Eisenhower
Election (1952)
- Democratic nomination: Adlai E. Stevenson
- Republican nomination: Dwight D. Eisenhower, VP: Richard Nixon
- Eisenhower debated releasing Nixon after accusation of tapping government funds
- Nixon delivers Checkers Speech, and stays on ballot
Election (1956)
- Democratic nomination: Adlai E. Stevenson
- Republican nomination: Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Democrats pushed for a issue to find over Eisenhower but failed and Eisenhower was reelected
Cold War
- Both countries agreed to put an end to nuclear weapons because they were becoming so dominant
- Helped Lebanon after they asked for aid under the Eisenhower Doctrine (economically and militarily)
- "Spirit of Camp David" after Krushchev proposed UN with a disarmament program with Eisenhower
- American U-2 spy plane shot down over Russia--no more peace
Joseph McCarthy
- Republican senator
- Accusations that government officials were communist
- McCarthyism
- Attacked the military--big mistake
- Army retaliated with TV trails and McCarthy was disbanded
Desegregation in the South
- Jim Crow laws still in place
- Sweatt v. Painter, 1950: supreme court ruled separate schools for the blacks did not meet the equality test
- Rosa Parks: refused to give up bus seat, sparking Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Montgomery Bus Boycott: black boycott of city busses, blacks showed they are no longer submitting to segregation
- Dr. Martin Luther King: paster, orator, leader of back revolution, created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--joint effort of black churches
- Little Rock Crisis: governor of Arkansas Oral Faubus mobilized the National Guard to prevent black students from enrolling in Central High School--Eisenhower sent troops to escort them to class
- Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 1954: supreme court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional, reversing the ruling of Plessy v Ferguson
- Civil Rights Act, 1957: permanent civil rights commission investigation civil rights violations & authorizing injunctions to protect blacks voting rights
Republicanism
- Operation Wetback: Eisenhower rounded up illegal Mexican immigrants after Mexican government worried they were taking the jobs that braceros were coming over legally for
- Indian New Deal: Eisenhower wanted to terminate the tribes as legal entities and assimilate as in the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887
- Plan was aborted after tribes refused
- Interstate Highway Act, 1956: many miles of highway were built making for many jobs and a quicker suburbanization
Vietnam War
- Early 50's: nationalist movement--trying to rid French in Indochina
- May 1954: French fort at Dienbienphu was trapped but Eisenhower did not intervene on fear of another war
- US promised to aid Diem regime
Space Race
- October 4th, 1957: Soviets launched satellite, Sputnik I and Sputnik II the following month
- NASA: created to focus on satellites and missiles
- National Defense and Education Act: authorized loans in order to improve science and language teaching