AP U.S. History
Chapter 37: The Eisenhower Era, 1952-1960
Focus Question
What were the Cold War fears of the American people in the aftermath of the Second World
War? How successfully did the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower address these
fears?
Learning Objectives
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What was the driving force behind the affluence and the consumer culture of the 1950s?
How did the Brown decision and the confrontation in Little Rock set the stage for the
civil rights movement of the 1950s?
What were the differences between Eisenhower’s foreign policy and those of his
predecessors in the battle of the Cold War?
What were the major issues facing Eisenhower in Europe and Asia?
How did the literature reflect confusion in the attitudes and feelings Americans had about
how to deal with post-war modern society during the 1950s?
What was the basis of “Beat” criticism of American society?
Questions
Affluence and Its Anxieties (860)
1. What factors characterized the changing nature of work in the 1950s?
2. Why, after World War II ended, did most American women care for their families and not
work outside the home?
3. What were the effects of the vast expansion of employment opportunities for women in the
1950s?
4. What was the enduring significance of the 1963 best-seller The Feminine Mystique?
Consumer Culture in the Fifties (862)
5. How did Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and Fulton J. Sheen illustrate the impact of mass media
on religion?
6. What were the major aspects of 1950s popular culture that conservatives found troubling?
7. Why did social critics such as David Riesman and William H. Whyte, Jr., criticize the new
popular mass media culture in the 1950s?
The Advent of Eisenhower (864)
8. Why was Richard Nixon selected as Dwight Eisenhower's vice-presidential running mate in
1952? How did Nixon's Checkers speech during the 1952 presidential campaign demonstrate
the new power of television?
9. What did the 1952 Republican presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower declare that he
would do to help to end the Korean War?
10. What was Dwight Eisenhower's greatest asset as president?
The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy (866)
11. How did Senator Joseph McCarthy first rise to national prominence? How did his brand of
anticommunism damage free speech and fair play?
12. How did President Eisenhower respond to Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist
attacks?
13. How was American foreign policy [supposedly] damaged as a result of Senator McCarthy's
crusade against communist subversion in America?
14. How did McCarthy's attack on the United States Army bring an end to his anticommunist
crusade?
Desegregating American Society (867)
15. What was the response of the State Department when singer Paul Robeson began to criticize
American racial policies in Europe?
16. What was the main argument of Swedish writer Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma?
Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution (868)
17. According to the textbook, what were Eisenhower’s beliefs and actions regarding the subject
of racial justice?
18. According to the textbook, why did the Supreme Court began to advance the cause of civil
rights in the 1950s?
19. What methods did African Americans use in their efforts to overturn Jim Crow laws and the
segregated system that they had created?
20. What was the significance of the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka?
21. How did the sit-in movement lead to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC)?
Makers of America (870)
22. What factors helped to generate the new militancy and restlessness among many members of
the African American community after 1945?
Eisenhower Republicanism at Home (872)
23. What was Eisenhower’s “dynamic conservatism”?
24. Why did Dwight Eisenhower, as president, support reducing military spending?
25. What was Eisenhower’s most notable policy toward Native Americans?
26. Why, during his presidency, did Eisenhower accept the principle and extend the benefits of
the Social Security system?
27. Why did Eisenhower promote the interstate highway system, a public-works project that was
far larger and more expensive than anything in Roosevelt's New Deal?
A "New Look" in Foreign Policy (874)
28. What were the major principles of Eisenhower’s “New Look” foreign policy? What was the
goal of the policy?
29. What was John Foster Dulles' role in Eisenhower's policy of "rolling back" Soviet gains?
30. How did the Eisenhower administration respond to the 1956 Hungarian uprising?
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The Vietnam Nightmare (874)
31. Who was the most prominent leader of the nationalist movement in Vietnam since World
War I?
32. What was President Eisenhower’s response to the impending fall of the French outpost of
Dien Bien Phu?
33. What were the major provisions of the 1954 Geneva Conference?
Cold War Crises in Europe and the Middle East (874)
34. How did the CIA respond to a supposed Soviet threat to Middle Eastern oil in 1953?
35. How did the United States respond to the Suez crisis in 1956? Why did the Suez crisis mark
the last time in history that the United States could use its oil weapon to make foreign policy
demands?
36. What was the connection between the Hungarian uprising and the Suez crisis?
37. What did the Eisenhower Doctrine pledge to Middle Eastern nations?
Round Two for Ike (876)
38. Why did President Eisenhower take a more active personal role in governing during his
second term?
39. Why did the federal government begin spending billions of dollars to improve American
science and language education after 1957?
The Continuing Cold War (877)
40. Why did the 1959 "spirit of Camp David" disappear in a failed 1960 summit meeting in
Paris?
Cuba's Castroism Spells Communism (878)
41. Why had Latin American anger toward the United States intensified by the end of the 1950s?
In 1954, why did the Central Intelligence Agency engineer a political coup in Guatemala?
Kennedy Challenges Nixon for the Presidency (878)
42. How did television emerge as the factor that may have tipped the electoral scales for John F.
Kennedy in the presidential election of 1960?
An Old General Fades Away (879)
43. How did Americans view Dwight Eisenhower when he left the presidency in 1961?
A Cultural Renaissance (880)
44. How did America's literary outpouring after World War II compared to that after World War
I?
45. Who were major postwar American fiction writers who explored the problems and anxieties
of affluence?
46. Why did some of the better-known American poets in the post-World War II era end their
lives through suicide?
47. Why might Ralph Ellison have titled his 1952 novel Invisible Man?
Makers of America (884)
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48. What factors characterized the Beat Generation and how it was perceived by other
Americans?
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