United States History

D

Consumers

World War II limited the products that consumers could buy, but at its end, consumer demand fueled the postwar economy. By the end of the 1950s, three out of five families owned homes, and three out of four owned cars. Consumers chose among a wealth of new products, many developed from wartime innovations, including polyester fabrics—rayon, dacron, orlon—and new household appliances such as freezers, blenders, and dishwashers. Manufacturers urged new models on consumers. Americans acquired more private debt with the introduction of credit cards and installment plans. Home mortgages increased the debt burden.

Businesses tried to increase consumer spending by investing more money in advertising, especially in television ads. Television played a pivotal role in consumption—both as a product to be bought and a mode of selling more products. The first practical television system began operating in the 1940s. Television reached 9 percent of homes in 1950 and almost 90 percent in 1960. Audiences stayed home to watch live productions of beloved comedies, such as “I Love Lucy” (1951-1957), and the on-the-scene reporting of Edward R. Murrow. TV Guide became one of the most popular magazines. Television programming of the 1950s, which catered to potential consumers, portrayed a middle-class, homogeneous society. But the less visible, less prosperous parts of society were also an important facet of the postwar era.

E

Other Americans

The widespread prosperity of postwar America failed to reach everyone. In The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962), political activist Michael Harrington revealed an economic underworld of 40 million to 50 million Americans, who were excluded from affluence and were socially invisible. At the end of the 1950s, nearly one-fifth of the population lived below the poverty line. The poor included many groups: the uninsured elderly, migrant farm workers, families in the Appalachian hills, and residents of inner-city slums.

When many middle-class Americans left the city for the suburbs, they left behind urban areas with antiquated schools and deteriorating public facilities. They also left behind high concentrations of poor people, which meant a dwindling tax base. Federal aid, which provided the middle class with mortgages and highways, had less influence on the poor. Federal housing programs, urban renewal efforts, and slum clearance projects often did little more than move poor city dwellers from one ghetto to another. What Harrington called the culture of poverty—that is, living without adequate housing, food, education, medical care, job opportunities, or hope—remained.

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Poverty affected minority groups in the 1950s. In the 1940s, when labor was scarce, the United States established the Emergency Labor Program, popularly known as the Bracero Program. Braceros, whose name derived from the Spanish word brazo (arm), were Mexican manual laborers allowed to enter the United States to replace American workers who joined the armed forces. Many Mexicans who entered the United States under the Bracero Program remained in the country illegally. To curb illegal immigration from Mexico, the United States in 1954 began Operation Wetback, a program to find illegal immigrants and return them to Mexico. During the 1950s, several million Mexicans were deported. But illegal entrants continued to arrive, often to become low-paid laborers. Most of the postwar Mexican American population settled in cities, such as Los Angeles, Denver, El Paso, Phoenix, and San Antonio. One-third of Mexican Americans in the 1950s lived below the poverty line.

Federal policy toward Native Americans underwent several reversals in the 20th century. In 1934 Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act, which granted Native Americans the right to elect tribal councils to govern reservations. In 1953 the federal government changed its position and adopted a “termination” policy. Congress passed a resolution to end its responsibility for Native American tribes. The resolution terminated Native American status as wards of the United States, granted Native Americans citizenship, eliminated financial subsidies, discontinued the reservation system, and distributed tribal lands among individual Native Americans. This redistribution made thousands of acres of reservation land available to non-Indians, such as real estate dealers. From 1954 to 1960, the federal government initiated a voluntary relocation program to settle Native Americans in urban areas. The new policies failed, and in 1963 the government abandoned termination.

African Americans of the postwar era continued their exodus from the South. Waves of black migrants, mainly young, left the rural South for Northern cities. The introduction of new machinery, such as the mechanical cotton-picker, reduced the need for field labor and eliminated sharecropping as a way of life. From the end of World War II to 1960, nearly 5 million blacks moved from the rural South to cities in the North. By 1950 one-third of blacks lived outside the South.

Simultaneously, the black population moved within the South. By 1960 almost three out of five Southern blacks lived in towns and cities, concentrated in large metropolitan areas such as Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Large-scale migration to cities spurred rising aspirations, soon evident in the postwar civil rights movement.

F

The Civil Rights Movement Begins

In the 1940s and 1950s the NAACP attacked race discrimination in the courts. It chipped away at Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), a Supreme Court decision upholding segregationist laws. The NAACP lawyers’ greatest success was the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954, in which the Supreme Court ordered desegregation of schools. The decision struck a Chicago newspaper as a “second emancipation proclamation.”

The Supreme Court’s implementation order of 1955, designed to hasten compliance, ordered desegregation of schools “with all deliberate speed,” but compliance was slow. When the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, tried to block the enrollment of nine black students into Little Rock High School in 1957, television showed the entire nation the confrontation between National Guard troops and segregationists. Television news helped make Little Rock’s problem a national one, and television crews continued to cover civil rights protests.

In December 1955 the black community in Montgomery, Alabama, organized a bus boycott after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. A local minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., helped organize the boycott. In 1957 ministers and civil rights leaders formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The SCLC, which adopted a policy of nonviolent civil disobedience, formed the backbone of the civil rights movement in the United States.

The civil rights movement expanded on February 1, 1960, when four black college students at North Carolina A&T University began protesting racial segregation in restaurants by sitting at whites-only lunch counters and waiting to be served. Within days the sit-ins spread throughout North Carolina, and within weeks they reached cities across the South. To continue students’ efforts and to give them an independent voice in the movement, college students in 1960 formed another civil rights group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Students and activists soon adopted other methods of protesting segregation, such as freedom rides—bus trips throughout the South in order to desegregate buses and bus stations. A powerful civil rights movement was underway.

Postwar prosperity brought comfort and social mobility to many Americans. Those who had grown up during the Great Depression especially appreciated the good life of the postwar years. Prosperity, however, eluded many citizens. The era, moreover, was hardly placid and complacent, but eventful and divisive. Signs of change around 1960 included the growing role of youth, the civil rights protests, and the simmering of dissent.

XXIV

The Liberal Agenda and Domestic Policy: The 1960s

In the 1960s, presidential initiatives, judicial rulings, and social protest movements generated reform. The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the youth movement, and the environmental movement changed people’s lives. They also created a climate of rebellion, confrontation, and upheaval. For more information, see Protests in the 1960s.

Handsome, dynamic, and articulate, John Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in the presidential election of 1960—the first election in which televised debates between presidential candidates played a major role. When he accepted the Democratic nomination, Kennedy urged Americans to meet the challenges of a “New Frontier.” The term New Frontier evoked the spirit of exploration that Kennedy wanted to bring to his presidency. His youth and vigor raised expectations. In practice, however, his actions were cautious and pragmatic.

In his brief tenure, Kennedy continued Cold War policies by broadening U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, overseeing an arms buildup, and hiking the defense budget. He also inaugurated a long era of economic expansion, based largely on additional spending for missiles, defense, and the space race. In 1961 he began the Peace Corps, an innovative federal program that sent American volunteers to assist needy nations by providing educational programs and helping communities build basic infrastructures. After first evading civil rights issues, Kennedy responded to the calls of civil rights advocates and proposed a comprehensive civil rights bill. Congress, however, had not passed the bill when Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.

At Kennedy’s death, his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, became president. A Texas politician since the New Deal and a majority leader of the Senate, Johnson seemed less likely than Kennedy to be an innovative leader. But, as president, Johnson plunged ahead with domestic reform. In July 1964 he proposed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, enacted in memory of Kennedy. The law prohibited segregation in public accommodations and discrimination in education and employment. Johnson then declared a “War on Poverty” in the United States. He promoted a billion-dollar campaign to end poverty and racial injustice. In August 1964 Congress established an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to direct the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty program and a Job Corps to train young people for the employment market. Johnson also supported a volunteer program, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a domestic version of the Peace Corps; Project Head Start, to educate preschoolers from disadvantaged families; and several other public works and job-training programs.

In the 1964 presidential election, Johnson won a landslide victory over conservative Arizona senator Barry Goldwater. He then pressed legislators to add to his reform program, which he labeled the “Great Society.” In 1965 Congress enlarged the War on Poverty by enacting Medicare (a program of medical insurance for the elderly) and Medicaid (a program of medical care for the needy), and funding urban development, housing, and transit. Congress also passed the Voting Rights Act, which protected the rights of minorities to register and vote. In addition it established the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities to provide funding for the arts, provided funds to school districts with children from low-income families, passed the Clean Air Act, and enacted legislation to protect endangered species and wilderness areas.

Finally, Johnson supported two policy changes with unexpected future impact. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed quotas based on race or nationality that had been in force since the 1920s, and it paved the way for massive immigration from Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. Also in 1965, Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, which required groups that did business with the federal government to take “affirmative action” to remedy past discrimination against African Americans. As Johnson told black leaders, his goals for racial progress meant “not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.” Over the next three decades, the federal government implemented affirmative action policies to promote the hiring of women and minorities.

Stunning in its scope, Johnson’s ambitious domestic agenda soon ran into problems. Within three years, the United States was deeply involved in the Vietnam War; its expense and controversy undercut many Great Society goals. But the civil rights revolution that Johnson endorsed made unprecedented gains.

A

The Civil Rights Movement

African Americans had been struggling to gain equal rights for many decades. As the 1960s began, the civil rights movement gained momentum. Individuals and civil rights organizations assailed segregation in the South and discrimination everywhere. They protested with marches, boycotts, and refusals to tolerate segregation. Many organizations conducted their protests with nonviolent resistance. Civil rights protesters often faced harsh confrontations with their opponents. These confrontations, which appeared on network television, exposed the struggle for civil rights to a large national audience.

In the spring of 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) started Freedom Rides to the South to desegregate bus terminals and protest segregation in interstate transportation. The Freedom Riders, black and white, challenged white supremacy and drew angry attacks.

In the fall of 1962, a federal court ordered the University of Mississippi to enroll a black air force veteran, James Meredith. To prevent his enrollment, white protesters rioted, and President Kennedy sent federal troops to restore order. In Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC led a campaign of marches, sit-ins, and prayer meetings to challenge segregation and racism. Clashes arose between black protesters and city police, armed with dogs and cattle prods. News coverage exposed the violence in Birmingham to people all over the world. Television news next covered the University of Alabama, where Governor George Wallace in June 1963 barred two black students from entrance.

Responding to African American calls for action, Kennedy in June 1963 declared civil rights “a moral issue” and proposed a comprehensive civil rights measure. Congress did not act on the bill, but the civil rights movement intensified. In August 1963 more than 200,000 Americans marched on Washington, D.C., to demand equal rights. The audience heard Martin Luther King, Jr., explain his dream of brotherhood, freedom, justice, and nonviolence. In July 1964, at Johnson’s prompting, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed segregation in public accommodations; gave the federal government new power to integrate schools and enfranchise blacks; and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to stop job discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, or gender. The law heralded a new phase of activism.

Since 1961 civil rights activists had worked on voter registration in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. In the summer of 1964, CORE and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organized the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. The project recruited over 1,000 Northern college students, teachers, artists, and clergy—both black and white—to work in Mississippi. These volunteers, who helped blacks register to vote and ran freedom schools, met harassment, firebombs, arrests, beatings, and even murder. In August 1964 civil rights workers sent a delegation to the Democratic National Convention to demand (in vain) the seating of delegates from the newly formed Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Mass protests in Selma, Alabama, in March 1965 again brought segments of violent confrontations to television news.

The voting rights campaign of the mid-1960s had results. In 1965 Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which authorized federal examiners to register voters and expanded black suffrage by suspending literacy tests for voting. The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, outlawed the poll tax in federal elections. A 1966 Supreme Court decision struck down the poll tax in all elections. These measures more than tripled the number of registered black voters in the South. Just as the federal government responded—after almost a century of inaction—to civil rights demands, waves of violence and disorder signaled a change in the civil rights movement.

In August 1965 frustrations with high unemployment and poverty led to riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles, a primarily black neighborhood. For six days, rioters looted, firebombed, and sniped at police and National Guard troops. When the riots ended, 34 people were dead and hundreds were injured. In the summers of 1966 and 1967, urban riots occurred in the poorer neighborhoods of several Northern cities. The summer of 1967 saw 150 racial confrontations and 40 riots.

In April 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated; in the summer race riots broke out in over 100 cities. In the wake of the riots, the president appointed a National Commission on Civil Disorders, headed by Otto Kerner, a former governor of Illinois. The Kerner Commission blamed white racism for the outbreaks of violence. “Our nation is moving toward two societies,” the Commission report warned, “one black, one white—separate and unequal.” The report urged job creation, more public housing, school integration, and “a national system of income supplementation.”

As the urban riots of the mid-1960s voiced black rage, demands for Black Power changed the tone of the civil rights movement. Stokely Carmichael, a civil rights activist and SNCC member, led SNCC away from its commitment to nonviolence and integration. Carmichael popularized the call for Black Power, a controversial term. To some, Black Power called for racial dignity and self-reliance. For others, it meant that blacks should defend themselves against white violence, instead of relying on nonviolence. Still others believed that the Black Power movement called for black economic and political independence.

Black Power advocates were influenced by Malcolm X, a Nation of Islam minister who had been assassinated in early 1965. They admired Malcolm’s black nationalist philosophy, which emphasized black separatism and self-sufficiency. They also appreciated Malcolm’s emphasis on black pride and self-assertion.

Conflict soon arose between the older civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP, and black power advocates, with their aura of militancy and violence. Some blacks called for racial pride and separatism instead of colorblindness and integration. Civil rights demands shifted from colorblinded to color-consciousness.

By the end of the 1960s, the civil rights movement had strongly influenced other groups, which adopted its protest tactics. Native Americans had mobilized early in the decade and convened in Washington in 1964 to press for inclusion in the War on Poverty. In 1968 Native American leaders demanded Red Power in the form of preferential hiring and reimbursement for lands that the government had taken from them in violation of treaties. Mexican Americans supported César Chávez, president of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. Chavez sought improved working conditions for migrant workers and organized national consumer boycotts of grapes and other products. The Hispanic movement also campaigned for bilingual and bicultural education, and Chicano studies in colleges. Finally, the women’s movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, especially, derived inspiration from the civil rights precedent.

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