Eisenhower
Electing Eisenhower
- Election of 1952: Elected as a republican with the hard line VP Nixon
- Nixon's checker speech appealed to America, showed the potency of television
- Promised to end the war in Korea
- Very popular, general and president of Columbia
Cold War contributions
- Threatened to use Atomic bombs to get an armistice
- Korea still split between the 38th parallel
- Vietnam was split at the 17th parallel
- Suez Canal Crisis- Eisenhower reprimanded Britain and France
- Diplomacy was attempted at the Geneva convention but ultimately failed
McCarthism Takes over
- Eisenhower liked harmony, McCarthy was a rubble rouser
- McCarthy was popular, as was Eisenhower
- Ruthless in his red-scare accusations
- Later denounced and de-partied
- Symbol of using unfairness and fear in a democratic society
Segregation
- 2/3 of African Americans were in the south, 20% of them were registered to vote Jack Robinson was the first black big league baseball player in 1947
- 1944- Supreme Court outlawed the "white primary"
- Rosa Parks rode on the "white section" of a bus in 1955, signaled that blacks were not content
- Little Rock Crisis- Students were barred from entering a segregated school, Supreme Court issued the famous Brown vs Board of Education outlawing all segregated schools
Containing Vietnam
- Nationalist movements were spreading across Indochina
- Leaders of the Indochinese countries became communist while America was anti-Communist (Ho Chi Minh)
- French forces were cornered in 1954
- Eisenhower did not intervene for he was weary of another Korean War
- United Nations split the countries at the 17th parallel, Communist north, western south
Eisenhower's policies
- Fiscally conservative, socially liberal
- Small government and protection from socialism
- Gave control of oilfields to states
- Operation Wetback- rounded up illegal immigrants
- Supported the construction of Highways in the Interstate Highway Act of 1956
Space race is initiated
- In 1957 Russia launched Sputnik, then Sputnik with a dog
- NASA was established, the space race kicked off
- In 1958, the National Defense and Education Act (NDEA) was passed and loans were given to colleges for science courses