COLD WAR What were the origins of

COLD WAR

What were the origins of the Cold War? Explain its broad ideological, economic, political, and military components. Analyze and discuss America’s plans of containment and economic aid and the consequent events that characterized foreign affairs between 1945 and 1952. What were the causes, conduct, and consequences of the Korean War? How did the Cold War affect domestic economic and political affairs in the 1950 s? How and why did civil rights emerge as a national domestic issue after 1954?

The wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union ended largely because they disagreed over the future of Eastern Europe and the development of nuclear weapons. At the end of World. War II, the Allies did agree to disarm Germany, dismantle its military production facilities, and permit the occupying powers to extract reparations. However, plans for future reunification of Germany stalled, leading to its division into East and West Germany. As tensions mounted, the United States came to see Soviet expansionism as a threat to its own interests and began shaping a new policy of containment.

Descent into Cold War, 1945– 1946 Roosevelt had been able to work with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and in part as a memorial to Roosevelt, the Senate approved America’s participation in the United Nations in 1945.

Since the Soviet Union had been a victim of German aggression in both world wars, Stalin was determined to prevent the rebuilding and rearming of its traditional foe, and insisted on a security zone of friendly governments in Eastern Europe for protection. At the Yalta Conference, America and Britain agreed to recognize this Soviet “sphere of influence, ” with the proviso that “free and unfettered elections” would be held as soon as possible, but, after Yalta, the Soviets made no move to hold the elections and rebuffed western attempts to reorganize the Soviet-installed governments.

On the 4 th of February 1945 the Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin) convened at Yalta, on the Crimean Peninsula. It was the second of the large war time conferences, preceded by Tehran in 1943, and succeeded by Potsdam (after Roosevelt's death) later in 1945.

Recalling Britain’s disastrous appeasement of Hitler in 1938, Truman decided that the United States had to take a hard line against Soviet expansion. At the 1945 Potsdam Conference between the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, Truman used what he called “tough methods”; negotiations on critical postwar issues deadlocked, revealing serious cracks in the Grand Alliance.

At Potsdam, the Allies agreed to disarm Germany, dismantle its military production facilities, and permit the occupying powers to extract reparations. Plans for future reunification of Germany stalled, and the foundation was laid for what would later become the division of Germany into East and West Germany.

The failure of the Baruch Plan to maintain a U. S. monopoly on nuclear arms while preventing their development by other nations signaled the beginning of a frenzied nuclear arms race between the two superpowers.

The Truman Doctrine and Containment The Truman Doctrine required large-scale military and economic assistance to prevent communism from taking hold in Greece and Turkey, which in turn lessened the Communist threat in the entire Middle East. The Marshall Plan brought relief to devastated European countries, ushering in an economic recovery that made them less susceptible to communism and opening these countries up to new international trade opportunities. This appropriation reversed the postwar trend toward sharp cuts in foreign spending and marked a new level of commitment to the Cold War.

For the next forty years, the ideological conflict between capitalism and communism determined the foreign policy of the United States and the Soviet Union and, later, China. The United States pursued a policy designed to contain Communist expansion in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

As tensions mounted, the United States increasingly perceived Soviet expansionism as a threat to its own interests, and a new policy of containment began to take shape, the most influential proponent of whom was George F. Kennan.

was an American advisor, diplomat, political scientist, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War. He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers.

The policy of containment crystallized in 1947 when suspected Soviet-backed Communist guerrillas launched a civil war against the Greek government, causing the West to worry that Soviet influence in Greece threatened its interests in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, especially Turkey and Iran.

American reaction resulted in the Truman Doctrine, which called for large-scale military and economic assistance in order to prevent communism from taking hold in Greece and Turkey which in turn lessened the threat to the entire Middle East, making it an early version of the “domino theory. ”

The resulting congressional appropriation reversed the postwar trend toward sharp cuts in foreign spending and marked a new level of commitment to the Cold War. The Marshall Plan sent relief to devastated European countries and helped to make them less susceptible to communism; the plan required that foreign-aid dollars be spent on U. S. goods and services

The Marshall Plan met with opposition in Congress until a Communist coup occurred in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, after which Congress voted overwhelmingly to approve funds for the program.

The Marshall Plan (from its enactment, officially the European Recovery Program (ERP)) was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding the allied countries of Europe and repelling communism after World War II. The initiative was named for United States Secretary of State George Marshall and was largely the creation of State Department officials, especially William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan

Map of Cold. War era Europe showing countries that received Marshall Plan aid. The red columns show the relative amount of total aid per nation.

The reconstruction plan was developed at a meeting of the participating European states in July 12 1947. The Marshall Plan offered the same aid to the Soviet Union and its allies, if they would make political reforms and accept certain outside controls. In fact, America worried that the Soviet Union would take advantage of the plan and therefore made the terms deliberately hard for the USSR to accept.

Over the next four years, the United States contributed nearly $13 billion to a highly successful recovery; Western European economies revived, opening new opportunities for international trade, while Eastern Europe was influenced not to participate by the Soviet Union.

The United States, France, and Britain initiated a program of economic reform in West Berlin, which alarmed the Soviets, who responded with a blockade of the city. Truman countered the blockade with airlifts of food and fuel; the blockade, lifted in May 1949, made West Berlin a symbol of resistance to communism.

Occupation zones after 1945

In April 1949, the United States entered into its first peacetime military alliance since the American Revolution—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—in which twelve nations agreed that an armed attack against one of them would be considered an attack against all of them. NATO also agreed to the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in May 1949; in October, the Soviets created the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

The Soviets organized the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance in 1949 and the military Warsaw Pact in 1955. In September 1949, American military intelligence had proof that the Soviets had detonated an atomic bomb; this revelation called for a major reassessment of American foreign policy. To devise a new diplomatic and military blueprint, Truman turned to the National Security Council (NSC), an advisory body established by the National Security Act of 1947 that also created the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency.

The National Security Council gave a report, known as NSC-68, recommending the development of a hydrogen bomb, increasing U. S. conventional forces, establishing a strong system of alliances, and increasing taxes in order to finance defense building. The Korean War, which began two months after NSC-68 was completed, helped to transform the report’s recommendations into reality, as the Cold War spawned a hot war.

NSC-68 was a 58 -page classified report written in February-April 1950 by Paul Nitze and issued by the United States National Security Council on April 14, 1950 during the presidency of Harry Truman. The report, written in the aftermath of the decision to build a hydrogen bomb, was declassified in 1977 and has become one of the classic historical documents of the Cold War era.

Containment in Asia and the Korean War

American policy in Asia was focused on the region’s global economic importance as well as the desire to contain communism there. After dismantling Japan’s military forces and weaponry, American occupation forces began transforming the country into a bulwark of Asian capitalism. At the end of World War II, both the Soviets and the United States had troops in Korea, which was divided into competing spheres of influence. In June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. Truman ordered U. S. troops to repel the invaders, leading to three years of vicious fighting. An armistice, brokered by President Eisenhower, was signed in July 1953. Korea was divided near the original border at the thirty-eighth parallel.

American policy in Asia was based as much on Asia’s importance to the world economy as on the desire to contain communism. After dismantling Japan’s military forces and weaponry, American occupation forces drafted a democratic constitution and oversaw the rebuilding of the economy.

In China, a civil war had been raging since the 1930 s between Communist forces, led by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and conservative Nationalist forces, under Chiang Kai-shek. For a time the Truman administration attempted to help the Nationalists by providing more than $2 billion in aid, but in August 1949 aid was cut off when reform did not occur; in October 1949 the People’s Republic of China was formally established under Mao, and Chiang Kai-shek’s forces fled to Taiwan.

The “China lobby” in Congress viewed Mao’s success as a defeat for the United States; the China lobbies influence blocked U. S. recognition of “Red China” leading instead to U. S. recognition of the exiled Nationalist government in Taiwan. The United States also prevented China’s admission to the United Nations; for almost twenty years U. S. administrations treated mainland China, the world’s most populous country, as a diplomatic nonentity.

At the end of World War II, both the Soviets and the United States had troops in Korea and divided the country into competing spheres of influence at the thirty-eighth parallel. The Soviets supported a Communist government, led by Kim Il Sung, in North Korea and the United States backed a Korean nationalist, Syngman Rhee, in South Korea. On June 25, 1950, North Koreans invaded across the thirty-eighth parallel; Truman asked the United Nations Security Council to authorize a “police action” against the invaders.

The Security Council voted to send a “peacekeeping” force to Korea; though fourteen non-Communist nations sent troops, the UN army in Korea was overwhelmingly American, and, by request of Truman to the Security Council, headed by General Douglas Mac. Arthur. Months of fighting resulted in stalemate; given this military stalemate, a drop in public support, and the fact that the United States did not want large numbers of troops tied down in Asia, Truman and his advisors decided to work toward a negotiated peace.

Mac. Arthur, who believed that the future of the United States lay in Asia and not in Europe, tried to execute his own foreign policy involving Korea and Taiwan and was drawn into a Republican challenge of Truman’s conduct of the war. Truman relieved Mac. Arthur of his command based on insubordination, though the decision to relieve him was highly unpopular; after failing to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1952, Mac. Arthur faded from public view.

Two years after truce talks began, an armistice was signed in July 1953; Korea was divided near the original border at the thirty-eighth parallel, with a demilitarized zone between the countries. Truman committed troops to Korea without congressional approval, setting a precedent for other undeclared wars. The war also expanded American involvement in Asia, transforming containment into a truly global policy.

During the war, American defense expenditures grew from $13 billion in 1950 to $50 billion in 1953; though they dropped after the war, defense spending remained at over $35 billion annually throughout the 1950 s. American foreign policy had become more global, more militarized, and more expensive; even in times of peace, the United States functioned in a state of permanent mobilization.

The Truman Era Reconversion

Government spending dropped after the war, but consumer spending increased, and unemployment did not soar back up with the shift back to civilian production. When Truman disbanded the Office of Price Administration and lifted price controls in 1946, prices soared, producing an annual inflation rate of 18. 2 percent. Inflation prompted workers to demand higher wages; workers mounted crippling strikes in the automobile, steel, and coal industries and general strikes effectively closed down business in more than a half dozen cities in 1946.

Truman ended a strike by the United Mine Workers and one by railroad workers by placing the mines and railroads under federal control; Democrats in organized labor were outraged. In 1946, Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress and set about undoing New Deal social welfare measures, especially targeting labor legislation. In 1947, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, a rollback of several pro-union provisions of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. The secondary boycott and the union shop, labor rights that workers had fought for, ere eventually dismantled by the Republican Congress.

Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act countered some workers’ hostility to his earlier antistrike activity and kept labor in the Democratic fold. In the election of 1948, the Republicans again nominated Thomas E. Dewey for president and nominated Earl Warren for vice president. Democratic left and right wings split off: the Progressive Party nominated Henry A. Wallace for president; the States’ Rights Party (Dixiecrats) nominated Strom Thurmond. To the nation’s surprise, Truman won the election handily, and the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress.

Fair Deal Liberalism The Fair Deal was an extension of the New Deal’s liberalism, but it gave attention to civil rights, reflecting the growing importance of African Americans to the Democratic coalition, and extended the possibilities for a higher standard of living and benefits to a greater number of citizens, reflecting a new liberal vision of the role of the state. Congress adopted only parts of the Fair Deal: a higher minimum wage, an extension of and increase in Social Security, and the National Housing Act of 1949.

The activities of certain interest groups — Southern conservatives, the American Medical Association, and business lobbyists — helped to block support for the Fair Deal’s plan for enlarged federal responsibility for economic and social welfare.

The Great Fear As American relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated, a fear of communism at home started a widespread campaign of domestic repression, often called “Mc. Carthyism. ” In 1938, a group of conservatives had launched the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to investigate Communist influence in labor unions and New Deal agencies. In 1947, HUAC intensified the “Great Fear” by holding widely publicized hearings on alleged Communist activity in the film industry.

In March 1947, Truman initiated an investigation into the loyalty of federal employees; other institutions undertook their own anti subversive campaigns. Communist members of the labor movement were expelled, as were Communist members of civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League. In early 1950, Alger Hiss, a State Department official, was convicted of perjury for lying about his Communist affiliations; his trial and conviction fueled the paranoia about a Communist conspiracy in the federal government and contributed to the rise of Senator Joseph Mc. Carthy.

Mc. Carthy’s accusations of subversion in the government were meant to embarrass the Democrats; critics who disagreed with him were charged with being “soft” on communism. Mc. Carthy failed to identify a single Communist in government, but cases like Hiss’s and the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg lent weight to Mc. Carthy’s allegations. Mc. Carthy’s support declined with the end of the Korean War, the death of Stalin, and when his hearings as he investigated subversion in the U. S. Army were televised revealing his smear tactics to the public.

Eisenhower and the “New Look” of Foreign Policy

After the Korean War, Eisenhower turned his attention to Europe and the Soviet Union. Soviet repression convinced American policymakers that armed conflict would be the only way to roll back Soviet power in Europe. Under the “New Look” defense policy, the United States began to develop a massive nuclear arsenal, instead of more expensive conventional forces, to deter the Soviet Union. President Truman attempted to expand the social welfare policies of the New Deal in a program he called the Fair Deal, which aimed to extend a higher standard of living to a greater number of citizens. But conservative Democrats joined with Republicans in order to block the most progressive legislation. Nevertheless, Truman did make some gains in Social Security, the minimum wage, and public housing. Truman turned to executive action to further civil rights, appointing a National Civil Rights Commission in 1946, ordering the Justice Department to support anti segregation cases, and desegregating the armed forces in 1948. Domestically, the Republican Party accused the Democrats of being “soft on communism. ” The frustrations of the Cold War led to a national persecution of suspected Communists, known as Mc. Carthyism. In the presidential election of 1952, Eisenhower represented modern Republicanism, the moderate continuation of the welfare-state policies of the Democrats.

In foreign policy, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles pursued a vigorous anti-Soviet line even though the death of Stalin had brought about a relative softening of the Soviet stance toward the West. In pursuit of containment, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assisted in the overthrow of legitimate governments that seemed to fall short of staunch anticommunism. The arms race continued with the development of new weapons systems capable of “mutual assured destruction” in case of a nuclear attack

Eisenhower’s “New Look” in foreign policy continued America’s commitment to containment but sought less expensive ways of implementing U. S. dominance in the Cold War struggle against international communism. One of Eisenhower’s first acts as president was to use his negotiating skills in order tobring an end to the Korean War. Eisenhower then turned his attention to Europe and the Soviet Union; Stalin died in 1953, and after a struggle, Nikita S. Khrushchev emerged as his successor in 1956.

Soviet repression of the 1956 Hungarian revolt showed that American policymakershad few options for rolling back Soviet power in Europe, short of going to war with the Soviet Union. Under the “New Look” defense policy, the United States economized by developing a massive nuclear arsenal as an alternative to more expensive conventional forces. To improve the nation’s defenses against an air attack from the Soviet Union, the Eisenhower administration developed the long range bombing capabilities of the Strategic Air Command installed the Distant Early Warning line of radar stations in Alaska and Canada in 1958.

By 1958, both the United States and the Soviets had intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and they were competing in the development of missile-equipped nuclear submarines. The arms race curtailed the social welfare programs of both nations by funneling resources into soon-to-be-obsolete weapons. The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was created in 1954 to complement the NATO alliance in Europe.

U. S. policymakers tended to support stable governments, as long as they were not Communist; some American allies were governed by dictatorships or repressive right-wing regimes. The CIA moved beyond intelligence gathering into active, albeit covert, involvement in the internal affairs of foreign countries. In 1953, the CIA helped to overthrow Iran’s premier after he seized control of British oil properties; in 1954, it supported a coup against the duly elected govenment of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala after he expropriated land held by the United Fruit Company and accepted arms from Communist Czechoslovakia.

The Cold War in the Middle East The American policy of containment soon extended to new nations emerging in the Third World. The United States often failed to recognize that indigenous or nationalist movements in emerging nations had their own goals and were not necessarily under the control of Communists.

The Middle East, an oil-rich area that was playing an increasingly central role in the strategic planning of the United States and the Soviet Union, presented one of the most complicated foreign-policy challenges. On May 14, 1948, Zionist leaders proclaimed the state of Israel; Truman quickly recognized the new state, alienating the Arabs but winning crucial support from Jewish voters. When Nasser came to power in Egypt in 1954, he pledged to lead not just his country but the entire Middle East out of its dependent, colonial relationship through a form of pan-Arab socialism and declared Egypt’s neutrality in the Cold War.

Unwilling to accept this stance of nonalignment, John Foster Dulles abruptly withdrew his offer of U. S. financial aid to Egypt in 1957; in retaliation, Nasser seized and nationalized the Suez Canal, through which three-quarters of Western Europe’s oil was transported. After months of negotiation, Britain and France, in alliance with Israel, attacked Egypt and retook the canal. Eisenhower and the UN forced France and Britain to pull back; Egypt retook the Suez Canal and built the Aswan Dam with Soviet support.

The Suez crisis increased Soviet influence in the Third World, intensified anti-Western sentiment in Arab countries, and produced dissension among leading members of the NATO alliance. After the Suez Canal crisis, the Eisenhower Doctrine stated that American forces would assist any nation in the Middle East requiring aid against communism. Eisenhower invoked the doctrine when he sent troops to aid King Hussein of Jordan against a Nasser-backed revolt and when he sent troops to back a pro-U. S. government in Lebanon.

The attention that the Eisenhower administration paid to developments in the Middle East in the 1950 s demonstrated how the access to steady supplies of oil increasingly affected foreign policy. Just as the Korean War had stretched the application of containment from Europe to Asia, the Eisenhower Doctrine revealed U. S. intentions to influence events in the Middle East as well.

The Cold War at Home Postwar Domestic Challenges

Government spending dropped after the war, but consumer spending increased, and unemployment did not soar back up with the shift back to civilian production. When Truman disbanded the Office of Price Administration and lifted price controls in 1946, prices soared, producing an annual inflation rate of 18. 2 percent. Inflation prompted workers to demand higher wages; workers mounted crippling strikes in the automobile, steel, and coal industries and general strikes effectively closed down business in more than a half dozen cities in 1946.

Truman ended a strike by the United Mine Workers and one by railroad workers by placing the mines and railroads under federal control; Democrats in organized labor were outraged. In 1946, Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress and set about undoing New Deal social welfare measures, especially targeting labor legislation. In 1947, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, a rollback of several pro-union provisions of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act.

Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act countered some workers’ hostility to his earlier antistrike activity and kept labor in the Democratic fold. In the election of 1948, the Republicans again nominated Thomas E. Dewey for president and nominated Earl Warren for vice president.

Democratic left and right wings split off: the Progressive Party nominated Henry A. Wallace for president; the States’ Rights Party (Dixiecrats) nominated Strom Thurmond. To the nation’s surprise, Truman won the election handily, and the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress.

Fair Deal Liberalism The Fair Deal was an extension of the New Deal’s liberalism, but it gave attention to civil rights, reflecting the growing importance of African Americans to the Democratic coalition, and extended the possibilities for a higher standard of living and benefits to a greater number of citizens, reflecting a new liberal vision of the role of the state.

Congress adopted only parts of the Fair Deal: a higher minimum wage, an extension of and increase in Social Security, and the National Housing Act of 1949. The activities of certain interest groups — Southern conservatives, the American Medical Association, and business lobbyists — helped to block support for the Fair Deal’s plan for enlarged federal responsibility for economic and social welfare.

The Great Fear As American relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated, a fear of communism at home started a widespread campaign of domestic repression, often called “Mc. Carthyism. ” In 1938, a group of conservatives had launched the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to investigate Communist influence in labor unions and New Deal agencies.

In 1947, HUAC intensified the “Great Fear” by holding widely publicized hearings on alleged Communist activity in the film industry. In March 1947, Truman initiated an investigation into the loyalty of federal employees; other institutions undertook their own anti subversive campaigns. Communist members of the labor movement were expelled, as were Communist members of civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League.

In early 1950, Alger Hiss, a State Department official, was convicted of perjury for lying about his Communist affiliations; his trial and conviction fueled the paranoia about a Communist conspiracy in the federal government and contributed to the rise of Senator Joseph Mc. Carthy’s accusations of subversion in the government were meant to embarrass the Democrats; critics who disagreed with him were charged with being “soft” on communism.

Mc. Carthy failed to identify a single Communist in government, but cases like Hiss’s and the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg lent weight to Mc. Carthy’s allegations. Mc. Carthy’s support declined with the end of the Korean War, the death of Stalin, and when his hearings as he investigated subversion in the U. S. Army were televised revealing his smear tactics to the public.

Modern Republicanism In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower secured the Republican nomination and asked Senator Richard M. Nixon to be his running mate.

. The Eisenhower administration set the tone for “modern Republicanism, ” an updated party philosophy that emphasized a slowdown, rather than a dismantling, of federal responsibilities. The Democrats nominated Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois for president and Senator John A. Sparkman for vice president.

Eisenhower was popular with his “I Like Ike” slogan, his K 1 C 2 (Korea, Communism, Corruption) formula, and his campaign pledge to go to Korea to end the stalemate. As president, Eisenhower hoped to decrease the need for federal intervention in social and economic issues yet simultaneously avoid conservative demands for a complete rollback of the New Deal. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was founded in 1958, the year after the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite.

To advance U. S. technological expertise, Eisenhower persuaded Congress to appropriate funds for college scholarships and for research and development. The creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 consolidated government control of social welfare programs. The Highway Act of 1956 authorized $26 billion over a ten-year period for the construction of a nationally integrated highway system and was an enormous public works program that surpassed anything undertaken during the New Deal.

The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National and International Issue

Civil Rights under Truman offered support for civil rights not only because he wanted to solidify the Democrats’ hold on African American voters but also because he was concerned about America’s image abroad. Lacking a popular mandate on civil rights, Truman turned to executive action; he appointed the National Civil Rights Commission in 1946, ordered the Justice Department to prepare a brief for Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), which ruled against discrimination in home buying, and signed an executive order to desegregate the army in 1948.

The Kraemers were a white couple who owned a residence in a Missouri neighborhood governed by a restrictive covenant. This was a private agreement that prevented blacks from owning property in the Kraemers' subdivision. The Shelleys were a black couple who moved into the Kraemers neighborhood. The Kraemers went to court to enforce the restrictive covenant against the Shelleys. Question Presented Does the enforcement of a racially restrictive covenant violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14 th Amendment? Conclusion State courts could not constitutionally prevent the sale of real property to blacks even if that property is covered by a racially restrictive covenant. Standing alone, racially restrictive covenants violate no rights. However, their enforcement by state court injunctions constitute state action in violation of the 14 th Amendment.

Southern conservatives blocked Truman’s proposals for a federal antilynching law, federal protection of voting rights, and a federal agency to guarantee equal employment opportunity.

Challenging Segregation Legal segregation of the races still governed southern society in the early 1950 s; whites and blacks were segregated in restaurants, waiting rooms and toilets at bus and train stations, and all forms of public transportation were rigidly segregated, with even drinking fountains being labeled “White” and “Colored. ”

“Whites Only” Waiting Room A black man is ordered out of a “whites only” waiting room. Separate facilities for blacks and whites were maintained throughout the South from the end of the 19 th century until the 1960 s.

" A rest stop for Greyhound bus passengers on the way from Louisville, Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee, with separate accommodatio ns for colored passengers. "

The first significant civil rights victory cam in 1954. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the Supreme Court overturned the long-standing “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). 3. Over the next several years, the Supreme Court used the Brown case to overturn segregation in public recreation areas, transportation, and housing.

Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

Over the next several years, the Supreme Court used the Brown case to overturn segregation in public recreation areas, transportation, and housing. In the Southern Manifesto of 1956, southern members of Congress denounced the Brown decision as an abuse of judicial power and encouraged their constituents to defy the ruling; White Citizens’ Councils in the South sprouted up dedicated to blocking school integration and other civil rights measures and the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) swelled.

In response to the Little Rock school-integration incident, Eisenhower, though showing little interest in civil rights, became the first president since Reconstruction to use federal troops to enforce the civil rights of blacks. President Eisenhower ordered the 101 st Airborne Division into Little Rock to insure the safety of the "Little Rock Nine" and that the rulings of the Supreme Court were upheld.

Little Rock Police work to keep protesters behind barricades at Central High on Sept. 27, 1957.

Students wait beside Arkansas National Guard troops blocking their admission to Little Rock Central High.

Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her bus seat to a white person prompted the 381 -day 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, which ended only when the Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was catapulted into national prominence after the bus boycott; in 1957, he and other black clergy founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta. While the SCLC and the NAACP achieved only limited victories in the 1950 s, that laid the organizational groundwork for the dynamic civil rights movement of the 1960 s.

The Impact of the Cold War Nuclear Proliferation

The escalating nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union brought Eisenhower to the United Nations on December 8, 1953. In his "Atoms for Peace" speech before the United Nations, Eisenhower sought to solve "the fearful atomic dilemma" by finding some way by which "the miraculous inventiveness of man would not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life. " Since Hiroshima, the destructive power of nuclear weapons had increased dramatically.

The Cold War extended to the most distant areas of the globe, but it also had powerful effects on the domestic economy, politics, and cultural values of the United States. It permeated domestic politics, helped to shape the response to the civil rights movement, and created an atmosphere that stifled dissent. The postwar expansion of the military produced a dramatic shift in the country’s economic priorities, as military spending took up a greater percentage of national income

One of the most alarming aspects of the nation’s militarization was the dangerous cycle of nuclear proliferation that would outlive the Soviet. American conflict that spawned it. The nuclear arms race affected all Americans by fostering a climate of fear and uncertainty; bomb shelters and civil defense drills provided a daily reminder of the threat of nuclear war.

Federal investigators documented a host of illnesses, deaths, and birth defects among families of veterans who had worked on weapons tests and among “downwinders, ” and later reports showed that many subjects used in the Atomic Energy Commission’s experiments in the 1940 s and 1950 s did not know that they were being irradiated. By the late 1950 s, public concern over nuclear testing and fallout had become a high profile issue; antinuclear groups such as SANE (the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy) and Physicians for Social Responsibility called for an international nuclear test ban.

Eisenhower also had second thoughts about a nuclear policy based on the premise of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and found spiraling arms expenditures a serious hindrance to balancing the federal budget.

Eisenhower tried to negotiate an arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union, but in 1960, progress was cut short when an American spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Soviet territory.

The Department of Defense evolved into a massive bureaucracy that profoundly influenced the postwar economy; federal money underwrote 90 percent of the cost of research on aviation and space and subsidized the scientific instruments, automobile, and electronics industries.

Pentagon spending created a powerful defense industry, with companies such as Lockheed and Boeing becoming dependent on government orders. Increased defense spending put money in the pockets of the millions working in defense-related industries, but it also limited the resources available for domestic needs

In his final address in 1961, Eisenhower warned against the growing power of what he termed the “military-industrial complex, ” which by then employed 3. 5 million Americans, but had the potential to threaten civil liberties and democratic processes.

At the end of his administration Eisenhower invited President-elect John F. Kennedy to come to the White House to see how things worked in the Executive Offices. On that visit Eisenhower warned Kennedy of a hard truth that accompanied the nation's highest office, "No easy matters will ever come to you. . . If they're easy they will be settled at a lower level. "