The Eisenhower Era, 1952-1960
Presidential
Checkers
Election of
Speech
1952
Chief Justice
Brown V.
Earl Warren
Board
SNCC
“Dynamic
Conservatism”
Indochina
Dienbienphu
Election of
1956
Sputnik I
Joseph
McCarthy
An American
Dilemma
The Seeds of
the Civil Rights
Little Rock
Nine
Dawes
Severalty Act
of 1887
Oil (Middle
East)
NASA
Civil Rights
Act
Interstate
Highway Act of
1956
Suez Crisis
SCLC
John Foster
Dulles
OPEC
NDEA
Presidential Election of 1952 –
 Democrats – Adlai E. Stevenson (Governor of Illinois)
 Republicans – General Dwight D. Eisenhower with Richard Nixon as his running
mate
o Commander of allied forces in Europe
o Army chief of staff after the war
o The first supreme commander of NATO from 1950-1952
o President of Columbia
o Eisenhower left the campaigning to Nixon
 Nixon himself faltered when reports surfaced of a secretly financed
“slush fund” he had tapped while holding a seat in the Senate
Checkers Speech –
given by Richard Nixon on September 23, 1952, when he was the Republican candidate
for the Vice Presidency. It was one of the first political uses of television to appeal
directly to the populace.
Nixon, having been accused of accepting $18,000 in illegal campaign contributions, gave
a live address to the nation in which he revealed the results of an independent audit that
was conducted on his finances, exonerating him of any malfeasance. The money, he
asserted, did not go to him for personal use, nor did it count as income, but rather as
reimbursement for expenses. He followed with a complete financial history of his
personal assets, finances, and debts, including his mortgages, life insurance, and loans, all
of which had the effect of painting him as living a rather austere lifestyle. He denied that
his wife Pat had a mink coat, instead she wore a "respectable Republican cloth coat."
The one contribution he admitted receiving was from a Texas traveling salesman named
Lou Carrol who gave his family a cocker spaniel, which his daughter named "Checkers."
[2]
Nixon admitted that this gift could be made into an issue by some, but maintained that
he didn't care, stating "the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right
now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it." Later, when asked
about Nixon's performance, some Eisenhower campaign insiders joked, "We're keeping
the dog."

With the new technology politicians could go straight to the voters without
mediating influence of parties or other institutions. The new medium thus stood
revealed as a threat to the historic role of political parties, which traditionally had
chosen candidates through complex internal bargaining and had educated and
mobilized the electorate.

The presidential election of 1952 was never really in doubt 442 electoral votes to
89. The Republican gain control of Congress.
President Eisenhower undertook a flying three-day visit to Korea in Dec. 1952. seven
months later, an armistice was finally signed but was repeatedly violated in succeeding
decades.
 Fighting lasted three years and 54,000 Americans lay dead
 Billions spent and Korea remained divided.
One of the first problems Eisenhower faced was the swelling popularity and power of
anticommunist Joseph McCarthy
 Senator from Wisconsin
 In a Feb. 1950 in a speech at Wheeling West Virginia to the Republican
Women's Club. There he accused Secretary of State Dean Acheson of knowingly
employing 205 Communist party members.
o Pressed to reveal the names McCarthy later conceded that there were only
57 genuine communists and in the end failed to root out even one.
o The speech won of national visibility and the Republicans realized this
could be used as a secret weapon against the Democrats
o McCarthy’s accusations began getting bolder and bolder
 Yet the majority of the American people approved of McCarthy
o Eisenhower privately loathed McCarthy by publicly tried to stay out of
his way
o McCarthy finally bent the bow too far when he attacked the US army.
 The Army fights back in 35 days of televised hearings staring on
April 22 1954.
o A few months later the Senate formally condemned him for “Conduct
unbecoming a member” Three years later McCarthy died of chronic
alcoholism
An American Dilemma (1944) – Swedish scholar Gunnar Myrdal uses this book to
expose the contradiction between America’s professed belief that all men are created
equal and its sordid treatment of black citizens.
 Increasingly African-Americans refused to suffer in silence.
The Seeds of the Civil Rights –
 Harry Truman in 1946 commissioned a report titled “To Secure These Rights.”
Following the report’s recommendations, Truman in 1948 ended segregation in
Federal Civil Service and ordered “equality of treatment and opportunity” in
armed forces.
 Congress stubbornly resisted passing civil rights legislation, and Truman’s
successor, Dwight Eisenhower, showed no real signs of interest in the racial issue.
Breaking the path for civil rights progress was Chief Justice Earl Warren.
o He shocked the president and other traditionalists with his active judicial
intervention in previously taboo social issues.
Brown V. Board – 1954
 The unanimous decision of the Warren Court ruled that segregation in the public
schools was unequal and thus unconstitutional
 It reversed the Court’s earlier declaration of 1896 Plessy v Ferguson – Separate
but equal.”
 Desegregation, the Justices insisted, must go ahead with “all deliberate speed.”
o The Border States generally made reasonable efforts to comply with this
ruling, but in the Deep South die-hards organized “massive resistance”
o Ten years after the Court’s momentous ruling, fewer than 2 percent of the
eligible blacks in the Deep South were sitting in classrooms with whites.
1955 – Rosa Parks, made history when she wouldn’t give up her seat. She helped ignite
the Montgomery bus boycott
Read page 895 --President Eisenhower was little inclined toward promoting integration.
He shied away from employing his vast popularity and the prestige of his office to
educate white Americans about the need for racial justice.
Little Rock Nine – In 1957 nine African American students enrolled in Central High
School and Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, mobilized the National Guard to
prevent this from happening. Eisenhower sent troops to escort the children to their
classes.
Civil Rights Act 1957 – Congressed passed the first civil rights act since the
reconstruction days. It set up a permanent Civil Rights Commission to investigate
violations of civil rights and authorized federal injunctions to protect voting rights.
SCLC – African Americans were taking the civil rights movement into their own hands.
Martin Luther King, Jr. formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. It
aimed to mobilize the vest power of the black churches on behalf of black rights. This
was an exceptionally shrewd strategy, because the churches were the larges and bestorganized black institutions that had been allowed to flourish in a segregated society.
SNCC – In April 1960 southern black students formed the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee to give more focus and force to these efforts.
“Dynamic Conservatism” – Describes his policy towards the economy. Eisenhower
strove to balance the federal budget and guard the Republic from what he called
“creeping socialism” (Only balanced the budget three times while in office)
 Slowed the military build up
 Supported the transfer of control over offshore oil fields from the federal
government to the states.
Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 – Eisenhower also sought to cancel the tribal preservation
policies of the “Indian New Deal,” in place since 1934. He proposed to terminate the
tribes as legal entities and to revert to the assimilationist goals. Most Indians resisted
termination, and the policy was abandoned in 1961.
Interstate Highway Act of 1956 – Ike backed the Interstate Highway Act of 1956 to
build forty-two thousand miles of sleek, fast motorways.
 Great of creating jobs, the car, and travel industry, but problematic for air quality,
trains, downtowns
John Foster Dulles – Secretary of State and a leading architect of American strategy in
the Cold war.
 He served in the American delegation at Versailles but in the 1930s became the
leading Republican expert on foreign policy. In 1936 he made a controversial
speech that expressed sympathy for officer in WWII and later head of the CIA
Eisenhower would relegate the army and the navy to the back seat and build up an air
fleet of superbomers
Indochina – Nationalist movements had sought for years to throw off the French colonial
yoke in Indochina. Asian leaders including Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam) became increasingly
communist. By 1954 American taxpayers were financing nearly 80 percent of the costs
of a bottomless French colonial war in Indochina. The United States’ share amounted to
about 1 billion a year.
Dienbienphu – In march 1954 Dienbienphu fell to the nationalists and at a conference in
Geneva roughly halved Vietnam at the 17th parallel. South pro US and the communists in
the North.
Oil (Middle East)—Increasing fears of Soviet penetration into the oil-rich Middle east
prompted Washington to take audacious action. The government to of Iran, supposedly
influenced by the Kremlin, began to resist the power of the gigantic Western companies
that controlled Iranian petroleum, In response the American CIA engineered a coup in
1953 that installed the youthful Shah of Iran, as a kind of dictator. Although successful
in the short run in securing Iranian oil for the West, the American intervention left a bitter
legacy of resentment among many Iranians.
Suez Crisis – President Nasser of Egypt, an Arab nationalist, was seeking funds to build
an immense dam on the upper Nile for urgently needed irrigation and power. American
and Britain tentatively offered financial help, but when Nasser began to flirt openly with
the communist camp, Dulles dramatically withdrew the dam offer.
 Nasser nationalized the dam in 1954
 By this stage, two-thirds of Europe's oil was being imported via the canal.
 The French and the British coordinated an attack on Egypt from Israel, in 1956
 The French and the British thought the US would supply them with oil while their
Middle Eastern supplies were disrupted, but Eisenhower refused to release
emergency supplies.
 The oilless allies resetfully withdrew their troops, and for the first time in history,
a United Nations police force was sent to maintain order.
OPEC – Nationalism spread in the Middle East and Arab countries wanted to reap for
themselves their share of the enormous oil wealth that Western companies pumped out of
the scorching Middle Eastern deserts. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran joined with
Venezuela in 1960 to form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Election of 1956 – The election of 1956 was a replay of the 1952 contest with President
Eisenhower
 Adlai Stevenson – Democrats.
 Eisenhower – Republicans
 Eisenhower 457 electoral votes, and Stevenson 73
 Eisenhower failed to win for his party either house of Congress
Sputnik I – In 1957 the Soviet launched sputnik weighing 184 pounds. And a month
later they launched a larger one weighing 1120 pounds and carrying a dog. This amazing
breakthrough shattered American self-confidence.
NASA – Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and
directed billions of dollars to missile development. In Feb. 1958 the US managed to put
into orbit a grapefruit sized satellite weighing 2.5 pounds.
NDEA – In 1958 the National Defense and Education Act authorized 887 million in
loans to needy college students and in grants for the improvement of teaching the
sciences and languages.
Downfall: Edward R. Murrow and "See it Now"
The downfall of Senator McCarthy would begin on 20 October 1953 on Edward
R. Murrow’s CBS television newsmagazine “See it Now.” Rather than attack McCarthy
directly, which would have been disastrous, Murrow and director Fred Friendly did a
story on Milo Radulovich, an Air Force officer from Michigan who had lost his
commission because of the communist leanings of his father and sister. Though
Radulovich was given an Air Force administrative hearing where he had an opportunity
to defend himself, he was not allowed to see the evidence against him, making it nearly
impossible to mount an effective defense. Though McCarthy was not involved in the
Radulovich case, with their emphasis on secret evidence and guilt by association,
Murrow and Friendly were clearly attempting to draw a parallel with the McCarthy
hearings. After its exposure on “See it Now,” the Air Force reinstated Radulovich.
Murrow and Friendly’s next attack on McCarthy was not nearly as oblique. On 9 March
1954, “See it Now” took on McCarthy directly. Using his own words against him,
Murrow and Friendly demonstrated McCarthy’s inconsistencies and fabrications. In an
extended portion, they documented McCarthy’s bullying treatment of Annie Lee Moss.
CBS News offered McCarthy equal airtime to refute the charges, an offer the Senator
took advantage of on 6 April 1954. If Murrow and Friendly’s attack was damaging for
the Senator, McCarthy’s defense of himself was devastating. In a rambling, often
incoherent, diatribe, McCarthy, rather than refute their allegations, attacked Murrow,
Friendly, and CBS News, confirming, for many, what had been reported.
In March 1954, McCarthy began to investigate Annie Lee Moss, a middle aged
African American woman who worked as administrative support in the Army Signal
Corps. As often happened in the McCarthy hearings, the case was built on innuendo and
hearsay. The case against Moss was built entirely on the fact that an informant once
reported seeing the name Annie Lee Moss on a membership roll of the Communist Party.
For this, Moss lost her job with the Army, was dragged before McCarthy’s hearings, and
publicly interrogated on national television.
Missouri Senator Stuart Symington was appalled. He pointed out that there were four
Annie Lee Mosses listed in the Washington D.C. phonebook and that there was no
indication that this was the proper one. Furthermore, Symington asked Moss to read from
the hearing transcript. Her difficulty in reading, while humiliating on national television,
demonstrated that Moss would have been incapable of the sort of complicated espionage
that McCarthy accused her of.
Text taken from Teaching American History Website
http://www.tahg.org/module_display.php?mod_id=108&review=yes