1946 to 1961:
Four Main Themes
COLD WAR
A CONFIDENT NATION
CONSUMERISM
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Was it a time of “happy days or
anxiety, alienation and social
unrest”?
The
Eisenhower Years
1953-1961
•Nickname: "Ike"
•Born: Oct. 14, 1890,
in Texas
•Died: March 28,
1969, in Washington,
D.C.
•Education: Graduate
of West Point
•WWII: Supreme
Allied Commander
during WWII
•34th President: Republican, 1953 to 1961
•VP: Richard Nixon
Issues/Events
Civil Rights
•Plessy vs. Ferguson overturned
•Public Schools Integrated
•Rosa Parks
•Montgomery Bus Strike
•Rise of Martin Luther King
•Little Rock Nine
Cold War
•Ended the Korean War
•Suez Canal
•Hungary
•Berlin
•Sputnik
•U-2 Spy Plane
Domestic Policy
Balanced, moderate
“Bland leading the bland”
Overall, a time of prosperity
New Deal a part of modern life
Expands farm aid, Social Security, housing,
health services
Highway Act of 1956
42,000 miles of interstate highways linking major
cities
Improve national defense
Good for jobs, trucking
Bad for the poor, public transportation
The Culture of the Car
America became a more homogeneous
nation because of the automobile.
First McDonald’s (1955)
Drive-In Movies
Howard Johnson’s
The Culture of the Car
Car registrations: 1945 --> 25,000,000
1960 --> 60,000,000
2-family cars doubles from 1951-1958
1956 --> Federal Interstate Highway Act -->
largest public works project in American
history!
* Cost $32 billion
* 42,000 miles of new highways built
The Culture of the Car
1959 Chevy Corvette
1958 Pink Cadillac
The Culture of the Car
1955 --> Disneyland opened in Southern
California. (40% of the guests came
from outside California, most by car.)
Frontier Land
Main Street
Tomorrow Land
The Culture of the Car
•The U. S. population was on the move in the
1950s.
•NE & Mid-W ---> S & SW (“Sunbelt” states)
Foreign Policy
 Korean War ends in a stalemate.
 Shaped by John Foster Dulles
–
Truman too passive
Brinksmanship
 Push Communist nations to the brink
of war, they will back down to U.S.
nuclear superiority
Massive Retaliation
 Focus on nuclear weapons, air power
 H-Bomb in 1953
 Criticized as “mutual extinction”
•Stalemate by 1953.
•Pres. Eisenhower
negotiated an end to
war
•Divided at 38th parallel
•Communism contained
•Remains divided today
Soviet Concerns
 Stalin’s Death (1953)
–
Khrushchev (1956): “peaceful coexistence”
 Hungarian Revolt (1956)
 Suez Canal Crisis (1956 to 57)
 Sputnik (1957)
 Second Berlin Crisis (1958)
–
Khrushchev: “We will bury capitalism”
 U-2 Incident (1960)
 Support for Castro in Cuba (1959)
•New Soviet leader after Stalin’s death in 1953 to 1965.
•Not as harsh as Stalin
•Believed US and Soviet Union could “peacefully co-exist”
with one another but the Soviet Union had to be as strong
militarily as the US.
The Suez Crisis: 1956-1957
The Hungarian Uprising: 1956
Imre Nagy, Hungarian
Prime Minister
}
Promised free
elections.
}
This could lead to the
end of communist rule
in Hungary.
Sputnik I (1957)
The Russians have beaten America in
space—they have the technological edge!
1957 Russians launch SPUTNIK I
Facts on Sputnik
•Aluminum sphere, 23 inches in
diameter weighing 184 pounds with
four steel antennae emitting radio
signals.
•Launched Oct. 4, 1957
•Stayed in orbit 92 days, until Jan. 4,
1958
1957 Russians launch SPUTNIK I
Effects on the
United States
•Americans fear a Soviet
attack with missile
technology
•Americans resolved to regain technological
superiority over the Soviet Union
•In July 1958, President Eisenhower created NASA
or National Aeronautics and Space Agency
•1958 --> National Defense Education Act
Effects of Sputnik on United States
Atomic Anxieties:
•“Duck-and-Cover Generation”
Atomic Testing:
•Between July 16, 1945 and Sept. 23,
1992, the United States conducted
1,054 official nuclear tests, most of
them at the Nevada Test Site.
Americans began
building
underground bomb
shelters and cities
had underground
fallout shelters.
Desert Research Institute
•Between 1949 and 1963, the United States and
Soviet Union conducted more than 100 above
ground nuclear weapons tests.
•Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963 banned all aboveground testing sending nuclear tests
underground.
•On Oct. 26, 1963 at the Shoal underground
nuclear test site 1,204 feet below the surface a
nuclear detonation conducted in the Sand Springs
Mountain Range about 30 miles southeast of
Fallon, Nevada.
•Produced a yield of 12.5 kilotons and analyzed
seismic detection of underground nuclear tests in
active earthquake areas.
•The veiled purpose of the experiment may have
been to discern the difference between Russian
earthquakes and Russian nuclear testing.
U-2 Spy Incident (1960)
Col. Francis Gary
Powers’ plane was
shot down over Soviet
airspace.
•On May 1, 1960, a U.S. U-2 high altitude
reconnaissance aircraft was shot down
over central Russia, forcing its pilot, Gary
Powers, to bail out at 15,000 feet.
•The CIA-employed pilot survived the
parachute jump and was picked up by the
Soviet authorities, who arrested him.
• On May 5, Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev announced the capture of the
U.S. spy, and vowed that he would be put
on trial.
•After initial denials, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower admitted on May 7 that
the unarmed reconnaissance aircraft was indeed on a spy mission.
•In response, Khrushchev cancelled a long-awaited summit meeting in Paris, and
in August, Powers was sentenced to ten years in a Soviet prison for his confessed
espionage.
•However, a year-and-a-half later, on February 10, 1962, the Soviets released him
in exchange for Rudolph Abel, a Soviet spy caught and convicted in the United
States five years earlier.
•Led to the Berlin Wall being built and the Cold War “heating up again”
McCarthyism
 Claimed 205
communists working for
State Department
 Attacked wealthy &
privileged—popular
appeal
 Even Eisenhower
wouldn’t challenge him
 Army hearings in 1954
televised
–
McCarthy exposed as a
bully (“reckless cruelty”
•Red Scare was Americans
response to the fear of
Communism
•Senator Joseph McCarthy
accused 205 US Govt. officials
of being Communist.
•McCarthyism to destroy or
assassinate one’s character
without proof and it ruined the
careers of many Americans.
Became a witch hunt that led to Americans
pledging a “loyalty oath” to the United States…….
red scare
red scare1
Popular Culture
 Consumer-driven mass economy
Television
 By 1961, 55 million TV sets
 3 national networks, bland sit-coms,
westerns, quiz shows, sports,
 “vast wasteland” for children,
culture
Advertising
 All media, aggressive
 Shopping centers, credit cards
 Change from “mom & pop” to
franchises
Consumerism
Americans were caught up in the “economic boom”
that took place after WWII
1950 --> Introduction of the Diner’s Card
Consumerism
Americans were becoming a consumer
society…..Buying whatever new product that came
out that would make their lives comfortable.
Television
1946 --> 7,000 TV sets in the U. S.
1950 --> 50,000,000 TV sets in the U. S.
Television is a vast wasteland --> Newton
Minnow, Chairman of Federal
Communications Commission, 1961
Mass Audience
•TV celebrated traditional
American values:
•Superman-----Truth, Justice,
and the American way!
Television
Davy Crockett--King of the Wild Frontier
Sheriff Matt Dillon,
Gunsmoke
The Lone Ranger
(and his faithful
sidekick, Tonto):
Who is that masked
man??
Television
Family Shows --> glossy view of mostly middleclass suburban life.
Wally and the
Beav
I Love Lucy
Alice Kramden,
The Honeymooners
Popular Culture
Paperback books
 Reading Increase despite
television—1 million copies a
day
Records
 Mass-marketed, inexpensive
LP’s or 45’s
 Rock and Roll music becomes
popular with teenagers
elvis
Elvis Presley
Chuck Berry
Teen Culture
In the 1950s --> the word “teenager” entered the
American language.
1956 --> 13 mil. teens with $7 billion to spend a year.
1951 --> “race music” --> “ROCK ‘N ROLL”
Elvis Presley --> “The King”
Teen Culture
“Happy Days”
OR
“Juvenile Delinquency”?
Marlon Brando in
The Wild One
(1953)
James Dean in
Rebel Without a
Cause (1955)
Popular Culture
Role of Women
 Mass media reinforced traditional roles
 Lower wages in the workplace
Social Critics
 Struggle against conformity
 Wanted increased social spending
 Beatniks
–
Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg
Well-Defined Gender Roles
Changing Sexual Behavior:
Alfred Kinsey --> 1948 --> Sexual Behavior in the
Human Male
1953 --> Sexual Behavior in the
Human Female
* premarital sex was common.
* extramarital affairs were frequent among
married couples.
Kinsey’s results are an assault on the family as a basic unit of
society, a negation of moral law, and a celebration of
licentiousness.
-- Life magazine, early 1950s
Teen Culture
The “Beatnik” Generation:
* Jack Kerouac --> On The Road
* Allen Ginsberg --> poem, “Howl”
* Neal Cassady
* William S. Burroughs
•Jack Kerouac is said to have responded:
We’re a beat generation!
•Against traditional values of the Great Depressions and
WWII generation (their parents)
•Would influence the “counter-culture” of the 1960’s
Conformity
Corporate America
 More white-collar jobs than blue-collar
–
Teamwork, conformity, strict dress codes
 Big unions merge (AFL & CIO)
–
more conservative—industrial jobs making middle-class income
 Suburbs, new cars, new schools, family vacations
Religion
 After WWII, organized religion expands, becomes more
tolerant
–
–
1000s of new churches, synagogues
Less interest in doctrine, more in socialization, identity
A Changing Workplace
New Corporate Culture
“The Company Man”
1947-1957 --> factory workers
decreased by 4.3%, eliminating 1.5
million blue-collar jobs.
By 1956 --> more white-collar
than blue-collar jobs in the U. S
1956 --> Sloan Wilson’s The Man in
the Gray Flannel Suit
Well-Defined Gender Roles
The ideal 1950’s man was the provider, protector,
and the boss of the house. -- Life magazine, 1955
1956 --> William H. Whyte, Jr. --> The Organization
Man * a middle-class, white suburban male is the
ideal.
Young Gentleman
Family Man
The Provider
Religious Revival
Today in the U. S., the Christian faith is back in the
center of things.
-- Time magazine, 1954
Church membership:
1940 --> 64,000,000
1960 --> 114,000,000
Television Preachers
1. Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen --> “Life is Worth
Living”
2. Methodist Minister Norman Vincent Peale --> The
Power of Positive Thinking
3. Reverend Billy Graham --> ecumenical message;
warned against the evils of Communism.
Religious Revival
Hollywood: apex of the biblical epics.
The Robe
1953
The Ten Commandments
1956
Ben Hur
1959
It’s un-American to be unreligious! -- The Christian Century, 1954
Civil Rights
Background
 Post WWI & WWII movement to urban areas
 African Americans influencing party politics
by the 1950s
 Conflicting feelings about Cold War message
of freedom and democracy
Civil Rights
 Montgomery Bus
Boycott (1955)
–
 Landmark in
Desegregation
–
Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka
(1954)
 Federal troops uphold
in Little Rock, Ark.
–
Little Rock 9
Rosa Parks, MLK, Jr.
 Civil Rights Acts of
1957 & 1960
–
First since
Reconstruction
 SCLC
 Greensboro sit-in
–
SNCC
Brown vs. Board of Education,
Topeka, Kansas
May 1954, the Supreme Court overturned Plessy v.
Ferguson and the "separate but equal" doctrine.
Segregation of
children in public schools on the
basis of race was unconstitutional and
discrimination.
Brown vs. board
States ordered to integrate their schools.
December 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42 yr. old
Black woman was ordered by a
Montgomery bus driver to give up her
seat to white passengers.
•Refused, arrested and fined
$10 for sitting in the white
section.
•Blacks refused to ride
buses until the law was
changed.
•Begins the Civil Rights Era
as a national movement to
bring about equality for
Black Americans.
Rosa parks
Rosa
parks
•Rosa Parks case led to the
Montgomery Bus Boycott against
segregation on public buses.
•Led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
•Montgomery City Government ended
segregation.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
•Leader for Black Civil Rights
•End Jim Crow
•Promote integration
•Increase voting rights
•Bring about a true democracy
•Rights deprived since Civil War
little rock
•Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas was
the first high school in the South to integrate.
•1958, President Eisenhower sent Federal troops to
accompany the nine black students attending an all
white high school...
Progress Through Science
1951 -- First IBM Mainframe Computer
1952 -- Hydrogen Bomb Test
1953 -- DNA Structure Discovered
1954 -- Salk Vaccine Tested for polio
1957 -- First Commercial U. S. Nuclear Power Plant
1958 -- NASA Created
Progress Through Science
UFO Sightings skyrocketed in the 1950s.
Hollywood used aliens as an allegory for whom ??
War of the Worlds
The 50’s Come to a Close
1959 --> “Kitchen Debate”
Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet
Premier Nikita Khrushchev
U.S. Embassy, Moscow, Soviet Union at the
American National Exhibition
Cold War Tensions --->
<--- Technology & Affluence