The American Promise – Lecture Notes
Chapter 27 – The Politics and Culture of Abundance, 1952-1960
I. Eisenhower and the Politics of the “Middle Way”
A. Modern Republicanism
1. A New Way—In contrast to the Old Guard conservatives in his party who wanted
to repeal much of the New Deal and preferred a unilateral approach to foreign
policy, Eisenhower preached “modern Republicanism”; meant resisting additional
federal intervention but not turning the clock back to the 1920s; overall maintained
the course charted by both Roosevelt and Truman.
2. Decline of McCarthyism—Eisenhower attempted to distance himself from the
anti-Communist fervor that plagued the Truman administration; but he refused to
denounce Senator McCarthy, who finally destroyed himself by going after the U.S.
Army.
3. Expanding the Welfare State—Eisenhower sometimes echoed the conservative
Republican conviction that government was best left to the states and economic
decisions to private business; however, the welfare state actually grew somewhat
during his administration; Eisenhower signed laws expanding Social Security,
increasing the minimum wage, and continuing the government’s modest role in
financing public housing.
4. The Interstate Highway—Eisenhower’s greatest domestic initiative was the
Interstate Highway and Defense System Act of 1956; facilitated the expansion of
people and goods across the country; also brought unforeseen costs of air pollution,
energy consumption, and urban decay.
5. Restraining Federal Activity—Eisenhower cut taxes to benefit business and the
wealthy; he also resisted a larger federal role in health care, education, and civil
rights.
B. Termination and Relocation of Native Americans
1. A New Indian Policy—Eisenhower’s efforts to restrict federal activity also
helped shape a new direction in Indian policy; reversed the emphasis on
strengthening the tribal governments and preserving Indian culture established by
the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.
2. Toward Assimilation—After World War II, policymakers began to favor
assimilating Native Americans and ending their special relationship to the
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government; to some, the communal practices of Indians resembled socialism and
stifled individual initiative.
3. Compensation—By 1960, the government had implemented a three-part
program of compensation, termination, and relocation; in 1946, Congress
established a commission to discharge, once and for all, any claims by Indians for
lands taken from them by the government; by 1978, it had settled 285 cases with
compensation exceeding $800 million.
4. Termination—Beginning in 1953, Eisenhower signed bills transferring
jurisdiction over tribal lands in several states to state and local governments; the
loss of federal hospitals, schools, and other special arrangements devastated Indian
tribes.
5. Relocation—Indian Relocation Program began in 1848 and involved more than
100,000 Native Americans; government encouraged Indians to move to cities,
providing one-way bus tickets and relocation centers to help with housing, job
training, and medical care; about one-third of the Indians who were relocated
eventually went back to the reservation; those who stayed faced great difficulties,
such as racism, lack of adequately paying jobs for which they had skills, poor
housing in what became Indian ghettos, and above all, the loss of their traditional
culture.
C. The 1956 Election and the Second Term
1. The Democrats in Congress—Eisenhower easily defeated Adlai Stevenson in the
election of 1956; Democrats, however, won significant gains in the midterm election
of 1958.
2. Challenges—Because of this Democratic resurgence, Eisenhower faced more
serious leadership challenges in his second term, including a major recession; did
agree on symbolic civil rights legislation and extending the federal government’s
role in education.
2. Eisenhower’s Legacy—In the end, the first Republican administration after the
New Deal left the size and functions of the federal government intact, though it
tipped policy somewhat more in favor of corporate interests.
II. Liberation Rhetoric and the Practice of Containment
A. The “New Look” in Foreign Policy
1. Defense Strategy—To meet his goals of balancing the federal budget and cutting
taxes, Eisenhower was determined to control military expenditures; feared massive
defense spending would hurt the economy; Eisenhower’s defense strategy
concentrated military strength in nuclear weapons along with the planes and
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missiles needed to deliver them; instead of spending huge amounts for large ground
forces of its own, the United States gave friendly nations American weapons and
backed them up with a nuclear arsenal.
2. Mutually Assured Destruction—Nuclear weapons could not stop a Soviet
nuclear attack, but in response to one, they could inflict enormous destruction on
the USSR; this nuclear standoff became known as mutual assured destruction, or
MAD.
3. The Problem of Nuclear War—Nuclear weapons were useless in rolling back
the iron curtain; they would destroy the very peoples that the United States had
promised to liberate; when Hungarian freedom fighters revolted against the Sovietcontrolled government, the United States did not offer support.
B. Applying Containment to Vietnam
1. Vietnamese Independence—A major challenge to the containment policy came
in Southeast Asia; in 1945, a nationalist coalition called the Vietminh, led by Ho Chi
Minh, proclaimed Vietnam’s independence from France; America supported France;
self-determination took a backseat to anticommunism.
2. Domino Theory—Eisenhower viewed communism in Vietnam much as Truman
had regarded it in Greece and Turkey, an outlook known as the “domino theory”; the
United States was contributing 75 percent of the cost of France’s war, but
Eisenhower resisted a larger role; refused to send American ground troops to aid
the French.
3. The Geneva Accords—The Vietminh defeated French forces at Dien Bien Phu in
May 1954; two months later, France signed a truce; the Geneva Accords temporarily
divided Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel, separating the Vietminh in the north
from the puppet government established by the French in the south; the Vietnamese
were to vote in elections to unify the government within two years.
4. U.S. Involvement in Southeast Asia—Some officials warned against U.S.
involvement in Vietnam; nonetheless, Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles moved to join the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) to defend
Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam; between 1955 and 1961, the United States
provided $800 million to the South Vietnamese army.
5. Guerilla Warfare and Insurgency—The Army of the Republic of Vietnam was
grossly unprepared for the guerrilla warfare that began in the late 1950s; unwilling
to abandon containment, Eisenhower handed over the deteriorating situation—
along with a firm commitment to defend South Vietnam against communism—to his
successor.
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B. Interventions in Latin America and the Middle East
1. Toppling Unfriendly Governments—While supporting friendly governments in
Asia, the Eisenhower administration, through the increasingly important foreign
policy work of the CIA, also worked to topple unfriendly ones in Latin America and
the Middle East.
2. Guatemala—The Guatemalan government was not Communist or Soviet
controlled but accepted support from the local Communist Party; in 1953, the
reformist president Jacobo Arbenz sought to nationalize land owned but not used by
a U.S. corporation, the United Fruit Company; Eisenhower authorized the CIA to
carry out covert operations destabilizing Guatemala’s economy and assisting in a
coup that ultimately led to decades of destructive civil wars.
3. Cuba—The United States tried to pursue a similar policy in Cuba, working against
rebel Fidel Castro, who in 1959 drove out the U.S.-supported dictator Fulgencio
Batista.
4. Iran—In the Middle East, as in Guatemala, the CIA intervened to support an
unpopular dictatorship and maintain Western access to Iranian oil; Eisenhower
authorized CIA agents to instigate a coup against the nationalist head of Iran,
Mohammed Mossadegh, by bribing army officials and paying Iranians to
demonstrate against the government; poisoned U.S.-Iranian relations into the
twenty-first century.
5. Israel and Egypt—The Eisenhower administration shifted from Truman’s all-out
support for Israel to fostering friendships with Arab nations; in 1955, Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles began talks with Egypt about American support to build the
Aswan Dam on the Nile River; but in 1956, Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser,
sought arms from Communist Czechoslovakia, which had formed a military alliance
with other Arab nations, recognizing the People’s Republic of China.
6. The Suez Crisis and the Eisenhower Doctrine—Unwilling to tolerate such
independence, Dulles called off the deal for the dam; Nasser responded by seizing
the Suez Canal, then owned by the British; Israel responded by attacking Egypt with
the help of France and Britain; Eisenhower opposed the intervention; recognized
that the Egyptians had claimed their own territory; despite staying out of the Suez
crisis, Eisenhower made it clear that the United States would actively combat
communism in the Middle East, invoking the “Eisenhower Doctrine.”
C. The Nuclear Arms Race
1. Nikita Khrushchev—Eisenhower and Khrushchev, Stalin’s more moderate
successor, met in Geneva in 1955 at the first summit conference since the end of
World War II; the summit produced no new agreements.
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2. Missiles and Satellites—In August 1957, the Soviets test-fired their first
intercontinental ballistic missile; two months later, they beat the United States into
space by launching Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to circle the earth;
Eisenhower tried to diminish public panic by creating the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA) and signing the National Defense Education Act,
providing assistance for students in math, foreign languages, and science.
3. Stockpiling Nuclear Weapons—The stockpile of nuclear weapons in the United
States more than quadrupled during Eisenhower’s presidency; but American
nuclear superiority did not guarantee security because the Soviet Union possessed
sufficient nuclear weapons to devastate the United States.
4. The U-2 Incident—By 1960, the two sides were within reach of a ban on nuclear
testing; to avoid jeopardizing the summit, Eisenhower cancelled espionage flights
over the Soviet Union; but his order came one day too late, as a Soviet missile shot
down a U-2 spy plane over Soviet territory, dashing prospects for a nuclear arms
agreement.
5. The Military-Industrial Complex—As he left office, Eisenhower warned about
the growing influence of the “military industrial complex” in American government
and life.
III. New Work and Living Patterns in an Economy of Abundance
A. Technology Transforms Agriculture and Industry
1. Agribusiness—Between 1940 and 1960, the output of American farms greatly
increased, while the number of farmworkers declined by nearly one-third; farmers
achieved nearly miraculous productivity through greater crop specialization, more
intensive use of fertilizers, and, above all, mechanization.
2. The Persistence of Poverty—Family farms declined and agribusinesses grew;
many of the small farmers who hung on constituted a core of rural poverty often
overlooked in the celebration of 1950s affluence; southern landowners replaced
sharecroppers with machines; as a result, thousands of African Americans moved to
cities and faced urban poverty.
3. Industrial Production—New technology, cheap oil, ample markets abroad, and
little foreign competition also increased industrial production.
4. Labor Successes and a Private Welfare State—Unions enjoyed their greatest
success during the 1950s; real earnings for production workers rose 40 percent;
success of unions created a private welfare state; the private welfare state meant
that workers who were not represented by unions were severely disadvantaged and
did not enjoy many of the benefits and programs guaranteed to union members;
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percentage of unionized workers began to decline as the economy shifted in the
1950s from production to service, as most service industries resisted unionization.
5. Women in the Workforce—The demand for female workers grew as clerical and
service jobs became more widely available.
B. Burgeoning Suburbs and Declining Cities
1. The Expansion of the Suburbs—Although suburbs had existed since the
nineteenth century, nothing symbolized the affluent society more than the
tremendous expansion of suburbs during the 1950s; by 1960, one in four Americans
lived in the suburbs.
2. Government Subsidies—The government subsidized home ownership with lowinterest mortgage guarantees through the Federal Housing Administration and the
Veterans Administration and by making interest on mortgages tax deductible;
federal interstate highways indirectly subsidized development.
3. Criticism of Suburbia—By the 1960s, suburbs came under attack for bulldozing
the natural environment, creating groundwater contamination, disrupting wildlife
patterns, and further adding to the polarization of society, especially along racial
lines: whites in Levittown were not allowed to sell houses to nonwhites.
4. Urban Migrants—As white residents joined the suburban migration, blacks
moved to cities in search of economic opportunity, increasing their numbers in most
cities by 50 percent during the 1950s; but migrants arrived in cities already in
decline.
C. The Rise of the Sun Belt
1. Moving West—A pleasant natural environment drew new residents to the West
and Southwest, but nothing proved stronger than the promise of economic
opportunity; the automobile, airplane, and air conditioning drew migrants to the
Sun Belt.
2. The Defense Industry—So important was the defense industry to the South and
West that those regions later were referred to as the “Gun Belt”; by the 1960s,
nearly one in three California workers had a defense-related job.
3. Environmental Threat—Surging population and industry threatened the
environment; providing water to cities and agribusinesses necessitated building
dams and reservoirs on previously free-flowing rivers; lack of public transit
contributed to air pollution.
4. Mexican Labor—The Mexican American population grew, especially in California
and Texas; permanent Mexican immigration was not as welcome as Mexicans’ low6 of 10
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wage labor; more than three million Mexicans were deported during “Operation
Wetback.”
5. Mexican American Struggle for Civil Rights—At the same time, Mexican
American citizens gained a small victory in their ongoing struggle for civil rights in
Hernandez v. Texas (1954); the Supreme Court ruled that the systematic exclusion of
Hispanics from juries violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.
D. The Democratization of Higher Education
1. More Students—Between 1940 and 1960, college enrollment in the United
States more than doubled; more than 40 percent of young Americans attended
college by the mid-1960s; more families could afford to keep their children in school
longer, and tax dollars spent on higher education more than doubled from 1950 to
1960.
2. Unequal Gains—African American college enrollment surged from 37,000 in
1941 to 90,000 in 1961; still constituted only 5 percent of all college students;
educational gap between white men and white women grew; in 1940, women had
earned 40 percent of undergraduate degrees; down to 25 percent in 1950 and only
33 percent in 1960.
IV. The Culture of Abundance
A. Consumption Rules the Day
1. Consumer Values—By the 1950s, consumption became a reigning value, vital for
economic prosperity and essential to individuals’ identity and status; encouraged
satisfaction and happiness through the purchase and use of new products; by 1960,
four out of every five families owned a television and nearly all had a refrigerator.
2. Creating Abundance—Several forces, including a population surge and
consumer borrowing, spurred this unparalleled abundance.
3. Women and Consumerism—Women’s presence in the labor force increased due
to the need to support themselves and their families, but also because of the desire
to secure some of the new consumer products.
B. The Revival of Domesticity and Religion
1. Celebrating Family Life—Even as married women took jobs in unprecedented
numbers, the dominant ideology celebrated traditional family life and gender roles;
emphasis on home and family life reflected anxieties about the Cold War and
nuclear menace.
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2. The Feminine Mystique—Writer and feminist Betty Friedan gave a name to the
idealization of women’s domestic roles in her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique;
criticized scholars, advertisers, and public officials for prescribing gender roles
based on the assumption of biological differences.
3. The Family Ideal—Although the glorification of domesticity clashed with
married women’s increasing participation in the labor force, most Americans did
embody the family ideal; prosperity led to more children, producing the baby boom
generation.
4. Religious Crusades—The 1950s witnessed a surge of interest in religion; offered
reassurance and peace of mind in the nuclear age; ministers such as Billy Graham
turned the Cold War into a holy war, labeling communism “a great sinister antiChristian movement masterminded by Satan”; critics, however, questioned the
depth of the religious revival.
C. Television Transforms Culture and Politics
1. Escape and Conformity—The new medium of television offered Americans a
welcome respite from Cold War anxieties; audiences watched comedies like I Love
Lucy that projected the family ideal and the feminine mystique into millions of
homes.
2. Political Influence—Television began to affect politics in the 1950s; viewers
tuned in to debates, and candidates were forced to spend huge sums of money for
TV spots; put a premium on personal appearance.
3. Private Enterprise—Unlike government-financed television in Europe,
American TV was paid for by private enterprise; made television the major vehicle
for hawking the products of the affluent society and creating a consumer culture;
advertisers in the mid-1950s spent $10 billion to push their products.
D. Countercurrents
1. Criticizing Conformity—Pockets of dissent underlay the complacency of the
1950s; some intellectuals took exception to the politics of consensus and to the
materialism and conformity celebrated in popular culture.
2. Questioning Masculinity—Critics of the consumer culture showed concern
about the loss of traditional masculinity; consumption itself was associated with
women; Playboy began publication in 1953 and demonstrated that consumption,
traditionally associated with women, could also be masculine.
3. Deviating Sexuality—Alfred Kinsey’s studies on sexual behavior showed that
men’s and women’s sexual conduct frequently departed from the family ideal of the
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postwar era; illuminated the prevalence of sex before marriage, adultery, and
homosexuality.
4. Changing Music—Fewer direct challenges to mainstream standards, such as
rock-and-roll music, appeared in the everyday behavior of large numbers of
Americans, especially youth.
5. The Beat Generation—Most blatant revolt against cultural conventionality came
from the self-proclaimed Beat generation, a small group of literary figures based in
New York City’s Greenwich Village and in San Francisco.
6. Defying Artistic Traditions—Bold new styles in the visual arts also showed the
1950s to be more than a decade of bland conventionality.
V. The Emergence of a Civil Rights Movement
A. African Americans Challenge the Supreme Court and the President
1. The Causes of Black Protest—Black migration from the South to areas where
they could vote and exert political pressure, Cold War concerns raised by white
leaders, and an organizational structure for blacks in the segregated South all
spurred black protest in the 1950s.
2. The Brown Decision—The legal strategy of the NAACP reached its crowning
achievement with the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in
1954; unanimous Supreme Court declared that separate education was inherently
unequal and violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
3. Limited Federal Intervention—Ultimate responsibility for enforcement of the
decision lay with Eisenhower; he refused to endorse Brown, choosing instead to
keep his distance from civil rights issues; inaction fortified southern resistance to
school desegregation and contributed to the gravest constitutional crisis since the
Civil War.
4. The Little Rock Nine—The crisis came in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September
1957; the state’s governor, Orval Faubus, ordered National Guard troops to block
the enrollment of nine black students at Central High School; Eisenhower was forced
to send regular army troops to enforce desegregation at Little Rock; the first federal
military intervention in the South since Reconstruction.
5. Modest Gains—Eisenhower ordered the integration of public facilities in
Washington, D.C., and on military bases, and he supported the first federal civil
rights legislation since Reconstruction; but the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960
were little more than symbolic.
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B. Montgomery and Mass Protest
1. The Modern Civil Rights Movement—What set the civil rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s apart from earlier acts of black protest were the masses of people
involved, their willingness to confront white institutions directly, and the use of
nonviolence and passive resistance to bring about change.
2. Rosa Parks—The first sustained protest to claim national attention began in
Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks violated a local
segregation ordinance, triggering a city-wide boycott of buses; Parks had long been
active in the local NAACP, led by E.D. Nixon; the Women’s Political Council, headed
by Jo Ann Robinson, had also discussed a potential bus boycott; such local
individuals and organizations laid critical foundations for the black freedom
struggle throughout the South.
3. Montgomery Bus Boycott—The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA)
organized a bus boycott, which began on December 5 and lasted for 381 days until
the Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional; leading the MIA was
Martin Luther King Jr., a pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church; Montgomery’s
blacks summoned their courage and determination in abundance, demonstrating
that blacks could sustain a lengthy protest and would not be intimidated.
4. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference—In January 1957, black clergy
from across the South met to coordinate local protests against segregation and
disenfranchisement; founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
5. An Incomplete Story—Prominence of ministers obscured the substantial
contributions of black women like Ella Baker and Jo Ann Robinson; King’s
prominence and the media’s focus on the South also hid the national scope of racial
injustice.
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