US History since 1865

1
US History since 1865

• The Coming of the Cold War

2
Ike's Warning

• a. The armed forces, once a small part of
  American life, waxed increasingly influential and
  powerful b. It developed vital ties with the
  giant corporations and thousands of
  subcontractors heavily dependent upon government
  defense spending c. The combined influence,
  economic, political, even spiritual, was felt in
  every city, every state house, every office of
  the federal government d. Eisenhower warned that
  Americans must guard against unwarranted
  influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
  military-industrial complex e. Even the
  universities, traditionally the fountainhead of
  intellectual curiosity, were now immersed in
  quest for government contracts f. The world was
  becoming smaller but we need to avoid becoming a
  community of dreadful fear and hate

3
The Postwar Boom (II)

• The emergence of the consuming culture
• Television changed the lifestyle of Americans
  eating, buying, dating and understanding the
  outside world
• The age of credit card
• shopping centers 8 in 1945 3,840 in 1960 
  "Years ago if he was unhappy, didn't know what to
  do with himself--he'd go to the church, start a
  revolution, do something.  Today you are
  unhappy?  Can't figure it out?  What is the
  salvation?  Go shopping!"
• The move to the Suburbs

4
The Postwar Boom (I)

• Fortune, "The Great American Boom is on."--With
  six percent of the world population Americans
  consumed two thirds of the world's goods
• World II and massive federal spending
• Most industrial nations devastated by the war
• Great technological advances
• The pent-up consumer demand unleashed after the
  war
• The return of 15 million soldiers to private
  life postwar baby boom from 1945 to 1960
  American population grew by some 40 million

5
The Postwar Boom (III)

• Incorporating America
• By 1960, 38 percent of the work force was
  employed by companies with more than 500
  employees
• IBM meant "I've been moved."
• Women returning to domestic sphere
• Religious revival By 1960 over 65 percent of
  Americans belonged to institutionalized
  churches.  In the words of Ike, "recognition of
  the supreme being is the first, the most basic,
  expression of Americanism.  Without God, there
  could be no American form of government, nor an
  American way of life."

6
The Intellectual Rebellion

• To a increasing number of intellectuals, the era
  of Ike was becoming a sea of conformity
• Kenneth Galbraith The Affluent Society--warned
  that there was still a long way to go for
  Americans to eradicate poverty
• David Riseman The Lonely Crowd--detected the
  shift from inner-directed to other-directed, the
  disappearance of the internal gyroscope
• C. Wright Mills White Collar Society--"When
  white collar people get jobs, they sell not only
  their time and energy but their personalities as
  well."
• William A. Whyte An Organization Man--In the US
  group was the source of creativity and that
  belongingness was the ultimate need of the
  individual.

7
The Rise of the Beatniks

• feel it in a beat mad to live, mad to talk and
  mad to be saved
• Jack Kerouac, "We've got to go and never stop
  till we get there."
• Allen Ginsberg berating "robot apartments,
  invisible suburbs, skeleton treasuries, blind
  capitals, and demonic industries."
• The beat generation underscored the tension
  between innovation and convention, between the
  debate of what was good life and what was worthy
  life
• the tension erupted into the open conflict in the
  1960s

8
The Eisenhower Administration (I)

• the supreme war hero with a 39 year old Senator
  from California in toe
• the formula for victory was K1C2--Korea,
  Communism and corruption
• New Dealers left car dealers came in "What is
  good for GM is good for America."
• Did nor touch the sacred cow of the New Deal. 
  "Should any political party attempt to abolish
  social security and eliminate labor laws and farm
  programs, you won't hear of that party again in
  our political history."

9
The Eisenhower Administration (II)

• Seaway and highway
• Security Risk and Earl Warren
• Ike never openly condemned McCarthy
• Stiffened the government security program
  initiated by Truman
• Robert Oppenheimer was classified as security
  risk because of his opposition to H-bomb
  experiment
• Appointed former governor of California Earl
  Warren as chief justice in 1953 "made the
  biggest damnfool mistake" since the Warren court
  became the engine of social and political change
  in the US

10
The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s (I)

• Ike did not believe that prejudice and
  discrimination could be legislated out--"I don't
  believe you can change the hearts of men with
  laws and decisions."
• He did move to desegregate public services in DC,
  the Navy yards and veteran hospitals
• Caught by surprise when the Supreme Court ruled
  on May 17, 1954 on the case of Brown v. Board of
  Education of Topeka, Kansas that in the field of
  public education the doctrine of "separate but
  equal" had no place

11
The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s (II)

• The Court directed "a prompt and reasonable start
  toward full compliance," triggering the beginning
  of the end of the Jim Crow rule
• The South was resistant to the ruling by 1956,
  in six southern states, not a single child
  attended school with whites
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott (December 1955)
• Rosa Parks Martin Luther King, Jr., a
  26-year-old pastor
• "We will soon wear you down by our capacity to
  suffer, and in winning our freedom we will so
  appeal to your heart that we will win you in the
  process
• A year-long boycott achieved victory when the
  Supreme Court let stand a without review a lower
  court's ruling that separate but equal was not a
  correct statement of the law
• SCLC founded in 1957

12
The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s (III)

• Ike sent a Civil Rights Act to Congress in 1956,
  leading to the establishment of the Civil Rights
  Commission at the Justice and authorizing the
  Court to register blacks to vote if there was an
  identifiable pattern of discrimination
• The Little Rock Central High standoff (1957)
• Governor Orval Faubus called out National Guards
  to prevent nine black students from entering the
  high school
• Ike Ordered the Guards to withdraw but there was
  no protection
• Sent in paratroopers to extend protection and
  nationalized the Guards
• The governor closed the high school

13
Eisenhower Engaging the World (I)

• John Foster Dulles containment policy was too
  defensive and passive pursuing a policy of
  liberation and rollback
• Ike promised to unleash Chiang Kai-shek to attack
  and recover mainland and ordered the 7th Fleet
  not to prevent Chiang from using forces against
  mainland
• massive retaliation more bang for the buck
  Americans choosing time and location of
  confrontation
• brinkmanship getting to the verge without
  getting into war art of diplomacy and pressuring
  combined

14
Eisenhower Engaging the World (II)

• The French was defeated in Vietnam after the
  Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954
• The Geneva Accords Dividing Vietnam at the 17th
  Parallel the Vietminh took over the North and
  the French remained in the South until elections
  scheduled for 1956
• US and South Vietnam government refused to sign
  the treaty
• US imposed Ngo Ding Diem, a Catholic from a
  seminary in New Jersey and began its long
  involvement

15
Eisenhower Engaging the World (III)

• The offshore islands crises September 1954 and
  by January 1955 Ike succeeded in getting Congress
  to pass the Taiwan Resolution, giving him
  authorization to secure and protect Taiwan and
  its islands negotiations began with US in Geneva
  in 1955
• The Suez Canal Crisis Egypt demanded the return
  of the Canal an finally nationalized it.  France,
  Great Britain and Israel invaded Egypt.  US
  threatened them with embargo and forced them to
  withdraw
• The Hungary Revolt in 1956
• The Sputnik (October 4, 1957)

16
Eisenhower Engaging the World (IV)

• The Eisenhower Doctrine promising to extend
  economic and military aid to the Middle East
  nations and to use armed forces if necessary o
  assist such nations against armed aggression from
  Communist nations
• The aborted summit between Ike and Khrushchev in
  May 1960
• Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 when
  Washington became hostile to Castro's attempt to
  conduct land reform and nationalize foreign
  companies, the latter turned over to Moscow US
  suspended sugar imports and began to embargo Cuba