Ch 35: American Zenith (1952-1963)

Some questions: what does McDonald’s have to do with interstate highways? In the Little Rock conflict, who was the one that was in charge of the AR National Guard, why didn’t Eisenhower bail out the French at the last French holdout in Vietnam?

Zenith is the top; the American Zenith is the peak of America

This period includes the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and other things going on (many times simultaneously)

In 1950s, there was conformity (middle class suburbs)

Women

• the Cult of Domesticity still persists

  • TV shows strengthen this role

• many women worked in clerical or service fields

• 1963, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

  • said that there’s more to a woman’s life than the home

  • sets off the Feminist Movement

Consumerism

• means “buying stuff”

• huge expansion of the middle class

• easy credit

  • 1949 - first plastic credit card (Diner’s Club)

• new forms of recreation

  • 1955 - Disneyland (Disney World comes later (happens bc there’s no room for expansion at land))

• huge volume “fast food” production

  • 1948 - McDonald’s (interstates - car culture)

• TV

  • huge, changed lifestyles'

  • advertising

  • religion, televangelists (Billy Graham, Oral Roberts)

  • sports - commercialized professional sports

• popular music

  • rock and roll (which traditionalists hated bc it came from R & B)

  • Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Berry, Domino, Richard, Charles, Cash, Perkins

1952 Election

• Democrat: Adlai Stevenson (Illinois governor)

• Republican: Dwight D. Eisenhower (VP: Richard Nixon (CA Senator, Red Hunter in Congress))

  • serves 2 terms

Race Relations

• 1950: 2/3 of African Americans still lived in the South

• Jim Crow laws still governed the South (Plessy v. Ferguson)

• 20% of eligible southern blacks were registered to vote

  • can’t vote if not registered → can’t affect change if can’t vote

  • most didn’t vote bc of KKK + fear tactics; they were scared to register to vote

  • some states had much lower percentages, like MS + AL who had 5%

• 1955 - Emmett Till, 14 years old, beaten + lynched (MS)

• 1947 - Jackie Robinson broke color barrier in Major League Baseball (Brooklyn Dodgers)

  • he wasn’t the 1st black baseball player, there was already the Negro League

• One World by Wendell Willkie, 1943

  • advocated era of racially blind universalism

• An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal, 1944

  • exposed contradiction btwn allegiance to values (liberty, equality) + the nation’s treatment of black citizens

• NAACP had some success

  • 1950, Sweatt v. Painter (Thurgood Marshall, attorney; 1st black justice in Supreme Court) - separate professional schools for blacks were not equal

• Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955

  • seen by historians as the start of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM)

  • Rosa Parks didn’t give up her seat → arrested

  • year-long boycott of city buses

  • brought MLK, Jr. to prominence

• 1948 - Truman ended segregation in federal civil service in armed forces while still president

Civil Rights Momentum

• Little Rock Nine

  • 1957

  • a high school that was set to integrate

  • AR governor Orval Faubus used the AR National Guard to prevent 9 black students from enrolling at Little Rock’s Central High School

  • Eisenhower sent troops to escort the children to their classes (bc he believed that you can’t use the AR National Guard (which the governor was in charge of) to defy the Supreme Court)

• Civil Rights Act of 1957 (1st step)

  • created a Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of civil rights

  • authorized federal injunctions to protect voting rights

• SCLC

  • stands for Southern Christian Leadership Conference

    • formed by MLK, Jr. in 1957

    • goal was to mobilize the power of the black churches on behalf of black rights

    • they worked with Montgomery bus boycott?

• Greensboro Sit-in

  • February 1, 1960

  • 4 black college students tried to order food at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter in dept store in Greensboro, NC (they didn’t actually think they were gonna get served)

  • service was refused, but the students didn’t leave until it closed - this sit-in movement grew (consisted of college students who were both black and white)

• SNCC

  • stands for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

  • April 1960

  • pronounced “snick”

  • formed by black students to give more force to efforts like the Greensboro Sit-in

  • SNCC eventually lost patience and turned militant (SCLC never did, though)

Interstate Highway Act

• public works project

• 1956

• $27 billion

• 42,000 miles of highway

• good: provided construction jobs

• bad: took business from RRs, air quality problems, energy consumption problems, sped the suburbs (makes us dependent on trucks and not trains)

Massive Retaliation

• mere containment was futile - Ike’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles promised to “roll back” the gains of the red tide and “liberate the captive people”

• Eisenhower also wanted to reduce military spending

  • instead of soldiers, have nukes; make it clear to the USSR that U.S. response was going to be massive so that they stay away

• “Massive Retaliation” - build up super bombers

  • advantage: paralyzing nuclear impact and cheaper price tag

  • problem: it’s too much for a minor crisis (can’t respond to minor issues)

    • 1956: popular uprisings in Hungary + Poland but U.S. couldn’t help (bc U.S. can’t just drop nukes on them)

Vietnam Beginnings

• Indochina is Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia

• Nationalist movements tried to throw off the yoke of French colonial rule (they’ve controlled Indochina since early 1800s)

• Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh tried to get U.S. help for self-determination (no help given so he grows communist)

  • he doesn’t get help bc ally of France

• 1954 - U.S. pays 80% of costs of French colonial war in Indochina

• March 1954 - France was trapped at Dienbienphu (last French holdout)

  • Eisenhower did not bail out the French

• Dienbienphu fell to Nationalists

• 1954 Conference at Geneva, Switzerland

  • divided Vietnam at 17° North (temporary division)

  • promised Vietnam-wide elections in 2 years (it was supposed to be a temporary agreement btwn North + South)

  • North: Ho Chi Minh (communist)

  • South: Ngo Dinh Diem (awful, Catholic, not communist, corrupt)

• elections never happen bc the Communists would’ve won so U.S. keeps free democratic elections from happening in Vietnam

Iran

• began to resist power of big Western companies that controlled Iranian oil - U.S. assumed the Kremlin (USSR) must be holding some influence

• the CIA engineered a coup in 1953 - brought the Shah of Iran (Mohammed Reza Pahlevi) to power as a kind of dictator (he was ruthless + awful to the Iranian ppl (they don’t like the U.S. bc of this))

Suez Canal

• this was built + owned by Britain + France (way b/f Panama Canal)

• helped to get from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea + Indian Ocean

• Egyptian President Nasser needed money to build a dam on the Nile River

• U.S. + Britain tentatively offered money

• Nasser openly flirted w/the Communists - so Dulles withdrew the U.S. offer (can’t get smth from both sides)

• Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal (owned mostly by British + French stockholders) → makes France + Britain mad

• France + Britain coordinated with Israel to attack Egypt (October 1956)

  • they thought the U.S. would supply them with oil while the Middle East supply was disrupted, but we didn’t sell them any

Eisenhower Doctrine

• promised U.S. military and economic aid to Middle Eastern nations threatened by communist aggression

OPEC

• formed in 1960

• Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

• Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela (only one that is Latin America country and not Middle Eastern)

• put a stranglehold on Western economic (esp bad bc since there are interstate highways now, there is more gas needed)

1956 Election

• Democrat: Adlai Stevenson

• Republican: Eisenhower

Space Race

• October 1957 - Soviets launched a satellite (Sputnik) into orbit, 184 lbs.

  • satellite orbits Earth

• November 1957 - Sputnik II carried a dog, 1,120 lbs.

• this scared the U.S. - Soviets could use rocked power to launch nuclear missiles

• NASA was created, 1958 - U.S. launched satellite, 2.5 lbs.

• U.S. increased spending on education (science, language)

U2

• spy plane

• Eisenhower and Khrushchev were supposed to meet in May 1960 at a Paris “summit conference” to discuss Berlin (abt opening it up)

• right b/f the conference, a U.S. U2 spy plane was shot down over Russia so Khrushchev doesn’t meet at this conference

• the conference collapsed b/f it got started

Cuba

• Fulgencio Batista ruled Cuba since the 1930s - friendly to U.S. investments

• 1959 - Fidel Castro led a revolution + ousted Batista

  • confiscated + nationalized U.S. property

  • U.S. cut off heavy imports of Cuban sugar

  • Castro made his dictatorship a satellite of Moscow

  • Anti-Castro Cubans fled to the U.S.

• 1961 - U.S. broke diplomatic relations w/Cuba (until President Obama) and imposed a strict embargo on trade

1960 Election

• Republican: Richard Nixon

• Democrat: John F. Kennedy (VP: Lyndon B. Johnson)

  • Kennedy is Catholic (1st Catholic president)

  • Bobby Kennedy is his Attorney General

  • South has been democrat since Reconstruction but Kennedy pushes his agenda of Civil Rights

• TV debates played a large role - Kennedy’s glamour and vitality were appealing (while Nixon had just gotten out of the hospital)

New Frontier

• JFK challenged a new frontier of domestic social and economic reform

Berlin Wall

• not the Iron Curtain in Europe but symbolized division

• 1961 was when its construction began

• goal was to stop the population drain from East Germany to West Germany through Berlin

  • basically to keep ppl from East Germany from getting to West Berlin to get to West Germany

• symbolized the post-WWII division of Europe

• comes down on November 9th, 1989

Flexible Response

• Kennedy didn’t like “massive retaliation” (in a crisis, U.S. faced either humiliation or nuclear incineration)

• new strategy: “Flexible Response” (not a crisis too small for us to get into)

  • develop several military “options” to match the gravity of the crisis

  • increased spending on conventional military forces

  • Green Berets - elite antiguerrilla outfit

• problems:

  • potentially lowered the level at which diplomacy would give way to shooting

  • provided the mechanism for progressive (and endless) escalation of the use of force (Vietnam)

Alliance for Progress

• Kennedy offered a Marshall Plan for Latin American

• the goal was to close the gap btwn rich + poor - to quiet communist agitation

• doesn’t work

Bay of Pigs Invasion

• plan was to topple Castro from power by invading Cuba w/anticommunist exiles

• April 17, 1961 - 1,200 exiles landed at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs

  • got bogged down

  • JFK wouldn’t send support or help the exiles

  • they surrendered (failure)

    • every exile either killed or captured (the captured were negotiated for release to the U.S.)

• this pushed Castro closer to Soviet embrace

Cuban Missile Crisis

• closest U.S. comes to nuclear war w/USSR

• October 1962 - U.S. spy plane photos showed the Soviets installing nuclear missiles in Cuba (which is 90 mi from Florida)

• October 22, 1962

  • JFK orders a naval “quarantine” (basically a blockade for weapons (Stalin did this but for all supplies in Berlin)) of Cuba

  • he demanded immediate removal of the missiles (which were getting closer to Cuba; don’t think he knew that yet (doesn’t know that we have missiles in Turkey either))

  • any attack from Cuba would be perceived as an attack from the USSR + would trigger nuclear retaliation against the Russian heartland

• for one week, USSR ships neared the U.S. quarantine and we were at the brink of war

• October 28, 1962

  • Khrushchev agreed to compromise:

    • missiles removed from Cuba

      • he loses his job

    • U.S. ended the quarantine, did not invade Cuba

    • U.S. removed its missiles from Turkey secretly