The Eisenhower Era: Affluence and Anxieties

1. Chapter 37 The Eisenhower Era, 1952–1960

2. I. Affluence and Its Anxieties • Prosperity boom • Housing: • A fabulous surge in home construction • One of every four homes were built in the 1950s • 83 percent of those new houses were in suburbia • Science and technology: • Invention of transistor in 1948 sparked a revolution in electronics, especially in computers • The first electronic computers were massive machines • Computer giant International Business Machine (IBM) prototype of the “high-tech” corporation

3. I. Affluence and Its Anxieties(cont.) • The coming “information age” • Computers transformed business practices • Aerospace industries: • Connection between military and civilian aircraft production • The Seattle-based Boeing Company (1957)—the first large passenger jet, the “707” • First presidential jet (Eisenhower) “Air Force One” • Nature of the work force was changing: • “White collar” workers outnumbered “blue collar” • Passage from an industrial to a postindustrial or service-based economy

4. I. Affluence and Its Anxieties(cont.) • Union membership peaked about 35 percent in 1954 and then steady decline (see p. 769) • Women and industry: • Surge in white-collar employment opened special opportunities for women (see Table 37.1) • A “cult of domesticity” emerged in popular culture to celebrate those eternal feminine functions • 40 million new jobs were created from 1950-1980 • 30 million jobs in clerical and service work • “Pink-collar ghetto” were occupations that were dominated by women (see Figure 37.1)

5. I. Affluence and Its Anxieties(cont.) • Urban age and women: • Women’s new dual role: both workers and homemakers raised urgent questions: • About family, • And traditional definitions of gender differences. • Feminist Betty Friedan: • The Feminine Mystique (1963): a classic of feminist protest literature that launched the modern women’s movement.

6. Table 37-1 p861

7. Figure 37-1 p862

8. II. Consumer Culture in the Fifties • 1950s expansion of the middle class and blossoming of a consumer culture: • Dinner’s Club introduced the plastic credit card (1949) • 1948 first “fast-food” style McDonald’s opened in San Bernardino, California • 1955 Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California • Manufacturers, retailers, and advertisers spread American-style consumer capitalism to rest of the world. • Especially critical was the development of the television (see Figure 37.2)

9. II. Consumer Culture in the Fifties(cont.) • Attendance at movies sank: • Entertainment industry changed from silver screen to the picture tube • $10 billion was spent on advertising on television in mid-50s • Critics fumed that the popular new mass medium was degrading the public’s aesthetic, social, moral, political, and educational standards • Religion: • Capitalized on the powerful new electronic pulpit • Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Fulton J. Sheen took to the airwaves to spread the Christian gospel • Catalyzed the commercialization of sports • Once numbered in the stadium-capacity thousands; could now be counted in the couch-potato millions

10. II. Consumer Culture in the Fifties(cont.) • Sports reflected the shift in population toward the West and South • Creating the westward and southward sports franchises • Led to expansion of major baseball leagues, football and basketball leagues followed • Popular music dramatically transformed in the 50s: • Chief revolutionary was Elvis Presley: • He fused black rhythm and blues with white bluegrass and country styles • Creating rock ‘n’ roll. • Marilyn Monroe helped to popularize and commer- cialize new standards of sensuous sexuality, as did Playboy magazine

11. II. Consumer Culture in the Fifties(cont.) • As the 1950s closed: • Americans were on their way to becoming free-spending consumers of mass-produced, standardized products • Critics lamented the implications of this new consum-erist lifestyle: • David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd,portrayed the postwar generation as a pack of conformists • As did William H. Whyte, The Organization Man • Similar theme in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955) by Sloan Wilson • John Kenneth Galbraith questioned the relation between private wealth and public goods in The Affluent Society (1958)

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13. Figure 37-2 p863

14. III. The Advent of Eisenhower • Election of 1952: • Democrats • Nominated a reluctant Adlai E. Stevenson • Republicans • Enthusiastically chose war hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower on the first ballot • “Ike’s” running mate was Richard M. Nixon, who gained notoriety as the red-hunter • Nixon was the campaigner with the bare-knuckle style of political combat.

15. III. The Advent of Eisenhower(cont.) • Politics and television: • Nixon, accused of taking illegal donations, appealed in a speech denying such on television—the Checkers Speech • Television was now a formidable political tool • Later Eisenhower used it in short, tightly scripted televised “spots” • These foreshadowed the future of political advertising • Television used for political purposes: • Vastly oversimplified complicated economic and social issues • Eventually turned to the standards of show business and commercialism

16. III. The Advent of Eisenhower(cont.) • Results of the 1952 presidential election: • Eisenhower pledged to go personally to Korea to end the war if elected: • 33,936,234 votes to Stevenson’s 27,314,992 • 442 electoral votes to 89 (see Map 37.1) • Ike was able to bring in Republicans to gain GOP control of the new Congress. • Eisenhower’s presidential term: • He fulfilled his pledge and went for a three day visit to Korea • It took him, after threats of atomic weapons, seven months to sign a treaty.

17. III. The Advent of Eisenhower(cont.) • Korean situation: • Last three years • 54,000 Americans lay dead • Perhaps a million Chinese • More than a million North Koreans and South Koreans were dead • Tens of billions American dollars had been poured in • The war bought only a return to the conditions of 1950 • Korea remained divided at the thirty-eighth parallel.

18. III. The Advent of Eisenhower(cont.) • Eisenhower himself • Military commander: • A leadership style that self-consciously projected an image of sincerity, fairness, and optimism • In World War II known as an “unmilitary” general • President: • Struck the pose of an “unpolitical” president • Serenely above the petty partisan fray • His greatest “asset” was his enjoyment of the “affection and respect of our citizenry” • Critics charged he hoarded the “asset” of his immense popularity, rather then spend it for a good cause.

19. Map 37-1 p865

20. p865

21. IV. The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy • First problem for Eisenhower was McCarthy • Joseph R. McCarthy was an obstreperous anticommunist crusader: • In February 1950, he accused Secretary of State Dean Acheson of knowingly employing 205 Communists • His rhetoric grew bolder and so did his accusations after the 1952 election • He saw the red hand of Moscow everywhere • McCarthyism flourished in the seething Cold War atmosphere of suspicion and fear.

22. IV. The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy (cont.) • He was the most ruthless and did the most damage to American traditions of fair play and free speech • Careers of countless officials, writers, and actors were ruined by “Low-Blow Joe” • Eisenhower privately loathed McCarthy but publicly tried to stay out of his way • Eisenhower allowed him to control personnel policy in the State Department • Which resulted in severe damage to the morale and effectiveness of the professional foreign service • It deprived the government of a number of specialists • Damaged America’s international reputation for fair and open democracy when it was necessary.

23. IV. The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy (cont.) • He bent too far when he attacked the U.S. army • The embattled military men fought back in 35 days of televised hearings in the spring of 1954 • Army-McCarthy hearings: • Showed the political power of the new broadcast medium • Up to 20 million watched the hearings • McCarthy publicly cut his own throat by parading his essential meanness and irresponsibility • The Senate formally condemned him for “conduct unbecoming a member” • Three years later McCarthy died of chronic alcoholism • “McCarthyism” a label for the dangerous forces of unfairness/fear, unleashed by a democracy society

24. V. Desegregating American Society • America’s black community in 1950s • African Americans: • 15 million citizens in 1950 • Two-thirds of whom made their homes in the South • Jim Crow laws: • A rigid set of laws which governed all aspects of their exis-tence • Dealing with a bizarre array of separate social arrangements • That kept them insulated from whites, economically inferior, and politically powerless • Had to have everything separated • Only about 20% eligible to vote

25. V. Desegregating American Society (cont.) • Where the law proved insufficient to enforce this regime, vigilante violence did the job: • Six black war veterans, claiming the rights for which they had fought overseas, were murdered in the summer of 1946 • A Mississippi mob lynched black fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 for allegedly leering at a white woman • Segregation tarnished America’s international image • African American entertainers Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker toured the world recounting the horrors of Jim Crow

26. V. Desegregating American Society(cont.) • Gunnar Myrdal book: An American Dilemma exposing the scandalous contradiction between • “The American Creed”—allegiance to the values of “progress, liberty, equality, and humanitarianism” • And the nation’s shameful treatment of black citizens. • International pressure with grassroots and legal activism • Propelled some racial progress in the North after World War II • They fought for and won equal access to public accommodations • Jackie Robinson cracked baseball’s color barrier when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed him in 1947

27. V. Desegregating American Society(cont.) • The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): • Pushed the Supreme Court in 1950 to rule in Sweatt v. Painter that separate professional schools for blacks failed to meet the test of equality • Black suffering still continued, especially in the South: • Increasingly African Americans refused to suffer in silence (see pp. 870-871) • On December 1955 Rosa Parks made history in Montgomery, Alabama, when she boarded a bus and took a seat in the “whites only” section and refused to give it up

28. V. Desegregating American Society(cont.) • Her arrest for violating the city’s Jim Crow statutes sparked a year-long black boycott of city buses • And served notice throughout the South that blacks would no longer submit meekly to the absurdities and indignities of segregation. • The Montgomery bus boycott: • The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.: • Unlikely champion of the downtrodden and disfranchised • He had been sheltered from the grossest cruelties of segregation • But his oratorical skill, his passionate devotion to biblical and constitutional conceptions of justice, and his devotion to nonviolent principles of India’s Mohandas Gandhi were destined to push him to the forefront of black revolution.

29. VI. Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution • President Truman and blacks • Commissioned a report called “To Secure These Rights”: • He ended segregation in the federal civil service in 1948 • Ordered “equality of treatment and opportunity” in the armed forces • Congress resisted passing civil rights legislation • Truman’s successor, Eisenhower, showed no interest in racial issues.

30. VI. Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution (cont.) • Supreme Court and civil rights: • The court assumed political leadership in the civil rights struggle • Chief Justice Earl Warren: • Active judicial intervention in previously taboo social issues • Courageously led the Court to address urgent issues that Congress and the President preferred to avoid • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas: • Segregation in the public schools was “inherently unequal” and thus unconstitutional.

31. VI. Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution (cont.) • It reversed the Court’s rule of 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson (see p. 496) that “separate but equal” facilities were allowable under the Constitution • Desegregation must go ahead with “all deliberate speed” • Border States made reasonable efforts to comply • Deep South organized “massive resistance” • Southern congressional members signed the “Declaration of Constitutional Principles” in 1956 • Pledging their unyielding resistance to desegregation • Some states diverted public funds to start private schools • Ten years later only 2% of the eligible blacks in the Deep South were sitting in classrooms with whites.

32. VI. Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution (cont.) • President Eisenhower remained reluctant to promote integration • Wanted to educate white Americans about the need for racial justice • Felt that the recent Court’s ruling upset “the customs and convictions of at least two genera-tions of Americans” • He steadily refused to issue a public statement endorsing the Court’s conclusion.

33. VI. Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution (cont.) • In September, Ike was forced to act: • Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, mobilized the National Guard to prevent 9 black students from enrolling in Little Rock’s Central High School • Ike sent troops to escort the children to their classes • Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction • It set up a permanent Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of civil rights • And authorized federal injunctions to protect voting rights.

34. VI. Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution (cont.) • Blacks and civil rights movement: • Martin Luther King, Jr. formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957 • Aimed to mobilize the vast power of black churches on behalf of black rights • Churches were the largest and best-organized black institutions • Black “sit-in” movement launched February 1, 1960 • By four black college freshmen in Greensboro, NC • They demanded service at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter

35. VI. Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution (cont.) • Sit-ins swelled into wade-ins, lie-ins, and pray-ins to compel equal treatment • April, 1960 southern black students formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): • Pronounced “snick” • To give more focus and force to these efforts • Young and impassioned, SNCC members would: • Lose patience with the more stately tactics of the SCLC • And the even more deliberate legalism of the NAACP.

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38. VII. Eisenhower Republicanism at Home • Eisenhower in 1953 • Administration of “dynamic conservatism” • Dealing with people: “Be liberal, be human” • “People’s money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative” • A balanced, middle-of-the-road course • Strove to balance the federal budget: • Guard the Republic from what he called “creeping socialism” • Supported the transfer of control over offshore oil fields from the federal government to the states

39. VII. Eisenhower Republicanism at Home (cont.) • Tried to curb the TVA (see p. 766) by encouraging a private power company to build a generating plant to compete with the massive public utility • Eisenhower’s secretary of health, education, and welfare condemned the free distribution of the Salk antipolio vaccine as “socialized medicine” • Eisenhower responded to the Mexican government concern about illegal Mexican immigrants (see p. 803) • Operation Wetback—1 million Mexicans were apprehended and returned to Mexico in 1954 • Eisenhower sought to cancel the tribal preservation policies of the “Indian New Deal” (see p. 765)

40. VII. Eisenhower Republicanism at Home (cont.) • He proposed to “terminate” the tribes as legal entities • And to revert to the assimilationist goals of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 (see p. 581) • Most Indians resisted termination, and the policy was abandoned in 1961 • Ike backed the Federal Highway Act of 1956: • a $27 billion plant to build forty-two thousand miles of sleek, fast motorways • Essential to the national defense • Created countless construction jobs • Sped the suburbanization of America • The Highway Act offered juicy benefits to the trucking, automobile, oil, and travel industries • While robbing the railroads, especially passenger trains, of business

41. VII. Eisenhower Republicanism at Home (cont.) • The act exacerbated problems of air quality and energy consumption • Had disastrous consequences for cities.

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43. VIII. A “New Look” in Foreign Policy • 1952 Republican platform called for a “new look” at foreign policy • Condemned “containment” • John Foster Dulles, secretary of state: • Wanted to “roll back” gains of the red tides and “liberate captive peoples” • Same time promised to balance the budget by cutting military spending • Dulles announced a policy of boldness 1954: • Eisenhower would relegate the army and navy to the backseat and build up an airfleet of superbombers (called the Strategic Air Command, SAC)

44. VIII. A “New Look” in Foreign Policy (cont.) • They would be equipped with city-flattening weapons • Inflict “massive retaliation” on the enemies • Advantage: paralyzing nuclear impact and cheaper price tag • Sought a thaw in the Cold War: • Through negotiations with the new Social leaders • In the end the “new look” proved illusory • Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet leader, rejected Ike’s call for an “open skies” mutual inspection program • U.S. refused aid to the Hungarians in their 1956 uprising • The Hungarian uprising revealed America’s nuclear weapon was ineffective in relatively minor crisis

45. VII. A “New Look” in Foreign Policy (cont.) • The “massive retaliation” doctrine: • Was starkly exposed • Eisenhower discovered that the aerial and atomic hardware necessary for “massive retaliation” was staggeringly expensive.

46. IX. The Vietnam Nightmare • Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh: • Nationalist movement sought to throw off the French colonial rule • Minh appealed to Wilson for self-determination • Cold War events damped anticolonial Asian people’s dreams: • Their leaders became increasingly communists while the United States became increasingly anticommunists • 1954 America was paying 80% of the costs in Indochina • It amounted to about $1 billion

47. IX. The Vietnam Nightmare(cont.) • French continued to crumble under Ho Chin Minh’s nationalist guerrilla forces—called Viet Minh • French garrison was trapped in fortress of Dien Bien Phu • The new “policy of boldness” was now to be tested • Some favored intervention with American bombers • Eisenhower, correctly fearing British nonsupport, held back. • The Battle of Dien Bien Phu: • Proved a victory for the nationalists • A multination conference in Geneva halved Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel (see Map 37.2)

48. IX. The Vietnam Nightmare(cont.) • Ho Chi Minh in the north consented to the arrangement on the assurance Vietnam-wide elections would be held within two years • South: a pro Western government under Ngo Dinh Diem was entrenched at Saigon • The Vietnamese never held the promised elections • Eisenhower promised economic and military aid to the autocratic Diem regime, for social reforms • The Americans had evidently backed a losing horse but could see no easy way to call off their bet.

49. 37-2 p875

50. X. Cold War Crises in Europe and the Middle East • Postwar Germany: • The Germans were welcomed into NATO 1955 • With an expected contribution of half a million troops • Eastern Europe countries and the Soviets created the Warsaw Pact to the newly NATO forces • The Cold War was thawing a bit in 1955: • Soviets agreed to end their occupation of Austria • Summer conference in Geneva produced little • Hope increased when Soviet Communist boss Khrushchev publicly denounced Stalin’s bloody excesses