Ike’s America

Postwar America, 1950s

Election of 1952

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Republican

Adlai Stevenson

Democrat

Election of 1952

“classic Horatio Alger success story”

West Point, class of 1915

Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II

Fiscal conservative

Internationalist

“hidden-hand leadership”

“everyone’s favorite grandfather”

“Dynamic Conservatism”• “dynamic conservatism” or “modern Republicanism”• “conservative when it comes to money matters and

liberal when it comes to human beings.”• He cut spending; didn’t cut New Deal social legislation• George Humphrey, Secretary of Treasury

– Abolished Reconstruction Finance Corporation– Submerged Land Act

• In 1955, minimum wage was raised to $1 per hour• Average family income rose 15 percent and real wages

went up 20 percent; unemployment averaged 4.5 percent – “golden decade” for American labor

• Output of goods and services rose 15 percentStable prices, full employment, and steady growth were the hallmarks of the 1950s

Country on Wheels• “highway lobby”

• National System of Interstate and Defense Highways Act, 1956– More than 41,000 miles; cost more than $26 billion, and

took 13 years to construct– Largest public works program in U.S. history

• Acceleration of decline of inner city and flight to the suburbs– Increase in shopping malls, motels, drive-in theaters,

gasoline service stations, mobile homes, multicar garages– In 1952, more than 52 million cars; 104 million by 1972– Less government spending on mass transit; old, poor,

handicapped negatively affected

Country on Wheels

Ike and the Cold War

Ike and the Cold War• Dulles favored “liberation policy” over containment policy”;

Eisenhower believed Truman’s “containment policy” was too expensive

• “New Look” or “brinkmanship policy”– Emphasized nuclear weapons over conventional weapons– Air Force became more important military branch– Reduced defense spending from $50.4 billion to $35.8 billion

in 1956– Reduced troop levels by a third– Emphasized massive retaliation to keep order– Increased foreign alliances (SEATO, CENTO, ANZUS)– Used CIA as a covert foreign policy arm (created by National

Defense Act of 1947)

Ike and the Cold War

Ike and the Cold War

Changes in Moscow• Stalin’s death, 1953• Cold War Thaw

– Repatriation of German POWs

– Soviet Union established relations with Greece and Israel; gave up claims on Turkey

– Withdrew from Austrian occupation zone

• Nikita Khrushchev– “peaceful coexistence”

• Geneva Summit, 1955– Rejection of “open skies” proposal

– “spirit of Geneva”

Warsaw Pact

1956• Poland – Wladyslaw Gomulka

• Hungarian Revolution – Imre Nagy

• Suez Canal Crisis – Gamal Adbel Nasser

– Aswan High Dam

– Nasser nationalized Suez Canal

– France, Britain, and Israel retook canal; angered Eisenhower

– Eisenhower Doctrine

• Election of 1956

• 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia

Sputnik• Sputnik, October 1957• Sputnik II, November 1957

– Laika, first dog in space

• Vanguard, December 1957– First of a series of highly publicized failures

– Forced Americans to question culture? Superiority?

– Sputnik did not demonstrate Soviet technological superiority, just willingness to place to place military ahead of well-being of citizens

• National Defense Education Act, 1958

Space Race

Third World Challenges• CIA coup d’etat in Iran – 1953

– Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

• CIA coup d’etat in Guatemala – 1954

• U.S. Marines in Lebanon – 1958

• U.S. became identified with unpopular, undemocratic, and intolerant right-wing regimes in Third World

Third World Challenges• Cuban Revolution – 1959

– Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista

– Nationalized American companies

90% of mines, 80% of utilities,

40% of sugar operations

– Eisenhower severed ties with Cuba in 1961

– Allied with Soviet Union because he was anti-American

• Truman and Eisenhower “containment policies” were unsuccessful in dealing with nationalistic independence movements– Between 1944 and 1974, 78 countries won their

independence

U-2 Incident• Khrushchev visited the U.S. in 1959

• Paris Summit set for May 1960

• American U-2 spy plane shot down over Soviet territory– Pilot Francis Gary Powers had not followed orders

and destroyed the plane; Soviets had both– Paris Summit was cancelled after Eisenhower refused

to apologize

• As Eisenhower left office, warned Americans that the “military-industrial complex” could threaten democratic process in country

Father Knows Best

Father Knows Best• “White flight” – growth of suburbs

– Suburbs grew six times faster than cities

• William Levitt – Levittown– VA and FHA loans

• Greater percentage of whites moved to suburbs– African Americans were 12.5 percent of urban

population; 4.9 percent of suburban population in 1950

– Numbers climbed to 20.5 percent of urban population and 4.8 of suburban population in 1970; housing and job restrictions

Father Knows Best• Baby boom

– Population increased by 10 million in 1930; 19 million in the 1940

– Population increased by 30 million in 1950s

• Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care (1946)

• Modern Woman: The Lost Sex – an independent woman was “a contradiction in terms.”– “ideal” woman was homemaker (wife and mother)

• Rise in religious affiliations

Other Side of the Coin• Abundance of self-criticism in 1950s

– Lewis Mumford: suburbs were a “multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal wasteland, inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group.”

– United States had come a country of unthinking consumers driven by advertisers; rise of consumerism and materialism

• Impact of Cars? televisions?

– Women expressed frustration about roles as wives and mothers – Betty Friedan

Other Side of the Coin

Other Side of the Coin• David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd (1955)

• Rise of conglomerates and franchises

• Rise of white-collar workers

• William Whyte’s The Organization Man (1956)– lack of individuality in the workplace

• Criticism of “suburban threat” was an overreaction– More Americans (middle and working class) could

afford to buy homes for the first time– Conformity, cultural homogeneity, materialism, anxiety

over sex roles existed in urban areas, too

Rock ‘n’ Roll• American youth were harshest

critics of “suburban values”

• Rock ‘n’ roll was the bastard mulatto child of a heterogeneous American culture: rhythm and blues, country, and pop– Made possible by

demographic changes post World War II

• Faced criticism, especially by white Southerners

• Elvis Presley

“Shake, Rattle, and Roll”Get out of that bed,

And wash your face and hands.

Get into that kitchen,

Make some noise with the pots and pans.

Well you wear low dresses,

The sun comes shinin’ through.

I can’t believe my eyes,

That all of this belongs to you.

Joe Turner

Get out in that kitchen,

And rattle those pots and pans.

Roll my breakfast,

‘Cause I’m a hungry man.

You wear those dresses,

Your hair done up so nice.

You look so warm,

But your heart is cold as ice.

Bill Haley and the Comets

Beat Generation• Beats scorned materialism,

traditional family life, religion, traditional sexuality, and politics

• Valued spontaneity and intuition, seeking truth through Eastern mysticism and drugs

• Glorified “natural life” of African Americans; music and language (jive)

• Allen Ginsberg– “Howl” (1955)

• Jack Kerouac– On the Road (1957)

We Shall Overcome

Jim Crow

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

William Levitt

Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)

John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me (1961)

World War II

A. Philip Randolph, 1941

Executive Order 8802

CORE – James Farmer, 1942

Race Riots, 1943

Jackie Robinson, 1946

President’s Committee on Civil Rights, 1948

Integration of armed services, 1948

NAACP

Thurgood Marshall

Missouri ex rel Gaines (1938)

Sweatt v. Painter (1950)

McLaurin v. Board of Regents (1950)

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

Earl Warren

“second emancipation proclamation”