Chapter 24 An Affluent Society
Kitchen Debate: was a classic Cold War confrontation over the meaning of freedom (debated merits of
capitalism and communism where Nixon emphasized America’s soft power of consumer goods all over
the globe)
I. The Golden Age
A. The Golden Age
1. After the war, the American economy enjoyed remarkable growth.
2. Numerous innovations came into widespread use in these years transforming
American’s daily lives.
B. A changing Economy
1. The Cold War fueled industrial production and promoted a redistribution of the
nation’s population and economic resources.
a. In the West, there were government contracts for aircraft, engines, guided
missiles, radar systems.
b. In the South, the federal government funded military bases and shipyards.
2. Since the 1950s, the American economy has shifted away from manufacturing. Last
decade of industrial age because the shift was towards services, education,
information, finance, and entertainment. By 1956, more jobs consisted of white
collar work rather than blue collar.
3. The number of farms declined since the 1950s, but farm production increased.
a. The center of gravity of American farming shifted decisively to Texas, Arizona,
and especially California.
b. More land cultivated grass for the suburban housing development than any
other crop in the United States.
C. A Suburban Nation
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 reach of the majority of Americans.
a. Levittown: William and Alfred Levitt used 1200 acres of potato fields on Long
Island to develop the first American suburb.
b. Shopping mall: people were driving cars in contrast to traditional mix of city
centers crowded with pedestrians.
D. The Growth of the West
1. California became the most prominent symbol of the postwar suburban boom.
2. Western cities were decentralized clusters of single-family homes and businesses
united by a web of highways. There was no traditional downtown business
districts linked to residential neighborhoods by public transportation.
3. Growth took place in metro areas that offered centerless cities such as Houston,
Phoenix and Los Angeles.
E. A Consumer Culture
1. In a consumer culture, the measure of freedom became the ability to gratify market
desires. Consumerism replaced economic independence & democratic
participation as the central definition of American freedom.
2. Americans became comfortable living in never-ending debt, once seen as a loss of
economic freedom.
3. Consumer culture demonstrated the superiority of the American way of life to
communism.
F. The TV World
1. Television 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 with the
exception of the McCarthy trials.
3. Television also became the most effective advertising medium ever invented.
4. It changed eating habits with the introduction of the frozen dinner.
G. A New Ford
1. Along with a home and television set, the car became part of what sociologists called
“the standard consumer package” of the 1950s.
2. Auto manufacturers and oil companies vaulted to the top ranks of corporate America
and since the Great Lakes region lagged behind in defense contracts, they
centered their economy on the manufacturing of cars.
3. The automobile transformed the nation’s daily life.
4. Cars were designed to go out of style in 1-2 years, promoting further purchases.
5. Automobiles altered the landscape with developments of motels, drive in movies,
roadside eating like restaurants.
6. The car became a symbol of individual’s freedom to move about by choice and was
the modern version of western pioneers on an open road.
H. The Female Sphere
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. They worked part time to help support their family’s
lifestyle and therefore had a lower salary, nonunion jobs. Ex: clerical, sales
service and labor.
3. Women were expected to get married, have kids, and stay at home.
a. Baby boom (average family 3.2 children)
b. lived longer due to widespread miracle drugs like penicillin
c. married younger (22 for men and 20 for women) and divorced less frequently
than before
4. The family also became a weapon in the Cold War because women could stay at
home while the communist woman had to work.
a. Feminism seemed to have disappeared from American life. It was dismissed
as a psychological disorder and women who wanted to wait to have
children were diagnosed with missing their natural maternal instinct.
b. Films, TV shows and ads portrayed marriage as the most important goal of
women.
I. A Segregated Landscape
1. The suburbs remained segregated communities. Moving to the suburbs also
promoted Americanization or getting away from urban ethnic communities.
2. During the postwar suburban boom, federal agencies continued to insure mortgages
that barred resale of houses to nonwhites, thereby financing housing
segregation.
3. Banks and developers barred non whites from buying a suburban home.
4. A housing act passed by Congress in 1949 authorized the construction of over 800,000
unites of public housing in order to provide a “decent home for every American
family.”
a. these houses were offered in segregated neighborhoods located in the inner
city
b. urban renewal demolished poor neighborhoods in center cities and
developed retail centers
4. Suburbanization hardened the racial lines of division in American life.
a. Seven million whites left the cities for the suburbs while 3 million blacks
moved into the Northern cities from the South
b. Puerto Ricans: moved to NYC in the East Harlem Section amongst Italians and
caused ethnic divisions (West Side Story is based on this)
J. The Divided Society
1. The process of racial exclusion became self-reinforcing.
a. Whites viewed urban ghettoes as places of crime, poverty and welfare.
b. Blockbusting: real estate brokers circulated exaggerated warnings of
nonwhites moving in to suburbs to scare sales into more expensive
exclusive suburbs.
2. Suburban home ownership long remained a white entitlement.
K. The End of Ideology
1. To many observers in the 1950s, it seemed that the ills of American society had been
solved because there was widespread affluence and limits to permissible
political debate.
a. If problems remained, their solution required technical adjustments, not
structural change or aggressive political intervention.
2. There emerged a new Judeo-Christian heritage, a notion that became central to the
cultural and political dialogue of the 1950s. Catholics, Jews and Protestants
shared same history and values. All had contributed to the evolution of
American society.
3. The idea of a unified Judeo-Christian tradition reflected the decline of anti-Semitism
and anti-Catholicism in the wake of World War II.
a. Secularization: 1950s had the highest level of population that was affiliated
with a church or synagogue. Church membership had less to do with
spiritual activities or sacred values and more to do with personal
identity and group assimilation.
L. Selling Free Enterprise
1. More than political democracy or freedom of speech, an economic system resting on
private ownership united the nations of the Free World.
2. The selling of free enterprise became a major industry.
M. People’s Capitalism
1. Until well into the 20th century, most ordinary Americans had been deeply suspicious
of big business.
2. Large-scale production was not only necessary to fight the Cold War, but enhanced
freedom by multiplying consumer goods.
3. More Americans bought stock in the stock market.
N. The Libertarian Conservatives
1. To libertarian conservatives, freedom meant individual autonomy, limited
government and unregulated capitalism.
2. They opposed a strong national government.
3. These ideas had great appeal in the rapidly growing South and West.
4. Milton Friedman wrote Capitalism & Freedom and identified the free market as the
necessary foundation for individual liberty.
5. He proposed to get rid of government functions such as regulating the economy and
individual conduct. He also wanted a repeal of minimum wage laws, graduated
income tax and social security system.
O. The New Conservatism
1. The new conservatism became increasingly prominent in the 1950s. For them, the
Cold War battlefield was moral and intellectual as much as military.
2. Toleration of different ideas didn’t allow for a search for absolute truth. Only the
civilization’s return to Christian traditional values would. They believed the cold
war was part of the timeless battle of good vs. evil in the face of moral decay.
3 The new conservatives insisted that toleration of difference offered no substitute for
the search for absolute truth.
4. They understood freedom as first and foremost a moral condition. Only if people led
virtuous lives or had a government forcing their citizens to lead moral lives
would allow a society to have freedom.
5. The conservative movement was divided between libertarians and new conservatives.
Both agreed on government not regulating the economy, but new conservatives
wanted government regulating personal behavior, while libertarians did not.
6. Two powerful enemies became focal points for the conservative revival:
a. the Soviet Union abroad
b. the federal government at home (conservatives and libertarians didn’t like
big government in America as long as it was controlled by liberals who
tolerated and encouraged immorality)
II. The Eisenhower Era
A. Ike and Nixon
1. General Dwight Eisenhower ran for president in 1953. He was a World War II military
hero and held the greatest political appeal in America. His party affiliation was
unknown so both Republicans and Democrats promoted him. He feared that
Republican Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft would run for president and take the US
into isolationism again so he ran as the Republican.
2. Richard Nixon ran as his vice president. He was also a World War II veteran. His
anticommunist reputation helped the ticket and he also garnered the young
vote for Ike. He had also gained a reputation for opportunism and dishonesty in
his career, but he was considered a big defender of business as well as the
champion of the forgotten man who was burdened by heavy taxes and an
unresponsive government due to too much red tape.
B. The 1952 Campaign
1. The press reported that wealthy California families had created a private fund for the
Nixon family and this was illegal. Ike thought about dropping Nixon from the
ticket.
2. Nixon went on public television and announced the only gift he had received that was
not appropriate was his family dog Checkers. Nixon’s Checker speech rescued
his political career, and it illustrated the importance of TV in politics.
3. Eisenhower’s popularity and promises to end the Korean conflict brought him victory
in 1952.
4. During the 1950s, voters at home and abroad seemed to find reassurance in selecting
familiar, elderly leaders to govern them.
C. Modern Republicanism
1. Wealthy businessmen dominated Eisenhower’s cabinet.
a. Eisenhower refused to roll back the New Deal instead he expanded it to
include agricultural workers. By not ending it, he legitimized it.
b. Ike scaled back government spending, even the traditional military. The
development of weapons of mass destruction allowed him to cut
spending on traditional military.
2. Modern Republicanism aimed to sever the Republican Party’s Identification in the
minds of many Americans with Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression,
and indifference to the economic conditions of ordinary citizens.
a. Core New Deal Programs expanded
3. Government spending was used to promote productivity and boost employment.
a. Interstate Highway Act: 41,000 mile construction. Those who supported its
expansion argued that it was needed to provide a rapid exit route from
cities in the event of nuclear war.
b. National Defense Education Act after launch of Sputnik. In 1957, Sputnik was
the first artificial earth satellite, and it was launched by the Soviet
Union. Americans worried the Soviet Union’s education system was
ahead of theirs and caused the race for space victory by the Soviet
Union. The Education Act gave direct federal funding to higher
education.
D. The Social Contract
1. The 1950s witnessed an easing of the labor conflict of the two previous decades. The
Taft-Hartley Act had reduced a lot of labor militancy.
a. AFL and CIO merged in 1955.
b. Social Contract: Labor agreed that the decisions of capital investment, plant
location and output management belonged to management.
Management agreed not to eliminate existing unions, grant wage
increases and fringe benefits to reflect rise in cost of living.
2. Unionized workers shared fully in 1950s prosperity.
3. Non Union benefited from minimum wage increase, but didn’t enjoy wage benefits
and job security of union workers.
4. Jobs shifted to less unionized suburbs and the South and the social contract
weakened.
E. Massive Retaliation
1. Ike approved armistice ending the fight in Korea.
2. US tested the 1st hydrogen bomb and a year later, the Soviet Union tested their own.
3. Ike took office at a time when the Cold War had entered an extremely dangerous
phase.
4. Massive retaliation declared that any Soviet attack on an American ally would be
countered by a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union itself.
5. Ike reduced spending in conventional military forces and the armed forces size fell by
nearly ½.
6. Critics called the doctrine brinksmanship because a small conflict or miscalculation led
American to the brink of warfare.
7. Massive retaliation made the US and SU more cautious.
8. People began building bomb shelters in their backyards and there were bomb drills
and schools that increased people’s fear.
F. Ike and the Russians
1. Eisenhower came to believe that the Soviets were reasonable and could be dealt with
in conventional diplomatic terms. When Stalin dies, Ike met with Nikita
Khrushchev in Geneva, Switzerland. It was the first summit between the two
countries since Potsdam. It was the start of what became known as the Cold
Thaw, or an easing of tensions between the US and Soviet Union.
2. The following year, Khrushchev delivered a speech detailing Stalin’s crimes, including
purges. Communists throughout the world were horrified. Three fourths of
America’s communist party abandoned the party.
3. Khrushchev’s call for peaceful coexistence with the United States raised the possibility
of an easing of the Cold War.
4. When Soviets sent troops to squash an anti-communist movement in Hungary, Ike
did not intervene. He formally recognized that the eastern states where the
Soviet spheres of influence.
5. In 1958, the two superpowers agreed to a voluntary halt on the testing of nuclear
weapons.
6. In 959, Khrushchev toured the US and met Ike at Camp David.
7. In 1960, the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane over their territory. Ike
refused to admit it was American or apologize, but the Soviet Union had
captured the pilot. This ended the Cold Thaw.
G. The Emergence of the Third World
1. The Bandung Conference was attended by twenty-nine Asian and African nations.
They came up with a description of their countries called the Third World, which
meant they were developing countries that were not aligned with either Cold
War power and wanted their own model of development between Soviet
centralized economic planning and America’s free market capitalism.
2. The post-World War II era witnessed the crumbling of European empires. India and
Pakistan both gained their independence.
3. Decolonization presented the US with a complex set of choices. There were new
power vacuums where communists could take power. Third world countries
either wanted socialist option or a neutral zone in the Cold War. Some
nationalists admired the US and their own struggle for independence.
H. The Cold War in the Third World
1. The Cold War became the determining factor in American relations with the Third
World. The shift focused from Europe to the Third World.
2. Containment policy shifted to oppose governments whether communist or not that
threatened American strategic or economic interests.
a. Guatemala nationalized the American owned United Fruit Company and the
CIA organized an overthrow of the government.
b. Iran nationalized the British owned Anglo Iranian Oil Company and the CIA
organized an overthrow of that government and the US replaced Great
Britain as the dominant Western country in Middle Eastern oil business.
3. In 1956, Israel, France and Britain invaded Egypt after the nationalist leader Nasser
nationalized the Suez Canal. The canal was owned by British and France. Ike
made them abandon the invasion.
4. The Suez crisis in 1956 led to the Eisenhower Doctrine. The Eisenhower Doctrine
pledged the US to defend Middle Eastern governments threaten by communist
or Arab Nationalism.
5. Lebanon asked for America’s help and American troops were sent to protect the
government dominated by pro-Western Christian’s against Nasser’s effort to
bring all Arab states in a single regime under his rule.
I. Origins of the Vietnam War
1. During World War II, France was invaded by Germany and so their colony Indochina
(present day Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) were taken over by Japan. In 1945,
Japan was kicked out of Vietnam and the French tried to gain back control of
their colony. However, a nationalist leader in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, led a
revolution against the French. This was known as the French Indochina War.
2. Anticommunism led the US into deeper and deeper involvement in Vietnam. The US
funneled billions of dollars to help the French, but declined to send troops or
nuclear weapons. The US did not want to get entangled with another “Korean”
type war.
3. France gave them their independence. A peace conference in Geneva divided
Vietnam temporarily at the 17th parallel. America continued to give money to
South Vietnam to prevent them from falling to communism like Ho Chi Minh’s
North Vietnam.
3. Events in Guatemala, Iran, and Vietnam, considered great successes at the time by
American policymakers, cast a long shadow over American foreign relations.
America became accustomed to intervention.
J. Mass Society and Its Critics
1. Some intellectuals wondered whether the celebration of affluence and the either or
mentality of the Cold War obscured the extent to which the US itself fell short of
the ideal of freedom.
2. One strand of social analysis in the 1950s contended that Americans did not enjoy
genuine freedom.
a. David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd
3. Some commentators feared that the Russians had demonstrated a greater ability to
sacrifice for common public goals than Americans.
a. John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society
b. William Whyte’s The Organization Man
4. Consensus and Conformity were the dominant ideal. Both parties were anticommunists so American political debate was narrowly limited. Dissenters
didn’t offer political alternative or have a real impact on parties or government.
K. Rebels without a Cause
1. The emergence of a popular culture geared to the emerging youth market suggested
that significant generational tension lay beneath the bland surface of 1950s life.
There were also generational tensions between teenage baby boomers and
their parents.
2. Cultural life during the 1950s seemed far more daring than politics.
a. Rock and roll
b. Playboy
3. Young people felt alienated from the world of adult respectability.
4. Older generations were panicked about juvenile delinquency. The Senate held
Committee hearings on violent comic books and their influence on the criminal
behavior of youth.
5. There was an emergence of mass marketed teenage culture that rejected middle
class norms.
L. The Beats
1. The Beats were a small group of poets and writers who rallied against mainstream
culture.
2. They were located in NYC, San Francisco and college towns like Madison, WI and Ann
Arbor, MI.
3. The movement got their name from Jack Kerouac’s book, On the Road, which meant
the people felt beaten down by society.
4. 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.
III. The Freedom Movement
A. Origins of the Movement
1. The causes of the civil rights movement were many.
B. Separate and Unequal
1. The United States in the 1950s was still a segregated and unequal society.
Segregation, though not legally sanctioned, occurred in the North as well as the
South. Seventeen southern and border states, as well as DC had legally
segregated societies.
2. Few white Americans felt any urgency about confronting racial inequality.
C. The Legal Assault of Segregation
1. It fell to the courts to confront the problem of racial segregation.
a. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) challenged through
courts, the restrictive housing segregation and employment
discrimination.
b. Mendez v. Westminster: California Supreme Court ordered Orange county
schools desegregated. California then repealed all school laws requiring
racial segregation.
c. Earl Warren: was Governor of California during World War II and had remorse
for his role in the internment camps for Japanese Americans. He felt
racial inequality had no place in American Society. Ike appointed him
as the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
2. For years, the NAACP, under the leadership of attorney Thurgood Marshall, had
pressed legal challenges to the separate but equal doctrine laid down by the
Court in Plessy v. Ferguson.
a. University of Missouri law school had to admit Lloyd Gaines in separate but
equal law school
b. University of TX law school had to admit Herman Sweatt in, but with no
separate school
D. The Brown Case
1. Marshall brought the NAACP’s support to local cases that had arisen when black
parents challenged unfair school policies.
2. Oliver Brown went to court because his 3rd grade daughter was forced to walk across
Dangerous railroad tracks each morning rather than attend a nearby school
Restricted to only whites.
3. Marshall argued that segregation did lifelong damage to black children, undermining
their self-esteem.
3. Earl Warren managed to create unanimity on a divided court, some of whose
members disliked segregation but feared that a decision to outlaw it would
spark widespread violence.
4. Warren’s statement said segregation in public education violated equal protection of
laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
5. The black press hailed the Brown decision as a “second Emancipation Proclamation,”
but many were still unhappy that it was limited only to public schools.
6. The Warren Court emerged as an active agent of social change.
E. The Montgomery Boycott
1. Brown ensured that when the movement resumed after waning in the early 1950s, it
would have the backing of the federal courts.
a. Rosa Parks: On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black tailor’s assistant
just worked a full day in the department store and refused to
surrender her bus seat to a white rider. She was arrested.
b. In reaction to the arrest, blacks in Montgomery boycotted the bus for a year.
c. The bus company almost went broke over it, but refused to end segregated
seats. In November 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregation in
public transportation was illegal.
F. The Daybreak of Freedom
1. The Montgomery bus boycott marked a turning point in postwar American history.
a. Nonviolent movement
b. Gained Northern support
c. vaulted Martin Luther King Jr. as the movement’s national symbol
2. From the beginning, the language of freedom pervaded the black movement
G. The Leadership of King
1. In King’s soaring oratory, the protester’s understandings of freedom fused into a
coherent whole.
2. A master at appealing to the deep sense of injustice among blacks and to the
conscience of white America, King presented the case for black rights in a
vocabulary that merged the black experience with that of the nation.
3. Echoing Christian themes derived from his training in the black church, King’s
speeches resonated deeply in both black communities and the broader culture.
H. Massive Resistance
1. In 1956, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
2. In 1956, many southern congressmen and senators signed a Southern Manifesto
Denouncing the Brown decision.
I. Eisenhower and Civil Rights
1. The federal government tried to not get involved in the civil rights movement, and
President Eisenhower was slow to act on behalf of the civil rights leaders.
2. In 1957, Governor Orville Faubus of Arkansas used the National Guard to prevent the
court-ordered integration of Little Rock’s Central High School and Eisenhower
had to step in and send federal troops to escort black students into school
V. The Election of 1960
A. 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 history.
3. Both Kennedy and Nixon were ardent Cold Warriors.
a. Missile gap
b. Television debate: Kennedy looked better. Those who heard debate on radio
thought Nixon won.
B. The End of the 1950s
1. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address Warned against the drumbeat of calls for a new
military buildup.
a. Military-industrial complex