Chapter 40

1952-1960

Election of 1952

• Democrats couldn’t choose Truman anymore because of his fight with MacArthur and deadlock in Korea. Choose Adlai E. Stevenson

• Republicans choose General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon as his VP running mate (red hunter)

• Ike: war hero, commander of NATO from 1950-52, Pres. Of Columbia University

• Nixon did all the campaigning and publicly lambasted Adlai Stevenson when his own scandalous slush fund use came out. Made “Checkers speech” and all was good

Power of TV on elections• Got Nixon to directly reach

the people, even more so than radio

• Eisenhower gave answers on video tape to questions that would be asked later.

• “selling” of the Presidency• Politicians can go directly to

the the voters without the influence of parties

• The entire South voted for Ike. Ike won

Ike Facts• Sincerity, fairness,

optimism in leadership.• Harmonizing personality,

which is perfect to sooth troubled Americans on divided issues such as communist subversion at home and civil rights.

• Critics say he was more concerned about social harmony than social justice (civil rights)

Joseph McCarthy• Eisenhower had to deal with this guy during his

presidency. McCarthy was a democrat• Most ruthless Anti-communist crusader who

came into the public eye in 1950 when he accused the Secretary of State Dean Acheson for employing 205 Communists.

• For four years, he ruined the careers of officials, writers, actors as McCarthy unfairly accused them as being communists.

• We could have had more Asian-specialist counsel our President more on the Vietnam issue, but McCarthy said they’re all communists.

• McCarthy’s career finished when he accused the Army. Armymen fought back in televised 35 day series and 20 million saw McCarthy with new lens

• 3 years later, McCarthy dies of Alcoholism. He will be forever remembered for the unfairness and fear he put in Americans about communists at home than abroad in the USSR.

Life in the Segregated South• 15 million AA in America in

1950. 2/3 in South.• Jim Crow Laws created

separate social lives.• Inferior, politically

powerless.• Segregated schools, toilets,

fountains, restaurants, waiting rooms, hotels.

• Only 20% registered to vote. Blotted out of television networks to not anger the Southerners

• 6 AA vets killed for wanting veteran rights.

• Emmett Till (1955) lynched for whistling at a white woman

• “Token black” – Jackie Robinson

“An American Dilemma” – Gunnar Myrdal (Swedish guy)

• Exposes the contradiction between America’s belief that all men are created equal and it’s horrible treatment of AA.

Thurgood Marshall • NAACP Chief Legal counsel who would later be a Supreme Court Justice.

• Sweatt v. Painter – stated that separate professional schools for blacks failed to be “equal” and were outlawed.

Rosa Parks Montgomery Bus Boycott• December 1955, Parks refuses to

give up her seat and arrested in violation of Jim Crow laws

• Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. got his congregation to boycott the busses. AA did not use the bus and walked for a year and they desegregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama!!! 381 days

• “Soul Force” = MLK JR’s non-violent resistance. Combo of Ghandi, Thoreau, Jesus, A. Philip Randolph. “I will not hate you. I will not obey your unjust laws.

Earl Warren – Supreme Court Justice• Elevated to Supreme Court

by Eisenhower, he actively used his judicial powers by stepping up to confront important social issues

• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954): says segregation in public schools is unconstitutional ***REVERSES Plessey v. Ferguson that says “separation is ok” ***Says Desegregation/integration must start NOW.

Reaction to Brown v. Board of Education

• In the deep South: massive resistance.

• More than 100 Southern senators signed a “Declaration of Constitutional Principles” in 1956 pledging against desegregation

• Created private schools where this would not apply.

• 10 years later, fewer than 2% AA were in White schools.

Ike’s beliefs regarding integration• Was against integration b/c he

grew up around all whites and fought in a segregated army

• Complained that Truman created a Fair Employment Practices Commission that would that would give equal treatment and opportunities to AA

• Complained that Brown v. Board of Edu “upset the customs of two generations of Americans”

Little Rock’s Central High School

• September 1957 – The governor of Arkansas got the National Guard to prevent 9 AA students from enrolling at Central High

• Eisenhower has to send troops to escort them to their classes.

Civil Rights Act (1957)• Congress passed for the

first time since Reconstruction

• But Eisenhower reassured the South that it would be the “mildest civil rights bill possible”

• Set up the Civil Rights commission to 1) investigate violence of civil rights 2) send federal troops to protect black voters

***Fed. Govn’t wont’ do anything for Blacks so Blacks have to take matters into their own hands.

FOR US, BY US (FUBU)

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) - 1957

• Got Black churches to mobilize for Black rights

Sit-ins - 1960• Four black college students in

Greensboro, NC demanded service at Woolworth’s “white only” lunch counter.

• Brought 19 more the next day. Then 85 more, then 1000 more.

• Sit-in movements transpired all throughout the South to fight for equal treatment in public places.

• SNCC – Students Non-violent Coordinating Committee helped out with these efforts.

Ike’s Beliefs• Harmony: Be liberal with humans, be conservative with

economy to create a balanced middle-road view.Put an end to Truman’s enormous military build up.- Believed in small government that even off shore oil field

control should be of the state, not the federal government. - But was FOR New Deal policies like Social Security and even

created the Interstate Highway Act, to build 42,000 miles of fast motorways. ***Led to jobs, sped up suburban development, boomed industries of trucking, automobile, oil, travel industries while slowly killing RRs.

- ***Air quality goes down. Helps with white flight since shopping malls open up in suburbs.

Ike responds to Mexicans and NA• Mexican govn’t was

worried that illegal immigration would undo the Bracero Program, which involved legally imported workers

• Operation Wetback: rounded up illegal immigrants. 1 million Mexicans were repatriated.

• Ike canceled the “Indian New Deal” and wanted them to get back into assimilating themselves in the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887.

John Foster Dulles “Brinkmanship”• Ike’s Secretary of State that

says he will “roll back the Reds and liberate the captives” while cutting military spending through “POLICY OF BOLDNESS” --- Zero tolerance

• This policy involves getting super-bombers (Strategic Air Command, SAC) with nuclear bombs. We will bomb anyone if they get out of hand.

• We actually threaten this on Mao’s China when they bomb Taiwan in 1955.

Nikita Khrushchev • Stalin dies in 1953.

Khrushchev takes his place

• Ike asks for “open skies” and Khrushchev says, “Yea right, so you can spy on us?”

• Hungary (1956) rose up against Soviets and asked US for help. They accused of us failing to honor the US promise to help, but we felt that our “policy of boldness” would be too much of a sledgehammer on such a minor crisis.

Ho Chi Minh• Nationalist movements in Asia

were turning up• Vietnam’s independence leader,

HO Chi Minh, asked Wilson for help back in 1919 since he talked about self-determination in the League.

• Ho Chi Minh became communistic and the US ended up supporting 80% of the French costs to fight Vietnam (stab to Ho Chi Minh’s heart)

• France was losing to the Vietnamese who were relentlessly fighting for their freedom. France and Japan had occupied since 1858. Vietnamese sick of them

• American bombers were to be sent to Vietnam (policy of boldness) to fire on Vietnamese who trapped French at Dienbienphu. But Eisenhower held back.

Geneva Accord

• French’s Dienbienphu fell and Geneva conference settled an accord to split Vietnam at the 17th parallel. North would be communist under Ho Chi Minh. South would be pro-western government under Ngo Dinh Diem

• Ho Chi Minh agreed to this set up as long as in two years, all of Vietnam would hold an election in 2 years but it never happened b/c Communism would probably win.

• Eisenhower promises Diem economic and military aid as long as he made some social reforms. He did not, and we still kept the money coming.

Hungary strikes for freedom

• (1956) Budapest, Hungary. Soviet tanks come in and Hungarians run for the Austrian Border

• The U.S. allows 30,000 Hungarian refugees in

Iran (1953)

• Soviets were influencing Iran, so the government started to resist the Western companies that controlled their petroleum.

• We need their oil, so we got our CIA to create a coup and install a new dictator, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, who would give us oil.

• Foreshadow: 20 years later, the Iranians will kill this guy and many other Americans.

Suez Canal Crisis• Nasser needs money to build a dam. We offered

to help, but then Nasser was talking to USSR, too, so we withdrew our money offer.

• In reaction to this withdrawal for help, Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, which was owned by British and French and threatened oil supply which came through the canal from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.

• Soviets threatened to give Egypt help if Western countries invade

• Britain and France end up attacking together and don’t tell the US about it. They assumed the US would give them oil during this time but Eisenhower (pissed) refused. GB/France have to withdraw.

• UN police have to maintain order for the first time.

• This is the last time that the US can use oil as a weapon b/c after 1948, we deplete our resources.

• ***Nasser starts to influence other middle eastern countries to nationalize their oil and reap the benefits of it since it is in HIGH DEMAND.

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran, Venezuela.- They will hold all other countries at a stranglehold b/c they have what we need

Election of 1956

• Eisenhower and Nixon run together again vs. Adlai Stevenson again.

• Ike wins• Had scandal with his assistant, Sherman Adams. Secretary of

State Dulles died of cancer. • Lots of financial scandal in unions and all laborers wanted a

thorough house cleaning.• Landrum-Griffin Act (1959) – designed to make sure labor

leaders aren’t stealing money or bullying.

The Space Race• October 1957, Soviets orbit Sputnik I and

then one month later, Sputnik II plus a dog.

• America was pissed b/c we were dealing with civil rights issues rather than space issues.

• If Soviets could launch satellites, they can launch missiles to reach the U.S.

• “Rocket Fever” sweeps the U.S. and we launch our satellite that is the size of a grape.

• ***Leads us to compare Soviet vs. American education.

• National Defense and Education Act – gave $887 million in loans to needy college students and grants to improve teaching sciences and languages.