Unit 8 - Period Review (Part B)
Part B - Struggling for the American Dream
By the end of 1945, Americans feared new economic troubles as the government cut war spending and soldiers returned home looking for work. Depression was not the problem from 1945 to 1947, however. Business boomed, with $140 billion in private savings flowing into the economy, and prices rose 25 percent. In addition to inflation, organized labor, using powers gained in the 1930s, struck for higher wages. There were five thousand strikes in 1946 alone, with major disruptions in many essential industries.
The Fair Deal
Truman tried to address these problems and other concerns with his Fair Deal, a continuation of the reform philosophy of the 1930s. He proposed expanding Social Security, national health insurance, and a limited civil rights program. The country rejected most of his ideas and the Republican-controlled Congress challenged the president with the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act.
In 1948, Truman’s domestic program was in tatters and his political future bleak. No one expected him to win the election that year as his party split three ways, with Strom Thurmond attacking his civil rights proposals and Henry Wallace criticizing his hard-line policy toward the Soviet Union. Further, Republicans were confident that Thomas Dewey would lead them to victory. Truman simply went out and “gave the Republicans hell” over their “do-nothing” Congress and their past connection with the Depression. The results shocked the nation as Truman won 303 electoral votes to Dewey’s 189. However, he still was unable to enact his reforms during his first full term.
Modern Republicanism
After twenty years of Democrats in the White House and with the Korean War stalemated, the nation elected Dwight Eisenhower president in 1952. The Republicans realized that the core of the New Deal programs was popular and had to be maintained. Eisenhower called for “modern Republicanism,” which extended social programs but without deficit spending. He emphasized fiscal discipline, took a pro-business stance toward economic development, and limited federal actions. He did not, however, dismantle the New Deal. Eisenhower extended Social Security, raised the minimum wage, enacted the Federal Highway Act and the National Defense Education Act, and created the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
While some saw the 1950s as a time of social and cultural sterility led by “organization men” and “other-directed” people, Eisenhower presided over an era of peace and prosperity. The Gross National Product grew by 25 percent, inflation was 1.4 percent, the nation achieved three balanced budgets, and 25 percent of all the houses ever built were constructed in the 1950s. Eisenhower won reelection in 1956, once again decisively defeating Adlai Stevenson. Yet, by 1960, with the shock of Sputnik and a lingering recession, Eisenhower’s staid policies seemed stale to many.
The Second Red Scare
The issue of internal subversion complicated the presidencies of both Truman and Eisenhower. A second Red Scare swept the country from 1947 to 1960, as fears grew that Americans were spying for the Soviet Union. Fueled by Communist takeovers in Czechoslovakia and China, the Korean stalemate, and the Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons, many Americans succumbed to this hysteria that ruined thousands of people’s lives and careers. Investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Truman’s Loyalty Review Board, and ambitious politicians such as Richard Nixon, many Americans’ loyalty became suspect. In addition, the high-profile spy trials of Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg made the charges of espionage extremely believable.
The leader of the Red Scare was Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. From 1950 to 1954, he was the most ruthless and feared Communist hunter in America. Although he uncovered no spies, McCarthy maintained his power until he attacked the Department of Army. In televised hearings, McCarthy showed himself to be unscrupulous and without proof for his reckless charges. His censure in December 1954 and death in 1957 helped end the most egregious phase of the hysteria, although its effects lingered well into the 1960s.
The New Frontier and Great Society
In the early 1960s, President John Kennedy used his youth, glamour, and rhetoric to inspire Americans “to ask what [they] could do for [their] country.” His domestic successes were more promise than progress, however. While he proposed a number of New Deal/Fair Deal types of reforms, such as medical care for the elderly, urban renewal, aid to education, and a civil rights bill, his agenda still languished in Congress. On November 22, 1963, he was assassinated.
Lyndon Johnson had the most successful domestic presidential record since Franklin Roosevelt. He used the trauma of Kennedy’s death, his own enormous political skills, and Republican disarray to establish his Great Society program. From 1964 to 1967, Johnson convinced Congress to approve Kennedy’s stalled agenda of tax cuts, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In addition, Johnson added an avalanche of achievements of his own. In the mid-1960s, Congress approved 181 out of 200 bills, including the Civil Rights Act of 1965, Head Start, and sixty aid-to-education bills.
His program was doomed by Vietnam, however. As the war became a quagmire, the nation turned against the Great Society. In 1968, his own party revolted against him as Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy challenged his renomination. By the July convention, Johnson had withdrawn from the race, Robert Kennedy had been assassinated, and the party was divided. Hubert Humphrey tried to unite the Democrats, but Republican Richard Nixon and third-party candidate George Wallace used the discontent over the war and domestic lawlessness to defeat the Democrats.
Civil Rights
After World War II, the Civil Rights Movement flickered to life and became the dominant social movement in the country. Truman initiated the drive when he desegregated the military and proposed a series of government actions to erode the Jim Crow system. He made little progress, however, and antagonized many in his own party in 1948.
President Eisenhower did not support direct government action on behalf of blacks, yet civil rights crowded his domestic agenda. Blacks, energized by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and led by Martin Luther King, pressed the nation for justice. While Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock and signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, he failed to use his office to affirm true racial justice.
John and Robert Kennedy were also weak in supporting King’s drive for equality. They were deeply affected, however, by the sit-ins, freedom rides, and King’s nonviolent protests for equal rights. After several bloody retaliations by southern officials to demonstrations, the president finally proposed a civil rights bill to Congress. King and his supporters marched on Washington in August of 1963 to lobby for its passage.
The Civil Rights Movement’s truest friend was President Johnson. He drove Kennedy’s civil rights bill through Congress in 1964 and added his own in 1965. In addition, his War on Poverty directly affected thousands of blacks through aid for public housing, education, and job training. By 1966, civil rights topped the nation’s social agenda, but violence and division undermined its continuing success. King’s nonviolent message came under increasing criticism as urban riots swept the nation. Further, militants such as Malcolm X and advocates of Black Power questioned King’s relevance. King’s assassination in 1968 brought his martyrdom but fragmented the movement even further. By 1968, a white backlash against militant rhetoric and violence propelled George Wallace to political prominence and further jeopardized racial progress.