NAME: ____________________________
Chapter 36
American Zenith, 1952–1963
CHAPTER THEMES
Theme: The Eisenhower years were characterized by prosperity and moderate conservatism at home and by the tensions of the Cold War abroad.
Theme: The 1950’s witnessed a huge expansion of the middle class and the blossoming of a consumer culture. Crucial to the development of a new lifestyle of leisure and affluence was the rise of the new technology of television.
Theme: While Dwight Eisenhower and the majority of Americans held to a cautious, family-oriented perspective on domestic social questions, an emerging civil rights movement and the influence of television and popular music presented challenges to the spirit of national “consensus.”
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Using the new medium of television to enhance his great popularity, grandfatherly “Ike” was ideally suited to soothe an America badly shaken by the Cold War and Korea. Eisenhower was slow to go after Joseph McCarthy, but the demagogue’s bubble finally burst. Eisenhower also reacted cautiously to the beginnings of the civil rights movement but sent troops to Little Rock to enforce court orders. While his domestic policies were moderately conservative, they left most of the New Deal in place.
Despite John Dulles’s tough talk, Eisenhower’s foreign policies were also generally cautious. He avoided military involvement in Vietnam, although aiding Diem, and pressured Britain, France, and Israel to resolve the Suez crisis.
He also refused to intervene in the Hungarian revolt and sought negotiations to thaw the frigid Cold War. Dealing with Nikita Khrushchev proved difficult, as Sputnik, the Berlin Crisis, the U-2 incident, and Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution all kept Cold War tensions high. In a tight election, Senator John Kennedy defeated Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard Nixon, by calling for the country to “get moving again” by more vigorously countering the Soviets.
American society grew ever more prosperous in the Eisenhower era, as science, technology, and the Cold War fueled burgeoning new industries like electronics and aviation. Women joined the movement into the increasingly white-collar workforce, and chafed at widespread restrictions they faced.
A new consumer culture, centered around television, fostered a new ethic of leisure and enjoyment, including more open expressions of sexuality in popular entertainment. Intellectuals and artists criticized the focus on private affluence rather than the public good. Jewish, African American, and southern writers had a striking new impact on American culture.
*America enjoyed its new prosperity and bought up loads of consumer items to go along with new homes. The “baby boom” also began.
*“McCarthyism” played off of, and added to, America’s fears of communism.
Affluence and Its Anxieties
Know: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique 1. What was life like for women in the 1950's?
Consumer Culture in the Fifties
Know: Diner's Club, McDonald's, Disneyland, Television, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe 2. How was popular culture changing and reflecting America?
The Advent of Eisenhower
Know: Adlai E. Stevenson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Checkers Speech 3. Describe the 1952 presidential election.
Desegregating American Society
Know: Jim Crow Laws, Emmett Till, Jackie Robinson, NAACP, Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King Jr.
5. What conditions in the South brought about the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement?
Seeds of the Civil Rights Revolution
Makers of America: The Great African-American Migration (pp. 860-861) 7. Why did African Americans move north and west in the 1930's and 40's?
Eisenhower Republicanism at Home
Know: Dynamic Conservatism, Operation Wetback, Federal Highway Act of 1956, 8. Did Eisenhower live up to his philosophy of dynamic conservatism?
A “New Look” in Foreign Policy
Know: John Foster Dulles, Strategic Air Command, Massive Retaliation, Hungarian Uprising 9. Was Eisenhower's policy of massive retaliation effective? Explain.
The Vietnam Nightmare
Know: Ho Chi Minh, Battle of Dienbienphu, Ngo Dinh Diem 10. How did the United States get involved in Vietnam?
Cold War Crises in Europe and the Middle East
Round Two for "Ike"
Know: Sputnik, NASA, National Defense and Education Act 12. Identify several ways the US responded to Sputnik.
The Continuing Cold War Know: U-2 Spy Plane
13. Describe efforts at disarmament during the Eisenhower administration.
Know: Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro
14. Why was revolution in Cuba such a concern to America?
Kennedy Challenges Nixon for the Presidency
Know: Richard Nixon, kitchen debate, John Kennedy, New Frontier 15. Was Nixon a good presidential candidate in 1960?
Know: Alaska, Hawaii
A Cultural Renaissance and New Cultural Voices
Know: Catch-22, Arthur Miller, Catcher in the Rye, George Orwell
17.
What do the books and plays of the post-war period say about the times in which they
were produced?
Kennedy's "New Frontier" Spirit
Know: Bobby Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Peace Corps 18. What was new about the New Frontier?
The New Frontier at Home
19. Assess the effectiveness of New Frontier domestic policies.
Foreign Flare-ups and "Flexible Response" Know: Robert McNamara, Flexible Response
20. Why did Kennedy believe that a policy of flexible response could better meet the foreign problems of the 1960s?
Know: Berlin Wall
Cuban Confrontations
Know: Fidel Castro, Bay of Pigs Invasion, Cuban Missile Crisis, Nikita Khrushchev, Quarantine 22. How could Cuba be considered the low and the high of Kennedy's foreign policy?
The Struggle for Civil Rights
Know: Freedom Riders, Voter Education Project, SNCC, James Meredith, Birmingham, March on Washington, "I Have a Dream," Medgar Evers
23. Were Kennedy's civil rights actions more the cause of events or a reaction to events in the civil rights movement?
The Killing of Kennedy
Know: Lee Harvey Oswald, Warren Commission
24. What was the reaction to Kennedy's assassination? Why?
Key Chapter Terms: Earl Warren
Rosa Parks Ho Chi Minh Ngo Dinh Diem Gamal Abdel Nasser Nikita Khruschev Fidel Castro
Desegregation / integration massive retaliation
military-industrial complex Brown v. Board of Education Geneva Conference
South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)
Hungarian Revolt Suez Crisis
Eisenhower Doctrine
Sputnik
National Defense and Education Act — (NDEA)
U-2 Incident New Frontier Peace Corps
Analysis Questions – Choose ONE of these questions. On a separate piece of paper, write a thesis statement (one sentence), and then outline (but don’t write out) your response. Include in the outline the main points you would discuss in the essay. Attach to this study guide.
1. How does Eisenhower’s political leadership compare with that of other general-presidents: Washington, Jackson, Taylor, and Grant?
2. Was Eisenhower’s seeming caution and inactivity a lack of vigorous leadership or a wise prudence in the exercise of power?
3. Was the 1950s a time of American triumph abroad and affluence at home, or was it a period that actually suppressed many problems of race, women’s roles, and cultural conformity?
4. Which writers and artists best expressed the concerns of American culture in the 1950s? Was there a connection between the rise of pop-culture figures like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe and the changes in art and writing (like the Beats and the new southern writers)?
5. Compare and contrast the literary outpouring of WWI with that of WWII. What caused the shift from a realism in literature to a more fantasized and psychedelic prose?
6. To what extent did the decade of the 1950’s deserve its reputation as an age of political, social, and cultural conformity? (94)
7. Analyze the influence of TWO of the following on American-Soviet relations in the decade following the Second World War.
Yalta Conference Communist Revolution in China
Korean War McCarthysim (96)
8. How do you account for the appeal of McCarthyism in the United States in the era following the Second World War? (97)
9. Compare and contrast United States society in the 1920’s and the 1950’s with respect to race relations, the role of women, and consumerism. (2003)
10. While the United States appeared to be dominated by consensus and conform in the 1950’s, some Americans reacted against the status quo. Analyze the critiques of United States society made by TWO of the following.
Youth Civil Rights Activists Intellectuals (06)
11. Compare and contrast the 1920’s and the 1950’s with respect to the impact of technology and intolerable attitudes.
