The 1950s

1. The 1950s by Sabrina Ho and Kataryna Jaworsky

2. Timeline • 1955 • Salk polio vaccine developed • AFL - CIO merger • Montgomery bus boycott • First postwar U.S.- Soviet meeting • 1956 • Interstate Highway Act • Suez crisis • Reelection of Eisenhower • 1957 • Sputnik • Peak of baby boom • Founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference • School desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas • Eisenhower Doctrine • Jencks v. United States • 1958 • National Defense Education Act • NASA founded • U.S. and Soviet Union stop atomic tests • 1959 • Fidel Castro • Camp David meeting between Khrushchev and Eisenhower • 1950 • Hydrogen Bomb • Soviet spy ring • Alger Hiss • McCarthyism • Korean War • Rosenbergs • McCarran Internal Security Act • NSC-68 • 1951 • Smith Act • First hydrogen bomb tested • Dennis v. United States • 1952 • The start of Eisenhower’s presidency • Republicans take control of Congress • McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 • 1953 • Korean War truce signed • Earl Warren becomes Chief Justice • Operation Wetback • 1954 • Army-McCarthy hearings • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka • Geneva Conference

3. Introduction http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/red-scare/videos

4. Presidents in the U.S. • President Dwight (Ike) D. Eisenhower • (1953 - 1961) • 34th president • Republican • Tried to reduce tension of the Cold War • Truce that brought peace to Korea • Geneva Summit Peace Meeting • Sent troops to Little Rock, Arkansas • President Harry S. Truman • (1945 - 1953) • 33rd president • Democrat • Decided to drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki • Truman Doctrine • Berlin Aircraft • Korean War

5. Cold War • National Security Counsel Paper - NSC-68 • Outlined a plan for the Cold War • Decided to build up the store of nuclear weapons • To fund the construction, tax rates were increased and reduce other parts of the budget • Nuclear arms race • First Hydrogen bomb (Mike) built and tested • John Foster Dulles - Massive retaliation & Brinkmanship • Geneva Summit Peace Meeting • 1955 - U.S. met with the Soviet Union but could not agree on a plan for nuclear-arms control. • Led to both nations pausing nuclear weapon testing • Popular Ideas • Vietnam Domino Effect • Iron Curtain • CIA Actions • Third World troubles • Eisenhower Doctrine • Suez Crisis - Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt after the Suez Canal was built.

6. The Sinews of Peace (Excerpt) The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with this primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. As you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done, but also you must feel anxiety lest you fall below the level of achievement. Opportunity is here now, clear and shining, for both our countries. To reject it or ignore it or fritter it away will bring upon us all the long reproaches of the aftertime. It is necessary that constancy of mind, persistency of purpose, and the grand simplicity of decision shall rule and guide the conduct of the English-speaking peoples in peace as they did in war. We must, and I believe we shall, prove ourselves equal to this severe requirement. I have a strong admiration and regard for the valiant Russian people and for my wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin. There is deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain -- and I doubt not here also -- toward the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships. It is my duty, however, to place before you certain facts about the present position in Europe. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow. The safety of the world, ladies and gentlemen, requires a unity in Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast. It is from the quarrels of the strong parent races in Europe that the world wars we have witnessed, or which occurred in former times, have sprung. Twice the United States has had to send several millions of its young men across the Atlantic to fight the wars. But now we all can find any nation, wherever it may dwell, between dusk and dawn. Surely we should work with conscious purpose for a grand pacification of Europe within the structure of the United Nations and in accordance with our Charter. In a great number of countries, far from the Russian frontiers and throughout the world, Communist fifth columns are established and work in complete unity and absolute obedience to the directions they receive from the Communist center. Except in the British Commonwealth and in the United States where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization. The outlook is also anxious in the Far East and especially in Manchuria. The agreement which was made at Yalta, to which I was a party, was extremely favorable to Soviet Russia, but it was made at a time when no one could say that the German war might not extend all through the summer and autumn of 1945 and when the Japanese war was expected by the best judges to last for a further eighteen months from the end of the German war. I repulse the idea that a new war is inevitable -- still more that it is imminent. It is because I am sure that our fortunes are still in our own hands and that we hold the power to save the future, that I feel the duty to speak out now that I have the occasion and the opportunity to do so. I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines. But what we have to consider here today while time remains, is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries. Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them. They will not be removed by mere waiting to see what happens; nor will they be removed by a policy of appeasement. What is needed is a settlement, and the longer this is delayed, the more difficult it will be and the greater our dangers will become. From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness. For that reason the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound. We cannot afford, if we can help it, to work on narrow margins, offering temptations to a trial of strength. Last time I saw it all coming and I cried aloud to my own fellow countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention. Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. There never was a war in history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented, in my belief, without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honored today; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We must not let it happen again. This can only be achieved by reaching now, in 1946, a good understanding on all points with Russia under the general authority of the United Nations Organization and by the maintenance of that good understanding through many peaceful years, by the whole strength of the English-speaking world and all its connections. If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealth be added to that of the United States, with all that such cooperation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe, and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary there will be an overwhelming assurance of security. If we adhere faithfully to the Charter of the United Nations and walk forward in sedate and sober strength, seeking no one's land or treasure, seeking to lay no arbitrary control upon the thoughts of men, if all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association, the high roads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for all, not only for our time but for a century to come. Winston Churchill - March 5, 1946

7. McCarthyism • Conspiracy that accused government officials of being communists • McCarran Internal Security Act • Communist organizations had to register with the Department of Justice • Arrest and detention were permissible during a national emergency • Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs Case • Alger Hiss - convicted of passing secret State Department documents to the Soviet Union • The Rosenbergs - convicted of sending nuclear bomb secrets to the Soviet Union • first ones to die for spying • Smith Act of 1940 • Dennis v. United States • Supreme Court allowed the conviction of supposed communists without proof • Declared that Congress could limit freedom of speech • House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) The Red Scare Alger Hiss Julius Rosenberg Ethel Rosenberg

8. Korean War (1950 - 1953) • June 24, 1950 - North Korea invaded South Korea • June 27, 1950 - Truman sent naval and air forces • Truman appealed to the UN to fight • North Korea started beating America and South Korea • Two weeks later, the North Koreans were pushed back across the 38th parallel • China became involved when the Americans and South Koreans were within forty miles of the border (Yalu River) • Ended with the border still at the 38th parallel

9. Geneva Accords • April 26 - July 21, 1954 • Purpose: fix problems in Asia • Main problem was the issue in Vietnam • Diplomats came from Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China, France, Laos, the United Kingdom, the United States, Soviet Union, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam • Result • Ceasefire • Told Communists and Guerillas to leave Laos and Cambodia • Divided Vietnam for 2 years, in which troops had to return home and elections had to be held • Both North and South Vietnam could not invade each other • 300 day grace period to move to either part of Vietnam

10. African Civil Rights Movement • Brown v. Board of Education • Ruled that segregation in public schools had to end • Rosa Parks • refused to give up seat to white man • Montgomery Bus Boycott • boycotted desegregated bus system after Parks arrest • Martin Luther King Jr. • Southern Christian Leadership Conference • Little Rock Incident, September 1957 • Arkansas Governor Faubus mobilized National Guard to bar 9 African-American students from entering school • Civil Rights Act of 1957 • Established permanent commission on civil rights with investigatory powers, did little to guarantee the black vote Rosa Parks Arrest National Guardsman confronting students at Little Rock school King meets with Montgomery bus boycott organizers

11. Minorities • McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 • Enacted over Truman’s veto • Maintained the quota system that severely restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe • 1953 Operation Wetback • Resulted from a massive migration of Mexicans into the U.S. • Was a campaign to outlaw illegal immigration of Mexicans • Was pretty effective • Latinos • Faced discrimination for jobs, wages, school, and culture • Big population • Native Americans • Poorest minority • Termination Bills - took away financial support from 61 reservations • About one-fifth of the population lived in poverty Mexicans being deported during Operation Wetback

12. Baby Boom • 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, called the “baby boom generation” • Fertility rate peaked in 1957; baby was born every 7 seconds; 4.3 million births • Fear of a child being paralyzed or killed by polio haunted families until the announcement of an effective vaccine in April 1955 • Baby boom reinforced idea that women’s place was in the home • Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946) by Dr. Benjamin Spock

13. Culture • TV • I Love Lucy • Music • Rock ‘N Roll • Elvis Presley • Books • Beat writers • Howl - Allen Ginsberg • On the Road - Jack Kerouac • Novels • Movies • National Parks • Museum of Modern Art

14. Technology • Electronics • Washers and Dryers • Freezers, blenders • TVs • Stereos • Computers • Mark I • ENIAC • Machines to control assembly lines • Cars • Credit Card • Nuclear Plants • First build was in Pennsylvania in 1954 • Space Race • October 4, 1957 - Soviet Union launched Sputnik, a satellite, into space • December 6, 1957 - the U.S. launched the Vanguard, which exploded • July 1958 - Eisenhower created NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) • Interstate highway system • 1956 Interstate Highway Act • United Americans • Vaccine

15. Politics • Election of 1952 • Adlai Stevenson • Democrat • Helped found the UN • Served as the chief delegate for four years • Dwight D. Eisenhower • Republican • Running mate: Richard Nixon • Received 55% of the ballots • Republicans carried both houses of Congress • Election of 1956 • Adlai Stevenson • Proposed dropping military draft and ban hydrogen bomb tests • Dwight D. Eisenhower • Carried every state including Louisiana but seven • 1951 22nd Amendment • Limited a president to two terms

16. Society • John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society • study of postwar America, reflected broad-based prosperity that made the 1950s seem the fulfillment of the American dream • 60% of American families owned homes; 75% owned cars; 87% owned at least one TV • The Suburbs • 85% of the 13 million homes built in the 1950s were in the suburbs • 20 million Americans moved to the suburbs in the decade • families considered the “ticky-tacky” houses the embodiment of the American Dream • Wives stayed home to raise kids as the fathers went to the cities to work • Togetherness • term coined in 1954 by McCall’s magazine to celebrate the “ideal couple” • man and woman who married young and centered lives around home and children • Domesticity • emphasized women’s role as helpmate to her husband and full time mother to children • Education became shallower but education flourished

17. Economy • The Worker • Was no longer prized for individuality • Not allowed to be innovative or act independently • The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman • AFL-CIO Merge • Brought 85% of union members into one union • Fell later due to its success • White collar workers outnumbered blue collar workers • President: George Meany • Manufacturing output increased for large corporations • Farmers • Start using more technology and chemicals • Consumers • Bought unnecessary items • GNP increased by 50% • consequence of heavy government spending, upsurge in productivity, and increasing demand for consumer goods and services

18. Quiz

19. Question 1 What did the Supreme Court Case Brown vs. Board of Education accomplish?

20. Question 2 How did the average worker change after the start of the 1950s?

21. Question 3 What was the purpose of the 22nd Amendment?

22. Question 4 What did the Eisenhower Doctrine do?

23. Question 5 Who were Beat writers?

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