Presidency of Dwight David Eisenhower (1953-61)
-Politics of the "Middle Way"
- Expansion of Social Security benefits
- Creation of Department of Health, Education & Welfare
- Oveta Culp Hobby, Secretary
Highway Act of 1956
- Facilitate military movement
- Cost shared by federal and state governments
Eisenhower's policy toward Native Americans
- Termination policy
- End dependency on federal government by encouraging Indians to relocate off reservations to cities
Civil Rights Movement
- 1954: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
- 1955-56: Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott
- 1957-58: Integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas
A Different Approach to the Race Divide
- The Beat Generation
-----Jack Kerouac- On the Road
-----Allen Ginsberg- "Howl"
- Rock 'n' Roll
-----Fusion of black and white music
-----Elvis Presley, B. B. King, Chuck Berry, etc.
-----Sun Records in Memphis
Conformity in the burbs
- Levitt-towns
-White flight
-Resurrection of "Cult of Domesticity"
------"Mother's Little Helper"
- The Kinsey reports on sexuality
- Suburban icons
-----Television
-----Automobiles
Living with "the bomb"
- Underground shelters
- School drills
- Science fiction/B-movies
Miscellany
- "under God" added to Pledge of Allegiance
- Alaska and Hawaii become states
- Polio vaccine
- DNA demystified
Foreign policy during the Eisenhower years
Continuation of Containment
- Southeast Asia
---Korea
---Vietnam
- Latin America
---Support of fascist dictators
---Cuba and Castro
- Middle-East
---Egypt and the Suez Canal
---Lebanon
---Iran
Arms race/Space race
- Development of ICBMs
- Sputnik
- NASA
President Eisenhower's farewell warning to the nation: beware the "military-industrial complex"
1960 presidential election
- Dem: Kennedy & Johnson
- Rep: Nixon & Lodge
The Kennedy mystique
Civil Rights achievements in the early 1960s
- "The Movement"
- Martin Luther King, Jr., and SCLC
- Roy Wilkins & NAACP
- Ella Baker & SNCC
- Freedom rides, sit-ins, marches
- Integration of Universities of Mississippi and Alabama
- Murder of Medgar Evers, June '63 - Jackson, MS
- Bombing of Birmingham, AL church
- March on Washington - August '63
Assassination of JFK
1964 Democratic Convention - Atlantic City, NJ
- Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Party
Ground breaking legislation
- 1964 Civil Rights Act
- 1965 Voting Rights Act
LBJ's Great Society
The Warren Court
- 1962: Engel v. Vitale, school prayer
- 1963: Gideon v. Wainwright, counsel for indigent
- 1963: Baker v. Carr, equitable legislative districts
- 1965: Griswold v. Connecticut, privacy rights (birth control)
- 1966: Miranda v. Arizona, rights advisory
- 1967: Loving v. Virginia, struck down interracial marriage ban
"You say you want a revolution..."
- Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam
- Black Panthers and Black Power Movement
- American Indian Movement
- Jose Angel Gutierrez and La Raza Unida
- Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers
- Port Huron Statement and Students for a Democratic Society
- Youth counterculture: don't trust anyone over 30
- Summer of love - San Francisco
Second wave feminism
- Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique
- National Organization for Women
- Ms. begins publication
- Equal Rights Amendment
- Title IX of 1972 Education Act
- Roe v. Wade
Environmental concerns
- Influence of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
- Clean Air Act
- Clean Water Act
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Earth Day
1970s energy crisis
- 1973 OPEC embargo
- President Nixon and conservation measures
John Kennedy's administration
- Kennedy and Khrushchev
----Test ban treaty
----Laos
----Berlin
- Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro
----Bay of Pigs
----Berlin Wall
----Cuban Missile Crisis
- Kennedy and Vietnam
----Advisors
----Assassination of Diem
- A different approach
----Peace Corps
Lyndon Johnson's administration
- Expanding U.S. involvement in Vietnam
----Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
----Rolling Thunder
Richard Nixon's administration
- "Vietnamization" of the war
- Henry Kissinger's secret negotiations
- Increased bombing
- Invasion of neutral Cambodia
Reactions
- Kent State
- War Powers Act
Nixon and the Communist Superpowers
- Detente
- Visit to China
Gerald Ford's administration
- Pull out of Vietnam
- Fall of Saigon
1972 election
Rep: Richard Nixon
Dem: George McGovern
(Shirley Chisholm sought Dem. nomination)
Indpendent: George Wallace
Watergate Scandal
- CREEP (Committee to Re-elect the President)
- Plumbers and Daniel Ellsberg
- Break-in and cover-up
- Trials
- Woodward, Bernstein, and the Washington Post
- Resignation
- Pardon
Gerald Ford's presidency
- Ongoing energy crisis
- 1976 bicentennial
- Assassination attempts against Ford
- First Lady Betty Ford and feminism
Demographic and popular culture changes in the 70s
- Population shift from 'rust belt' to 'sun belt'
- Economic hard times and the family
- Increased divorce rate
- Swinging singles
- Recreational drug use
- Television: tackling real life
----"All in the Family"
----"Mary Tyler Moore"
----"Good Times"
----PBS
Miscellaneous
- 26th amendment lowered voting age to 18
- Community colleges expand
Jimmy Carter's administration
- Ongoing energy crisis
- Conservation, alternative fuels, fuel-efficient autos
- Bail out of Chrysler
Carter's Foreign policy
- Panama Canal
- Camp David Accords
- Anwar Sadat, Egypt
- Menachim Begin, Israel
Iranian revolution
- American hostages in Tehran
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
- U.S. boycott of Moscow summer Olympics