Between 1945 and 1970, the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s
New Deal largely determined the parameters of
American domestic politics. The New Deal gave rise to a
distinct pattern that signified a basic transformation in
American society. This pattern included a dramatic increase
in the role and power of the federal government,
the rise of organized labor as a significant force in the
economy and politics, a commitment to the welfare state,
albeit a restricted one (Americans did not have access
to universal health care as most other industrialized societies
did), a grudging acceptance of the need to resolve
minority problems, and a willingness to experiment with
deficit spending as a means of spurring the economy. The
influence of New Deal politics was bolstered by the election
of Democratic presidents—Harry Truman in 1948,
John F. Kennedy in 1960, and Lyndon B. Johnson in
1964. Even the election of a Republican president,
Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1952 and 1956, did not significantly
alter the fundamental direction of the New Deal.
As Eisenhower conceded in 1954, “Should any political
party attempt to abolish Social Security and eliminate labor
laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that
party again in our political history.”
No doubt, the economic boom that took place after
World War II fueled public confidence in the new American
way of life. A shortage of consumer goods during
the war left Americans with both surplus income and the
desire to purchase these goods after the war. Then, too,
the growing power of organized labor enabled more and
more workers to obtain the wage increases that fueled the
growth of the domestic market. Increased government
expenditures (justified by the theory of English economist
John Maynard Keynes that government spending
could stimulate a lagging economy to reach higher levels
of productivity) also indirectly subsidized the American
private enterprise system. Especially after the Korean War
began in 1950, outlays on defense provided money for
scientific research in the universities and markets for
weapons industries. After 1955, tax dollars built a massive
system of interstate highways, and tax deductions for
mortgages subsidized homeowners. Between 1945 and
1973, real wages grew at an average rate of 3 percent a
year, the most prolonged advance in American history.
The prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s also translated
into significant social changes. More workers left the factories
and fields and moved into white-collar occupations,
finding jobs as professional and technical employees,
managers, proprietors, and clerical and sales workers.
In 1940, blue-collar workers made up 52 percent of the
labor force; farmers and farmworkers, 17 percent; and
white-collar workers, 31 percent. By 1970, blue-collar
workers constituted 50 percent; farmers and farmworkers,
3 percent; and white-collar workers, 47 percent. One
consequence of this process was a movement from rural
areas and central cities into the suburbs. In 1940, just
19 percent of the American population lived in suburbs,
49 percent in rural areas, and 32 percent in central cities.
By 1970, those figures had changed to 38, 31, and 31 percent,
respectively. The move to the suburbs also produced
an imposing number of shopping malls and reinforced the
American passion for the automobile, which provided
the means of transport from suburban home to suburban
mall and workplace. Finally, the search for prosperity led
to new migration patterns. As the West and South experienced
rapid economic growth through the development
of new industries, especially in the defense field, massive
numbers of people made the exodus from the cities of the
Northeast and Midwest to the Sunbelt of the South and
West. Between 1940 and 1980, cities like Chicago, Philadelphia,
Detroit, and Cleveland lost between 13 and
36 percent of their populations, while Los Angeles, Dallas,
and San Diego grew between 100 and 300 percent.
Although the country was becoming more affluent, it
was also feeling more vulnerable as Cold War confrontations
abroad had repercussions at home. The Communist
victory in China aroused fears that Communists had infiltrated
the United States. A demagogic senator from
Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, helped intensify a massive
“Red scare” with his (unsubstantiated) allegations that
there were hundreds of Communists in high government
positions. But McCarthy went too far when he attacked
alleged “Communist conspirators” in the U.S. Army, and
he was censured by Congress in 1954. Shortly after, his
anti-Communist crusade came to an end. The pervasive
fear of communism and the possibility of a nuclear war,
however, remained at a peak.
While the 1950s have been characterized (erroneously)
as a tranquil age, the period between 1960 and
1973 was clearly a time of upheaval that brought to the
fore some of the problems that had been glossed over in
the 1950s. The era began on an optimistic note. At age
forty-three, John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) became the
youngest president in the history of the United States and
the first born in the twentieth century. His own administration,
cut short by an assassin’s bullet on November 22,
1963, focused primarily on foreign affairs, although it inaugurated
an extended period of increased economic
growth. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–
1973), who won a new term as president in a landslide in
1964, used his stunning mandate to pursue the growth of
the welfare state, first begun in the New Deal. Johnson’s
programs included health care for the elderly, a “war on
poverty” to be fought with food stamps and a “job corps,”
the new Department of Housing and Urban Development
to deal with the problems of the cities, and federal
assistance for education.
Johnson’s other domestic passion was the achievement
of equal rights for African Americans. The civil rights
movement began in earnest in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme
Court took the dramatic step of striking down
the practice of maintaining racially segregated public
schools. According to Chief Justice Earl Warren, “Separate
educational facilities are inherently unequal.” A year
later, during a boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery,
Alabama, the eloquent Martin Luther King Jr.
(1929–1968) surfaced as the leader of a growing movement
for racial equality.
By the early 1960s, a number of groups, including
King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC), were organizing demonstrations and sit-ins
across the South to end racial segregation. In August
1963, King led the March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom. This march and King’s impassioned plea for
racial equality had an electrifying effect on the American
people. By the end of 1963, a majority of Americans
(52 percent) called civil rights the most significant national
issue; only 4 percent had done so eight months
earlier.
President Johnson took up the cause of civil rights. As
a result of his initiative, Congress in 1964 enacted the
Civil Rights Act, which ended segregation and discrimination
in the workplace and all public accommodations.
The Voting Rights Act, passed the following year, eliminated
racial obstacles to voting in southern states. But
laws alone could not guarantee a “great society,” and
Johnson soon faced bitter social unrest, both from African
Americans and from the burgeoning antiwar movement.
In the North and West, African Americans had had
voting rights for many years, but local patterns of segregation
resulted in considerably higher unemployment
rates for blacks (and Hispanics) than for whites and left
blacks segregated in huge urban ghettos. In these ghettos,
calls for militant action by radical black nationalist leaders,
such as Malcolm X of the Black Muslims, attracted
more attention than the nonviolent appeals of Martin
Luther King. In the summer of 1965, race riots erupted in
the Watts district of Los Angeles that led to thirty-four
deaths and the destruction of more than one thousand
buildings. Cleveland, San Francisco, Chicago, Newark,
and Detroit likewise exploded in the summers of 1966
and 1967. After the assassination of Martin Luther King
in 1968, more than one hundred cities experienced rioting,
including Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital.
The combination of riots and extremist comments by
radical black leaders led to a “white backlash” and a severe
division of American society. In 1964, only 34 percent
of white Americans agreed with the statement that
blacks were asking for “too much”; by late 1966, that
number had risen to 85 percent.
Antiwar protests also divided the American people after
President Johnson committed American troops to a
costly war in Vietnam (see the box on p. 197). The antiwar
movement arose out of the free speech movement
that began in 1964 at the University of California at
Berkeley as a protest against the impersonality and authoritarianism
of the large university. As the war progressed
and U.S. casualties mounted, protests escalated.
Teach-ins, sit-ins, and the occupation of university buildings
alternated with more radical demonstrations that increasingly
led to violence. The killing of four students at
Kent State University in 1970 by the Ohio National
Guard caused a reaction, and the antiwar movement began
to subside. By that time, however, antiwar demonstrations
had helped weaken the willingness of many
Americans to continue the war. But the combination of
antiwar demonstrations and ghetto riots in the cities also
prepared many people to embrace “law and order,” an appeal
used by Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995), the Republican
presidential candidate in 1968. With Nixon’s
election in 1968, a shift to the right in American politics
had begun.
World History
