Chapter 27 - America at Midcentury
American Society at Mid-century
- Americans needed to spend more time & money on the community, not personal stuff
- Medical care, schools, etc
- Many tensions felt due to the Cold War - these shaped American life
The Eisenhower Presidency
- First 2 term Republican president since Grant
- Eisenhower had a very conservative vision of community
- Saw the US as corporate commonwealth, similar to Hoover’s “associative state”
- Wanted to run the govt. in a businesslike manner
- Appointed 9 businessmen to his first cabinet
- 3 of these had contacts with GM
- Submerged Land Act: gave $40 billion in Oil back to the Gulf States
- Lax government regulations lead to harming the environment in Florida & Louisiana
- Accepted the New Deal legacy of greater federal responsibility for social welfare
- Refused to stop the Social Security system
- Created Dept of Health, Education & Welfare
- Eisenhower continued agricultural payments to sustain farming prices
Subsidizing Prosperity
- Many people gain middle class status after WWII thanks to financial aid
- 1934 - Federal Housing Administration (FHA) subsidized the housing industry
- Mainly concentrated on the suburbs - as a result, inner city suffers
- Discourages multi-unit housing
- Discriminated against racially mixed communities
- Stability could only be achieved through same race and same lifestyles
- Suburbs: planned communities
- One of the first: Levittown, Long Island
- 1947 - built on what was formerly 1500 acres of potato fields
- Called the “perfect planned community”
- Prefabricated housing
- 1960 - Still no black residents
- 1944 - GI Bill of Rights: gave returning vets low interest mortgage & business loans
- Paid for some higher education
- 1956 - Federal Highway Act: $32 billion in National Interstate Highway System
- After Sputnik, US government worries the country’s education system is lagging behind
- Strengthens support for teaching math, science & technology
- National Defence Education Act: $280 million in grants for state universities to upgrade science facilities & $300 million for college student loans
- NDEA represented a new agreement that high-quality education was important
Suburban Life
- The “perfect housewife” was efficient, patient & charming
- Dominant image in the media
- Becoming a housewife was seen as a woman’s only path to happiness & fulfillment
- The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan) tries to change these stereotypes
- Strong religious resurgence in 1940s & 1950s
- Cars became the centre of the suburban lifestyle
- Necessary for commuting & recreation
- California has most drive-in facilities in nation
- “Centreless city” - lives became very spread out and cars became a necessity
Lonely Crowds & Organisation Men
- 1950 - The Lonely Crowd (David Riesman): introduced the “other-directed man”
- Peer oriented instead of self-oriented
- 1956 - Organisation Men (W.H. Whyte):
- Study of Chicago suburb: people obsess with fitting into community and at work
- Middle-class suburbanites want a comfortable secure niche
- 1951- White Collar: C. Wright Mills analyzes white collar workers
- Analyzed middle-class salaried & office workers
- Get jobs through skills & personalities - need to change to fit expectations
Expansion of Higher Education
- 800,000 more college students between 1950-60
- This number more than doubled to 7.2 million in 1970
- GI Bill & National Defence Education Act helped to make school accessible
- Many major in business & commerce
- Gateway to the middle-class
- College life became like a business style work
- Administrators adopted business language, quality control, etc
Health & Medicine
- Improvements allowed Americans to enjoy a longer and healthier life
- Lots of money pumped into the health system
- Armed forces immunized against diseases from syphilis to tuberculosis
- Penicillin manufactured & mass distributed
- 1949 - National Institute of Mental Health created
- Epidemic diseases eradicated (tuberculosis, diphtheria & measles)
- Poliomyelitis eradicated through immunization after discovery in 1955 of vaccine
- Many expensive treatments not available to the poor
- Many small towns didn’t have a hospital
- Decline of General Practitioner stops most house calls
- American Medical Assoc. does nothing to increase the flow of doctors
- Truman and Eisenhower made plans to offer assistance to private health care
- AMA denounced proposals as “socialized medicine”
Youth Culture
- “Teenager” began being used to describe someone between the ages of 13 and 19
- Lots of media and social pressure to grow up quickly
The Youth Market
- High birth rates in the 1930s + post war baby boom = lots of teenagers during the 1950s
- Kids obsessed with popular clothes & fads - eg getting a Cadillac
- More teens in school
- Books: How to Live with Your Teenager & Understanding Teenagers
- Educate adults on how to handle teens
- Traditional sources of adult authority - marketplace, schools, child-rearing manuals, the mass media -- all reinforced the notion of teenagers as a special community
Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll
- Transistor & car radios become common & youths want their own defining music
- Small independent record labels begin producing black rhythm & blues artists
- Black music such as “Doowop” & Little Richard crossover & attract white teens
- Large record labels produce covers of “nigger music” by whites
- Alan Freed, white DJ in Cleveland refuses to play white covers.
- Coins phrase: “Rock ‘n’ Roll” - came from black slang for having sex
- Billboard magazine is started & pushes more teens to Rock ‘n’ Roll
- Elvis Presley crosses the colour border & creates his own ‘black music’
- Eases tensions of adults over their teens listening to black music
- Presley was a symbol of rebellious youth & sexuality, but he wasn’t black
Almost Grown
- Record sales triple from 1954 to 1959 - everyone becomes attracted to music
- Teenagers begin to want to grown up faster
- More 16 yr olds driving & dating
- Puberty age goes down & girls discover their sexuality at an earlier age
- Junior high schools become popular after 1945
- Late 1950’s - most Americans marry at age 18
Deviance & Delinquency
- Adults hold Rock ‘n’ Roll responsible for the increasing teenage rebelliousness
- Juvenile delinquency becoming a problem but an exaggerated one
- Adults tend to blow things out of proportion
- Teenagers seem to be more loyal to their friends than to their parents
- The Wild One & Rebel Without a Cause - depict rebellious and emotional youths
- Movies enforce the teenage delinquency stereotype
Mass Culture & its Discontents
- TV achieved more than any form of mass media ever had before it
- Basic technology developed in the 1930s
- 1960 - Nearly 90% of American families owned a TV
- The ideas of the media would strongly affect American views and cause upheaval
Television: Tube of Plenty
- NBC, CBS & ABC grow directly from radio organisations
- Advertising becomes an integral part of TV
- TV transforms the advertising industry into a cutthroat business
- Various programs show the lives of the different classes:
- I Remember Mama & The Life of Riley show working class family struggles
- Leave it to Beaver & Ozzie and Harriet show middle-class suburban family life
- Happy & prosperous
- TV creates overnight fads
- The images shown on TV were rarely the case of what real families were like
- Elvis Presley appears on several shows & becomes a national symbol
Television & Politics
- Prime-time shows carefully avoided references to the political climate of the day
- Communism alleged to “run rampant” in the film industry
- Red Channels - 151 well known TV & movie writers branded as communists
- Cold War fears prevent much political discussion on TV shows
- Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now - a short lived political discussion show
- TV begins to have effects politically
- Promoted Estes Kefauver of Tennessee to a national figure
- Contributed to Senator McCarthy’s downfall when it showed his bullying tactics
- Nixon uses TV to promote himself to voters through the “Checkers” speech
Culture Crisis
- Mass culture - described as “a parasite... on high culture” ~ Dwight MacDonald
- Media becomes capable of manipulating audiences through advertising
- Mad magazine etc. met with much criticism
The Beats
- Led by Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg
- Shared a distrust of the American virtues of progress, power & material gain
- Kerouac coined the term “beat” - meant weary and tired of the modern industrial state
- Identified with black music & culture
- Kerouac believed in “spontaneous writing” - one’s first thought was the best
- Similar in music, language & dress to black jazz musicians
- Beatnik - a derrogatory term for hippie-like, rebellious, alienated people
The Cold War Continued
- Eisenhower had lots of experience in foreign affairs - WWII commander, etc
- Introduced a greater reliance on nuclear weapons and more agressive use of the CIA
- Didn’t want an all-out nuclear war
- Eisenhower’s promotion of weaponry led to a military-industrial complex
The “New Look” in Foreign Affairs
- Promised to reduce the military budget by exploiting the US’s air & atomic superiority
- “More bang for the buck”
- Between 1954-1961: govt spending only raises $800 million
- Military spending as a % of total dropped from 66% to 49%
- John Foster Dulles -
- Believes in US responsibility to preserve the “free world” from communism
- wanted a “rollback” of communist powers & reliance on US nuclear superiority
- This “new look” conflicted with Eisenhower’s personal sense of caution
- Hard to rely on nuclear arms and not want to start a nuclear conflict
- 1953: East Berlin residents revolt against Soviets
- Eisenhower doesn’t respond
- Couldn’t start the “rollback” without starting an all out war
- Stalin dies in 1953
- Kruschev & Eisenhower agree to suspend nuclear testing
- Kruschev visits US & talks with Eisenhower
- Paris summit planned to discuss reunification of Germany
- Soviets shoot down Francis Gary Powers in his U2 spy plane
- Eisenhower refuses to apologize to the Soviets & summit collapses
- Sputnik launched - Arms race begins
- Military spending raised $10.5 billion by 1958
Covert Action
- CIA relied on to produce info on the Soviets
- These paramilitary operations becomes a key facet of US foreign policy
- Used to destabilize emerging 3rd world governments deemed to radical or too friendly with the Soviets, or anti-capitalist
- Head of CIA = Alan Dulles (JFD’s brother)
- Former head of Office of Strategic Services (CIA precursor)
Intervening Around the World
- CIA produces swift victory in Iran in 1953 after the Iranian president nationalized a UK oil company (Anglo-Iranian Oil)
- CIA created opposition from inside the military & wins the civil war
- Replaced Mossadegh with the Shah
- Arab-Israeli rivalry -
- Arabs attack Israel in 1948
- US & USSR already recognized the independence of Israel
- Israel wins & forces hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes
- US supports Israel because most Americans feel sorry for the Jews
- Egypt wants a dam of the Nile to create good farming land & cheap electricity
- Nasser is turned down for foreign aid, decides to nationalize the Suez Canal
- Turns to Soviet Union for help
- UK, France & Israel invades - US gets a ceasefire & troop withdrawal
- Guatemala -
- Jacobo Arbenz threatens to expropriate land from the United Fruit Co.
- US Navy decides to blockade Guatemala
- CIA director Dulles sat on the board of directors for United Fruit Co.
- US bombing stops Guatemalan invasions into United Fruit buildings
- CIA overthrows Arbenz & Carlos Castillo Armas becomes a dictatorial ruler
- Armas later assassinated & civil war ensues
- Eisenhower denies all knowledge of CIA action in Guatemala
- Indochina -
- US provides France with military aid & CIA cooperation
- Trying to suppress the communist Vietminh forces
- Led by Ho Chi Minh at Dien Ben Phu
- France defeated; Eisenhower declines all out US intervention
- Geneva Accord separates Vietnam into North & South sectors
- Ngo Dinh Diem takes control as a Catholic in a 90% Buddhist state
- CIA keeps him in power in South Vietnam & represses elections agreed to in Geneva
- Both Diem and the US know that Ho Chi Minh would have won
- US fears loss of one country to communism will force it to spread
- Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation:
- Includes US, UK, France, Australia, NZ, Thailand, Philippines & Pakistan
- “Anti-communist league”
Ike’s Warning: The Military-Industrial Complex
- 1950s - Peace advocates want full nuclear disarmament
- Eisenhower begins to see their point
- Uurges the country to avoid the military-industrial complex
- The conjunction of a large military & large arms industry
- Devoted his farewell address to warning against the military-industrial complex
John F. Kennedy and the New Frontier
- JFK embodied youth, sophistication, and excitement
- Early in his presidency, he followed the already-set Cold War precepts
- At the time of his assassination, he was beginning to veer away from them
The Election of 1960
- Nixon (faithfully served Eisenhower as VP) vs. Kennedy (youthful war hero)
- Featured the first televised presidential debates
- Supporters promoted Kennedy’s intellect - won Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage
- Kennedy looks more confident in front of the cameras & stresses the elimination of the arms gap between the US & USSR
- Kennedy wins by 100,000 votes out of 69 million
- Becomes the first celebrity president
- Kennedy’s administration promised to be a modern-day Camelot
- Inaugural Address: “Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country”
- Inspired a whole generation of young Americans
New Frontier Libralism
- Kennedy promises to revive the liberal domestic agenda
- New Frontier advocated higher minimum wage, greater federal education aid, increased Social Security & medical care for the elderly
- Most blocked by Southern Democrats in Congress
- Congress did pass a slight improvement in minimum wage - up to $1.25
- Area Redevelopment Act - redeveloped urban slums
- Manpower Retraining Act to train the unemployed
- Higher Education Act offers aid to universities to upgrade their facilities
- Peace Corps created to give aid in 3rd world countries
- Creates Commission on the Status of Women led by E. Roosevelt
- Leads to Equal Pay Act (1963) & calls for full equality
- Kennedy focused on stimulating economic growth & creating new jobs
- Depended on the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA)
- Targets tax cuts & defecit spending
- 1962 - Revenue Act lowers business taxes
- The Space Program -
- Creates NASA & pumps $33 billion into it by 1969
- JFK’s greatest achievement was the strengthening of the executive branch
- Direct presidential control over details usually left to advisors
- White House staff take over many responsibilities of Cabinet Ministers
Kennedy and the Cold War
- Kennedy attempts to ease US-Soviet tensions
- JFK builds up military spending & increases covert operations
- Supplements CIA with Army Special Forces
- The Kennedy-supported militant regime in Laos is defeated by the Soviet-backed group
- Kennedy supports Diem’s militant govt in Vietnam
- Diem defeated & the Vietcong take over govt with Ho Chi Minh
- Latin America -
- 1961 - Alliance of Progress: $100 billion plan to aid Latin nations in rebuilding their economy & spur economic growth
- Introduced as a kind of Marshall Plan to benefit the poor and middle classes
The Cuban Revolution and the Bay of Pigs
- Corrupt US puppet dictator Fulgencio Batista faces heated rebellion from Fidel Castro & his peasant-based revolutionary movement
- Castro defeats Batista & begins land reform programs
- Frightened Eisenhower; the US withdraws aid
- Castro turns to the Soviets for aid
- Sells sugar to the USSR & seizes US oil interests
- CIA leads invasion of counterrevolutionaries at the Bay of Pigs
- Is defeated when Kennedy pulls the Air Force support
- Turns into a highly embarrassing situation
- Kennedy still remains committed to getting rid of Castro
The Missile Crisis
- Castro is frightened by US & asks Kruschev for military aid
- USSR ships sophisticated weapons to Cuba
- US discovers the hidden missile silos through reconnaissance missions
- US cities now increasingly vulnerable to Soviet based ICBMs
- Many call for an invasion of Cuba
- Kennedy demands the removal of the missiles
- Puts a blockade on Cuba of all military equipment
- Threatens full retaliation on USSR if any Cuban missiles are fired
- Khrushchev offers to remove all missiles if US promises not to invade Cuba, and to dismantle the US missiles in Turkey
- Kennedy agrees but USSR start a weapons buildup
The Assassination of President Kennedy
- Killed Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald
- Becomes a martyr for the US cause for world peace
- He is the perfect American, and the US public sees their frailty
- At the time of Kennedy’s death, Soviet-US relations were better than they had ever been
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US History [2]