A Time of Paradox: America Since 1890 by Jeansonne Glen

Author:Jeansonne, Glen [Jeansonne, Glen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461636380
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2013-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

PART III

An Era of Uncertainty, 1945–1968

Prologue

EVEN AFTER winning World War II, Americans lived with uncertainty. They seemed to be fighting constantly, waging wars abroad in Korea and Vietnam and waging wars at home—one against poverty and, ultimately, one among themselves. The Cold War permeated these struggles, affecting domestic politics, culture, and international relations.

President Harry S Truman promoted the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine, sent the United States into the Korean War, promised civil rights to minorities, and espoused a Fair Deal. But much of his domestic program faltered or fell short of expectations, and Truman, an upset winner in 1948, was a lame duck by 1952. Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II hero who succeeded Truman, took office determined to ensure enduring peace but had to settle for an inconclusive end to the Korean conflict and a continuation of the Cold War.

In the Cold War, America experienced instant fortunes, instant celebrities, and the specter of instant death. Americans had believed themselves secure, unchallenged with the might of the atomic bomb, until the Soviets acquired the power. Subversives within the federal government were helping prepare the country for a communist takeover, warned demagogic Senator Joseph McCarthy, who became a victim of his own excesses. Bigger bombs, greater radioactive fallout, multiple warheads, and ballistic missiles were to come. Despite it all, most Americans lived normal lives. More important than world events, especially in rural areas and small towns, were families, friends, jobs, and schools. Socially and economically, there were a host of ways to enjoy life during these affluent decades. Instead of shrinking from the Cold War, some moviemakers parodied it. Although the times were uncertain, Americans were concerned, perhaps saddened, but not hysterical.

If the bomb did not explode, the population did. From the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, a baby boom occurred that affected the United States economically and politically, particularly in the 1960s. The initial wave of baby boomers, born in the year after World War II ended, entered college in 1964, the year of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the Berkeley free speech movement, and the beginning of the urban riots. Television was the companion of the baby boomers, whose generation was the first to come of age under its influence. In 1950 only 8 percent of American families had TV sets; a decade later, only 10 percent did not have one. People watched Ozzie and Harriet, Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, the Kefauver Committee hearings, and the Army-McCarthy hearings. Other shows featured preachers Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale, and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, popularizers who offered religion as a tonic. Elvis Presley, on the other hand, shook everyone up. To adult dismay, the boomers gyrated with him and tuned in to rock ‘n’ roll music, introducing a culture much as their elders embraced jazz.

Unlike the 1950s—a golden age, if one were white, male, and middle class—the 1960s were inhospitable to moderation. Bob Dylan, troubadour of the young, warned the older generation about the impending deluge of change.

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