The Consensus of the Fifties and Early Sixties

The Affluent Decades

• Consensus

• Eisenhower and Centrism

• Moderate Conservatism

1959 Cadillac

Prosperity

• GNP doubled between 1940 and 1950.

• Real personal income increased 50%.

• Unemployment was 5% or less.

• 1950-64, Productivity grew 3.2% a year.

• Wages outpaced prices 9 out of 11 years from 1953 to 1964, leading to more real income.

• Many Working Class rise to middle-class lifestyle

• 1955: AFL and CIO join to become the AFL-CIO.

• Minorities prosper.

Reshaping Urban America

• The Service Economy

• The Consumer Society

• Credit: Consumer debt tripled between 1952 and 1964.

• Rise of the Shopping Center

• The Baby Boom

• Urban Renewal

• Interstate Highways: 1956 Interstate and Defense Highway System Act

Highway Cloverleaf

Suburbs

• Suburban Life

• Organizations

• Self-Focused

• Hispanic entertainers politicking for Governor Shivers in the 1950s

Hispanics

• Mexicans: 1900: 100,000. 1930: 1.25 million. 1942 to 1964, (4.5 million temporary workers)

• Puerto Ricans: 301,000.

• Cuba: – 1950-1960 -- 79,000 – 1960-1970: 208,000

A 50s family

More Suburban Life

– Pressure to Marry– Television:

• TV Sitcom Iconizes the Nuclear Family

– Popular Entertainment: • TV

• Romantic movies, musicals, and spectaculars

• The Walt Disney Corporation – Dead Lemmings

– Working Mothers vs Housekeepers?

Youth Culture

Inventing the Teenager

• Extended Education and semi-autonomy

• Rock and Roll

• Technology: Radios and phonograph

• The "Beats”: Jack Kerouac's On the Road

• Youth Rebels: Rebel Without A Cause, Happy Days, Grease.

Religion

• Rising Religion: Church going rose from 48% in 1940 to 63% in 1960.

• African-American Churches

• Ecumenicism

• The Gospel of Prosperity: John Kenneth Galbraith, in The Affluent Society (1958)

John Foster Dulles, Sec. Of State and President Eisenhower

Nikita Kruschev

Eisenhower’s Foreign Policy

• A Foreign Policy President• The Hidden Hand• Korea• Nikita Krushchev• Eisenhower’s Military Strategy

– massive retaliation

– Hydrogen Bombs

– Sputnik

» National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

– The Missile Gap

Meddling Abroad

• Iran

• Guatemala

Conducting the Cold War

• Summit Meetings

• 1956 Hungary Uprising

• Suez Crisis

• Eisenhower Doctrine

• U-2 Incident

• The Problem of Decolonization

Economic Problems

• Unemployment: 7.7% rate or even worse.

• Recessions: 1953-1954 and 1957-8.

Elections of '56 and '58

• Adlai Stevenson Returns

• Eisenhower Wins: 457 to 73, with a 9 million popular vote margin

• 1957-8 problems:

• 1958: Democrats scored a landslide victory. (283 seats to the Republican 153, with 1 independent) (Democrats retook the House in 1954, kept it until 1994).

John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

• Most Overrated of Overrated Presidents

• Camelot

• Election of 1960– The Televised Debate– Narrow Victory– JFK: 34,220,984 / 303 EV– Nixon: 34,108,157 / 219 EV

Economy

• Early Success

• The Steel Clash

Kennedy’s Foreign Policy

• Limited War.

• Confrontationalism

• Bay of Pigs:

• Berlin Wall

• Alliance For Progress

• Hydrogen Bomb

The Bay of Pigs

Map of Cuba

Soviet Missiles in Cuba

Face-Off, JFK vs. Kruschchev

Cuban Missile Crisis

• Spring 1962: 2 batteries of 40 intermediate range nuclear missiles each are posted in Cuba.

• Kennedy Responds

• Blockade: October 1962

• Soviets Back Down

• Results

After the Missile Crisis

• Project Mercury (1959-63)– Mercury-Atlas 6 flight on February 20, 1962

• Test Ban Treaty of 1963

• Dallas: November 23, 1963

The Civil Rights Movement: Education

• 1930s: Dean Charles Hamilton Houston– Smith v. Allwright (1944)

• Earl Warren• Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka

(1954)• Southern Manifesto (1955)• Little Rock (1957• Resistance

Martin Luther King

Civil Rights: Against Segregation

• Montgomery, Alabama (1955): Martin Luther King

• SCLC: Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

• Religious Anti-Segregation

• Greensboro, NC: February 1, 1960

Kennedy and Civil Rights

• Kennedy and Civil Rights

• The Freedom Riders

• Media Coverage:

• March on Washington: – I Have a Dream

• Martyrdom

“I have a dream”

LBJ

• Every citizen will be able, in his productive years when he is earning, to insure himself against the ravages of illness in his old age. -- LBJ

Lyndon Baines Johnson

• Optimism• Highly Productive • 'The Great Society'.• Origins• 1964: Barry Goldwater vs. LBJ

– The Daisy Ad– The Election: Goldwater died in flames, 486-52

(43 to 27 million).

The Great Society

• 1964 Tax Cut

• War on PovertyEducation

• Medicare

• Environmental

• Civil Rights Act of 1964.

• Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Great Society (II)

• Racial Conflict Steps Up– Black Power– Malcom X

• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

• Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

• Political Stalemate

The Warren Court

• Gideon v. Wainright (1963)

• Miranda v. Arizona (1966)

• End of Obscenity

• First Amendment

• One Man, One Vote: Baker v. Carr (1962)