The Eisenhower Era
1952-1960
Chapter 38
Election of 1952



Democrats
nominate Adlai
Stevenson
Republicans chose
General Dwight
David Eisenhower
Richard Nixon was
chosen to run as
VP for the
Republicans
Election of 1952



During the campaign,
Nixon was accused of
using government
funds
Checkers Speech –
Eisenhower was going
to drop Nixon but he
went on TV and
apologized
Ike – won by a large
majority
Korea




Eisenhower promised to
end the Korean War
July 1953 – Ike
threatened to use
nuclear weapons to end
the war
An armistice was signed
Korea remained divided
at the 38th parallel
Joseph McCarthy




Sen. McCarthy
Feb. 1950
Accused Sec. Of State
Dean Acheson of
knowingly employing
205 communists
Public supported
McCarthy’s attempt to
rid the government of
communists
McCarthyism




McCarthy was the most
ruthless of all the Red
Hunters
Did the most damage to
American tradition of free
speech and fair play
1954 – McCarthy
attacked the US Army –
went too far
Charged with “conduct
unbecoming a member”
Desegregating the South




All aspects of blacks’ lives in
the South were controlled by
Jim Crow laws.
WWII generated a new
militancy in the black
population
Dec. 1955 – Rosa Parks
refused to give up her seat on
a Montgomery, Alabama bus
Her arrest sparked a yearlong
boycott of the bus system
The Civil Rights Revolution



1946 – Truman ended segregation in
federal civil services
1954 – Brown V. Board of Education the Supreme Court ruled that segregation
in public schools was unequal and thus
unconstitutional. The decision reversed
the previous ruling in Plessey v.
Ferguson (1896).
States in the Deep South resisted the
ruling
Crisis at Little Rock


Ike was not inclined to
promoting integration.
Sept. 1957 – Ark. Gov.
Orval Faubus mobilized
the Arkansas National
Guard to block 9 black
students from entering
Central High School in
Little Rock
Little Rock



Eisenhower sent federal
troops to escort the 9
children to class
Faubus had directly
challenged federal
authority
Students were allowed
to attend after a white
mob and state guard
backed away from a
confrontation
Civil Rights Act of 1957
1st Civil Rights legislation since the
Civil War
 Set up a permanent Civil Rights Commission
to investigate violations of civil rights and
authorized federal injunctions to protect voting
rights.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.



Ph.D. from Boston
University
Alabama preacher
Formed the Southern
Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) in
1957. It aimed to
mobilize the vast
power of the black
churches on behalf of
black rights.
Sit-Ins




February 1, 1960
4 black college students in Greensboro, North
Carolina demanded service at a whites-only lunch
counter.
Within a week, the sit-in reached 1,000 students
demanding equal rights.
April 1960 - southern black students formed the
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) to give more focus and force to their efforts.
Eisenhower’s Republicanism



When dealing with the
economy and government,
Ike was a conservative
Wanted to balance the
budget and guard America
from isolation
Supported the transfer of
control over offshore oil
fields from the federal
government to the states.
Immigration
1954 – Ike launched Operation
Wetback and rounded up 1 million
illegal Mexicans in the USA
 wanted to terminate Indian tribes on
reservations and reverse the Indian
policy in place since 1934
 wanted to get rid of many
government programs that cost
money

Interstate Highway Act of 1956


Created countless jobs and
sped the suburbanization of
America as 42,000 miles of
highways were built.
Eisenhower only managed
to balance the budget 3
times while in office, and in
1959, he incurred the
biggest peacetime deficit in
the history of the United
States.
Foreign Policy



Sec. Of State John Foster Dulles – 1954
proposed a plan in which Eisenhower would set aside
the army and the navy to build up an air fleet of
super-bombers (called the Strategic Air Command,
or SAC) equipped with nuclear bombs.
This would allow President Eisenhower to threaten
countries such as the Soviet Union and China with
nuclear weapons.
Peace Conference in Geneva


At the Geneva summit
conference in 1955,
President Eisenhower
attempted to make peace
with the new Soviet Union
dictator, Nikita Khrushchev,
following Stalin’s death.
Peace negotiations were
rejected.
The Vietnam Nightmare



In the early 1950s,
nationalist movements had
sought to throw the French
out of Indochina
Vietnam’s leader was Ho
Chi Minh
He became increasingly
communist as America
became increasingly
anticommunist
Vietnam




May 1954 - a French garrison was trapped in
the fortress of Dienbienphu in northwestern
Vietnam.
President Eisenhower decided not to intervene,
wary of another war right after Korea.
The pro-Western government in the South, led by
Ngo Dinh Diem, was entrenched at Saigon as
Vietnam-wide elections, which were promised by
Ho Chi Minh, were never held.
President Eisenhower promised economic and
military aid to the Diem regime of the south.
Europe




1955, West Germany was let into NATO
1955, the Eastern European countries and the
Soviets signed the Warsaw Pact, creating a red
military counterweight to the newly-bolstered
NATO forces in the West
May 1955, the Soviets ended the occupation of
Austria.
In 1956, Hungary rose up against the Soviets
attempting to win their independence. When their
request for aid from the United States was denied,
they were slaughtered by the Soviet forces.
The Middle East


In 1953 - the CIA
engineered a coup that
installed Mohammed
Reza Pahlevi as the
dictator of Iran.
An effort to secure
Iranian oil for the
United States
The Middle East



President Nasser of Egypt was
seeking funds to build a dam on the
Nile River.
After associating with the
communists, secretary of state
Dulles pulled back U.S. monetary
aid for Egypt.
Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal,
which was owned by the French and
British.
The Middle East



October of 1956, the Suez Crisis ensued as the French
and British launched an assault on Egypt. The two
countries were forced to withdraw their troops as
America refused to release emergency supplies of oil to
them.
In 1957, Congress proclaimed the Eisenhower
Doctrine, pledging U.S. military and economic aid to
Middle Eastern nations threatened by communist
aggression.
In 1960, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, and
Venezuela joined together to form the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC
Election of 1956


Eisenhower again defeated
Adlai Stevenson to win reelection
Again, Richard Nixon was
selected as his VP running
mate
Labor


1959 - a drastic labor-reform bill grew out of
recurrent strikes in important industries and corruption
in unions. The Teamsters Union leader, “Dave” Beck
was sentenced to prison for embezzlement. When his
union replaced him with James R. Hoffa, the AF of LCIO expelled the Teamsters. Hoffa was later jailed for
jury tampering.
In 1959, President Eisenhower passed the LandrumGriffin Act. It was designed to bring labor leaders to
book for financial shenanigans and to prevent bullying
tactics.
The Race To Space


October 4, 1957, the
Soviets launched the
Sputnik I satellite into space
November, they launched
the satellite Sputnik II,
carrying a dog. The two
satellites gave credibility to
the Soviet claims that
superior industrial
production lay through
communism.
The Race To Space



President Eisenhower established the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA).
As a result of the new technological advances in
the Soviet Union, it was thought that the
educational system of the Soviet Union was better
than the United States‘
A move to improve the American education
system was taken. In 1958, the National Defense
and Education Act (NDEA) authorized $887
million in loans to needy college students and in
grants for the improvement of teaching sciences
and languages.
The Cold War Continues




1958 – The US and USSR announce the end of
nuclear testing
In July 1958, Lebanon called for aid under the
Eisenhower Doctrine as communism threatened
to engulf the country.
In 1959, Soviet dictator Khrushchev appeared
before the U.N. General Assembly and called for
complete disarmament.
In 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot
down in Russia, causing feelings of a possibly
peaceful resolution to subside.
Cuba and Communism



Fidel Castro led a coup that
overthrew the government
of Cuba in 1959.
The United States cut off
the heavy U.S. imports of
Cuban sugar.
Cuba’s left-wing
dictatorship quickly had the
possibility to become a
military satellite for the
Soviet Union.
Election of 1960


The Republicans nominated
Richard Nixon to run for
president and Henry Cabot
Lodge, Jr. for vice president
in the election of 1960.
The Democrats nominated
John F. Kennedy (MA) to
run for president and
Lyndon B. Johnson (TX) for
vice president.
The Election of 1960



JFK’s Catholicism
made many in the
Protestant Bible Belt
leery of voting Dem.
JFK claimed that
USSR had gained on
the US
TV played a big role
– JFK was TV
friendly and Nixon
was not
A Changing Economy

The invention of the
transistor in 1948
sparked a revolution in
electronics, especially
computers. Computer
giant International
Business Machines
(IBM) grew
tremendously.
A Changing Economy


1956 - The number of
“white-collar” (no manual
labor) workers exceeded the
number of “blue-collar”
(manual labor) workers
Feminist Betty Friedan
wrote The Feminine
Mystique in ‘63, helping to
launch the modern women’s
movement.
Consumer Culture





Credit cards, fast food,
and new forms of
entertainment all began
in the 1950s
1946 – 6 TV stations
1956 – 400+ stations
Sports teams also
moved west with the
population
New York Giants
became S.F. Giants
TV and Religion

“Televangelists” like
Baptist Billy Graham,
and Pentecostal
Holiness speaker Oral
Roberts, and Roman
Catholic Fulton J. Sheen
took to the television
airwaves to spread
Christianity.
Elvis and Rock and Roll


Popular music was
transformed during the
1950s. Elvis Presley
created the new style
known as rock and
roll.
Traditionalists were
repelled by Presley as
well as many of the
new social movements
during the 1950s.