Chapter 24: An Affluent Society,

1953-1960JSRCC

HIS 122 01PR

Levittown

• Low-cost, mass-produced developments of suburban tract housing tabby William Levitt after World War II on Long Island and elsewhere.

Segregation

• School segregation• For years, the NAACP, under the leadership of attorney Thurgood

Marshall, had pressed legal challenges to the separate but equal doctrine, and in the 1950s, attitudes began to shift.

Modern Republicanism

• Also called "dynamic conservatism," President Eisenhower's domestic agenda advocated conservative spending approaches without drastically cutting back New Deal social programs.

Brinksmanship

• the art or practice of pursuing a dangerous policy to the limits of safety before stopping, typically in politics.

Vietnam

• 1954

• US actively aids against Ho Chi Minh and Communists

• French defeat at Dien Bien Phu

Beats

• A term coined by Jack Kerouac for a small group of poets and writers who railed against mainstream culture.

Jack Kerouac

• American novelist and poet

Allen Ginsberg

• visionary poet and founding father of the Beat generation inspired the American counterculture of the second half of the 20th century with groundbreaking poems such as "Howl" and "Kaddish."

• 1960s, Ginsberg experimented with a number of different drugs, believing that under the influence he could create a new kind of poetry.

• 1980s, Ginsberg was the most famous living American poet

Jim Crow

• Jim Crow laws

• were racial segregation laws enacted between 1876 and 1965 in the United States at the state and local level

Earl Warren

• was an American jurist and politician who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States

• 1942 Warren ran successfully for Governor of California as a Republican and was reelected in 1946 and 1950

• He ran for Vice President of the United States in 1948 on the Republican ticket with Thomas Dewey

• Within a year Warren had managed to bring a divided Court together in a unanimous decision, Brown v. Board of Education (1954), overturning the infamous 1896 "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson with regards to public education

Plessy V. Ferguson

• Plessy v. Ferguson, is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal"

Brown V. Board to Education of Topeka, KS

• U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down racial segregation in public education and declared separate but equal unconstitutional.

• 1954

• Schools were not-equal-no running water, no toilets, no busses

• Oliver Brown sued Topeka Board to allow 8 years old daughter Linda to attend a closer white-only school

• Supreme court chief justice Earl Warren ruled “separate facilities are inherently unegual:• Court ruled all schools to be desegregate “with all deliberate speed”

Thurgood Marshall

• Lawyer in the Brown V. Board of Education

Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Sparked by Rosa Parks’ arrest on December 1, 1955, for refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger, a successful year-long boycott protesting segregation on city buses; led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

• Began with Rosa Parks in December-refused to move, was arrested and stood trial

• Organized a boycott- called for Africa Americans to refuse to use the entire bus system until the company agreed to change its policy

• Movement went on for one year

• Supreme court ruled bus segregation was unconstitutional

Massive Resistance

• In 1954, John Foster Dulles announced an updated version of the doctrine of containment. Massive retaliation, as it was called, declared that any Soviet attack on an American ally would be countered by a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union itself.

Little Rock, AR

• Reaction to brown v. board-whites hostile, 82 congressmen opposed the ruling

• Governor Orval Faubus said he could not keep order if he had to enforce integration

• Faubus placed AK National Guardsman at a high school who stopped black students

• Direct challenge to Constitution

• Eisenhower used the 101st airborne to protect black students

Richard Nixon

• Republicans ran Richard M. Nixon• Remained on defensive throughout campaign

• Performed poorly in first of several televised debates

John F. Kennedy

• Democrats ran John F. Kennedy• New Frontier

• Support for civil rights

• Social Programs

• Tax cuts and deficit spending

• Heavy defense spending and “ flexible” response to communist threat

• Civil Rights • Concerned about Southern conservatives

• Sit-in movement, early 1960

• CORE and SNCC

• Freedom rides, 1961,

• Forced to send marshals to protect riders

• Universities of Mississippi and Alabama

• Forced to intervene to protect black students

• Executive order banning segregation in public housing, November 1952

• Kennedy assassinated• Shot in Dallas and November 22, 1963

• Official report blamed Lee Harvey Oswald as lone assassin

• Conspiracy theories and uncertainties remain decades later

Sputnik

• First artificial satellite to orbit the earth; launched October 4, 1957, by the Soviet Union