic revolutionary Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini.
Alliances
Another approach the American government
employed was the use of treaties. In Indochina,
where the decline of European colonialism had led
to tremendous political instability, the United States
increased military aid to the new anticommunist
state of South Vietnam and also helped create the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). In this
way, the U.S. government hoped to prevent a chain
of “falling dominoes,” or neighboring countries inexorably succumbing to communism one at a time.
Nuclear Weaponry
The third approach was more frightening: hydrogen
bombs. In January 1954 the United States articulated
a strategy of “massive retaliation,” by which it meantS
a substantial buildup of hydrogen bombs, each aM
thousand times more powerRead John
ful than an atomic bomb. ThisI
Foster Dulles’s
strategy had its strengths. ForT
“Massive Retaliinstance, when the Chinese
ation” speech.
Communists in mainlandH
China threatened the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan,
in 1954 and 1958, American threats of massive retaliation helped hold the Communists at bay. But this
experience also prompted the Chinese to seek SovietJ
aid in developing their own nuclear arsenal.
From Arms Race to Space Race
With time, hydrogen bombs were getting smaller
and less complicated, meaning that smaller nations
without bomber technology, such as Britain, France,
and Israel, could develop atomic weapons systems.
In August 1957, the Soviets tested the first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which could travel
from one continent to another. Two months later,
they launched the world’s first artificial satellite,
Sputnik I, into orbit.
These events inspired a wave of dread across
America. The idea that the enemy had actually
placed a device in space that was passing over the
United States frightened the American public and
ended confidence in American technological superiority. American war planners were alarmed as
well, because the launch implied that the Soviets
could now deliver nuclear warheads to U.S. territory
O
S
Because of the fear of being outgunned and because
H
of the occasional usefulness of the idea of “massive
retaliation,” an arms race began between the UnitedU
States and the Soviet Union. America’s first hydroA
gen bomb was tested on November 1, 1952. Within
a year, the Soviet Union matched this achievement
with a test of its own. American decision makers6
concluded that, if the United States was to continue
to derive some advantage from the hydrogen bomb,8
it must stay ahead of the Soviets in numbers of9
bombs, destructive power, and the ability to deliver
them swiftly. The Soviets responded in kind, with0
each side forcing the other to go higher and higher,B
accelerating the potential for an ever more devastatU
ing conflict. Eventually this policy came to be called
“mutually assured destruction,” or MAD, because
the policy behind the arms race suggested that an
attack by one side would almost necessarily mean
a destruction of both sides in the conflict. Some
Americans, notably the scientists who worked on
the first nuclear bombs, protested the arms race. But
the escalation continued.
436
C h apte r 2 4
During the unsettling arms race, the American public turned
>>
to booklets like this one, offering such unlikely cure-alls as covering
Image courtesy of The Advertising Archives
The Arms Race Begins
one’s head or ducking under furniture in the event of an atomic bomb
blast.
Cold War America
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
in about half an hour. The United States matched
the feat of Sputnik three months later, in January
1958, by placing Explorer I into orbit. Over the course
of the following year, the United States made major
investments in science initiatives and established
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) as a central body for space research. The
Soviet challenge inspired American government
leaders to attain a new level of technological mastery, one that would ultimately lead to a moon
landing in 1969. But in the short term, it merely
heightened the mistrust that characterized the
Cold War.
24-2 The Cold War
Home Front
S life in
The Cold War shaped American domestic
many ways. For one thing, it helped keep the
M economy hot despite the demobilization after World War
I
II. Fear of nuclear war also inspired both a second
Red Scare (usually called McCarthyism, as explained
T
later in this chapter) and a religious revival. The Cold
H
War contributed to a tide of conservatism, as many
politicians warned that communists had ,gained a
foothold in American political and cultural life and
any left-leaning initiative might be the secret work
of covert communists. This conservatismJ diminished some of the momentum of postwarO
liberals,
who believed the rhetoric of World War II had given
S
them leverage to pass their pro-union, antidiscrimiH
U
A
Rykoff Collection/CORBIS
6
8
9
0
B
U
Fair Deal
nation agenda. (Despite this,
Truman’s twenty-one-point
the fight against fascism
postwar plan that provided
remained a point of rhetoric
increases in the minimum
wage, federal assistance
for most civil rights liberals.)
in building homes, federal
Amid
these
uncersupport for education and
tainties, many Americans
health care, and jobs in
public works; represented
adjusted somewhat comforta renewal of the Fair
ably to life in a Cold War,
Employment Practices
taking advantage of good
Commission
wages and the new luxury
items that appeared by the
truckload. These values were unaffected by the
anxieties provoked by the Cold War, and in fact
many Americans exerted their democratic freedoms
through consumerism. Historians have for good
reason called the period from 1945 to 1960 the Age
of Affluence, even if that affluence was tempered by
knowledge that, at any given moment, the Cold War
might flash hot, and nuclear war might begin.
24-2a Truman and the
Postwar Economy
The Fair Deal
At the end of World War II, Truman saw all the
returning soldiers and feared that job shortages
were imminent. With this in mind, in late 1945 he
submitted a twenty-one-point plan, later called the
Fair Deal, that sought to expand the welfare state
initiated during the New Deal. The Fair Deal included
increases to the minimum wage, federal assistance in building homes,
federal support for education and health care,
and an attempt to reach
full employment through
public works. Showing
Truman’s commitment
to civil rights, the Fair
Deal also renewed the
Read excerpts
from Truman’s
message to
Congress.
When the USSR launched
>>
the world’s first two artificial satellites in 1957 (Sputnik I and II, as
represented in this Soviet postcard),
many Americans were petrified that
the Soviet Union was now literally
hovering over the United States and
that the state of American science
was inferior to that of its Cold War
adversary.
The Cold War Home Front
437
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Taft-Hartley Act
Fair Employment Practices
Commission (FEPC), which
Roosevelt had established to
end racial job discrimination
in federal jobs.
Despite the Fair Deal’s
breadth, Truman faced many
obstacles. For one, he was
not terribly popular as president. His reserved demeanor made him seem small
compared to the charismatic Roosevelt. Moreover,
Truman faced a hostile Congress: although controlled by Democrats, Congress was led by an informal coalition of conservatives from both parties. As
a result, Truman had few domestic successes.
Labor-Management Act
of 1947 that banned the
closed shop, outlawed
collective bargaining
within industries, and
authorized the president to delay strikes by
declaring a “cooling-off”
period
The Conversion Economy and Labor Unrest
Truman’s problems were compounded by the truly
tempestuous postwar economy. In the months afterS
the war, the return of GIs pushed wages down, whileM
inflation rose 25 percent during the first year. Labor
organizers demanded increased wages to compen-I
sate, but because there were more workers availableT
than ever before, employers felt little pressure to
capitulate. The result of this impasse was a remark-H
able series of strikes. By the end of 1946, about,
5 million workers had walked off the job in more
than 5,000 strikes across the country. Workers were
shifting jobs rapidly, and security seemed a farawayJ
promise.
O
Truman, generally a friend of labor but worried
about the economy, soon grew intolerant of theS
strikes. When two railroad unions went on strike in
H
May 1946, Truman requested that Congress draft the
strikers into the military, which would then forceU
them to work. Although the strike was soon settled
A
and the authority to draft strikers was never made
law, union workers were angry at Truman for his
threats. Meanwhile, conservatives complained that6
Truman had not taken stronger anti-union steps.
That fall, a Republican slogan asked Americans if8
they had “Had Enough?” In November 1946, the pub-9
lic answered by sending a Republican majority to
both houses of Congress for the first time since 1928.0
Taft-Hartley
B
U
Republicans
With their new power, pro-business
attempted to scale back the role of the federal
government, particularly with regard to labor disputes. Led by Senator Robert Taft, Congress passed
the Labor-Management Act (better known as the
Taft-Hartley Act) in June 1947. Taft-Hartley banned
the closed shop, meaning that jobs could not be
exclusively limited to union members only. It also
438
C h apte r 2 4
outlawed collective bargaining within industries
and authorized the president to delay strikes by
declaring a “cooling-off” period. Predictably, Truman
vetoed Taft-Hartley, but Congress overrode his veto.
Truman’s presidency seemed destined for oblivion.
More importantly, the rights of labor, which unions
had fought for so ardently since the 1930s, were dramatically curbed—and would remain so for the rest
of the century.
24-2b Economic Growth
After these initial flurries of uncertainty, however,
the postwar economy picked up. Indeed, it grew red
hot. From 1947 to 1960, the gross national product
doubled. Wages went up, inflation stayed low, and
leisure activities became accessible to more and
more Americans. So did comforts like electricity, air
conditioning, and indoor plumbing. Well more than
half of all Americans were now considered “middle
class.” Fears about a distressed economic picture
melted away as the American nation successfully
converted to a peacetime economy.
Consumerism
How did this happen so quickly? The change
occurred because Americans were spending more
due to higher wages, veterans’ benefits, and
demand that had been restrained during wartime.
American industries were meeting people’s desires
by producing new products. Things like dishwashers, washing machines, and televisions rapidly
moved from luxuries to necessities. Automation
became a key word in the vocabulary of the
American consumer. Fewer concerns about carrying debt helped as well, as credit cards became
more popular in the 1950s. And the commitment to
the Cold War meant that government dollars were
continuously pouring into a variety of defenserelated industries.
Out of the emerging strong economy, business leaders greatly curbed the postwar wave of
strikes by offering benefits like health insurance
and pensions to workers. Labor leaders like Walter
Reuther were only marginally pleased with these
offers. Certainly they liked the fatter paychecks, but
Reuther and others felt that the burdens of health
care and retirement should not be borne by an individual company because that made retirement plans
dependent on the health of that particular company.
Nevertheless, because they could not make much
headway in crafting national health or retirement
plans, Reuther and other labor leaders accepted the
system whereby a single company provides a worker
Cold War America
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with health care and retirement—the system on
which most Americans depend today.
Television and the Automobile
Out of this expanded economy, two products
transformed American life more than any others:
(1) television and (2) the automobile. In the 1950s,
the technology behind the television was perfected,
and it immediately became immensely popular.
Nine out of ten American families owned at least
one set by the end of the decade. Television changed
the way Americans relaxed and recreated. Rather
than attend social forms of entertainment like movies or sporting events, people could be entertained
while staying home. Initially, neighborhood social
and political clubs emerged to replace more casual
social gatherings, but by the end of the 1950s, memberships in social clubs were beginning to decline as
S indelwell. Furthermore, television produced strong,
ible images that were disseminated widely,
Mcutting
through regional differences and creating a genuine
I
national experience.
The automobile also transformed American
T life,
and the 1950s were the years when cars were made
accessible to many in the middle and lowerHclasses.
Not only were more Americans wealthier
, in the
1950s, but in 1956, the federal government passed
National Interstate and
the National Interstate and
Defense Highways Act
Defense Highways Act,
The largest public works
which authorized $25 bilproject in American history when it was passed;
lion to build 41,000 miles of
authorized $25 billion
interstate highways over the
to build 41,000 miles of
following ten years. The largroads, greatly assisting
the burgeoning car culture
est public works in American
of the 1950s
history to that time, the act
greatly eased suburbanization and car transportation. By the end of the decade,
eight in ten Americans owned at least one car.
Motels, drive-ins, and fast-food restaurants sprang
up throughout the country, reflecting the dominance of this form of transportation. The suburbs
expanded as well, in no small part because now
nearly everyone could afford to drive to a job in
the city. But Americans’ love of cars came at a cost:
plans for extensive public transportation systems
were put on hold. Rather than build train tracks or
subway systems, the federal and state governments
expanded the roads.
24-2c Suburban Nation
The new interest in cars combined with a quirk in
the GI Bill led to another change in American life:
the dramatic growth of the suburbs. The GI Bill
6
8
9
0
B
U
Rather than attend social forms of entertainment like movies or sporting events, with TV, people could be entertained while staying home.
>>
This constituted a transformation in the way Americans lived, as they became increasingly private and joined fewer clubs and organizations.
The Cold War Home Front
Image courtesy of The Advertising Archives
J
O
S
H
U
A
439
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Kitchen Debate
made loans available for
new homes, but it did not
finance the renovation of
old homes. For this and
other reasons, more and
more Americans moved out
of the cities to the green ring
around them.
Suburbs had been growing since the 1890s and
especially since the 1920s, but they expanded even
farther in the 1950s. By 1960, suburbs claimed a
larger portion of the nation’s population than did the
city, small town, or countryside. Most of this expansion was due to the work of developers like William
Levitt, who transformed orange groves and empty
fields on the outskirts of cities into large towns
made of prefabricated homes. The rapid growth of
the suburbs and the conformity that seemed to set
in there had at least five important results: (1) theS
sudden end to the experimental gender roles cre-M
ated by World War II; (2) an increase in racial segregation; (3) a postwar religious revival; (4) a chorus ofI
critics of conformity; and (5) a lasting environmentalT
footprint outside America’s major metropolises.
Discussion between
Soviet premier Nikita
Khrushchev and Vice
President Richard Nixon
in 1959 debating the relative merits of capitalism
and communism
H
,
Gendered Spheres
rtis
The Adve
urtesy of
Image co
ves
ing Archi
While women entered industrial and white-collar
jobs during the war, the ethos of 1950s America
suggested that women should stay home. BesidesJ
enforcing age-old stereotypes, there was a social reaO
son too: following the war, the twenty-somethings
who had fought for the Four Freedoms wanted toS
begin families. A baby boom resulted. After World
H
War II, 76 million children were born in less than
U
twenty years. In 1940, women were
having, on average, 2.1
A
children; in 1960, they
were having 3.5 children.
In the 1950s, the
6
domestic ideal of the
8
nuclear family became a
dominant cultural image.
9
Childcare experts, televi0
sion, magazines, and politicians all propagated the
B
notion that women should
U
leave the work world and
return home. For instance,
according to many psychiatrists, caring for children was
not simply a task, but was
meant to be the central focus
of women’s lives. The concept
of the child-centered family
440
C h apte r 2 4
was popularized by Dr. Benjamin Spock, a pediatrician and expert on child development whose enormously popular manual, Baby and Child Care (1946),
sold more than 50 million copies. Meanwhile, Ebony,
a magazine for African Americans, celebrated the
prosperity that allowed some black women to
become primarily wives and mothers and no longer
domestic servants. Black or white, domesticity was
the presumed feminine ideal.
American politicians promoted women’s roles
as mothers and homemakers as well. In 1959, Vice
President Richard Nixon proudly told Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev that
Read a transcript
American women prided
of the Kitchen
themselves on stocking
Debate.
their kitchens with the latest appliances. Debating the relative merits of capitalism versus communism, Nixon reasoned that
American women were fueling the economy by
spending, rather than by marching off to industrial
jobs as Soviet women did. The exchange between the
two leaders became known as the Kitchen Debate.
Though suburban domesticity was promoted
throughout American life as a desirable ideal, the reality was somewhat harsher than portrayed. Because
many mothers had two or three children, their days
were demanding. New suburban homes required a
great deal of upkeep as well. Even with new household inventions, many of which were advertised as
“time-saving,” the amount of time women spent on
housework actually increased during the 1950s. If
women did have free time, they were encouraged to
channel it into caring for their families.
For the women who did
remain in the employment
sector, there was an increase
in occupational segregation
between the sexes. With men
returning from military service, working women were
forced into an employment niche in the service
sector. For the most part,
they worked as secretaries,
teachers, nurses, and waitresses. Most women’s jobs
offered few possibilities
for career advancement.
Childcare experts, tele>>
vision, magazines, and politicians
all propagated the notion that
women should leave the work
world and return home.
Cold War America
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
During the 1950s, African American women
made some gains, moving out of primarily domestic
service and agricultural work and into clerical work,
nursing, and teaching. In 1960, 58 percent of all
African American women worked outside the home.
Many Japanese American and Hispanic women also
worked outside the home to support their families.
Racial Segregation
The physical distance of suburbia hardened racial
segregation. As millions of white Americans left the
cities for the suburbs, millions of black Americans
were moving from the South to the cities of the
North or West. In New York City, about half a million Puerto Ricans moved into what had been the
Italian American neighborhoods of East Harlem.
As a symbol of what was happening elsewhere,
during the 1950s, a majority of Italian Americans
S York’s
moved out of East Harlem, favoring New
suburbs instead. These types of migrationsM
created
many racially defined urban ghettos. White realI worse
tors and politicians frequently made matters
by excluding black people from certain neighborT
hoods or making home loans impossible for African
H afford
Americans to obtain. Even when they could
it, black people were routinely barred by covenant
,
or custom from many neighborhoods. The federal
government refused to insert protections against
such practices in federal housing bills. As J
a result,
the new suburbs were overwhelmingly white, and
O
the cities housed higher populations of racial
minorities.
S
H
UminorIf segregation was the rule concerning racial
ities, religious minorities—Catholics and Jews—
A
Religious Revival
developed a new kind of pluralism in these years.
Previously denied access to many social arenas in
American life, these minority groups took6 advantage of a 1950s consumerism to move more fully
8 awakinto the mainstream. More importantly, fears
ened during the Cold War, the baby boom,9and the
move to the suburbs all led to a dramatic religious
0 God”
revival in the 1950s. This was when “Under
was added to the U.S. Pledge of AllegianceBand “In
God We Trust” was added to U.S. currency. What
U
distinguished this religious revival from all previous
ones was that Catholics and Jews were included; it
was not solely a Protestant revival. As Catholics and
Jews earned allowances for their public displays
of religion, they expanded the scope of American
religious life, moving it beyond the Protestantism
of yesteryear. This transition to acceptable pluralism led to many debates about the place of religion
in American life, especially when Catholics sought
federal funds for parochial schools and Jews sought
to ensure protection by emphasizing the separation
of church and state.
Critics of Conformity
Life in the suburbs, with its stereotype of two cars,
husband at work, wife at home, and children in
the yard, seemed to many to be both refreshing
after the uncertain depression years and boring
because of its homogeneity. Focusing on this conformity, critics derided what they saw as The Lonely
Crowd (1950), to use sociologist David Reisman’s
title, which described a society in which people
were aware of the world around them, but the substance of the individual was never acknowledged or
explored. Films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(1956) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), novels like
J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951), the poetry
of a youthful group of poets called the Beats, and
sociological tracts like The Lonely Crowd and William
H. Whyte’s The Organization Man (1956) all focused
on the supposed blandness of American suburban
life at mid-century. Historians have noted how
these critics understated the continued diversity
of American life and the very real psychological
problems of living in a world shrinking because of
mass communications and unimpeded transportation. Furthermore, these critics overlooked other,
perhaps more serious problems such as poverty,
environmental destruction, and persistent racism.
But they tapped into a psychological sentiment that
was shared by many Americans who, supposedly
living the American Dream, found themselves bored
by it or excluded from it.
The Large Environmental Footprint
Postwar suburban living, with its large detached
houses, unwieldy yards, dependence on the automobile, and incursion into wild lands and wetlands,
greatly enlarged the size of the average American’s
environmental footprint. As Americans left dense
cities behind, they encroached on lands that had
lain undisturbed for years. In doing so, they were
also relying on goods and services that were not
easily reclaimable by the earth, like petroleum for
automobiles.
24-2d Postwar Domestic Politics
As American social life changed in the 1950s, so did
national politics, drifting toward conservatism and
propelled by persistent fears of Soviet influence in
the United States.
The Cold War Home Front
441
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Truman’s Decline
Viewing Truman as a spent force after his labor
troubles in 1947, the Republicans eagerly anticipated
the presidential election of 1948. Their chances
seemed dramatically improved by internal dissension among Democrats. First, Truman’s support for
civil rights (for example, his 1948 order to end segregation in the armed forces) antagonized southerners, who had been vital members of Roosevelt’s New
Deal coalition and loyal Democrats for nearly eighty
years. Truman also put a civil rights plank in the
1948 party platform. In protest, southern delegates
literally walked out of the Democratic National
Convention and formed their own party, the States’
Rights Democratic Party, then selected their own
candidate for president. These so-called “Dixiecrats”
threatened to disrupt the Democratic hold on the
South that dated back to Reconstruction.
Second, Truman had alienated many liberalsS
when he fired Henry Wallace from his cabinet. FormerM
vice president Wallace had openly criticized Truman’s
I
Cold War policies and advocated greater cooperation with the Soviets. Wallace’s followers formed theT
Progressive Party and nominated Wallace as their
H
candidate. Truman was under assault from the right
and the left, and this was just within his own party. ,
Truman’s Resurgence
For their part, Republicans nominated Thomas E.J
Dewey, indicating that they had made peace withO
S
H
U
A
some elements of the New Deal legacy. Dewey advocated several liberal policies, hoping to appeal to
the middle of the political spectrum. In July 1948,
however, Truman cleverly called Congress back into
session and demanded that the Republicans pass an
agenda based on their own party platform. When
congressional Republicans refused to act, Truman
attacked the “do-nothing Republican Congress.” This
made it appear as if they were making election-year
promises that they did not intend to keep. Many
union workers also returned to the Democratic fold,
encouraged by Truman’s veto of Taft-Hartley and by
his calls for the nation to strengthen the New Deal
(although he still lost union-heavy Michigan, New
York, and Pennsylvania). Farmers came out particularly strong for Truman as well, giving him all
but six states west of the Mississippi. In November
1948, Truman pulled off a stunning upset, defeating Dewey and helping recapture both houses of
Congress for the Democratic Party.
Democratic Eclipse
Truman viewed his election as a mandate for the
Fair Deal. He was wrong. Upon starting his second
term, Truman resubmitted the proposals in his
platform, but, once again, a watertight coalition
of conservative southern Democrats and northern
Republicans meant that few of Truman’s proposals became law. Southern Democrats continued
to reject civil rights laws, and, in 1950, interest in
Truman’s domestic agenda was overshadowed by
the Korean War. Frustrated and becoming
increasingly unpopular, Truman decided
not to seek reelection in 1952. The country,
he felt, was moving to the right.
Republicans Return
© Bettmann/Corbis
6
8
9
0
B
U
442
C h apte r 2 4
It was. In the fall of 1952, World War II
hero Dwight D. Eisenhower became the
Republican candidate and easily won
the presidential election, outdistancing
by a wide margin the Democratic nominee, Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson.
Republicans gained majorities in the House
and Senate as well. The New Deal, the
Fair Deal, and twenty years of Democratic
power in Washington seemed to have run
its course. But, like Dewey, Eisenhower,
while rhetorically favoring smaller government, did not fundamentally oppose
Dewey defeats Truman in one of the most
>>
notorious journalist mistakes in American history, a fact
attested to by Truman’s giant grin.
Cold War America
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
AP Photo/Bill Allen Stokes
S
M
I
T
H
,
>>
The World War II hero Gen. Dwight Eisenhower served as president from 1953 to 1961, overseeing both an economic boom and the growth
and expansion of the Cold War. While many Americans “liked Ike,” many others thought he represented a bland, conformist culture.
J
O
the New Deal. And Cold War concerns would, in the
long run, provide a new impetus for expanding
S the
government, which in fact grew during his presiH
dency. Eisenhower was a folksy conservative who
U averse
was friendly to big business, but he was not
to pouring money into the economy, especially
A
for national defense. He defined national defense
broadly, employing it as a pretext to fund the giant
interstate project that built most of the nation’s
6
highways, as well as several housing projects. He
8 stratalso oversaw the development of the Cold War
egy of crafting covert operations, forming alliances,
9
and building up the nation’s nuclear weapon supply.
0 in no
The economy was good during his presidency,
small part because of the tremendous amount
B of
federal spending Eisenhower poured into it, and the
U good
Cold War remained cold. Lots of people had
reason to “Like Ike.”
By the end of his presidency, Eisenhower began
to express reservations about these expenses. In
his 1961 farewell address, he himself sounded the
alarm against the “military-industrial complex” that
tied the military too closely to the economy and
jeopardized American democracy. But during his
presidency, Eisenhower had not been shy about
expanding the federal government, and indeed
much of his success had depended on it.
24-3 The Second Red Scare
All this politicking took place with dramatic background music: the second Red Scare. For those
caught in its sweep, it was more than just background music. The Red Scare was a crusade against
communist influence within the United States. Its
scope was wide and deep, curtailing civil liberties
and quelling political dissent from the top levels
of national politics to lowest neighborhood school
board meeting.
24-3a Loyalty Oaths
The second Red Scare began almost as soon as World
War II ended; its prominence paralleled the progress
of the Cold War. Fearful of allegations that there were
communists working in his government, in 1947
Truman established the Federal Loyalty-Security
The Second Red Scare
443
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Program, which investigated the backgrounds of all
federal employees and barred hiring anyone who
was deemed a security risk. Meanwhile, Truman’s
attorney general, Tom C. Clark, compiled a list of
hundreds of organizations that were considered
potentially subversive. The organizations were then
subjected to investigations. Many state and city
governments and private companies emulated the
loyalty program and required
Read Truman’s
employees to sign loyalty
1947 loyalty
oaths. Between 1947 and
oath.
1965, roughly 20 percent of
all working people in the United States were required
to take an oath.
24-3b Nixon, Hoover, and McCarthy
With fingers pointing everywhere, leading Americans
grew worried about an insidious conspiracy toS
overthrow the government. Congressman RichardM
Nixon, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and Senator
Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin were at the center ofI
T
H
,
Image courtesy of The Advertising Archives
J
O
S
H
U
A
6
8
9
0
B
U
Even Marvel Comics’ Captain America, now billed as
>>
“Captain America . . . Commie Smasher!”, became a crusader against
communism.
444
C h apte r 2 4
this storm. For his part, Nixon propelled himself to
fame in 1948 by charging former State Department
official Alger Hiss with espionage. Although the evidence of his association with communists at first
appeared shaky, Hiss was convicted of lying about
his Soviet contacts in 1950. Decades later, his guilt is
still debated by historians, although most now conclude that Hiss was in fact a spy. Meanwhile, Hoover
insisted that communists were everywhere, “even
at your front door,” and he instructed the FBI to
keep tabs on people who might be associated with
communism. In general, his investigations extended
to any group that challenged conformity, including liberals, labor activists, civil rights workers, and
especially homosexuals.
But it was Senator Joseph McCarthy who best
leveraged the supposed threat of communism to
launch himself into prominence. His speeches
were shrill and bombastic as he publicized his
communist purges. In an infamous 1950 speech,
the senator declared that the State Department
was “thoroughly infested with communists.” He
claimed to have a list of more than two hundred
communists, but he did not allow the press to
confirm his evidence. In the end, McCarthy’s demagoguery, which destroyed
Read McCarthy’s lives and led to many a
speech warning ruined career, was based on
of the commufalse accusations. His influnist threat.
ence reached deeply into
American culture, though, so much so that the
aggressive tactics of the Red Scare became known
as “McCarthyism.”
With Truman, Hoover, and McCarthy all asserting the presence of communists in the United
States, Americans began pointing fingers at each
other. Regardless of the evidence against them,
once someone was labeled a subversive, his or her
life was often dramatically altered. These individuals found it difficult to find work, became socially
isolated, and had a hard time recovering their reputation. This was most dramatically illustrated by
accusations against Hollywood actors. The congressional House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC) focused on Hollywood beginning in 1947.
HUAC members believed that the movie industry
was teeming with communists; they also knew that
a formal investigation of Hollywood would generate considerable publicity. As part of the anticommunist purge, writers, directors, actors, and film
executives were called to testify about their political
beliefs and also those of their family, friends, and
colleagues.
Cold War America
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Hollywood Ten
Group of screenwriters
and directors accused of
being members of the
Communist Party
blacklist
© Bettmann/Corbis
Collection of names
of hundreds of people
deemed “subversive”
whom Hollywood executives agreed not to hire
to mobilize their forces for
what would become the
civil rights movement.
S
Sen. Joseph McCarthy used bombast and smear tactics to
>>
fight what he saw as homegrown communism.
M
I
In 1947, a group of screenwriters and direcT
tors known as the Hollywood Ten appeared before
HUAC and refused to answer any questions,
H citing their right to freedom of speech. The Supreme
,
Court, however, denied them protection under
the First Amendment. The members of the group,
many of whom were or had been members of the
J
Communist Party in the 1930s, were each charged
O to a
with contempt, fined $1,000, and sentenced
year in jail. More damningly, they were S
also put
on a blacklist, which contained names of people
Hexecudeemed “subversive” and whom Hollywood
tives agreed not to hire. The blacklist expanded
U
to include hundreds of Hollywood professionals
A
between 1947 and 1965.
6
8
9
Despite the tendency toward McCarthy-inspired conservatism during these years, minorities 0
achieved
significant breakthroughs. Indeed, many Bminorities used the language of freedom inspired by the
U rights.
Cold War to push for their own increased
24-4 Civil Rights
Breakthroughs
European immigrant groups, which had faced discrimination before the war, were generally assimilated into American culture during the war. They
became accepted in social groups and the workplace
in ways that would have been unthinkable just two
decades prior. And African American groups began
24-4a D
esegregation
in the Military
President Truman displayed an early example of
this new consideration for minorities. Truman was
the first president to address the NAACP at its
national convention. More importantly, in 1946,
Truman formed the first Committee on Civil Rights
to assess the state of citizenship rights across the
country. The committee issued a report, To Secure
These Rights, that recommended “the elimination of
segregation, based on race, color, creed, or national
origin, from American life.” Based on these recommendations, Truman ordered the desegregation of
the U.S. armed forces in 1948. The process was slow
and laborious, and not complete until 1954. But it
was a monumental accomplishment that brought
black and white Americans together in the close
confines of the U.S. military.
Desegregating the armed forces also sent a clear
signal that the federal government was willing to
challenge segregation in its own ranks. The armed
forces became a model example that interracial
desegregation could work, something that was not
generally accepted before the 1940s (and, for many
Americans, not until much later than that). That
same year, Truman endorsed a plank in his party’s
platform at the Democratic National Convention
that supported civil rights for all Americans, regardless of race, creed, or color. Though many Democrats
expressed outrage, civil rights had entered the
national dialogue.
24-4b Desegregation in Sports
Professional baseball featured another popular
example of civil rights liberalism. In April 1947,
Civil Rights Breakthroughs
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rule cannot be allowed
“to Mob
override the decisions of our
courts.
”
Board of Education (1954), in
Jackie Robinson, a World
which the Supreme Court
War II veteran, made his
ruled that separate educamajor league baseball debut
tional facilities for black and
with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
white people were “inherAware that his presence
ently unequal.” This was a
would generate hostil—President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
major breakthrough, overity, Robinson vowed not
September 24, 1957
turning nearly sixty years of
to retaliate against racist
legal segregation that began
taunts. As expected, fans
with Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
threw debris at him, rival
But it was slow to trigger changes. For one thing,
players attacked him, and he was often barred from
President Eisenhower believed that states rather
eating with his teammates on the road. Despite
than the federal government should deal with civil
these stressful hardships, Robinson flourished. He
rights, and he refused to endorse the decision. For
won the National League Rookie of the Year award in
another, the Court decreed in 1955 that desegrega1947 and the league’s Most Valuable Player award in
tion of southern schools should proceed “with all
1949, and later he became the first African American
deliberate speed,” which was vague enough to allow
inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Within a few
southern states leniency in enforcing the new law.
years, a number of other stars of the Negro Leagues
Another near breakthrough came with Eisenentered the historically white major leagues, suc-S
hower’s assistance. In September 1957, nine black
cessfully integrating “America’s pastime,” a highlyM
students were selected to integrate Central High
visible aspect of the nation’s cultural life.
I
School in Little Rock, Arkansas. When classes
Brown v. Board
T began, the students
Read the deciwere met by angry, racLegal challenges to segregation were meeting with
sion in Brown
H
ist mobs threatening viosome success as well, especially those led by the
v. Board of
lence, as well as by the
NAACP’s legal team. The landmark case is Brown v.,
Education.
© Bettmann/Corbis
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Elizabeth Eckford endures the taunts of classmates as troops ensure African Americans’ entry into Little Rock’s Central High School. When
>>
the federal troops left a month later, the taunts and jeers reappeared, and Gov. Orval Faubus closed Little Rock’s public schools the following year in
order to prevent integration.
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Read Eisenhower’s
response to
the Little Rock crisis.
Arkansas National Guard,
which had been ordered by
Arkansas Governor Orval
Faubus to prevent integration. Believing he had little choice but to uphold
the Supreme Court’s order in Brown, Eisenhower
sent a thousand troops from the U.S. Army’s 101st
Airborne Division to Little Rock to protect the black
students. They stayed for a month before being
replaced by the Arkansas National Guard, which
looked on as white students taunted and tortured
the African American students for the remainder
of the school year. The following year, Faubus chose
to close all of Little Rock’s public schools in order to
prevent further integration.
24-4c Massive Resistance
and the Black Response S
Faubus was not alone. In the South, black advances
M
were almost always met by massive resistance
I
from the dominant white population. Certainly
some white southerners supported racialTintegration, but the loudest and most agitated did not.
H symAfrican American activists and their white
pathizers were beaten, picketed, and generally
,
maltreated, sometimes even killed. The Brown decision itself had led to the creation of several White
Citizens’ Councils, which were organized to
J defend
segregation. The Ku Klux Klan also experienced a
O
revival in the middle 1950s, especially in the South.
And parts of the South, such as PrinceSEdward
County, Virginia, chose to close their public school
H
system and their public pools rather than be forced
U
to integrate.
Emmett Till
A
One of the most-discussed acts of racist violence
occurred in 1955, when a fourteen-year-old 6
Chicagoborn African American boy named Emmett Till was
8
beaten and murdered for supposedly whistling
at
a white woman who worked at a grocery9store in
Money, Mississippi. The woman’s husband and his
0 murhalf-brother were arrested for kidnapping and
der, and the American public closely followed
B their
trial in newspapers and on television, especially
U
after Till’s mother allowed reporters to photograph
Till’s badly beaten body. Although several African
Americans testified that they had seen and heard
the beating, the jury found the two men innocent.
The world press also followed the story closely,
leading one German newspaper to report, “The
Life of a Negro Isn’t Worth a Whistle.” The communist presses also picked up the Till case and other
massive resistance
civil rights abuses in order
A campaign and policy
to make a statement about
begun by politicians in
the hypocrisy of the United
Virginia to craft laws and
do whatever possible to
States’ claims to be fightresist racial integration;
ing for freedom in the Cold
spread throughout the
War. Although lynching was
South
still, evidently, permissible in
White Citizens’
the Deep South, the case of
Councils
Emmett Till provoked outCommittees organized in
the 1950s and 1960s to
rage, leading many northdefend segregation in the
erners who had been cool on
South
civil rights to see the depth
bus boycott
of segregation still extant in
A campaign to boycott
the South and making white
an area’s buses until
southerners aware that the
change is instituted; used
frequently during the civil
world was watching their
rights movement
actions; the two men acquitted of Till’s murder were later
ostracized by their local white society. Many later
civil rights activists saw the murder of Till as a turning point in their lives, demonstrating that the legal
system in the South was not going to protect them
and that they needed activism to create change.
Montgomery Bus Boycott and SCLC
Indeed, white resistance did not prevent African
Americans from continuing to push for equal
treatment and access to public services. In fact,
civil rights activism increased in the late 1950s.
Following a successful 1953 bus boycott in Baton
Rouge and the public outcry over Emmett Till’s
murder, in 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her
seat in the “whites only” section of a Montgomery,
Alabama, bus. After her arrest, the African
American community in Montgomery, which had
been planning for such an event for more than a
year, boycotted the city’s bus system. Despite significant loss of revenue, the white owners of the
bus lines refused to integrate their seating policy.
They held out until 1956, when the Supreme Court
declared that segregation in public transportation
was unconstitutional.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, a remarkable
success that mobilized the black community and
demonstrated the possibilities of a widespread
social movement, led directly to the formation
of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC), founded in January 1957 to challenge Jim
Crow laws in a direct way. Several veteran civil
rights activists were present at the inception,
including Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, Stanley Levison,
Ralph Abernathy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. King
was selected as the group’s leader. The SCLC initiated and organized massive revolts in the Deep
Civil Rights Breakthroughs
447
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nonviolence
South against racial oppression, and it embraced a
philosophy of peaceful integration and nonviolence.
But it would take increased
grassroots protests to push the movement forward,
protests that would start in 1960.
Strategy for social
changes that rejects the
use of violence
American life led many Americans to critique their
society as hollow and bland. Whatever else it might
be, the coming decade, when these complaints
would have ramifications, would not be described as
bland, conformist, or dull. It is to that subject, “the
sixties,” that we now must turn.
What else was happening . . .
Looking Ahead . . .
The conflicts over race in 1950s America would turn
out to be dress rehearsals for the massive social
changes that would come in the 1960s. But more
than just civil rights were affected by the changes
in postwar America. The political spectrum was
colored by the Cold War for the next half-century.
Americans were to have access to greater luxuries
than in any other society in the history of the world.S
Jobs were mostly plentiful, and churches were generally full. But these changes came with some costs.M
The fear of unpredictable nuclear holocaust loomedI
over everything. Women were socially prescribed
to remain in the home if the family could afford it.T
Racial disparities were made worse by restrictions inH
suburban housing. And the consumerist impulse of
1947
AT&T invents the cellular phone, which becomes
commercially available only in 1983.
1950
Danish doctor Christian Hamburger performs the
first sex change operation on New Yorker George
Jorgensen, who becomes Christine Jorgensen.
1954
Ray Kroc buys the small-scale franchise
McDonald’s Restaurant and begins to turn it into
the most successful fast-food chain in the world.
1959
The Beatles form.
Visit the CourseMate website
at www.cengagebrain.com for
additional study tools and review
materials for this chapter.
,
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Chapter 25
The Sixties
S
M
I
T
H
,
J
O
S
H
Learning Outcomes
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do U
the following:
A
25-1 Describe the experiences John F. Kennedy had while president
that led some to label him the “ultimate cold warrior.”
6
25-2 Discuss attempts made both by African Americans and by the
8
legal system to provide voting and other rights to black citizens.
9
25-3 Discuss Lyndon Johnson’s desire to build a “Great
0 Society” and
evaluate the relative success of his programs.
25-4
B
Explain the situation in Vietnam that President Johnson
inherited
U
from his predecessors, and evaluate the decisions he made over
the next few years concerning the Vietnam War.
25-5 Discuss the growth of the “counterculture” in American society
during the 1960s, and describe the various movements that
began to gather strength as Americans with an agenda sought
to have their voices heard.
450
C h apte r 21
The Continued Move West
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
“
The transition to the excitement
and disenchantments that we
associate with the sixties took place
slowly, beginning about
1963 or 1964.
”
From today’s perspective, the
years 1960, 1961, and 1962
look a lot more like the fifties
than what we have come to
think of as “the sixties.” The
It is acceptable for the federal government to purposely
economy remained strong,
deceive the American public in order to promote what the
those advocating for drafederal government defines as a national objective.
matic social change remained
Strongly Disagree
Strongly Agree
S
largely on the margins, and
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
the child-focused world
M of
the postwar years retained its
I
grip in the ever-expanding suburbs. The transition to the excitement and disenchantT with the sixties took place slowly, beginning about 1963 or 1964.
ments that we associate
It culminated in 1968, as liberalism—America’s dominant political system at the time,
H
which stressed individual rights, democratic capitalism, and a generous system of social
entitlements—seemed, under attack from all sides. Some felt it was too generous, creating a class of entitled loafers unwilling to do their fair share. Others felt postwar liberalism wasn’t generous enough, sacrificing equality for the sake of freedom, and placing
J and consumerism rather than authenticity and generosity.
a priority on appearances
Nonviolent political stances—against
racial discrimination and the Vietnam War—so
O
infuriated resisters that they sometimes turned to violence, which was sometimes met
S
in return by further violence.
By the late 1960s, this violence included even the assassinations of leaders like
H John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert
Kennedy. Furthermore, sexual and social mores seemed to be changing and loosening,
U
as a widespread drug culture
emerged and as women pushed against society’s long-held
restrictions. African Americans
and other repressed minorities also began to demand
A
greater recognition and access to power. In the end, the agents for change provoked a
conservative reaction that began mounting in 1968 and persisted for the next several
decades. But they would
6 transform America before the reaction took hold.
What do you think?
8
25-1 Kennedy
9 and the Cold War
The sixties started conventionally enough. After eight years in the White House,
0
Eisenhower was still beloved by much of America. But the Twenty-second Amendment,
B to FDR’s four terms as president, did not permit Eisenhower,
ratified in 1951 in reaction
or anyone else, to run U
for more than two terms in office. Eisenhower tepidly endorsed his
vice president, Richard Nixon, who had risen to fame through the anticommunist witch
hunts of the 1950s Red Scare.
For their part, the Democrats nominated a young (forty-three-year-old) Mas
sachusetts senator named John F. Kennedy. The scion of a prosperous Boston Irish
family, Kennedy seemed to have been bred for the job. He was a World War II hero with
M&N/Alamy
A psychedelic image of the musician Jimi Hendrix, who symbolized the topsy-turvy nature of the latter
>
the new medium to showcase his youthful vigor, while Nixon’s shifting eyes and moving hands made viewers uncertain he was ready to be
© Bettmann/Corbis
J
O
S
H
U
A
president. Many radio listeners, though, thought Nixon won the debate.
452
C h apte r 2 5
The Sixties
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OR
6
MT
4
ID
4
NV
3
CA
32
WY
3
MN
11
SD
4
CO
6
NM
4
WI
12
IA
10
NE
6
UT
4
AZ
4
ME
5
ND
4
KS
8
OK
R-7/I-1
TX
24
IL
27
MI
20
AR
8
LA
10
PA
32
OH
25
IN
13
MO
13
WV
8
KY
10
AL
MS I-6/D-5
8
VA
12
NC
14
TN
11
AK
3
VT
3 NH MA
4 16
NY
45
GA
12
RI
NJ CT 4
16 8
DE
3
MD
9
SC
8
FL
10
HI
3
Candidate (Party)
Electoral Vote
Popular Vote
Kennedy (Democrat)
303
56.50%
34,226,731
49.7%
Nixon (Republican)
219
40.75%
34,108,157
49.5%
15
2.75%
501,643
S 0.7%
M
Map 25.1. The Election of 1960I
Cengage Learning
Single column map
Election
1960
No bleeds
. Cengage Learning 2014
T
Ms00477
20p6 x 18p9
H
Final proof 8/16/08
Correction
for
Boyer
7/27/09—cm:
grams. As a result, Kennedy’s calls for increased
,
Eliminate yellow in TN
Byrd (Independent)
federal
aid for
medical care, mass transit,
Correct
Kennedy
pop.education,
vote per
1970
Abstract: 34,226,731
theStatistical
unemployed,
and a cabinet-level urban affairs
Rev.department
11/14/09—cm: generally
eliminate OR
& CA state
boundaries
went
nowhere.
@ shorelines
J
O
25-1b Kennedy the Cold WarriorS
But Kennedy did become an avid
H
Cold Warrior. During the election,
U
he vowed to take a more aggressive approach to the Cold War
A
than Eisenhower had, by challenging communism all over the
world.
Nation Building
To do this, Kennedy sought the
support of developing nations,
which he intended to win by
facilitating their economic and
political maturation—a process
known as nation building.
Kennedy believed wholeheartedly
in the doctrine of containment
and announced his willingness
to wage preemptive strikes to
prevent the march of communism. The Kennedy administration pursued this policy all over
the globe, specifically with
his Alliance of Progress program, which provided $25
billion in aid to countries in
Latin America. One response
to the United States’ promoting wealth for its allies was
the construction, in 1961,
of the Berlin Wall, built by
the communist government
to separate impoverished,
Soviet-controlled East Berlin
from the more prosperous
West Berlin.
nation building
Facilitating the economic
and political maturation of
developing nations; political strategy employed
by President Kennedy in
order to prevent developing nations from adopting
communism
Berlin Wall
Barrier built in 1961 by the
communist government
to separate impoverished,
Soviet-controlled East
Berlin from the more prosperous West Berlin
Kennedy and Cuba
After the election, however, Cuba and Vietnam rapidly developed as the president’s two biggest areas
of concern, and nowhere did Kennedy’s hard-line
approach to the Cold War manifest itself more
dramatically than in dealing with Cuba. Located 90
miles off the coast of Florida, Cuba had been a main
concern of U.S. foreign policy since the SpanishAmerican War for two reasons: (1) the United States
feared any political turmoil so close to its border,
and (2) many Americans had invested in the country.
These long-standing concerns were compounded
when Fidel Castro took power in 1959 and established a communist regime. This new regime distressed Kennedy not only because it meant one more
communist country in the world, but also because
the Soviet Union now had an ally just 90 miles from
6
8
9
0
B
U
The Berlin Wall, designed to prevent East Berliners from defecting to the West, became
>>
a powerful symbol of the Cold War throughout the remainder of the twentieth century.
Kennedy and the Cold War
Paul Schutzer/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
1960
WA
9
453
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Cuban Missile Crisis
Thirteen-day confrontation between the
Kennedy administration
and the Cuban communist regime in October
1962; Castro had agreed
to allow the Soviet
Union to base a few of
its nuclear missiles in
Cuba, thus potentially
triggering a nuclear war
between the United
States and the Soviet
Union
U.S. shores. Kennedy soon
dedicated himself to removing Castro and the communists from power.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Under Eisenhower, the CIA
had designed a plan to
overthrow Castro. Kennedy
implemented the plan in
April 1961, when the CIA sent
American-trained
Cuban
exiles back to their homeland to spark a rebellion. This seemingly simple
scheme quickly went awry. Inadequate air cover,
treacherous reefs, and swampy terrain meant that
the 1,400 commandos had a tough landing. In addition, the plan was hardly a secret to Castro; there
had been a lot of talk about the invasion in theS
Cuban immigrant community in the United States,M
and the news got back to him. When the commandos
arrived on Cuban shores, Castro’s forces were wait-I
ing to capture them as they landed.
T
Kennedy, wanting to conceal U.S. aims to overthrow or even assassinate another nation’s leader,H
waffled as to how to salvage the operation. His,
options were to do nothing and allow the operation
to fail, or send U.S. military forces into Cuba, escalating the conflict. He chose to do nothing, meaningJ
that more than 1,200 exiles
O
Explore docuwere captured and went on
ments related to trial; some were executed,S
the Bay of Pigs
and most were sentenced to
invasion.
H
thirty years’ imprisonment.
Those imprisoned were released in twenty months,U
in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine.
A
It was Kennedy’s greatest humiliation as president.
Cuban Missile Crisis
6
After the Bay of Pigs incident, the president launched
a multifaceted assault on the Castro regime, includ-8
ing radio broadcasts, assassination plots, and sabo-9
tage raids. Castro knew that another invasion of
0
Cuba was imminent. Determined to protect his
communist revolution, in April 1962 Castro agreedB
to allow the Soviet Union to base a few of its nuclear
U
missiles in Cuba. These missiles would be easily
capable of reaching U.S. targets and therefore of
triggering a nuclear war between the United States
and the Soviet Union. The Soviet premier, Nikita
Khrushchev, also knew the United States had missiles close to the Soviet Union, in American ally
Turkey, and he wanted to have at least some sem-
454
C h apte r 2 5
blance of balance in the arms race. A nuclear conflict
was on the horizon.
In October 1962, a U.S. reconnaissance plane
photographed the storage site of the missiles. This
shocking discovery set off a thirteen-day confrontation known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy
hastily convened a committee of top advisors to
discuss how to handle the situation. Options ranged
from invading Cuba to negotiating, although most
of Kennedy’s advisors favored some form of direct
standoff. Kennedy ultimately decided to establish
a naval “quarantine,” or blockade, of Cuba to prevent the Soviet weapons shipments from reaching port. The tension heightened on October 27
when a U.S. pilot flying over Cuba was shot down
and killed. The frightening standoff subsided only
when the Soviets agreed to remove their missiles
from Cuba in exchange for a promise that the
United States would not invade Cuba. The Kennedy
administration also privately pledged to dismantle
U.S. nuclear missiles that were placed in Turkey.
Successful negotiations meant that both sides had
averted nuclear war, and the secrecy of the agreement about removing missiles in Turkey made it
appear that Kennedy had won the standoff. The two
sides also took steps to avoid getting that close to
a nuclear standoff again, including putting a direct
telephone line between the White House and the
Kremlin.
Kennedy and Vietnam
While Kennedy was dealing with Cuba, he was also
supporting an anticommunist government in South
Vietnam. U.S. forces had first entered Vietnam in
the 1950s, after France removed itself as colonial
overlord of the Southeast Asian country. With France
gone, the country was partitioned in two halves.
The south was led by the U.S.-supported leader
Ngo Dinh Diem, the north by communist leaders
like Ho Chi Minh. When Ho Chi Minh threatened to
unify the nation under communist rule, the United
States increased its involvement. First, it canceled
Vietnam’s 1956 elections (which had been mandated
by the Geneva Convention) because it feared the
communists would win. Then it devoted resources
to propping up the South Vietnamese government.
By 1961, it was spending more than $40 million on
improving the South Vietnamese police system and
on establishing a number of programs to help the
South Vietnamese battle communist-backed guerrilla forces in the south, called the Viet Cong. The
Viet Cong often fought with the assistance of the
North Vietnamese military but were an independent
The Sixties
9781305178526, HIST: US History Since 1865, Volume 2, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without express authorization.
need for U.S. intervention. By 1963,
Vietnam was a small but volatile
front in the Cold War.
Keystone/Getty Images
25-2 The Freedom
Movement
S
In one of the most horrific images of the decade,M
a Buddhist
>>
monk in Saigon makes the ultimate protest against the repression of
I
the Buddhist majority by setting himself on fire.
T
H too
unit. To prevent the Viet Cong from becoming
powerful in the south, Kennedy increased, the U.S.
As Kennedy navigated the difficult
terrain of a multifaceted worldwide
Cold War, a movement at home was
emerging just as dramatically. After
the civil rights victories of the 1950s,
African Americans stepped up their
activism in the early 1960s, using
Cold War rhetoric to demonstrate
that America itself was not living
up to its claim of being a beacon of
freedom.
25-2a Expanded Nonviolence
Civil rights protests had been ongoing since the
Second World War, but they increased in intensity
and number in the early 1960s, beginning with the
actions of a collection of university students.
military presence in South Vietnam from 5,000 to
16,700. The United States was slowly drawing itself
The Sit-Ins and SNCC
in, all in an attempt to prevent another domino
J from
In one of the most influential protests in American hisfalling.
O
tory, on February 1, 1960, four black college freshmen
But when an internal battle in South Vietnam
from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical
S Diem
between Catholic leaders like Ngo Dinh
College began a sit-in at a local Woolworth’s lunch
and the Buddhist majority led to protests (several
H
counter in Greensboro. The young men would not
Buddhists publicly burned themselves to death to
U
leave until they were served a cup of coffee, a pracprotest the repression of the Buddhist majority),
tice regularly refused in a segregated society. The stuthe United States felt it was necessary to intervene
A
dents sat quietly until the store closed. The next day,
in order to maintain stability. Diem was not doing
twenty-seven students sat
the job and was making
in. Within a few days there
South Vietnam susceptible
6
were more students than
to a communist takeover. In
8
seats at Woolworth’s, which
August 1963 the U.S. ambasprompted the students to
sador to Vietnam, Henry
9
spread their protest to other
Cabot Lodge, gave U.S.
0
white-only restaurants in
support (and $40,000) to a
the city. Within three days,
group of South Vietnamese
B
there were more than three
generals who launched a
U
hundred students particicoup against Diem. Within
pating in the sit-in.
a few days, the U.S.-backed
By the end of February,
officers executed the old
students in other southern
leaders and took charge.
cities began similar proNevertheless,
political
tests, and by late spring,
instability persisted, only
—Franklin McCain, one of the original four
almost seventy thousand
increasing the apparent
sit-in protesters at Greensboro
Some way through, an old
“
white lady, who must have been
seventy-five or eighty-five, came
over and put her hands on my
shoulders and said, ‘Boys I am
so proud of you. You should
have done this ten years ago.
”
T...
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