1. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
Truman’s Struggles
Harry S Truman – the person
Truman’s domestic program
Propose extension of New Deal programs
Solve labor disputes
Improve race relations
Conservative backlash
Midterm Elections (1946)
Taft-Hartley Act of 1947
Rallying to an opportunity for the W.H.

2. Jackie Robinson – broke the “color barrier” (1947) in professional baseball when signed by Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers

3. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
Truman’s Struggles
The Election of 1948
Truman (Dem.)
Dewey (Rep.)
Thurmond (States’ Rights Dem. – “Dixiecrats”) Right-Wing
Wallace (Progressive Party) Left-wing
President in his own right
The “Fair Deal”

4. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
The Republican Decade
The Election of 1952
“I Like Ike”
Nixon & the “Checkers Speech”
Emergence of independent voters
Ike’s management style
Chief of Staff – Sherman Adams
Cabinet – “8 millionaires and a plumber”
Democratic control of Congress – 1954
Little done in domestic policy
Housing Acts (‘54-’59)
Highway Act of 1956
Emphasis on science & science ed. (i.e. NASA)
Re-elected in 1956, in a Stevenson rematch

6. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
Setting the Stage
United Nations
European instability – new balance of power
Regional Conflicts (3rd World, China, etc.)
Containment/Truman Doctrine
Greece/Turkey
Marshall Plan
NATO (1949) & the Warsaw Pact (1955)
Prague Coup
Berlin Blockade & Airlift
Korean War
Limits of containment: Hungarian revolt (1956)

7. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
Arms Race
National Security Act (1947) – NSC, CIA, Dept of Defense / Joint Chiefs of Staff
Russia goes nuclear (1948)
NSC-68 (1950) – massive military spending
H-Bomb – SAC – ICBMs – DEW
John Foster Dulles, The New Look and “brinksmanship”
Ike & the new leader in the Kremlin (Khrushchev) – Geneva, Camp David, Paris

8. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
Korean War
Acheson’s fumble & N Korean aggression
June 1950 invasion
U.N. action w/ US leadership
MacArthur & Inchon
Chinese entrance & MacArthur exit
Uneasy truce at the 38th Parallel

9. The Iron Curtain

10. George Kennan ( )

11. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
--Omar Bradley

12. Gen. Douglas MacArthur

15. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
McCarthyism / 2nd Red Scare
“Better Dead than Red” or “Better Red than Dead” ???
1949 – Alger Hiss, Chinese Revolution, Soviets go nuclear
Politicians of both parties fed the fire
Joseph McCarthy enters the picture
Congress: A House of Intolerance
McCarthy hearings in the Senate
HUAC
Blacklists, Red Channels, ruined lives
McCarthy’s Downfall
The Legacy of McCarthy & McCarthyism

16. Herb Block, Joseph McCarthy, Washington Post (4th March, 1954)

17. Herb Block, HUAC, Washington Post (1947)

18. Lillian Hellman & Dashiell Hammett

19. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
Happy Days
Conversion to peacetime economy
Buildup of savings (demand) & new products (supply)
Defense spending
GI Bill
Stats
The Baby Boom
Triumph of Suburbia
Factors of Suburbanization
The Rise of “Levittowns”
Dependence on the automobile
Television
The Beatniks

20. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
GNP
Consumer Income
Farm Income
Federal Budget
Pre-WW II
$92 bil (1939)
$79 bil.
$11 bil. (1941)
$9 bil. (1938)
1945
$213 bil.
$151 bil.
$25 bil.
$92 bil.
1950
$284 bil.
$208 bil.
$29 bil.
$40 bil.

22. Neal Cassady & Jack Kerouac
The Beatniks:
Allen Ginsberg
The Beatniks:
Neal Cassady & Jack Kerouac

23. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
Birth of the Civil Rights Movement
Conditions were still poor
South vs. North
Racial vs. Ethnic
Crumbling ladder to urban success
NAACP Legal Strategy
Brown v Bd of Ed (1954)
Southern Manifesto
Little Rock crisis
Montgomery Bus Boycott ( )
Rosa Parks & 381 Days of protest
A new leader emerges
Setting the stage for a new era
Civil Rights Acts of 1957 & 1960

24. Birmingham, AL – June 1963

25. Walkers during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956
Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church on first day of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,
December 5, 1955
Walkers during the Montgomery Bus Boycott,

26. MLK Press Conference during Montgomery Bus Boycott

29. The Fifties: Conformity & Cold War
The Election of 1960
Democratic Primaries
JFK vs. HHH
Weighing the pros and cons
An historic nomination
General Election
Comparing two Hawks
Role of TV
The African-American vote
Results