Chapter 24An Affluent Society, 1953–

1960“Everyone’s happy; everyone’s in

their place, but the pot is simmering.”

The Golden Age of American Capitalism

• 1. After the war, the American economy enjoyed remarkable growth: stable prices, low unemployment, rising living standards.

– By 1960 approx. 60% of Americans enjoyed a middle-class standard of living; living much better than had their parents and grandparents.

• 2. Numerous innovations came into widespread use during these years, transforming Americans’ daily lives: television, home air-conditioning, automatic dishwashers, inexpensive long-distance telephone calls, jet airplane travel. Also, electricity, central heating, and indoor plumbing became common.

The Golden Age: A Changing Economy: [Twilight of the American Industrial Age and the Transformation of Agricultural America]

• 1. The Cold War fueled industrial production and promoted a redistribution of the nation’s population and economic resources.

• 2. Since the 1950s, the American economy has shifted away from manufacturing.

• 3. The number of small farms declined in the 1950s, but farm production increased, because of the growth of large corporate farms.– Center of gravity of American farming shifted to Texas, Arizona, and

especially California. Cheap migrant labor plentiful. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFstIQDr5qA (9m)– California in the 1950s

The Golden Age: A Suburban Nation; “Suburbia”

• 1. The main engines of economic growth during the 1950s were residential construction and spending on consumer goods.

• 2. The dream of home ownership came within the reach of Americans.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OApZePeJSdU• 1950s newsreel about the building of suburbia in Levittown

(3m) • -Shopping malls-new forms of shopping centers

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yrJUjdn1uE• Leave It To Beaver S03E30 Beaver Finds a Wallet (25m)

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Levittown, New York

The Golden Age: The Growth of the West

• 1. California became the most prominent symbol of the postwar suburban boom.– In 1963 CA surpassed NY to become the nation’s most populous state.– Los Angeles in the 50s – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n77NxU0CHPw (1m)

• 2. Western cities were decentralized clusters of single-family homes and businesses united by a web of highways.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCXcoiF09sE (1m)• 1950s Traffic on the California Freeway

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This aerial view of Westchester, a communityin Los Angeles

The Golden Age: A Consumer Culture

• 1. In a consumer culture, the measure of freedom became the ability to gratify market desires.

• 2. Americans became comfortable living in never-ending debt, once seen as a dishonorable loss of economic freedom.

• 3. Consumer culture demonstrated the superiority of the American way of life to Communism.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CvQOuNecy4 (7m)• Nixon vs. Khrushchev - The Kitchen Debate (1959)

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Vice President Richard Nixon

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Advertisers during the 1950s

The Golden Age: The TV World

• 1. TV replaced newspapers as the most common source of information about public events and provided Americans of all regions and backgrounds with a common cultural experience.

• 2. TV avoided controversy and projected a bland image of middle-class life.

• 3. TV also became the most effective advertising medium ever invented.

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In this 1950 photograph, television sets movethrough an assembly line.

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

Figure 24.2 Average Daily Television Viewing

The Golden Age: A New Ford

• 1. Along with a home and television set, the car became part of what sociologists call “the standard consumer package” of the 1950s. By 1960, 80% of Americans had a car.

• 2. Auto manufacturers and oil companies vaulted to the top ranks of corporate America.

• 3. The automobile transformed the nation’s daily life.• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWsxKAS4CfQ (4m)• 1950s car culture video

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A 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz

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Map 24.1 The Interstate Highway System

The Golden Age: Women at Work and at Home• 1. After 1945 women lost most of the industrial jobs they had

performed during the war.• 2. By the mid-1950s women were working again, but the

nature and aims of women’s work had changed.• 3. Women were expected to get married, have children, and

stay at home.• -Baby Boom• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_A9PFOY18 (3m)• 1950s Homelife Suburban Sprawl and the Baby Boom

-Feminism disappeared from American life.• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBB3_Mf3RTw (2m)• 1950s: What Does Feminism Mean to You?

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

Figure 24.3 The Baby Boom and its Decline

The Golden Age: A Segregated Landscape

• 1. The suburbs remained segregated communities.• 2. During the postwar suburban boom, federal agencies

continued to insure mortgages that barred resale of houses to non-whites, thereby financing housing segregation.

• 3. A housing act passed by Congress in 1949 authorized the construction of over 800,000 units of public housing in order to provide “a decent home for every American family.”

• 4. Suburbanization hardened the racial lines of division in American life.– Seven million whites left the cities for the suburbs while seven million

blacks moved into the cities.– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OClYPCYAf7s (30m)– Racism in America: Small Town 1950s Case Study Documentary Film

The Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYCB5zv8sJM (7m)

The Eisenhower Era: Ike and Nixon

• 1. General Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for president in 1952.• The most popular military commander to emerge from WW2.• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmCDaXeDRI4 (1m)• 1952 Eisenhower Political Ad - I Like Ike - Presidential

Campaign Ad

• 2. Richard Nixon ran as his vice president– Nixon was a rabid anti-communist and active member of

HUAC. Instrumental in the prosecution of Alger Hiss.– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnCC2gYmAMk (3M)– Alger Hiss case, 1948-1950

The Eisenhower Era: The 1952 Campaign

• 1. Nixon’s Checkers speech rescued his political career.– Illustrated the importance of TV in national politics– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9LcAJOsFGg (3m)– Richard Nixon - "Checkers" Speech

– 2. Eisenhower’s war time popularity and promises to end the Korean conflict brought him victory in 1952.

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OvoNoc0Jr4 (3m)– President Eisenhower Aka Ike Wins! (1952) -During the 1950s, voters seemed to find reassurance in

selecting familiar, elderly leaders to govern them.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower’s campaign

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Map 24.2 The Presidential Election of 1952

The Eisenhower Era: Massive Retaliation• 1. Ike took office at a time when the Cold War had entered an extremely

dangerous phase.*

• 2. “Massive retaliation” declared that any Soviet attack on an American ally would be countered by a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union itself. (John Foster Dulles’s ‘updated’ Containment policy.)

• 3. Critics called the doctrine brinkmanship.-spread fear of an imminent nuclear war. Government appeals to build bomb shelters in back yards, and school drills where students hid under their desks, were meant to convince Americans that they could survive a nuclear war. But these only increased widespread fear.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7j09xE2Ecg (9m)Duck And Cover (1951 Cold War US Civil Defense Animated Short Film, Directed By Anthony Rizzo)

The Eisenhower Era: Massive Retaliation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNYe_UaWZ3U //// The Largest Nuclear Bomb //// Tsar Bomba (7m)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DesTCK7dn78 (2M)H-BOMBS IN HD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6PGZ4yiJqY (1M)HD Scary hydrogen bomb explosion 9.8 megatons TNT 1958 popular shot

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Louis Severance and his son in their undergroundfallout shelter

The Eisenhower Era: Ike and the Russians• 1. After the death of the evil Josef Stalin in 1953, Eisenhower came to

believe that the Soviets were reasonable and could be dealt with in conventional diplomatic terms.

• 2. In 1956 Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev’s called for peaceful coexistence with the United States, which raised the possibility of an easing of the Cold War. However…in 1956, in Hungary…

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m89XLY2wbdA• Soviets Crush Hungarian Revolt (1956) (2M)

3.Despite events in Hungary, in 1958, the two superpowers agreed to a voluntary halt on the testing of nuclear weapons, which lasted 3 years. Until…our spy and his spy plane were captured….

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8RmbTQGj-M• (3m) The first U2 spy plane shot down half a century ago - RT 100501

The Eisenhower Era: The Emergence of the Third World

• Meanwhile…countries that were not aligned with the capitalist West or the Communist East became known as Third World countries.

• Decolonization and the crumbling of European empires led to new countries being formed from old British empire: India, Pakistan, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania—all up for grabs.

• Facing decolonization, the United States feared that power vacuums in the former colonies would be penetrated by Soviet-allied communists.

The Eisenhower Era: The Cold War in the Third World

MEANWHILE…Containment policy soon created U.S. opposition to any government, whether communist or not, which appeared to threaten U.S. strategic or economic interests.

• Jacabo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala and Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran were elected leaders, but when Arbenz enacted land reforms that threatened the domination of the Guatemalan economy by the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company, and when Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, whose refinery in Iran was Britain’s largest overseas asset, their enemies branded them as communists, and in 1953 and 1954, the CIA orchestrated coups against both governments.•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukGp9kxIF5Y•The CIA's 1954 Guatemala Coup on Behalf of United Fruit Company (8M)•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYutojeC5Kk (6M)•Mossadegh - Stephen Kinzer - Iranian Democracy

•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgfsgiPMqRc•1953 Iran Coup - CIA Finally Admits Role (4M)

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The military junta installed in Guatemala

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

Mohammed Mossadegh, prime minister of Iran

The Eisenhower Era: The Cold War in the Third World

• ALSO…In 1956, Israel, Britain, and France invaded Egypt when that country’s nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal, which had been owned by Britain and France.

• Eisenhower forced them to abandon the invasion, and soon the United States replaced Britain as the dominant Western power in the Middle East, with American firms dominating the region’s oil fields.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JObqhUMgQcg• Eisenhower and the Suez Crisis APUSH (10M)

The Eisenhower Era: The Cold War in the Third World

• In 1957 Eisenhower extended containment policy to the Middle East and issued the *Eisenhower Doctrine*, which committed the United States to defend Middle Eastern governments threatened by communism or Arab nationalism.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg5HnAx7c5c• President Dwight Eisenhower - The "Eisenhower Doctrine" • (4m)

The Eisenhower Era: Origins of the Vietnam War

• 1. Anticommunism led the United States into deeper and deeper involvement in Vietnam.– In Vietnam in 1945, when the Japanese were expelled, the French

moved to crush a national independence movement led by Ho Chi Minh and reassert its colonial rule. Anti-communism pulled the United States deeper into involvement in southeast Asia. Following a policy set by Truman, Eisenhower gave billions of dollars in aid for French efforts, and by the early 1950s, the United States was paying for four-fifths of the costs of France’s war in Vietnam.

• 2. But Eisenhower did not send U.S. troops in 1954, when French forces were on the verge of defeat. France had no choice but to concede Vietnamese independence. A peace conference in Geneva divided Vietnam temporarily at the 17th parallel.

The Eisenhower Era: Origins of the Vietnam War

• With elections in 1956 set to unify the country, but the anti-communist southern leader Ngo Dinh Diem, at the suggestion of the United States, refused to hold elections, which both parties knew would result in communist victory.

• Diem’s Catholicism and his ties to landlords in a country of small famers and Buddhists alienated him from many Vietnamese, and only U.S. aid let his regime survive. By 1960, Diem faced a guerrilla war launched by the communist-led National Liberation Front.

The Eisenhower Era: Origins of the Vietnam War

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGH6-rNSSkQ

• Why did the USA get involved in Vietnam under Eisenhower? (8M)

The Eisenhower Era: Origins of the Vietnam War

• Events in Guatemala, Iran, and Vietnam set a trend in U.S. foreign relations. The United States became accustomed to intervention, both overt and covert, throughout the world.

• In Guatemala, a series of military regimes began a period of repression in which about 200,000 Guatemalans died.

• In Iran, the Shah replaced Mossadegh and gave U.S. and British companies 40 percent of Iranian oil revenues, remaining in office until the 1979 revolution ushered in a radical Islamic nationalist government.

• In Vietnam, U.S. support for Diem led to the most disastrous war in U.S. history.

The Eisenhower Era: Rebels without a Cause• 1. The emergence of a popular culture geared to the

emerging youth market suggested that significant generational tensions lay beneath the bland surface of 1950s life.

• 2. A very large and growing young population (thanks to the Baby Boom) wore leather jackets and danced to rock and roll music—Elvis Presley.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj0Rz-uP4Mk (2m)• Elvis Presley - Jailhouse Rock (Music Video)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMmljYkdr-w• Elvis Presley - Hound Dog (1956) HD 0815007 • (2m)

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Elvis Presley and his famous gyrating hips

The Eisenhower Era: The Beats• 1. The Beats were a small groups of poets and writers who railed against

mainstream culture.

• 2. Rejecting the work ethic, the “desperate materialism” of the suburban middle class, and the militarization of American life by the Cold War, the Beats celebrated impulsive action, immediate pleasure, and sexual experimentation.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqFSuIYeOMU• American Canvas - The Beat Museum – Ovation (2m)• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jej5d2kYjuQ• Jack Kerouac / The Beat Generation (3m)• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO3JNrAZQJk• The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis Season 2 Episode 5 The Mystic Powers of

Maynard G Krebs (25M)

The Freedom Movement: Origins of the Movement

• The Civil Rights movement had its origins in the southern black church, which organized a militant but nonviolent assault on segregation.

• In the 1950s the United States was still a segregated and unequal society. Half of America’s black families lived in poverty.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S64zRnnn4Po• Civil Rights and the 1950s: Crash Course US History #39

(11m)

The Freedom Movement: Separate and Unequal

• 1. The United States in the 1950s was still a separate and unequal society. In the South, Jim Crow characterized all kinds of separate public institutions, and in the North and West, not law but custom barred blacks from colleges, hotels, restaurants, and most suburban housing.

• 2. In 1950, seventeen southern and border states and Washington, D.C., required the racial segregation of public schools, and several more states allowed local districts to segregate. Few whites felt it was urgent to challenge racial inequality.

The Freedom Movement: The Legal Assault on Segregation• 1. Because of the Eisenhower administrations’ reluctance to confront race

relations, segregation was attacked first in the courts. In California, a challenge to segregation there by Latino groups led to the desegregation of public schools in that state in 1946. The governor who signed the measure, Earl Warren, had presided over Japanese-American internment, but after the war he came to oppose racial inequality.

• 2. For years the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), under the leadership of attorney Thurgood Marshall, had pressed legal challenges to the separate-but-equal doctrine laid down by the Court in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfqLvtFoY0Y• Mr. Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP – Trailer (2m)

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A segregated school in West Memphis

The Freedom Movement: The Brown Case

• 1. Marshall brought the NAACP’s support to local cases that had arisen when black parents challenged unfair school policies.

• 2. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, Marshall argued that segregation did lifelong damage to black children, undermining their self-esteem.

• 3. Earl Warren managed to create unanimity in a divided court, some of whose members disliked segregation but feared that a decision to outlaw it would cause widespread violence.

• 4. The black press hailed the Brown decision as a “second Emancipation Proclamation.”

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTGHLdr-iak• Brown v. Board of Education in PBS' The Supreme Court (4m)

The Freedom Movement: The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• 1. Brown ensured that when the movement resumed after waning in the early 1950s, it would have the backing of the federal courts.

• Rosa Parks:• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8A9gvb5Fh0• (4M) ROSA PARKS-MINI-BIO

• Bus boycott• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZhSNiTQuqo• Montgomery Bus Boycott (5M)

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

The mug shot of Rosa Parks

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

Black residents of Montgomery walking to work

The Freedom Movement: The Leadership of King

• 1. King’s soaring oratory was inspiring and appealing to all across a broad spectrum of the population.

• 2. King was a master at appealing to the deep sense of injustice among blacks and to the conscience of white America.

• 3. Echoing Christian themes derived from his training in the black church, King’s speeches resonated deeply in black communities and in the broader culture. I Have a Dream speech: “Free at last! Free at last! Thanks God Almighty, we are free at last!” (1963)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ank52Zi_S0• Martin Luther King, Jr. - Mini Bio (4m)

The Freedom Movement: Massive Resistance

• 1. In 1956, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a coalition of black ministers and civil rights activists, to organize desegregation efforts.

• 2.In retaliation, Southern whites launched a campaign of “massive resistance” against desegregation in the South, and in 1956 many southern congressmen and senators signed a Southern Manifesto condemning Brown as an abuse of judicial power and calling for lawful resistance to “forced integration.

• http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/sources_document2.html• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pxzRG4mJ4• (2M) MASSIVE RESISTANCE• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gn-yVUdtj4• Locked Out: The Fall Of Massive Resistance (57M)

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

If the civil rights movement borrowed thelanguage of freedom

The Freedom Movement: Eisenhower and Civil Rights

• 1. The federal government tried to remain aloof from the black struggle.– President Eisenhower failed to provide moral leadership.

2. In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas used the National Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration of Little Rock’s Central High School.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctnj1hkWMdIThe Little Rock Nine (5M)

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

The Problem We All Live With

The Freedom Movement: The World Views the United States

• 1. Since the start of the Cold War, American leaders had worried about the impact of segregation on the country’s international reputation.

• 2. The global reaction to the Brown decision was overwhelmingly positive.

• 3. However, the slow pace of change led to criticism from abroad.

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

Federal troops at Little Rock’s CentralHigh School

The Election of 1960: Kennedy and Nixon

• 1. The presidential campaign of 1960 turned out to be one of the closest in American history.

• 2. John F. Kennedy was a Catholic and the youngest presidential candidate in American history.

• Both candidates were ardent Cold Warriors. But Kennedy argued that the Soviet Union’s success in launching Sputnik, the first earth satellite, into orbit, and their tests of the first intercontinental ballistic missile, showed that the United States under the Republicans had let a “missile gap” develop and was lagging behind the USSR in the Cold War. Both Kennedy and Nixon knew that the U.S. military and economic capacity was far greater than the Soviets’. But Kennedy’s criticisms convinced many Americans that new leadership was needed.

• TV debate favored JFK; radio Nixon

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG1g6ZNbCuU• 1960 Presidential Election for Dummies -- Kennedy vs Nixon

(6m)

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

The 1960 presidential campaign produced a floodof anti-Catholic propaganda.

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd EditionCopyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

Map 24.3 The Presidential Election of 1960

The Election of 1960: The End of the 1950s

• 1. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address warned against the drumbeat of calls for a new military buildup.– January 1961, Military-industrial complex speech.

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUXtyIQjubU– (1M) Eisenhower Farewell Address -- Military Industrial

Complex

The Election of 1960: The End of the 1950s

• By the 1960s, the foundations of 1950s life seemed to be collapsing.

• Cars and the chemicals produced and released by new consumer goods were found to be spoiling the environment and giving people cancer.

• Housewives rebelled against the roles given them in the suburban family.

• And blacks became impatient with the slow pace of racial progress.

• The 1960s had arrived.

How To Lose What We Have - Anti-Communism - Cold War (1950)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNzwjOpvb_4 (11m)

Communism: A 1952 Anti Soviet Propaganda Short Film From The Cold War Era

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4yjAb6eoCw (10m)

Cold War - After Stalin (1953-1956)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXm7Mm-w_aA (45m)

Khrushchev's Regime - Secrets of the Cold War (SECRETS OF WAR MILITARY HISTORY

DOCUMENTARY)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct7jkVgbTlM (43m)