Eisenhower’s Dynamic Conservatism

• President Eisenhower promoted moderate Republicanism, or “dynamic conservatism.” While critical of excessive government spending on social programs, he expanded Social Security coverage and launched ambitious public works programs, such as the Federal-Aid Highway Act that constructed the Interstate Highway System.

Growth of the U.S. Economy

• High levels of federal government spending continued during the postwar period. The GI Bill of Rights boosted home buying and helped many veterans attend college and enter the middle class. Consumer demand for homes, cars, and household goods fueled the economy

Critics of Mainstream Culture

• The Beats and many other writers and artists rebelled against what they claimed was the suffocating conformity of middle-class life. Adolescents rebelled through acts of juvenile delinquency and a new form of sexually provocative music called rock ’n’ roll. Pockets of chronic poverty persisted despite record-breaking economic growth, and minorities did not prosper to the extent that white Americans did.

Civil Rights

• During the early 1950s, the NAACP mounted legal challenges in federal courts to states requiring racially segregated public schools. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the U.S. Supreme Court nullified the separate-but-equal doctrine. Many white southerners adopted a strategy of “massive resistance” against court-ordered desegregation. In response, civil rights activists used nonviolent civil disobedience to force local and state officials to allow integration, as demonstrated in the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama and the forced desegregation of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. Martin Luther King organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) after white violence against activists in Little Rock. In 1957, the U.S. Congress passed a Civil Rights Act intended to stop discrimination against black voters in the South, but it was rarely enforced.

American Foreign Policy in the 1950s

• Eisenhower’s first major foreign-policy accomplishment was to end the fighting in Korea. Thereafter, he kept the United States out of war and relied on secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intervention, financial and military aid, and threats of massive retaliation to stem the spread of communism. Though American aid was not enough to save the French at Dien Bien Phu, Eisenhower’s belief in the “falling domino” theory deepened U.S. support for the government in South Vietnam in its war with North Vietnam and the Communist Viet Cong insurgents.