President Eisenhower
Furnish 2: Lilian Kao
Election
Election of 1952:
Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Republican Party
- Running Mate: Richard Nixon
- First presidential campaign to make an effort for female votes (Education, inflation, ending war in Korea)
- "Korea, Communism, Corruption"
- "I like Ike"
- "Citizens for Eisenhower" : focused on canvassing neighborhoods and expanding GOP activist ranks
- Won with 55% popular vote
Adlai Stevenson
- Democratic
- Running Mate: John Sparkman
Election of 1956:
- Re-match of Election of 1952
- TV ads became popular
Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Republican Party
- Running Mate: Richard Nixon
- Had health problems, but he was able to run because of the television
- Won with 57.4% popular vote
Adlai Stevenson
- Democratic Party
- Running Mate: Estes Kefauver
- Campaigned for government spending on social programs
- Proposed ending the military draft
Key Events
Cold War
- (1945-1963
- Tension between Western democracies and E. European communists
- US v. Soviets fought indirectly)
- Dien Bien Phu falls to communists; causes Geneva Conference (split Vietnam)
- Suez Canal Crisis
McCarthy
- Anti-communist crusader
- Senator Joseph R. McCarthy
- Too accusatory, little evidence
- Eisenhower did not like him, but stayed out of his way
- "McCarthyism" is known as the practice of making accusations of disloyalty without evidence
Desegregation
- Jim Crow Laws ("separate but equal")
- "Whites only" v. "Colored area"
- 1944: An American Dilemma (Gunnar Myrdal) exposes the harsh treatment of blacks
- Jackie Robinson broke color barrier in baseball; 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers sign
- Sweatt v. Painter Supreme Court Case: separate black schools were not equal
- Rosa Parks: refuses to give her seat up to whites, causes Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Rev. MLK Jr. : non violence, led black revolution
- Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas: segregation was unconstitutional
- Eisenhower forced to send troops to escort nine students to class (Little Rock)
- Civil Rights Act 1957: set Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of civil rights, protect voting rights
- MLK Jr.: SCLC 1957
- 1960: SNCC
Eisenhower's Republicanism
- "Dynamic conservation"
- Supported transfer of oil field control from Fed to State
- Encouraged private power company to build generating plants to challenge the TVA
- Proposed termination of Native American tribes; Dawes Severalty Act 1887
- Interstate Highway Act 1956: $27bil. plan for 42k miles of motorway
Vietnam War
- Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh
- Asia became increasingly communist
- 1954 Dien Bien Phu; Geneva Conference (split Vietnam at 17th parallel); N.Vietnam = Ho Chi Minh, S. Vietnam = Ngo Dinh Diem
- Eisenhower promised aid to south
Space Race
- After second Eisenhower election (1956)
- Soviets launch Sputnik into space on October 4, 1957
- Americans embarrassed... Eisenhower creates NASA in response