the consensus of the fifties and early sixties
Post on 02-Jan-2016
21 Views
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
Prosperity
• GNP doubled between 1940 and 1950.
• Real personal income increased 50%.
• Unemployment was 5% or less.
• 1950-64, Productivity grew 3.2% a year.
• Wages outpaced prices 9 out of 11 years from 1953 to 1964, leading to more real income.
• Many Working Class rise to middle-class lifestyle
• 1955: AFL and CIO join to become the AFL-CIO.
• Minorities prosper.
Reshaping Urban America
• The Service Economy
• The Consumer Society
• Credit: Consumer debt tripled between 1952 and 1964.
• Rise of the Shopping Center
• The Baby Boom
• Urban Renewal
• Interstate Highways: 1956 Interstate and Defense Highway System Act
Hispanics
• Mexicans: 1900: 100,000. 1930: 1.25 million. 1942 to 1964, (4.5 million temporary workers)
• Puerto Ricans: 301,000.
• Cuba: – 1950-1960 -- 79,000 – 1960-1970: 208,000
More Suburban Life
– Pressure to Marry– Television:
• TV Sitcom Iconizes the Nuclear Family
– Popular Entertainment: • TV
• Romantic movies, musicals, and spectaculars
• The Walt Disney Corporation – Dead Lemmings
– Working Mothers vs Housekeepers?
Inventing the Teenager
• Extended Education and semi-autonomy
• Rock and Roll
• Technology: Radios and phonograph
• The "Beats”: Jack Kerouac's On the Road
• Youth Rebels: Rebel Without A Cause, Happy Days, Grease.
Religion
• Rising Religion: Church going rose from 48% in 1940 to 63% in 1960.
• African-American Churches
• Ecumenicism
• The Gospel of Prosperity: John Kenneth Galbraith, in The Affluent Society (1958)
Eisenhower’s Foreign Policy
• A Foreign Policy President• The Hidden Hand• Korea• Nikita Krushchev• Eisenhower’s Military Strategy
– massive retaliation
– Hydrogen Bombs
– Sputnik
» National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
– The Missile Gap
Conducting the Cold War
• Summit Meetings
• 1956 Hungary Uprising
• Suez Crisis
• Eisenhower Doctrine
• U-2 Incident
• The Problem of Decolonization
Elections of '56 and '58
• Adlai Stevenson Returns
• Eisenhower Wins: 457 to 73, with a 9 million popular vote margin
• 1957-8 problems:
• 1958: Democrats scored a landslide victory. (283 seats to the Republican 153, with 1 independent) (Democrats retook the House in 1954, kept it until 1994).
John F. Kennedy
• Most Overrated of Overrated Presidents
• Camelot
• Election of 1960– The Televised Debate– Narrow Victory– JFK: 34,220,984 / 303 EV– Nixon: 34,108,157 / 219 EV
Kennedy’s Foreign Policy
• Limited War.
• Confrontationalism
• Bay of Pigs:
• Berlin Wall
• Alliance For Progress
• Hydrogen Bomb
Cuban Missile Crisis
• Spring 1962: 2 batteries of 40 intermediate range nuclear missiles each are posted in Cuba.
• Kennedy Responds
• Blockade: October 1962
• Soviets Back Down
• Results
After the Missile Crisis
• Project Mercury (1959-63)– Mercury-Atlas 6 flight on February 20, 1962
• Test Ban Treaty of 1963
• Dallas: November 23, 1963
The Civil Rights Movement: Education
• 1930s: Dean Charles Hamilton Houston– Smith v. Allwright (1944)
• Earl Warren• Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka
(1954)• Southern Manifesto (1955)• Little Rock (1957• Resistance
Civil Rights: Against Segregation
• Montgomery, Alabama (1955): Martin Luther King
• SCLC: Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
• Religious Anti-Segregation
• Greensboro, NC: February 1, 1960
Kennedy and Civil Rights
• Kennedy and Civil Rights
• The Freedom Riders
• Media Coverage:
• March on Washington: – I Have a Dream
• Martyrdom
LBJ
• Every citizen will be able, in his productive years when he is earning, to insure himself against the ravages of illness in his old age. -- LBJ
Lyndon Baines Johnson
• Optimism• Highly Productive • 'The Great Society'.• Origins• 1964: Barry Goldwater vs. LBJ
– The Daisy Ad– The Election: Goldwater died in flames, 486-52
(43 to 27 million).
The Great Society
• 1964 Tax Cut
• War on PovertyEducation
• Medicare
• Environmental
• Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Great Society (II)
• Racial Conflict Steps Up– Black Power– Malcom X
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
• Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
• Political Stalemate
top related