Chapter 28: America at Midcentury,

1953-1963
p757
 1950s Pop Culture

 Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963)

 The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-1966)

 Kitchen Debate- Nixon and Khrushchev (1959)

 I Love Lucy (1951-1957)

 Honeymooners (1955-1956)
p769
 Pop Culture- New Rebels
 Chuck Berry- “Johnny B. Goode”

 Elvis Presley- “Hound Dog”

 James Dean- Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

 Jack Kerouac on the Steve Allen Show (1959)

 Allen Ginsberg- “Howl” (1959)

p759
 Reorienting Containment, 1953–1960
and Eisenhower Takes Command
 Bipolar confrontation between the United States and the
Soviets on European issues gave way to greater reliance
on nuclear weaponry and the Third World
 Eisenhower ends the Korean War with an armistice
declared on July 27, 1953
 Eisenhower wrests control of national security issue from
more militant anticommunists
 McCarthy suffers political downfall with the Army-
McCarthy hearings; he is censured by the U.S. Senate
 The New Look, Global Alliances, and
Summitry
 Stalin dies in 1953. Soviet Union (Khrushchev)
soon admits massive purges under Stalin.
 “Open Skies” proposal, 1955: Arms limitation
 The United states and USSR began holding
high-level “summit meetings” in 1955 to
discuss control over nuclear weapons
 Planned 1960 summit with Khrushchev collapses
after the
Soviets shot down U-2 spy plane over their territo
ry
p771
 Covert Action and Economic Leverage
 Focus of Cold War shifted to the “Third World”
 Use of CIA covert action around the world (Iran,
Philippines, Guatemala)
 Thereafter, CIA grew enormously in influence and
power
 Military aid to Third World nations rose sharply
between 1953 and 1963
 Resentment towards the US in Iran is linked to the CIA
supported coup of the democratically elected
Mossadegh (1953).
p760
 The Third World
 Latin America
 Talked of supporting democracy
 Regularly supported dictatorial regimes as long as
they accepted U.S. investment
 Caused resentment among Latin Americans
 Cuba situation demonstrated anti-American
sentiment. US supported Batista, a dictator who
was deeply corrupt and tied to the mob in the US.
 Egypt
 Rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser
 Call for Arab nationalism and “positive neutralism”
 Nationalization of Suez Canal, 1956
 Caused U.S. rift with Britain
 Loss of U.S. prestige and power in Middle East
 The Third World (contd)
 Eisenhower Doctrine, 1957
 Defense of Middle Eastern countries against “international
communism”
 Followed up with intervention in Lebanon and Jordan
 Vietnam
 Drive for independence under way after World War
II
 French decided to withdraw in 1954
 Geneva Peace Accords
 Temporary division in North and South Vietnam
 Eventual elections for reunification
 Administration belief in “domino theory”
 Provided direct aid to government in South Vietnam in mid-
1950s.
 Feared the loss of another Asian nation to communism
 By early-1960s, there are 15,000 “military advisers”
 A Decade of Affluence
 Eisenhower warns of the long-term economic threat posed
by the nation’s “military-industrial complex” in his
final speech as president.
 By 1960, the U.S. could claim a GNP five times that of
Great Britain and 10 times that of Japan
 National security policies facilitated American access to
raw materials and energy
 Government support for “military Keynesianism” also
pumped money into the economy
p768
p765
 Highways and Waterways
 Highway Act of 1956
 First centrally
planned
transportation in
nation’s history
 Military needed to
develop a better road
system after WW2
 Dams, irrigation
canals, reservoirs
 Transformed Western
agriculture
 Created huge
governmental
bureaucracies
 Environmental
consequences
p765
p764
 Political Pluralism
 Labor-Management had a stable relationship in mid-20th
century. Real economic gains for most workers
 American standard of living became envy of world in the 1950s
and 1960s
 A roughly equal bargaining process among well-organized
interest groups
 Labor unions, consumer lobbies, farm organizations, and
other groups could check the aspirations of large
corporations
 Pluralists praised the process that seemed to produce
constant economic growth
 Majority of Republicans and Democrats believed in good
labor relations, Keynesian economics, and fighting the Cold
War
 A Religious People
 There was a new surge of religious activities in the 1950s
 Multi-denominational emphasis
 Reverence and celebrity for individual religious leaders
 Norman Vincent Peale and The Power of Positive Thinking
 Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and
 Rev. Billy Graham become a central figure in the new
Christian movement of the Cold War.
 Graham becomes central figure in American politics for next
several decades
 Religion began to play a larger role in the nation’s fabric-
“One Nation Under God” added in 1954 to Pledge of
Allegiance
p766
 Debating the Role of Government and
The New Conservatism
 Eisenhower hinted that he favored rolling back the New Deal,
but he actually president over a modest expansion of earlier
initiatives, such as a higher minimum wage and better
unemployment benefits
 Ike’s centrist policies earned ire of political conservatives
 Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative (1960)
 William F. Buckley, Up from Liberalism (1959) and National
Review
 On domestic issues, the new conservatives championed
much more limited government
 Favored legislation to prevent state and national
government authorities from infringing on liberties of
suburban communities
 Favored increased spending on national defense, different
than isolationist conservatives
1960 Election: JFK vs. Nixon
 1960 Election
 Democrats ran Senator John F. Kennedy (JFK)
 Kennedy’s Catholicism
 New Frontier
 Mild support for civil rights
 New Social programs
 Tax cuts and deficit spending to promote economic growth
 Heavy defense spending and “flexible” response to
Communist threat
 Republicans ran Vice President Richard M. Nixon
 Remained on defensive throughout campaign
 Performed poorly in first of several televised debates
 Kennedy won narrow electoral victory
Map 28-2 p772
 Inaugural Address and Foreign
Policy
 Inaugural Address- “I ask not what your country can do for
you, but what you can do for your country?”
 Kennedy administration increased defense budget, even
after concluding missile gap didn’t exist
 President created the Peace Corps, a very popular
program that inspired young people to volunteer on
development projects abroad, non-military service
 Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress” continued Eisenhower’s
efforts to reorient American policy in Latin America away
from dictators and toward economic development
 Cuba and Berlin
 Cuba
 Bay of Pigs Invasion, April 1961, a complete debacle
 Operation Mongoose, covert effort to assassinate Castro
 Cuban missile crisis, October 1962, put America on the brink
of nuclear war with USSR, resolved through secret
diplomacy and negotiations with Khrushchev
 For nearly two weeks, Americans are afraid that we were ab
out to enter a nuclear war
 Closest the two nations came to nuclear war
 Berlin
 Berlin Wall constructed, August 1961, by USSR
 Heightened Cold War tensions
Southeast Asia and Flexible Response
 Goal to build South
Vietnam into a viable
non-Communist state led
by Ngo Dinh Diem
 U.S. sent combat troops,
totaling 15,000, “to
advise” South Vietnam’s
forces
 Many Buddhists were
persecuted
 Buddhist burns himself t
o death in protest
 U.S. support of South
Vietnamese dictator
Diem was nearing its end
by 1963
 Domestic Policy
 General policymaking goals
 Tax cuts for everyone, special cuts for corporations.
Top rate lowered from 91 to 70 percent (between
1963 and 1965).
 Could afford tax cuts since it was a time of general
prosperity
 Higher minimum wage and urban renewal
 Federal grants and loans to Appalachia
 Increased Government spending
 Keynesian Economic still rule the 1960s
The Politics of Gender and The New
Suburbs and Gender Politics
 Modern conveniences
were advertised in widely
read magazines
 Reinforced traditional
gender roles
 Life Magazine- A Busy Wi
fe’s Achievements
(1956)
 Women turned to other
sources for child rearing
advice
 Dr. Spock encouraged
parents to adopt a
more liberal attitude
towards parenting
 Signs of Women’s Changing Roles
 Greater number of
women entered into
workforce
 Birth control pill
becomes an issue in
early 1960s.
 Family wage created a
barrier to better pay
for women
 Mass circulation
magazines created
mixed messages about
gender roles
 A New Women’s Movement
 Women on the right (Phyllis Schlafly) helped provide
momentum for conservative movement
 African American women (Fannie Lou Hamer) fought
discrimination based on race and gender
 Women also played key roles in protests against the U.S-
Soviet nuclear arms race
 Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique
 Would contribute to the growth of feminism in late-1960s
and 1970s
 Songs of the Civil Rights Movement

 Sam Cooke- “A Change is Gonna Come” (1963)

 Bob Dylan- “Blowin in the Wind” (1962)

 “We Shall Overcome”

 Fanie Lou Hamer- “This Little Light of Mine” (1960s)

 Little Rock Nine

 Southern states defied

Brown order on
school desegregation

 Eisenhower forced to
send in federal troops
to resolve Little Rock
Central High School
crisis, 1957

 Life Magazine on the

Little Rock Nine
 Martin Luther King, Jr. - Letter from a
Birmingham Jail (1963)
1. What does King say in response to critics who believe that
blacks should wait for a better time to protest?
2. According to King, what are the two types of laws?
3. How does WW2 shape this essay?
Civil Rights Photographs

1. What role do you

think these photos
played in the nation’s
discussion on civil
rights in the 1960s?
2. What role do you
think you would have
played in the civil
rights movement?
p775
 The Brown Cases, 1954–1955
 NAACP and its chief legal strategist, Thurgood Marshall spearheaded
the legal effort to desegregate the public schools
 Supreme Court, with newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren,
entered the growing civil rights struggle
 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) and series of similar
constitutional rulings
 School segregation violated constitutional guarantee of equal
protection under the law, Implied that all segregated public
facilities were unconstitutional
 Race could no longer be treated as simply a regional issue
 South becoming more like rest of the country
 Racial composition of rest of country becoming more like
South
 Segregationists promised “massive resistance” to Brown
 Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens’ Council
 A new wave of Violence, vigilantism, terror became rampant
p777
 The Montgomery Bus Boycott
 Rosa Parks became the public face of the boycott
 Vaulted Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. into
national prominence
 Spurred creation of Southern Christian Leadership
Conference
 Succeeded in ending Montgomery, Alabama’s
segregated transit policy in 1956.
Map 28-3 p778
 The Politics of Civil Rights: From the
Local to the Global
 Civil Rights Act of 1957
 Procedure to expedite lawsuits by African Americans who claimed

their voting rights had been violated

 Created permanent Civil Rights Commission to hear complaints

 Politics of civil rights

 Southern Democrats in Congress tried to block real action on civil

rights, Southern states defied Brown order on school desegregation

 Eisenhower forced to send in federal troops to resolve Little Rock

Central High School crisis, 1957

 Eisenhower declined to support proposal barring racial

discrimination in federal construction contracts

 Civil Rights was a Cold War issue, comparison to Soviet Union
Urban-Suburban Issues and Civil Rights
 Growth of suburbs created new urban issues
 Redlining contributed to decay of inner cities due to
less tax revenue coming in.
 Urban renewal often amounted to “urban removal”
 Robert Moses and New York City split up
neighborhoods through massive highway projects
 Public housing proved a grave disappointment
 Urban-suburban policies came under bipartisan
criticism
p781
New Forms of Direct Action, 1960–
1963
 JFK concerned about
Southern
conservatives (Part of
New Deal Coalition)
 Sit-in movement,
1960-1963
 CORE and SNCC
 Freedom riders, 1961
 Kennedy forced to
send marshals to
protect riders
 PBS Documentary
on Freedom Riders
New Forms of Direct Action, 1960–
1963
 Direct action and violence in Birmingham
 White supremacists’ bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church
 Thousands of African Americans rally in protests and
televised scenes of arrests and violence by Birmingham
police officers
 Kennedy administration crafted civil rights legislation to try
to dampen direct action by civil rights advocates
 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom proceeds in
August 1963, “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther
King, Jr.
 The march was meant to pressure JFK and congress to pass
stronger Civil Rights legislation
p782
 November 1963 and Policy
Choices
 As fall turned to winter in 1963, United States confronted
four major policy issues
 Using major tax cuts to stimulate economic growth
 U.S. policy and intervention in Vietnam
 Political dilemmas associated with civil rights and
proposed civil rights legislation
 Secretly, JFK and the Khrushchev had begun
negotiations on a nuclear treaty
p784
The Assassination of John F. Kennedy
 Shot in Dallas on November 22, 1963:
 Walter Cronkite tells the American People
 Zapruder film (American public did not see it until years
later)
 Official report blamed Lee Harvey Oswald as lone assassin
 Conspiracy theories and uncertainties remain decades later
 JFK (1991) becomes a massive box office hit and influences
public discussion of JFK assassination
 JFK Court Room Scene
 Seinfeld Parody
 Discussion Questions
 Assess the Eisenhower presidency. What were his
accomplishments and failures?
 How did JFK deal with the Soviet Union? Give particular
attention to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
 How did Ike and JFK deal with the issue of civil rights? How
were they similar/different? Who was more effective?
 Examine JFK’s presidency. Why do some consider him a
great president? What were his achievements?