Period Eight (1945-1980) Domestic Review

Liberalism and the Great Society

• Liberal principles dominated postwar politics and court decisions.

• Johnson's Great Society aimed to increase the scope/size of the federal government.

• Key programs: Head Start, Job Corps, Medicare, Medicaid.

• Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended national origin quotas.

• Warren Court expanded individual freedoms (e.g., Yates v. US, Griswold v. Connecticut, Miranda v. Arizona).

Criticisms of Liberalism

• From the Left: some felt not enough towards civil rights and poverty, and criticized foreign policy (Vietnam).

• From the Right: Criticized the large federal government, deficits, Warren Court decisions, and undermined traditional morality.

• Rise of conservatism: Barry Goldwater, election of Richard Nixon in 1968, election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Civil Rights

• All three branches of government advanced civil rights.

• Executive Branch: Truman desegregated the military (Executive Order 9981).

• Judicial Branch: Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson.

• Legislative Branch: Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, 24th Amendment (ended poll taxes).

• Civil rights advocates sought to fulfill Reconstruction era promises.

• Tactics: Legal challenges, direct action, nonviolence.

• Key events: Montgomery bus boycott, Greensboro sit-ins, Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer.

• Resistance: Southern Manifesto, Little Rock Nine, violence during protests.

• Tactical/philosophical differences emerged; some questioned nonviolence.

• Black Power movement (Stokely Carmichael), Malcolm X, Black Panthers.

Other Movements

• Feminist Movement: Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, National Organization of Women (NOW), Title IX.

• Roe v. Wade (1973) legalized abortion.

• American Indian Movement.

• Cesar Chavez and United Farm Workers.

• University of California v. Bakke (1978) upheld affirmative action.

• LGBT movement; Stonewall Riots (1969).

Society and Economics

• Post-WWII: Rise of the American middle class, suburbanization (Levittown), baby boom.

• Economic growth from Cold War defense spending.

• Television standardized culture.

• Challenges to conformity: Beat movement, rock and roll.

• 1960s: Counterculture (hippies), sexual revolution (the pill), political and moral debates.

• Rise of the conservative movement/Christian fundamentalists.