The American Journey
A History of the United States, 7th Edition
By: Goldfield • Abbott • Anderson • Argersinger • Argersinger • Barney • Weir
Chapter
28
The Confident Years
1953–1964
The Confident Years 1953–1964
28.1
A Decade of Affluence
How did the “Decade of Affluence” alter social and
religious life in America?
28.2
Facing Off with the Soviet Union
What impact did Dwight Eisenhower’s foreign
policy have on U.S. relations with the Soviet Union?
28.3
John F. Kennedy and the Cold War
What was John F. Kennedy’s approach to dealing
with the Soviet Union?
The Confident Years 1953–1964
28.4
Righteousness Like a Mighty Stream:
The Struggle for Civil Rights
What was the significance of Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka?
28.5
“Let Us Continue”
How did Lyndon B. Johnson continue the domestic
agenda inherited from the Kennedy administration?
In what ways did he depart from it?
Video Series: Key Topics in U.S. History
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The Affluent Society: 1953–1960
The Suburban Ideal
The Age of Ike
The Civil Rights Movement
A Decade of Affluence
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What’s Good for General Motors
Reshaping Urban America
Comfort on Credit
The New Fifties Family
Inventing Teenagers
Turning to Religion
The Gospel of Prosperity
The Underside of Affluence
Home
What’s Good for General Motors
• Eisenhower and the politics of the middle
 Secretary of Defense: former head of General
Motors
• The new prosperity
• Unemployment high among minorities
• Native Americans
 Termination policy
A Decade of
Affluence
Reshaping Urban America
• Urban renewal
 Displaced minorities
• Transportation
 Federal Highway Act of 1956
 Interstates
• Suburbanization accelerated
A Decade of
Affluence
Comfort on Credit
• Credit buying
 Mortgages
 Store credit cards
• Suburban malls
• Leisure travel increased
A Decade of
Affluence
The New Fifties Family
• New ideas about childhood
• The impact of television
 Sitcoms
• Stay-at-home moms and working women
 Higher education fell for women
 Employment reached new highs
A Decade of
Affluence
Inventing Teenagers
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Marketing targeted teenagers
Rock-and-roll
Phonographs and 45s
Radio
Culture of rebellion
A Decade of
Affluence
Turning to Religion
• Churchgoing rose slightly
• Evangelicals and fundamentalists
 Bill Graham
• Ecumenicalism among Protestant faiths
• Supreme Court
 Engel v. Vitale (1962)
 Abington Township v. Schempp (1963)
A Decade of
Affluence
The Gospel of Prosperity
• Prosperity became a political goal
• The “kitchen debate”
 Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev
A Decade of
Affluence
The Underside of Affluence
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Large poor class
Military-industrial complex
Impact of suburbs
Women’s issues
 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
A Decade of
Affluence
Facing Off with the Soviet Union
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Why We Liked Ike
A Balance of Terror
The American Approach to the Cold War
U.S. Alliances and the Third World
Containment in Action
Global Standoff
Home
Why We Liked Ike
• Dwight Eisenhower
 Concentrated on foreign policy
 Experience of World War II
 Behind-the-scenes president
Facing Off
with the
Soviet Union
A Balance of Terror
• Deterrence
 Use of fear
 Based on massive retaliation
• Launching of Sputnik
• National Defense Education Act
• National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA)
Facing Off
with the
Soviet Union
The American Approach to the Cold War
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Talk of brinkmanship
Continued Truman’s containment
Commercial goals
Religious slant
Facing Off
with the
Soviet Union
U.S. Alliances and the Third World
• Alliances formed to block the spread of
communism
 Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)
 Central Treaty Organization
• Nonaligned nations
 India, Egypt, Ghana
Facing Off
with the
Soviet Union
Containment in Action
• Intervention in Iran
 CIA backed a coup ‒ 1963
• Guatemala
 United Fruit Company
• Suez Canal Crisis ‒ 1956
• Israel
Facing Off
with the
Soviet Union
Global Standoff
• Peace talks planned
• U-2 spy plane ‒ 1960
• Peace talks halted
Facing Off
with the
Soviet Union
John F. Kennedy and the Cold War
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The Kennedy Mystique
Kennedy’s Mistakes
Getting into Vietnam
Missile Crisis: A Line Drawn in the Waves
Science and Foreign Affairs
Home
The Kennedy Mystique
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The New Frontier
Televised debates
Kennedy’s glamour
Inconsistent policies
John F. Kennedy
Kennedy’s Mistakes
• Arms race continued
• Invasion of Cuba ‒ 1961
 Bay of Pigs
• Summit ‒ June 1961
• Berlin Wall
John F. Kennedy
Getting into Vietnam
• France withdrew in 1954
• United States supported Ngo Dinh Diem
 Versus Viet Cong
• Diem removed with U.S. complicity
John F. Kennedy
Missile Crisis: A Line Drawn in the Waves
• Cuban Missile Crisis ‒ 1961
 Blockade
 Brinkmanship
• Alliance for Progress
 Anti-communist
• War avoided
John F. Kennedy
Science and Foreign Affairs
• U.S. space program
• Nuclear testing resumed in 1961‒1962
• Limited Test Ban Treaty ‒ 1963
John F. Kennedy
Righteousness Like a Mighty Stream:
The Struggle for Civil Rights
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Getting to the Supreme Court
Deliberate Speed
Public Accommodations
The March on Washington, 1963
Religious Belief and Civil Rights
Home
Getting to the Supreme Court
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
• Charles Hamilton Houston
 Howard University
 Thurgood Marshall
• All-white primaries ended
• League of United Latin American Citizens
 Mendez v. Westminster
The Struggle for
Civil Rights
Deliberate Speed
• Southern Manifesto protested the Brown
decision
• Little Rock, Arkansas ‒ 1957
 Use of the National Guard
• Desegregation proceeded slowly
The Struggle for
Civil Rights
Public Accommodations
• Rosa Parks
 Montgomery, Alabama
 Bus boycott
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) ‒ 1957
• Woolworth’s sit-in ‒ 1960
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) ‒ 1960
• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) The Struggle for
Civil Rights
Explore the Civil Rights Movement on
MyHistoryLab
• The Civil Rights Movement History Explorer
addresses the central impediments to the economic
advancement of African Americans in the decades
following World War II, including white racism,
patterns of poverty, school segregation, and the
agricultural labor market. It also asks students to
weigh the impact of the Second Great Migration—the
exodus of over 5 million African Americas from the
rural South to the industrial cities of the North and
West beginning in the 1940s—on the aims and
outcomes of the movement.
The March on Washington, 1963
• Birmingham protests ‒ 1963
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
 “I Have a Dream”
• Civil rights movement spread
• Militancy
The Struggle for
Civil Rights
Religious Belief and Civil Rights
• Support of Christian beliefs
• Two dominant southern churches supported
desegregation
The Struggle for
Civil Rights
“Let Us Continue”
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Dallas, 1963
War on Poverty
Civil Rights, 1964–1965
War, Peace, and the Landslide of 1964
Home
“Let Us Continue”
• Johnson pursued Kennedy’s policies
• War on Poverty ‒ 1963
“Let Us
Continue”
Dallas, 1963
• Assassination of Kennedy ‒ November 1963
 Lyndon Johnson became president
• Warren commission
“Let Us
Continue”
War on Poverty
• Kennedy’s New Frontier
• Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO)
 Job Corps
 VISTA
“Let Us
Continue”
Civil Rights, 1964–1965
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
 Ended segregation
 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC)
• SNCC
 Freedom Summer
 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
• Voting Rights Act
 Minority voter registration jumped
“Let Us
Continue”
War, Peace, and the Landslide of 1964
• Gulf of Tonkin incident ‒ 1964
 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
• Election of 1964
 Johnson won in a landslide
• Great Society
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National Endowments
Wilderness Act
Medicare
Medicaid
“Let Us
Continue”
Conclusion
• The period from 1953 to 1964 was
characterized by a consistent foreign policy
that focused on containment.
• The civil rights movement gained momentum,
and despite violent resistance, significant
legislation was passed regarding voting and
other rights.
• The Cold War shaped much of U.S. society as
anticommunism helped forge consensus and
stifle dissent.