COLD WAR

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COLD WAR

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Title: COLD WAR

1
COLD WAR
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What were the origins of the Cold War? Explain
its broad ideological, economic, political, and
military components. Analyze and discuss
Americas 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 1950s? How
and why did civil rights emerge as a national
domestic issue after 1954?
3
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.

4
Descent into Cold War, 19451946

Roosevelt had been able to work with Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin, and in part as a memorial
to Roosevelt, the Senate approved Americas
participation in the United Nations in 1945.
5

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.

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On the 4th 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 Britains 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.

11
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 Revolutionthe 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
reports 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.

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Containment in Asia and the Korean War
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American policy in Asia was focused on the
regions global economic importance as well as
the desire to contain communism there. After
dismantling Japans 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
Asias importance to the world economy as on the
desire to contain communism.
After dismantling Japans 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
1930s 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 Peoples Republic of China was formally
established under Mao, and Chiang Kai-sheks
forces fled to Taiwan.

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The China lobby in Congress viewed Maos
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 Chinas
admission to the United Nations for almost
twenty years U.S. administrations treated
mainland China, the worlds 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.

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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 MacArthur.
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.

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MacArthur, 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 Trumans conduct of the war.
Truman relieved MacArthur 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,
MacArthur 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 1950s.
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.

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Eisenhower and the New Look of Foreign Policy
44

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
McCarthyism. 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

Eisenhowers New Look in foreign policy
continued Americas commitment to containment but
sought less expensive ways of implementing U.S.
dominance in the Cold War struggle against
international communism.
One of Eisenhowers 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 nations defenses against an air
attack from the Soviet Union, the Eisenhower
administration developed the long range bombing
capabilities of the Strategic Air Command and
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 Irans
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.

50
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 Egypts 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 Europes 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
1950s 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.

55
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.

Trumans 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 nations surprise, Truman won the election
handily, and the Democrats regained control of
both houses of Congress.

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Fair Deal Liberalism

The Fair Deal was an extension of the New Deals
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 Deals plan for
enlarged federal responsibility for economic and
social welfare.

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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 McCarthyism.
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
McCarthy.
McCarthys accusations of subversion in the
government were meant to embarrass the Democrats
critics who disagreed with him were charged with
being soft on communism.

McCarthy failed to identify a single Communist in
government, but cases like Hisss and the 1951
espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
lent weight to McCarthys allegations.
McCarthys 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.

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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 K1 C2 (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.

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The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National and
International Issue
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Civil Rights under Truman

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
Americas 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 14th 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 14th Amendment.

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

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Challenging Segregation

Legal segregation of the races still governed
southern society in the early 1950s 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.

79
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 19th century until the 1960s.

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" A rest stop for Greyhound bus passengers on the
way from Louisville, Kentucky to Nashville,
Tennessee, with separate accommodations for
colored passengers."
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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 101st Airborne
Division into Little Rock to insure the safety of
the "Little Rock Nine" and that the rulings of
the Supreme Court were upheld.

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Little Rock Police work to keep protesters behind
barricades at Central High on Sept. 27, 1957.
106

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

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Rosa Parkss 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.

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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 1950s, that laid the
organizational groundwork for the dynamic civil
rights movement of the1960s.

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The Impact of the Cold War

Nuclear Proliferation

116

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.

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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 countrys economic
priorities, as military spending took up a
greater percentage of national income

119

One of the most alarming aspects of the nations
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.

120

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 Commissions experiments in the 1940s and
1950s did not know that they were being
irradiated.
By the late 1950s, 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.

121

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.

122

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.

123

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.

124

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

125

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.

126

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."

127
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