XXIII.

A World of Plenty

In the post-World War II decade, the United States was the richest nation in the world. After a brief period of postwar adjustment, the economy boomed. Consumers demanded goods and services. Businesses produced more to meet this demand, and increased production led to new jobs. Federal foreign aid programs, such as the Marshall Plan, provided overseas markets for U.S. businesses. Finally, the government spent large amounts of money by providing loans, fighting the Cold War, and funding social programs. Government spending plus consumer demand led to an era of widespread prosperity, rising living standards, and social mobility.

A.

The Postwar Administrations

As the nation demobilized, President Harry S. Truman faced a political battle. A one-time courthouse politician who owed his political success to the Democratic political machine of Kansas City, Truman had been a liberal senator and loyal New Dealer. Assertive and self-confident, he capably assumed the presidency after Roosevelt’s death at the end of World War II. But in 1946, Truman encountered the Republican-dominated 80th Congress, the first time Republicans won control of both houses since 1928.

In 1947 Congress passed the Labor-Management Relations Act, known as the Taft-Hartley Act, over Truman’s veto. The act was a restrictive labor law that handicapped labor and boosted employer power. For instance, it banned closed shops, thereby enabling employers to hire nonunion workers; it revived the labor injunction as a way to end strikes and boycotts; and it allowed states to pass right-to-work laws that forbade making union membership a condition of hiring.

Congress also rejected Truman’s efforts to improve civil rights for African Americans. It refused to pass federal antilynching laws or to abolish the poll tax. In 1948, however, Truman integrated the armed forces by an executive order. He also ordered an end to discrimination in the hiring of federal employees.

Southern Democrats never liked Truman. At the Democratic convention of 1948, they withdrew from the party to form a states’ rights party, the Dixiecrats. Truman also faced a challenge from the left, when Henry Wallace ran as the presidential candidate of the Progressive Party. Both of these challenges took Democratic votes from Truman, and most observers expected that his Republican opponent, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, would defeat him. But the scrappy president won reelection. The 81st Congress continued to reject his social and economic proposals, known as the Fair Deal. Legislators defeated, for instance, a measure for national compulsory health insurance. Still, Truman succeeded in raising the minimum wage, extending social security coverage, and building low-income housing.

Elected president by big margins in 1952 and 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower enjoyed immense popularity. A pragmatic, centrist Republican, Eisenhower believed in smaller government, fiscal conservatism, and a businesslike administration.

Eisenhower continued some New Deal policies. He expanded social security, raised the minimum wage, and backed a huge public works program, the Federal Highway Act of 1956, which provided funds for the Interstate Highway System. He also cut defense spending and presided over an era of peace and prosperity.

In 1953 Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as chief justice of the Supreme Court, an appointment that began a new era in judicial history. The Warren Court transformed the American legal system by expanding civil rights and civil liberties. In the 1950s the Court broadened the rights of the accused and overturned the 1949 convictions of Communist leaders who had been tried under the Smith Act. Most important, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the Warren court declared that school segregation violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Concluding that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” it declared segregated schools unconstitutional.

In 1955 the Court ordered the states to desegregate schools “with all deliberate speed.” However, many people resisted school integration. In 1957 the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, tried to block the enrollment of nine black students into Little Rock High School. In response, Eisenhower, never a strong civil rights supporter, reluctantly sent federal troops to desegregate the school. The Brown decision began a new era in civil rights.

The Eisenhower administration also ushered in the age of modern space exploration. In 1958 Congress formed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to oversee a civilian space program. NASA’s birth reflected the Cold War competition between the United States and the USSR for supremacy in space. The Soviets launched Sputnik 1 (an artificial satellite) in October 1957. The United States followed with Explorer 1 in January 1958. In 1961 the Soviets hurled the first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit. The same year, Alan Shepard, one of seven American astronauts trained in Project Mercury, went into space on a suborbital flight. In 1962 John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth.

B.

The Prosperous Fifties

Eisenhower oversaw a productive and prosperous era. Government spending plus consumer demand boosted the gross national product (GNP). With 6 percent of the world’s population, the United States produced half the world’s goods. Technological advances, many achieved with federal aid, ushered in new industries and sped up the pace of production in old ones.

The nation’s five largest industries—autos, oil, aircraft, chemicals, and electronics—illustrated a leap in productivity. The auto industry, the nation’s largest, lowered labor costs by using more automated machines. Oil replaced coal as the nation’s major energy source. The aircraft industry profited from defense spending, space research, and commercial airlines’ shift to jet propulsion. The chemical industry offered new consumer goods, such as synthetic fibers, chemical fertilizers, and plastics. Computers, too, began to have an effect in the business world. By the mid-1960s, more than 30,000 mainframe computers were in use.

As productivity rose, the labor market changed. Fewer people held blue-collar jobs, and more did white-collar work. Employment grew rapidly in the service sector, which includes sales work, office work, and government jobs. More American wage earners worked for large corporations or for state or federal agencies than in small enterprise. Businesses expanded by swallowing weaker competitors, as happened in the steel, oil, chemical, and electrical machinery industries. Corporations formed huge new conglomerates (mergers of companies in unrelated industries). In addition, companies offering similar products or services in many locations, known as franchises, increased; the first McDonald’s franchise opened in 1955.

Some big corporations established overseas operations and became multinational. Producers in the United States depended on world markets to buy oil, iron, steel, and food that they exported. They also increased their overseas investments. Standard Oil (later Exxon), for instance, developed oil resources in Venezuela and the Middle East. Coca-Cola swept through Europe, where it set up bottling factories. New types of bureaucrats ran the big businesses of postwar America. In The Organization Man (1956), sociologist William H. Whyte wrote that employers sought managers who would adapt to corporate culture, which rewarded teamwork and conformity.

C.

The Middle Class Expands

Many factors converged to provide unparalleled social mobility in postwar America. Most important, income rose. Between 1945 and 1960, the median family income, adjusted for inflation, almost doubled. Rising income doubled the size of the middle class. Before the Great Depression of the 1930s only one-third of Americans qualified as middle class, but in postwar America two-thirds did.

The growth of the middle class reflected full employment, new opportunities, and federal spending, which contributed mightily to widespread prosperity. During the war, for example, the U.S. government built many new factories, which provided jobs. The federal government also directly aided ambitious Americans. In 1944 Congress passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, known as the GI Bill of Rights. Under the law, the government paid part of tuition for veterans and gave them unemployment benefits while they sought jobs. It also provided low-interest loans to veterans buying homes or farms, or starting businesses. The GI Bill and other federal programs offered mortgages for home buyers.

New middle-class families of postwar America became suburban families. Of 13 million new homes built in the 1950s, 85 percent were in the suburbs. By the early 1960s, suburbs surrounded every city.

New families of the postwar era created a baby boom. The birth rate soared from 1946 to 1964, and peaked in 1957, when a baby was born every 7 seconds. Overall, more than 76 million Americans were part of the baby boom generation. The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946), by Dr. Benjamin Spock, sold a million copies a year in the 1950s, and popular culture glorified suburban homemakers.

However, more and more women entered the job market. New women workers were increasingly likely to be middle-aged and middle class. By 1960 almost two out of five women with school-age children held jobs. Some women workers supported households alone; many were wives whose second incomes helped their families attain middle-class lifestyles.

As suburbs, generally without public transportation, grew, cars became necessary and auto sales increased. Easy credit facilitated the purchase of cars. The number of cars on the road leaped from 40 million in 1950 to 60 million in 1960. The Federal Highway Act of 1956 created the Interstate Highway System, a 68,400-km (42,500-mi) network of limited-access highways. This system spurred further suburban growth.

Middle-class families bought not only homes and cars, but educational opportunities. Between 1940 and 1960, the percentage of college-age Americans who attended college almost doubled. Again, the federal government played a role. In 1958 Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, which provided loans to college students and funds for teacher training and instructional materials. Cold War enthusiasm for technological advances also affected research. By 1960 one-third of scientists and engineers in universities worked on government research, mainly defense projects.

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.

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.