Dwight D. Eisenhower
34th President of the United States, from 1953-1961
Election of 1952
- Ran against Democrat Adlai Stevenson
- Chose Nixon as his running mate to satisfy anti-Communist Republican wing
- Nixon accused of tapping government funds during campaign, almost removed from ballot
- Nixon stays on the ballot by publicly apologizing in his televised Checkers Speech.
- Black and white television changed the campaigning process during this election
- Eisenhower wins by a large majority
Election of 1956
- Ran again against Democrat Adlai Stevenson
- Eisenhower's Health issues were a concern but he ultimately won a landslide victory
Cold War
- Long competition between the US and the USSR effectively over whose ideology was better, communism or democracy
- Race to convert other countries to either ideology
- Race to achieve more power or prestige
- No open conflict between the two, but it came close a few times
- Geneva Summit Conference, Eisenhower tries to make peace with new soviet dictator
- The space Race, but more on that later
- US and USSR suspend nuclear testing in 1958
- Lebanon asks for US support to combat communism in 1958
- US U-2 Spy plane shot down over Russia in 1960
Joseph McCarthy
- February 1950, Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy made a speech accusing secretary of State Dean Acheson of knowingly employing 205 communist party members
- while this proved to be false, it gained McCarthy public support
- With the republican victory in the election McCarthy got even bolder with his communist accusations
- in 1954, he went too far and attacked the US Army. A few months later he was condemned by the senate for his conduct.
Desegregation in the South
- Sweatt vs. Painter ruled that black schools were not equal
- in 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, sparking a year-long black boycott of buses
- Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ruled that segregation is schools was unequal and unconstitutional, reversing the decision of Plessy vs. Ferguson
- more than 100 senators and Congressmen in the deep south signed the declaration of constitutional principles in 1956, opposing desegregation
- in 1957, Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas, mobilized the national guard from to keep blacks from enrolling in Little Rock's Central High School
- Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort these blacks to their classes
- 1957, congress passes first civil rights act since reconstruction which set up a permanent civil rights committee
- Martin Luther King Jr. formed the SCLC in 1957
Eisenhower's Republicanism Policies
- Dynamic Conservatism
- liberality with human resources, but conservation of economic resources
- desire to avoid "Creeping Socialism"
- decrease military spending significantly
- shrink the federal government
- encourage the private sector to compete with the public institutions of the new deal
- Operation Wetback deported about a million Mexican immigrants
- cut back the "Indian New Deal" wanting to return to the Dawes Act of 1887
- Interstate Highway Act
Beginning of the Veitnam War
- Ho Chi Minh became communist
- US was giving the French money to help the fight in Southeast Asia
- French Forces still could not defeat Minh's guerrilla forces
- French trapped at Dienbienphu
- Geneva conference established the 17th parallel as the border
- Southern Vietnam (Pro-Western) led by Ngo Dinh Diem
- Eisenhower supports the south as long as they undergo the slow process of social reform
Space Race
- USSR launches Sputnik into orbit Oct 4, 1957
- Sputnik II follows a month later
- This hurt America's pride because it showed that communism created more industrial efficiency
- NASA created by Eisenhower
- Vanguard explodes just after takeoff which was televised
- US sends small satellite into orbit and begins testing intercontinental missiles in 1958
- Education began focusing on science over art