In a well-written essay, compose a thoughtful response to the question below i
Question: How did mass production, advertising and marketing, and retailing improvements lead both to innovation and conformity in fashion, and style from the early 1900s to the late 1950s?
CHAPTER
20:
FROM
BUSINESS
CULTURE
TO
GREAT
DEPRESSION: THE TWENTIES, 1920-1932
This chapter concentrates on the history of the 1920s. The chapter opens with the Sacco-Vanzetti
case, which encapsulated divisions within the larger society. Nativists dwelled on the
defendants’ immigrant origins. Conservatives insisted that these alien anarchists must die,
despite the lack of evidence. By contrast, prominent liberals, such as the future Supreme Court
justice Felix Frankfurter and the Socialist Eugene Debs, rallied around the convicted men.
Despite these divisions, the 1920s was a decade of economic prosperity for many, as the
business of America became business. Illustrating the meaning of freedom as linked to
prosperity is Andre Siegfried’s Atlantic Monthly piece in “Voices of Freedom.” The chapter looks at
the decline of labor, the shift in the women’s movement after the Nineteenth Amendment, and
the predominance of the Republican Party overseeing business prosperity and economic
diplomacy. The birth of civil liberties is explored next, discussing Hollywood, the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Supreme Court. In “Voices of Freedom,” read Justice James C.
McReynolds’s majority opinion in Meyer v. Nebraska, which gave a tremendous boost to the civil
liberties that had been lost during World War I. However, the decade was still rife with social
divisions, as seen within the context of the culture wars. The fundamentalist revolt is seen most
vividly through the Scopes trial. In the wake of the anti-immigrant hysteria of World War I, the
Ku Klux Klan emerged again, targeting Catholics and Jews as well as blacks. The anti-immigrant
sentiment is capped with the 1924 Immigration Act, which strictly limited immigration. On the
other hand, cultural pluralism and the Harlem Renaissance celebrated the diversity and pluralism
of America. The chapter concludes with the stock market crash of 1929 and Herbert Hoover’s
attempts at relieving the strains of the Great Depression.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: The Sacco-Vanzetti Case
II. The Business of America
A. A Decade of Prosperity
1. The business of America was business.
2. The automobile was the backbone of economic growth.
a. It stimulated the expansion of steel, rubber, and oil production, road construction,
and other sectors of the economy.
3. American multinational corporations extended their reach throughout the world.
a. American companies produced 85 percent of the world’s cars and 40 percent of its
manufactured goods.
B. A New Society
1. Consumer goods of all kinds proliferated, marketed by salespeople and advertisers
who promoted them as ways of satisfying Americans’ psychological desires and
everyday needs.
2. Americans spent more and more of their income on leisure activities like vacations,
movies, and sporting events.
3. Radios and phonographs brought mass entertainment into American homes.
4. Americans accepted going into debt for purchasing consumer goods.
C. The Limits of Prosperity
1. The fruits of increased production were very unequally distributed.
2. By 1929, an estimated 40 percent of the population still lived in poverty.
D. The Farmers’ Plight
1. Farmers did not share in the prosperity of the decade.
2. California impacted by displaced farmers.
3. New technology transformed farming.
a. Immigrant labor
E. The Image of Business
1. Business people like Henry Ford and engineers like Herbert Hoover were cultural
heroes.
2. Numerous firms established public relations departments.
F. The Decline of Labor
1. Business appropriated the rhetoric of Americanism and industrial freedom as a
weapon against labor unions.
a. Welfare capitalism
2. Employers embraced the “American Plan,” or open shop.
a. strikebreakers and blacklisting
3. During the 1920s, labor lost over 2 million members.
G. The Equal Rights Amendment
1. The achievement of suffrage in 1920 eliminated the bond of unity between various
activists.
2. Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party proposed the ERA.
H. Women’s Freedom
1. Female liberation resurfaced as a lifestyle, the stuff of advertising and mass
entertainment.
a. The flapper
2. Sex became a marketing tool.
3. New freedom for women only lasted while they were single.
III. Business and Government
A.
1. In 1929, the sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd published Middletown.
2. Voter turnout declined dramatically.
B. The Republican Era
1. Government policies reflected the pro-business ethos of the 1920s.
a. Lower taxes
b. Higher tariffs
c. Anti-Unionism
2. The Supreme Court remained strongly conservative.
a. Repudiated Muller v. Oregon
C. Corruption in Government
1. The Harding administration quickly became one of the most corrupt in American
history.
2. Harding surrounded himself with cronies who used their offices for private gain.
a. Teapot Dome scandal
D. The Election of 1924
1. Coolidge exemplified Yankee honesty.
2. Robert La Follette ran on a Progressive platform in 1924.
E. Economic Diplomacy
1. Foreign affairs also reflected the close working relationship between business and
government.
a. Washington Naval Arms Conference
2. Much foreign policy was conducted through private economic relationships rather than
through governmental action.
a. Bankers loaned Germany large sums of money.
3. The government continued to dispatch soldiers when a change in government in the
Caribbean threatened American economic interests.
a. Somoza and Nicaragua
IV. The Birth of Civil Liberties
A.
1. Wartime repression continued into the 1920s.
a. “Banned in Boston”
b. Hays Code
c. “Lost Generation”
B. A Clear and Present Danger
1. The ACLU was established in 1920.
2. Prior to this, the Supreme Court had addressed the concept of civil liberties in rulings
that limited political dissent.
a. Schenck v. United States
C. The Court and Civil Liberties
1. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis began to speak up for freedom of speech.
2. The new regard for free speech went beyond political expression.
3. Anita Whitney was pardoned by the governor of California on the grounds that
freedom of speech was the “indispensable birthright of every free American.”
V. The Culture Wars
A. The Fundamentalist Revolt
1. Many evangelical Protestants felt threatened by the decline of traditional values and
the increased visibility of Catholicism and Judaism because of immigration.
2. Convinced that the literal truth of the Bible formed the basis of Christian belief,
fundamentalists launched a campaign to rid Protestant denominations of modernism.
a. Billy Sunday
3. Fundamentalists supported Prohibition, while others viewed it as a violation of
individual freedom.
4. Prohibition also raised questions about the expansion of federal authority, the wisdom
of legislating morality, and it split the Democratic Party.
5. Prohibition proved highly profitable for some and also led to corruption.
B. The Scopes Trial
1. John Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in school.
2. The Scopes trial reflected the enduring tension between two American definitions of
freedom.
3. The renowned labor lawyer Clarence Darrow defended Scopes.
a. Darrow examined William J. Bryan as an expert on the Bible.
4. After the trial, fundamentalists retreated for many years from battles over public
education, preferring to build their own schools and colleges.
C. The Second Klan
1. Few features of urban life seemed more alien to small town, native-born Protestants
than immigrant populations and cultures.
2. The Klan was reborn in Atlanta in 1915 after the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish
factory manager accused of killing a teenage girl.
3. By the mid-1920s the Klan spread to the North and West.
D. Closing the Golden Door
1. The 1920s produced a fundamental change in immigration policy.
2. In 1924, Congress permanently limited immigration for Europeans and banned it for
Asians.
3. To satisfy the demands of large farmers in California who relied heavily on seasonal
Mexican labor, the 1924 law established no limits on immigration from the Western
Hemisphere.
4. The law did establish a new category of “illegal alien” and a new mechanism for
enforcement, the Border Patrol.
E Race and the Law
1. By the early 1920s, political leaders of both North and South agreed to the relegation
of blacks to second-class citizenship.
2. Immigration policy would now rest on a biological definition of the ideal population.
3. The 1924 immigration law also reflected the Progressive desire to improve the quality
of democratic citizenship and to employ scientific methods to set public policy.
4. The concept of race as a basis for public policy lacked any rational foundation.
a. 1923 Supreme Court decision in Bhagat Singh Thind case
F. Promoting Tolerance
1. Immigrant groups asserted the validity of cultural diversity and identified toleration of
difference as the essence of American freedom.
2. In landmark decisions, the Supreme Court struck down laws that tried to enforce
Americanization.
G. The Emergence of Harlem
1. The 1920s also witnessed an upsurge of self-consciousness among black Americans,
especially in the North’s urban ghettos.
2. New York’s Harlem gained an international reputation as the “capital” of black
America.
3. The 1920s became famous for slumming.
H. The Harlem Renaissance
1. Harlem was home to a vibrant black cultural community.
2. In art, the term “New Negro” meant the rejection of established stereotypes and a
search for black values to put in their place.
VI. The Great Depression
A. The Election of 1928
1. Herbert Hoover seemed destined for a successful presidency.
2. Although a Progressive, Hoover did not favor government intervention in the
economy.
3. Hoover accepted the Republican nomination for president and faced Democratic
opponent Alfred E. Smith, three-time governor of New York.
4. Smith’s Catholicism became the focus of the race.
5. Hoover is elected by a landslide.
B. The Coming of the Depression
1. On October 21, 1929, Hoover gave a speech that was a tribute to progress; eight
days later on “Black Tuesday” the stock market crashed.
2. The stock market crash did not, by itself, cause the Depression.
3. The global financial system was ill equipped to deal with the crash.
4. By 1932, the economy had hit rock bottom, and 25 percent of the U.S. labor force
was out of work.
C. Americans and the Depression
1. The Depression transformed American life.
2. Many Americans migrated out of cities into rural areas.
3. The image of big business, carefully cultivated during the 1920s, collapsed as
congressional investigations revealed massive irregularities among bankers and
stockbrokers.
D. Resignation and Protest
1. Twenty thousand unemployed World War I veterans descended on Washington in the
spring of 1932 to demand early payment of a bonus due in 1945.
2. Milo Reno led the National Farmers’ Holiday Association.
3. Only the minuscule Communist Party seemed able to give a political focus to the
anger and despair.
E. Hoover’s Response
1. Hoover’s response seemed inadequate; businessmen strongly opposed federal aid to
the unemployed.
2. The federal government had never faced such a severe economic crisis
3. Hoover remained committed to “associational action.”
a. claims “the tide had turned” seemed out of touch
F. The Worsening Economic Outlook
1. Some administration remedies made the economic situation worse.
a. Smoot-Hawley Tariff
2. Hoover created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Federal Home Loan
Bank System in 1932, in a dramatic departure from previous federal economic policy.
3. Hoover was still opposed to offering direct relief to the unemployed.
G. Freedom in the Modern World
1. In 1927, the definition of freedom celebrated the unimpeded reign of economic
enterprise yet tolerated the surveillance of private life, and individual conscience
reigned supreme.
2. By 1932, the seeds had already been planted for a new conception of freedom.
CHAPTER 21: The New Deal, 1932–1940
This chapter concentrates on the history of the New Deal era, examining legislation, protest
movements, and the impact of the New Deal on minorities. The chapter opens with the story of
the Grand Coulee Dam—a magnificent piece of civil engineering, yet it flooded hundreds of acres
of Indian hunting and farming land for which the Indians were not compensated. Roosevelt’s
New Deal accomplished significant achievements, but also had many limitations. In his fireside
chats, President Roosevelt spoke directly to Americans in their homes and mobilized support for
New Deal programs. In a 1934 radio address in “Voices of Freedom,” President Roosevelt
explained his support for government jobs programs and public-works projects. The chapter
explores the economic recovery programs of the first New Deal and the subsequent wave of
protests from men like Upton Sinclair, Huey Long, Father Charles Coughlin, and Dr. Francis
Townsend. Pressured by these voices of protest, Roosevelt’s Second New Deal focused more on
economic security. Labor made remarkable gains during the New Deal, as seen with the
establishment of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Led by John Lewis, the CIO had
a clear vision of what democracy and freedom meant for labor. The limits of the New Deal are
then explored, examining the hardships faced by women, Indians, Mexicans, and AfricanAmericans. In his writings featured in “Voices of Freedom,” John Steinbeck gives us a glimpse
into the migrant worker’s life on the road in California, facing the harsh realities of the Dust
Bowl and the Great Depression. Finally, the chapter looks at the appeal of the Communist Party
during the New Deal and the conservative congressional response to the Popular Front with the
establishment of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Smith Act.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: The Columbia River Project
II. The First New Deal
A. FDR and the Election of 1932
1. FDR had previously served as undersecretary of the navy and had run for vice
president.
2. He projected a strong public image, despite being confined to a wheelchair from
contracting polio in 1921.
3. In accepting the Democratic nomination for president, FDR promised a “new deal” for
the American people, but his campaign was vague in explaining how he was going to
achieve that.
4. In 1932, he won the presidency in a resounding victory.
B. The Coming of the New Deal
1. Roosevelt saw his New Deal as an alternative to socialism on the left, to Nazism on
the right, and to the inaction of upholders of unregulated capitalism.
2. For advice, FDR relied heavily on a group of intellectuals and social workers who took
up key positions in his administration.
3. Justice Louis Brandeis believed large corporations should be broken up.
4. FDR’s “brains trust” disagreed; their view that corporations should be managed by the
government prevailed during “the First New Deal.”
C. The Banking Crisis
1. FDR confronted a banking system on the verge of collapse.
2. He declared a bank holiday, temporarily halting all bank operations, and called
Congress into special session.
a. Emergency Banking Act
3. Further measures also transformed the American financial system.
a. Glass-Steagall Act
b. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
D. The NRA
1. An unprecedented flurry of legislation during the first three months of Roosevelt’s
administration was a period known as the Hundred Days.
2. The centerpiece of Roosevelt’s plan was the National Industrial Recovery Act, which
established the National Recovery Administration (NRA).
3. The NRA reflected how the New Deal reshaped understandings of freedom.
a. Section 7a as step toward “industrial freedom”
4. Hugh S. Johnson set standards for production, prices, and wages in the textile, steel,
mining, and auto industries.
a. NRA codes controversial
E. Government Jobs
1. The Hundred Days also brought the government into providing relief to those in need.
a. Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA)
2. The
Civilian
Conservation
Corps
(CCC)
employed
young
men
in
nationwide
environmental improvement projects.
F. Public-Works Projects
1. The Public Works Administration (PWA) built roads, schools, hospitals, and other
public facilities.
2. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) built a series of dams to provide cheap electric
power.
G. The New Deal and Agriculture
1. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) authorized the federal government to try to
raise farm prices by setting production quotas for major crops and paying farmers not
to plant more.
2. The AAA succeeded in significantly raising farm prices and incomes for large farmers.
a. The policy generally hurt small farms and tenant farmers.
3. The 1930s also witnessed severe drought, creating the Dust Bowl.
H. The New Deal and Housing
1. The Depression devastated the American housing industry.
2. FDR moved energetically to protect homeowners from foreclosure and to stimulate
new construction.
a. Home Owners Loan Corporation
b. Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
3. There were other important measures of Roosevelt’s first two years in office:
a. Twenty-First Amendment
b. Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
c. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
4. The First New Deal was a set of experiments; some succeeded, others did not.
I. The Court and the New Deal
1. In 1935, the Supreme Court began to invalidate key New Deal laws.
a. National Recovery Administration (NRA)
b. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)
III. The Grassroots Revolt
A. Labor’s Great Upheaval
1. Organized labor experienced an upsurge in the mid-1930s; unlike in past, the federal
government now seemed on the side of labor.
2. Militant labor leaders provided leadership.
3. Workers’ demands during the 1930s went beyond better wages.
a. All their goals required union recognition.
4. Roosevelt’s election as president did much to rekindle hope among labor.
5. 1934 saw an explosion of strikes.
B. The Rise of the CIO
1. The labor upheaval posed a challenge to the American Federation of Labor.
2. John Lewis led a walkout of the AFL that produced a new labor organization, the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
3. The United Auto Workers (UAW) led a sit-down strike in 1936.
4. Steel workers tried to follow suit.
5. Union membership reached 9 million by 1940.
C. Labor and Politics
1. The labor upsurge altered the balance of economic power and propelled labor’s goal
of a fairer, freer, more equal America to the forefront of politics.
2. CIO leaders explained the Depression as the result of an imbalance of wealth and
income.
D. Voices of Protest
1. Other popular movements of the mid-1930s also placed the question of economic
justice on the political agenda.
a. Upton Sinclair and the End Poverty in California movement (EPIC)
b. Huey Long and Share Our Wealth
c. Dr. Francis Townsend
E. Religion on the Radio
1. “Radio priest” Father Charles Coughlin preached against banks, capitalists, the
shortcomings of the New Deal, and eventually in favor of European fascism.
2. Religious leaders like Aimee Semple McPherson drew on radio and mass media to
spread conservative religious beliefs.
IV. The Second New Deal
A.
1. Spurred by the failure of his initial policies to pull the country out of the Depression
and by the growing popular clamor for greater economic equality, Roosevelt in 1935
launched the Second New Deal.
a. The emphasis of the Second New Deal was economic security.
b. The Rural Electrification Agency (REA) provided electricity to rural areas.
c. The federal government also tried to promote soil conservation and family farming.
B. The WPA and the Wagner Act
1. In 1934 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) is established for the construction
of public facilities.
2. The WPA employed 3 million people and unlike previous work-relief programs,
employed white-collar workers.
3. Perhaps the most famous WPA projects were in the arts.
4. The Wagner Act established the National Labor Relations Board and outlawed “unfair
labor practices.”
C. The American Welfare State: Social Security
1. The centerpiece of the Second New Deal was the Social Security Act of 1935, a
system of unemployment insurance, old age pensions, and aid for the disabled and
poor.
2. Social Security was the American version of the “welfare state,” and emerged as a
decentralized hybrid of national and local funding, control, and eligibility standards.
3. Social Security represented a dramatic departure from the traditional functions of
government.
V. A Reckoning with Liberty
A.
1. Roosevelt was a master of political communication and used his fireside chats to
great effect.
2. FDR gave the term “liberalism” its modern meaning.
3. FDR’s opponents organized the American Liberty League.
B. The Election of 1936
1. Fighting for the possession of “the ideal of freedom” emerged as the central issue of
the presidential campaign of 1936.
2. Republicans chose Kansas governor Alfred Landon, a former Theodore Roosevelt
Progressive.
3. Roosevelt won a landslide reelection.
a. New Deal coalition
C. The Court Fight
1. FDR proposed to change the face of the Supreme Court for political reasons.
2. Congress rejected his “court packing” plan.
3. But by March 1937, Court’s new willingness to accept the New Deal marked a
permanent change in judicial policy.
D. The End of the Second New Deal
1. The momentum of the Second New Deal slowed in 1937.
2. The Fair Labor Standards bill finally passed in 1938: it banned goods produced by
child labor from interstate commerce, set a minimum wage, and established overtime
pay policy.
3. The year 1937 witnessed a sharp downturn of the economy.
VI. The Limits of Change
A. The New Deal and American Women
1. The New deal brought more women into government than ever before, and Eleanor
Roosevelt transformed the role of first lady.
2. However, organized feminism, already in disarray during the 1920s, disappeared as a
political force.
3. Women were discouraged from working.
a. Economy Act of 1933
4. Most New Deal programs did not exclude women from benefits, but the ideal of the
male-headed household powerfully shaped social policy.
B. The Southern Veto
1. The power of the Solid South helped to mold the New Deal welfare state into an
entitlement for white Americans.
a. Social Security law excluded agricultural and domestic workers, the largest
categories of black employment.
2. Black organizations lobbied for changes in Social Security.
C. The Stigma of Welfare
1. The “southern veto” resulted in the majority of black workers being confined to the
least generous wing of the new welfare state.
2. A stigma of minority dependence on government assistance (“welfare”) later
developed.
D. The Indian New Deal
1. Under Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier, the administration launched an
Indian New Deal.
a. Indian Reorganization Act of 1934
2. It marked the most radical shift in Indian policy in the nation’s history.
E. The New Deal and Mexican-Americans
1. For Mexican-Americans, the Depression was a wrenching experience.
a. The Wagner and Social Security Acts did not apply to agricultural workers
F. Last Hired, First Fired
1. African-Americans were hit hardest by the Depression.
2. FDR appointed a number of blacks to important federal positions.
a. Mary McLeod Bethune
3. The 1930s witnessed a historic shift in black voting patterns.
a. Shift to Democratic Party
G. Federal Discrimination
1. Federal housing policy revealed the limits of New Deal freedom.
2. Federal employment practices also discriminated on the basis of race.
3. Not until the Great Society of the 1960s would those left out of New Deal programs
win inclusion in the American welfare state.
VII. A New Conception of America
A. The Heyday of American Communism
1. In the mid-1930s, the left enjoyed a shaping influence on the nation’s politics and
culture.
2. The Communist Party experienced remarkable growth.
a. The Popular Front
B. Redefining the People
1. The Popular Front vision for American society was that the American way of life
meant unionism and social citizenship, not the unbridled pursuit of wealth.
2. Popular Front artists and writers captured the lives of ordinary citizens.
3. The Popular Front forthrightly sought to promote the idea that the country’s strength
lay in diversity, tolerance, and the rejection of ethnic prejudice and class privilege.
C. Challenging the Color Line
1. Popular Front culture moved well beyond New Deal liberalism in condemning racism as
incompatible with true Americanism.
2. The Communist Party was the era’s only predominately white organization fighting
racism.
a. Scottsboro case
3. The CIO welcomed black members.
D. Labor and Civil Liberties
1. Another central element of Popular Front public culture was its mobilization for civil
liberties, especially the right of labor to organize.
2. Labor militancy helped to produce an important shift in the understanding of civil
liberties.
3. Attorney General Frank Murphy established a Civil Liberties Unit in the Department of
Justice.
a. Civil liberties replaced liberty of contract as the judicial foundation of freedom.
4. To counter, the House of Representatives established an Un-American Activities
Committee in 1938 to investigate disloyalty.
a. Smith Act
E. The End of the New Deal
1. FDR was losing support from southern Democrats.
2. Roosevelt concluded that the enactment of future New Deal measures required a
liberalization of the southern Democratic Party.
3. A period of political stalemate followed the congressional election of 1938, and
further reform initiatives seemed impossible.
F. The New Deal in American History
1. Given the scope of the economic calamity it tried to counter, the New Deal seems in
many ways quite limited.
2. Yet even as the New Deal receded, its substantial accomplishments remained.
3. The New Deal improved economic conditions, but World War II ended the Great
Depression.
CHAPTER 22: FIGHTING FOR THE FOUR FREEDOMS: WORLD
WAR II, 1941-1945
This chapter concentrates on the history of World War II. Attempting to give the war an
ideological meaning and to convince the American public that it had to be prepared, Roosevelt
linked the war’s meaning with the freedoms that Americans had taken for granted for years.
The chapter looks at FDR’s foreign policy in Latin America, the road leading up to the European
and Pacific wars, and America’s reluctance to intervene until Pearl Harbor. However, not
everyone was an isolationist. In The American Century Henry Luce advocated a more influential
leadership role for America, as is examined in “Voices of Freedom.” Next, the war on the home
front is examined. Americans mobilized quickly, and business and labor worked to make America
an “arsenal of democracy” while the Office of War Information promoted the Four Freedoms to
the American public. The intellectual debates about how the postwar world might define
freedom are examined through the writings of Luce, Henry Wallace, Friedrich Hayek, and FDR’s
Economic Bill of Rights. Ethnic minorities’ experiences during the war were varied. While Native
and Mexican-Americans had some opportunities, Japanese-Americans were interned during the
war, held as criminals without evidence or due process. Blacks saw the war as an opportunity to
win two victories, one abroad and one at home. In an excerpt from the book What the Negro Wants
(found in “Voices of Freedom”), the historian Charles H. Wesley explains that blacks were denied
the Four Freedoms, and he demonstrates that the war strengthened black internationalism. The
modern civil rights movement gets its start with the war, particularly through the work of A.
Philip Randolph and through the support of the new liberalism. The war ends with the dawn of
the atomic age, which introduced a technology that remains controversial to this day. Preparing
for the postwar world, meetings at Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks laid the foundation for
a new economic order and international political structure.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms Paintings
II. Fighting World War II
A. Good Neighbors
1. FDR embarked on a number of departures in foreign policy.
a. Soviet Union
b. Latin America
B. The Road to War
1. Japan had expanded its reach in Manchuria and China by the mid-1930s.
2. In Germany Adolf Hitler embarked on a campaign to control the entire continent.
a. Benito Mussolini
3. Although Roosevelt was alarmed, he was tied to the policy of appeasement.
C. Isolationism
1. American businesspeople did not wish to give up profitable overseas markets in
Germany and Japan.
2. Many Americans were reluctant to get involved in international affairs because of the
legacy of World War I.
3. Congress favored isolationism, as seen with various Neutrality Acts.
D. War in Europe
1. Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler.
2. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.
a. Blitzkrieg appeared unstoppable.
3. By June 1940, Hitler dominated nearly all of Europe.
4. For nearly two years, Britain stood virtually alone in fighting Germany.
a. Battle of Britain
E. Toward Intervention
1. Most Americans wanted to remain out of the European conflict.
a. “Cash and carry”
b. America First Committee
2. In 1940, breaking with longstanding tradition, Roosevelt announced his candidacy for
a third term as president.
a. “Arsenal of democracy”
3 Congress passed the Lend Lease Act in 1941 and froze Japanese assets.
4. Interventionists tried to awaken a reluctant country to prepare for war.
a. Freedom House
F. Pearl Harbor
1. On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes, launched from aircraft carriers, bombed the
naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
2. FDR asked for a declaration of war against Japan.
G. The War in the Pacific
1. World War II has been called a “gross national product” war.
2. The first few months of American involvement witnessed an unbroken string of
military disasters.
a. Japanese conquests in the Pacific in 1942
3. The tide turned with the battles at Coral Sea and Midway in May and June 1942.
H. The War in Europe
1. The “Grand Alliance” united to defeat Germany.
2. The war in Europe was first fought in North Africa and Italy.
3. D-Day established the much needed second front in western Europe in 1944.
4. The crucial fighting in Europe took place on the eastern front between Germany and
the Soviet Union.
a. In January 1943, Stalingrad was the turning point.
5. The war claimed millions of lives.
a. Holocaust
III. The Home Front
A. Mobilizing for War
1. The army exemplified how the war united American society.
2. World War II transformed the role of the national government.
3. The government built housing for war workers and forced civilian industries to retool
for war production.
B. Business and the War
1. Americans produced an astonishing amount of wartime goods and utilized science and
technology.
2. The West Coast emerged as a focus of military-industrial production.
a. Nearly 2 million Americans moved to California for jobs in defense-related
industries.
3. The South remained very poor when the war ended.
C. Labor in Wartime
1. Organized labor entered a three-sided arrangement with government and business
that allowed union membership to soar to unprecedented levels.
2. Congress continued to be dominated by a conservative alliance of Republicans and
southern Democrats.
D. Fighting for the Four Freedoms
1. World War II came to be known as “the Good War”.
a. The word “freedom” helped sell the war.
2. In 1941, FDR described the “Four Freedoms,” offering protection against tyrannical
governments.
3. The most ambiguous was freedom from want.
a. It came to mean protecting the standard of living from falling after the war.
E. The Fifth Freedom
1. Private companies joined in the campaign to promote wartime patriotism.
2. A of messages marketed advertisers’ definition of freedom.
a. “Free enterprise” the fifth freedom
F. Women at Work
1. The war saw an unprecedented mobilization of “womanpower” for industrial jobs.
a. Rosie the Riveter
2. New opportunities opened up for married women and mothers in jobs previously
restricted to men.
3. Women’s work during the war was viewed by men and the government as temporary.
4. The advertisers’ “world of tomorrow” rested on a vision of family-centered prosperity.
IV. Visions of Postwar Freedom
A. Toward an American Century
1. Henry Luce insisted that the United States embrace a leadership role in his 1941 book
The American Century.
2. Henry Wallace offered a less imperialistic alternative.
B. “The Way of Life of Free Men”
1. The National Resources Planning Board offered a blueprint for a peacetime economy
based on:
a. Full employment, expanded welfare state, American standard of living
2. FDR called for an Economic Bill of Rights in 1944.
3. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, or GI Bill of Rights, was one of the most farreaching pieces of social legislation in American history.
C. The Road to Serfdom
1. In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek claimed that economic planning represented a
threat to liberty.
2. Hayek offered a new intellectual justification for opponents of active government.
a. Helped lay the foundation for the rise of modern conservatism
V. The American Dilemma
A.
1. A pluralistic vision of American society now became official rhetoric.
B. Patriotic Assimilation
1. By the war’s end, racism and nativism had been stripped of intellectual respectability.
a. Ruth Benedict and Ashley Montagu
2. Intolerance hardly disappeared from American life.
C. The Bracero Program
1. The war had a far more ambiguous meaning for nonwhites than for whites.
2. The bracero program allowed tens of thousands of contract laborers to cross into the
United States to take up jobs as domestic and agricultural workers.
3. The war offered new opportunities for Mexican-American women.
a. “Rosita the Riveter”
4. A new Chicano culture, a fusion of Mexican heritage and American experience, was
being born.
a. “Zoot suit” riots
b. Used Fair Employment Practices Commission
5. Perhaps half a million Mexican-American men and women served in the armed forces.
D. Indians during the War
1. American Indians served in the army.
a. “Code talkers”
2. Indians left reservations for jobs in war industries.
E. Asian-Americans in Wartime
1. Asian-Americans’ war experience was filled with paradox.
2. Chinese exclusion was abolished.
3. Japanese-Americans had a far different experience.
a. wartime propaganda
4. A substantial majority of Japanese-Americans were nisei—American born, thus
citizens.
a. Unlike German-Americans and Italian-Americans, Japanese ethnics viewed as
potential spies
F. Japanese-American Internment
1. The military persuaded FDR to issue Executive Order 9066.
2. Internment revealed how easily war can undermine basic freedoms.
a. Hardly anyone spoke out against internment.
b. The courts refused to intervene.
i. Korematsu v. United States
3. 20,000 Japanese-Americans joined the armed forces from the camps.
4. Contradictions abounded in the wartime experiences of Japanese-Americans.
G. Blacks and the War
1. The wartime message of freedom portended a major transformation in the status of
blacks.
2. The war spurred a movement of the black population from the rural South to the
cities of the North and West.
a. Detroit race riot
H. Blacks and Military Service
1. During the war, over 1 million blacks served in the armed forces.
2. Black veterns returned home to racial discrimination.
a. GI Bill
I. Birth of the Civil Rights Movement
1. The war years witnessed the birth of the modern civil rights movement.
2. In July 1941, the black labor leader A. Philip Randolph called for a March on
Washington.
a. Executive Order 8802 and FEPC
3. The FEPC played a significant role in securing industrial jobs for black workers.
J. The Double-V
1. The double-V meant that victory over Germany and Japan must be accompanied by
victory over segregation at home.
a. CORE
2. “Symbols of solidarity” had different meanings to white and black Americans.
K. The War and Race
1. During the war, a broad political coalition centered on the left, but reaching well
beyond it called for an end to racial inequality in America.
2. CIO unions made significant efforts to organize black workers and to win them access
to skilled positions.
3. The new black militancy alarmed white southerners and planted the seeds for future
“massive resistance” to desegregation.
L. An American Dilemma
1. Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma was a sprawling account of the country’s racial
past, present, and future.
a. An “American Creed ”
2. Myrdal noted the conflict between American values and American racial policies.
3. In the context of the struggle against Nazism, Myrdal’s call for racial equality struck a
chord.
M. Black Internationalism
1. In the first decades of the twentieth century, a black international consciousness was
reinvigorated.
2. W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and others developed an outlook that linked the plight
of black Americans with that of people of color worldwide.
3. World War II stimulated among African-Americans a greater awareness of the links
between racism in the United States and colonialism abroad.
VI. The End of the War
1. As 1945 opened, Allied victory was assured.
A. “The Most Terrible Weapon”
2. One of the most momentous decisions ever confronted by an American president fell
to Harry Truman.
3. The atomic bomb was a practical realization of the theory of relativity.
4. The Manhattan Project developed an atomic bomb.
B. The Dawn of the Atomic Age
1. On August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped an atomic bomb that detonated over
Hiroshima, Japan.
2. Because of the enormous cost in civilian lives, the use of the bomb remains
controversial.
C. The Nature of the War
1. The dropping of the atomic bombs was the logical culmination of the way World War II
had been fought.
D. Planning the Postwar World
1. Even as the war raged, a series of meetings between Allied leaders formulated plans
for the postwar world.
a. Tehran, Yalta, Potsdam
2. Relations among the Allies were often uneasy.
E. Yalta and Bretton Woods
1. In their agreement on the postwar division of Eastern Europe, Yalta proved the highwater mark of American-Soviet cooperation, but foretold future conflict.
2. Tension existed between Britain and the United States.
3. The Bretton Woods meeting established a new international economic system.
F. The United Nations
1. The Dumbarton Oaks meeting established the structure of the United Nations.
a. General Assembly
b. Security Council
G. Peace, But Not Harmony
1. World War II ended with the United States as the world’s dominant power.
2. It remained to be seen how seriously the victorious Allies took their wartime rhetoric
of freedom.
a. Mahatma Gandhi
CHAPTER 23:
THE UNITED STATES AND THE COLD WAR,
1945-1953
This chapter concentrates on the history of the early Cold War period and the Truman
administration. The chapter opens with the national tour of the Freedom Train, which celebrated
the freedom of America in contrast to the tyranny of Hitler. The chapter continues by explaining
the origins of the Cold War and the roots of containment as outlined by George Kennan and as
implemented through the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift, and Korean War. Many
critics, including Walter Lippmann, questioned the wisdom of viewing the Cold War through the
narrow lens of “free versus slave.” Next, freedom and the Cold War are explored by comparing
freedom with totalitarianism. The quest for an international human rights movement begins with
the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that the United States
has still not completely ratified. Truman’s domestic policy, the Fair Deal, is an attempt to
continue the expansion of government under the New Deal. Truman wished to extend rights to
labor and blacks and to create comprehensive national health insurance and housing plans. Most
of Truman’s agenda was stopped by the Republican resurgence led by Senator Taft. The
Democratic Party was disrupted with the Dixiecrat revolt and Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party,
but Truman was still able to steal the 1948 election away from the Republican Thomas Dewey.
The chapter concludes with the anticommunist crusade, looking at the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) investigations, the arrest of the Rosenbergs, and the rise of
Senator Joseph McCarthy. The loyalty of every American came under suspicion during the Red
Scare. As such, critics such as historian Henry Steele Commager spoke out against the blatant
violations of the First Amendment. His article, “Who Is Loyal to America?” is highlighted in
“Voices of Freedom.” The second “Voices of Freedom” is an excerpt from the national security
paper NSC-68 that called for massive increased military spending in the name of a global fight
for freedom. This excerpt speaks only of the word “freedom” and what it means in the United
States. Taken together, it is clear that the word “freedom” is a strong rhetorical weapon in the
Cold War.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: The Freedom Train
II. Origins of the Cold War
A. The Two Powers
1. The United States emerged from World War II as by far the world’s greatest power.
2. The only power that in any way could rival the United States was the Soviet Union.
B. The Roots of Containment
1. It seemed all but inevitable that the two major powers to emerge from the war would
come into conflict.
2. The first confrontation of the Cold War took place in the Middle East.
3. The Long Telegram advised the Truman administration that the Soviets could not be
dealt with as a normal government.
a. Containment
4. Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech popularized the idea of an impending long-term
struggle between the United States and the Soviets.
C. The Truman Doctrine
1. Truman soon determined to put the policy of containment into effect.
2. To rally popular backing for Greece and Turkey, Truman rolled out the heaviest
weapon in his rhetorical arsenal—the defense of freedom.
3. Truman’s rhetoric suggested that the United States had assumed a permanent global
responsibility to support “freedom-loving peoples’ wherever communism threatened
them.
D. The Marshall Plan
1. George Marshall pledged the United States to contribute billions of dollars to finance
the economic recovery of Europe.
2. The Marshall Plan offered a positive vision to go along with containment.
3. The Marshall Plan proved to be one of the most successful foreign aid programs in
history.
E. The Reconstruction of Japan
1. Led by General Douglas MacArthur after the war, Japan adopted a new, democratic
constitution.
a. Women’s suffrage
b. Renunciation of war
2. Economic recovery
a. American economic assistance, new technologies, and low spending on military
F. The Berlin Blockade and NATO
1. In 1945, the Soviets cut off road and rail traffic from the American, British, and
French zones of occupied Germany to Berlin.
a. An Allied airlift followed
2. In 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb.
3. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) pledged mutual defense against any
future Soviet attack.
a. Warsaw Pact
G. The Growing Communist Challenge
1. Communists won the civil war in China in 1949.
2. National Security Council approved a call for a permanent military buildup to enable
the United States to pursue a global crusade against communism.
a. NSC-68
H. The Korean War
1. In June 1950, the North Korean army invaded the south, hoping to reunify the
country under communist control.
2. American troops did the bulk of the fighting on this first battlefield of the Cold War.
a. General Douglas MacArthur
b. Chinese intervention
3. No formal peace treaty was signed to end the Korean War.
4. Korea made it clear that the Cold War, which began in Europe, had become a global
conflict.
I. Cold War Critics
1. The Soviet Union presented a stark opposite of democracy and “free enterprise.”
2. Casting the Cold War in terms of a worldwide battle between freedom and slavery had
unfortunate consequences.
3. Walter Lippmann objected to turning foreign policy into an “ideological crusade.”
J. Imperialism and Decolonization
1. Colonial independence movements borrowed American language of self-government.
2. Repressive governments joined the worldwide anticommunist alliance led by the
United States.
III. The Cold War and the Idea of Freedom
A.
1. One of the more unusual Cold War battlefields involved American history and culture.
a. Hollywood
2. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) emerged as unlikely patrons of the arts.
B. Freedom and Totalitarianism
1. Along
with
freedom,
the
Cold
War’s
other
great
mobilizing
concept
was
“totalitarianism,” which became shorthand for those on the Soviet side of the Cold
War.
2. Just as the conflict over slavery redefined American freedom in the nineteenth
century, and the confrontation with the Nazis shaped understandings of freedom
during World War II, the Cold War reshaped them once again.
C. The Rise of Human Rights
1. The Cold War also affected the emerging concept of human rights.
2. In 1948, the UN General Assembly approved the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.
D. Ambiguities of Human Rights
1. In debates over the Universal Declaration of Human Rights both the United States and
the Soviet Union refused to accept outside interference in their internal affairs.
a. NAACP’s petition
2. After the Cold War ended, the idea of human rights would play an increasingly
prominent role in world affairs.
IV. The Truman Presidency
A. The Fair Deal
1. Truman’s first domestic task was to preside over the transition from a wartime to a
peacetime economy.
2. He moved to revive the stalled momentum of the New Deal with his “Fair Deal.”
B. The Postwar Strike Wave
1. The AFL and CIO launched Operation Dixie, a campaign to bring unionization to the
South.
2. In 1946, nearly 5 million workers went on strike.
C. The Republican Resurgence
1. Republicans swept control of both houses of Congress in 1946.
2. Congress turned aside Truman’s Fair Deal program.
a. Taft-Hartley Act
D. Postwar Civil Rights
1. Immediately after the war, the status of black Americans enjoyed a prominence in
national affairs unmatched since Reconstruction.
a. Fair employment practices, antidiscrimination laws, access to jobs, in some states
2. The Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 added Jackie Robinson to their team, indicating race
relations were in flux.
E. To Secure These Rights
1. A Commission on Civil Rights appointed by the president called on the federal
government to abolish segregation and discrimination.
2. Truman’s ambitious civil rights program failed to pass Congress.
3. In 1948, Truman desegregated the armed forces.
4. The Democratic platform of 1948 was the most progressive in the party’s history.
F. The Dixiecrat and Wallace Revolts
1. Dixiecrats formed the States’ Rights party.
a. Strom Thurmond
2. A group of left-wing critics of Truman’s foreign policy formed the Progressive Party.
a. Henry Wallace
3. Truman’s main opponent was the colorless Republican Thomas E. Dewey.
4. Truman’s success represented one of the greatest upsets in American political
history.
V. The Anticommunist Crusade
A.
1. The Cold War encouraged a culture of secrecy and dishonesty.
2. Military spending helped fuel economic growth.
B. Loyalty and Disloyalty
1. The conflation of communism with opposition to freedom at home began with
President Truman’s loyalty review program.
2. Truman’s loyalty review boards failed to detect espionage, but the new national
security system targeted leftist sympathizers as well as homosexuals, forcing
hundreds from their jobs.
3. At the same time, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began its
search for communists in Hollywood.
C. The Spy Trials
1. HUAC investigated Alger Hiss.
2. The Rosenbergs were convicted of spying and executed in 1953.
D. McCarthy and McCarthyism
1. Senator Joseph McCarthy announced in 1950 that he had a list of 205 communists
working for the State Department.
2. McCarthy’s downfall came with the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings in
1954.
E. An Atmosphere of Fear
1. Anticommunism was as much a local as a national phenomenon.
2. Local anticommunist groups forced public libraries to remove “un-American” books
from their shelves.
F. The Uses of Anticommunism
1. Most Americans accused of being national security threats during the McCarthy era
simply held unpopular political beliefs.
2. Anticommunism had many faces and purposes.
G. Anticommunist Politics
1. The anticommunist crusade powerfully structured American politics and culture.
a. McCarran Internal Security Bill of 1950
b. McCarran-Walter Act of 1952
c. Operation Wetback
2. Expansion of the New Deal welfare state subsided and private welfare arrangements
proliferated.
H. Cold War Civil Rights
1. The civil rights movement also underwent a transformation.
a. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) purged
communists
2. The Cold War caused a shift in thinking and tactics among civil rights groups.
3. Dean Acheson’s speech to the Delta Council was filled with irony.
4. After 1948, little came of the Truman administration’s civil rights flurry, but time
would reveal that the waning of the civil rights impulse was only temporary.
CHAPTER 24
An Affluent Society, 1953–1960
This chapter concentrates on the 1950s, its economic prosperity, its conformity and cultural
critics, and the civil rights movement. Opening with the Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev
debates in 1959, the chapter sets up the theme of the suburban material bliss of the 1950s.
The golden age of the 1950s is discussed, identifying a new meaning of freedom for the
American people in consumerism and the freedom of consumer choice. The Cold War fueled
industrial production and promoted a redistribution of the nation’s population and economic
resources. Likewise, the Cold War also shaped a new role for women and the family. Excluded
from this economic prosperity and growing suburbia were blacks and ethnic minorities, who
found themselves left in the inner cities. Before segueing into the Eisenhower administration,
the chapter defines libertarian conservatives and new conservatives; however, Dwight D.
Eisenhower did not consider himself to be either. Calling his policies modern Republicanism,
Eisenhower did not roll back the New Deal but instead extended the core New Deal programs.
Labor too benefited from the prosperity of the decade. In foreign policy, Eisenhower adopted
the policy of massive retaliation to fight the Cold War and used the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) in various Third World countries to counter nationalist movements that were viewed as
Soviet-sponsored communist campaigns. Responding to the affluence and the anxieties of the
Cold War, cultural critics of the 1950s spoke out against the conformity they witnessed. From
sociologist David Riesman to the poems of the Beats, cultural critics voiced dissent. The final
section of the chapter discusses the civil rights movement. Building on decades of social
conflict, the movement gets its momentum from the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. Mobilizing the black
community in Montgomery, King’s oratorical abilities and his definition of freedom are
highlighted in “Voices of Freedom.” But not all African-Americans could muster King’s patience
and good faith and gave up hope for a change in American society, as becomes apparent in
Richard Wright’s explanation for his self-chosen exile in “Voices of Freedom.” The chapter
concludes with the 1960 election between Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: The Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debates
II. The Golden Age
A.
1. After the war, the American economy enjoyed remarkable growth.
2. Numerous innovations came into widespread use during these years, transforming
Americans’ daily lives.
3. Wages rose
B. A Changing Economy
1. The Cold War fueled industrial production and promoted a redistribution of the
nation’s population and economic resources.
2. Since the 1950s, the American economy has shifted away from manufacturing.
3. The South was transformed as the numbers of farms declined since the 1950s, but
farm production increased.
a. The center of gravity of American farming shifted decisively to Texas, Arizona, and
especially California.
C. A Suburban Nation
1. The main engines of economic growth during the 1950s were residential construction
and spending on consumer goods.
2. The dream of home ownership came within reach of the majority of Americans.
a. Levittown
b. The automobile
D. The Growth of the West
1. The modern West emerged in the postwar years.
2. California became the most prominent symbol of the postwar suburban boom.
3. Western cities were decentralized clusters of single-family homes and businesses
united by a web of highways.
a. Cars and the suburbs
E. The TV World
1. Television transformed American lives in a number of ways.
a. Replaced newspapers
b. Changed eating habits
2. TV avoided controversy and projected a bland image of middle-class life.
F. Women at Work and at Home
1. The emergence of suburbia placed pressure on the family, women in particular.
2. By the mid-1950s women were working again, but the nature and aims of women’s
work had changed.
3. Women were expected to get married, have kids, and stay at home.
a. Baby boom
4. Feminism seemed to have disappeared from American life.
G. A Segregated Landscape
1. A move to the suburbs was a way to fulfill the American postwar dream of home
ownership and a middle-class life.
2. The suburbs remained segregated communities.
3. During the postwar suburban boom, federal agencies continued to insure mortgages
that barred resale of houses to nonwhites, thereby financing housing segregation.
a. Levittowns excluded blacks.
4. Under programs of “urban renewal,” cities demolished poor neighborhoods to make
way for retail centers and all-white middle-income housing complexes.
H. The Divided Society
1. Suburbanization hardened racial lines as 7 million whites left the cities for the
suburbs.
a. 3 million blacks migrated north.
b. Puerto Ricans
2. The process of racial exclusion became self-reinforcing.
I. Religion and Anticommunism
1. Both Protestant and Roman Catholic religious leaders played crucial roles in the spread
of anticommunism.
2. American values celebrated religiosity as opposed to “godless” communism and
affirmed the nation’s faith.
a. Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust”
3. There emerged a new Judeo-Christian heritage, a notion that became central to the
cultural and political message of the 1950s.
a. Hollywood films
b. Radio and television clerics
J. Selling Free Enterprise
1. Cold War freedom in the Free World increasingly came to focus on consumer
capitalism, or “free enterprise.”
2. In the face of widespread abundance, the capitalist marketplace came to embody
individual freedom.
K. The Libertarian Conservatives and the New Conservatives
1. In the 1950s, a group of thinkers began to revive conservatism and reclaim the idea
of freedom from liberals.
2. To these “libertarian” conservatives, freedom meant individual autonomy, limited
government, and unregulated capitalism.
3. These ideas had great appeal in the rapidly growing South and West.
4. A second strand of conservative thought also became increasingly prominent in the
1950s: the “new conservatives.”
5. New conservatives called for the Free World to arm itself morally and intellectually
against communism.
a. A return to civilization grounded in Christian values
6. The conservative movement was divided between libertarians and new conservatives.
7. Two powerful enemies became focal points for the conservative revival:
a. Soviet Union abroad and federal government at home
III. The Eisenhower Era
A. Ike and Nixon
1. Having enormous political appeal, General Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for president in
1952.
2. Anticommunist crusader Richard Nixon ran as his vice president.
a. Nixon gained a reputation for opportunism and dishonesty.
B. The 1952 Campaign
1. Television was transforming politics.
2. Eisenhower was popular; he promised to end the Korean conflict, which brought him
victory in 1952.
3. During the 1950s, voters at home and abroad seemed to find reassurance in selecting
familiar, elderly leaders to govern them.
C. Modern Republicanism
1. Wealthy businessmen dominated Eisenhower’s cabinet.
a. Eisenhower refused to roll back the New Deal.
2. Modern Republicanism aimed to sever the Republican Party’s identification in the
minds of many Americans with the Great Depression.
3. Government spending was used to promote productivity and boost employment.
a. Interstate highway
b. National Defense Education Act a response to Sputnik
D. The Social Contract
1. The 1950s witnessed an easing of the labor conflict of the two previous decades.
a. AFL and CIO merged in 1955.
b. Social contract
2. Unionized workers shared fully in the prosperity of the 1950s.
E. Massive Retaliation
1. Ike took office at a time when the Cold War had entered an extremely dangerous
phase.
a. Hydrogen bomb
2. Massive retaliation declared that any Soviet attack on an American ally would be
countered by a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union itself.
a. “Mutually assured destruction” (MAD)
F. Ike and the Russians
1. After the end of the Korean War and Stalin’s death, Eisenhower came to believe that
the Soviets were reasonable and could be dealt with in conventional diplomatic terms.
2. Khrushchev’s call for peaceful coexistence with the United States raised the
possibility of an easing of the Cold War.
3. In 1958, the two superpowers agreed to a voluntary halt on the testing of nuclear
weapons.
G. The Emergence of the Third World
1. As the Cold War began, many developing countries—in the so-called “Third World”—
were not aligned with either of the two Cold War superpowers.
a. Non-aligned countries affected by U.S.-Soviet rivalry
2. The post–World War II era witnessed the crumbling of European empires, and
“decolonization” began to occur.
3. Communists participated in movements for colonial independence in the non-aligned
world.
4. The policy of containment became the determining factor in American relations with
the Third World.
a. Guatemala
b. Iran
5. The Suez Crisis in 1956 led the U.S. to replace Britain as the major Western power in
the Middle East.
H. Origins of the Vietnam War
1. After the Japanese were expelled from Vietnam in 1945, the French moved militarily
against communist Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist independence movement.
2. Anticommunism led the United States into deeper and deeper involvement in
Vietnam.
3. A peace conference in Geneva divided Vietnam temporarily at the 17th parallel, and
American aid poured into South Vietnam.
4. Little by little, the United States was becoming accustomed to intervention—secretly
and openly—in far flung corners of the world.
a. Long-term consequences in Guatemala, Iran, and Vietnam
I. Mass Society and Its Critics
1. Consensus was the dominant ideal in the 1950s.
2. Dissenting voices could be heard, however.
a. Sociologist C. Wright Mills
b. David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd
c. The Organization Man
J. Rebels without a Cause
1. The emergence of a popular culture geared to the emerging youth market suggested
that significant generational tensions lay beneath the bland surface of 1950s life.
2. Cultural life during the 1950s seemed far more daring than politics.
a. Rock and roll
b. The Beats
IV. The Freedom Movement
A. Origins of the Movement
1. The civil rights revolution came as a great surprise.
2. The United States in the 1950s was still a segregated and unequal society.
3. Segregation was legal in the South and border states and “defacto” in the North; few
white Americans felt any urgency about confronting racial inequality.
B. The Legal Assault on Segregation
1. It fell to the courts to confront the problem of racial segregation.
a. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
b. Earl Warren
2. For years, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP)led by attorney Thurgood Marshall,had pressed legal challenges to the
separate-but-equal doctrine laid down by the Court in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson.
a. Lloyd Gaines
b. Heman Sweatt
C. The Brown Case
1. Marshall brought the NAACP’s support to local cases that had arisen when black
parents challenged unfair school policies.
2. In 1952, before the Supreme Court, Marshall argued such a case in Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka, Kansas.
3. Marshall argued that segregation did lifelong damage to black children, undermining
their self-esteem.
4. Chief Justice Earl Warren managed to create unanimity in a divided court, some of
whose members disliked segregation, but feared that a decision to outlaw it would
spark widespread violence.
5. The Court decision stated that segregation in public education violated the equal
protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
D. The Montgomery Bus Boycott
1. Brown ensured that when the movement resumed after waning in the early 1950s, it
would have the backing of the federal courts.
a. Rosa Parks
b. Bus boycott
E. The Daybreak of Freedom
1. The Montgomery Bus Boycott launched a nonviolent crusade for social justice.
a. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2. From the beginning, the language of freedom pervaded the black movement.
a. Freedom schools
3. Freedom had many meanings for African Americans.
F. The Leadership of King
1. In King’s soaring oratory, the protesters’ understanding of freedom fused into a
coherent whole.
2. King presented the case for black rights in a vocabulary that merged the black
experience with that of the nation.
3. Echoing Christian themes derived from his training in the black church, King’s
speeches resonated deeply in both black communities and in the broader culture.
G. Massive Resistance
1. In 1956, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
a. white South refused to accept Brown decision
b. “massive resistance”
2. In 1956, many southern congressmen and senators signed a Southern Manifesto
denouncing Brown.
H. Eisenhower and Civil Rights
1. The federal government tried to remain aloof from the black struggle.
a. A 1957 civil rights law had weak enforcement
b. President Eisenhower failed to provide moral leadership.
2. In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas used the National Guard to prevent the
court-ordered integration of Little Rock’s Central High School.
3. Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to enforce the order, but the incident
demonstrated the effectiveness of massive resistance.
4. Since the start of the Cold War, American leaders had worried about the impact of
segregation on the country’s international reputation.
5. The global reaction to the Brown decision was overwhelmingly positive, but the
slowness of change invited criticism and embarrassed American diplomats.
V. The Election of 1960
A. Kennedy and Nixon
1. The presidential campaign of 1960 between Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat
John F. Kennedy turned out to be one of the closest in American history.
2. John F. Kennedy was a Catholic, which became a campaign issue.
3. Both Kennedy and Nixon were ardent Cold Warriors.
a. Missile gap
b. Television debate
B. The End of the 1950s
1. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address warned against the drumbeat of calls for a new military
buildup.
a. Military-industrial complex