Gregory Bodenhamer Become A Millionaire in American The Affluent Society of Dealers and Risk Takers Learn How Free Workbook The 1950s are often seen as a counterpoint to the decades that followed it — a period of conformity, prosperity, and peace (after the Korean War ended), as compared to the rebellion, unrest, and war that began in the 1960s. However, the decade was not without its problems. Many domestic and foreign policy issues surfaced in the '50s that the United States would grapple with in the years ahead. Throughout the country, while many Americans enjoyed the fruits of an “affluent society,” poverty was more widespread than most believed, and the struggle for civil rights by minorities, particularly African-Americans, became a national concern. Internationally, the Cold War continued. Although Eisenhower initiated the first steps toward improving relations with the Soviet Union, the United States became involved in Southeast Asia and offered pro-Western governments in the Middle East and Latin America financial and military support.

The Affluent Society

The 1950s are often seen as a counterpoint to the decades that followed it — a period of conformity, prosperity, and peace (after the Korean War ended), as compared to the rebellion, unrest, and war that began in the 1960s. However, the decade was not without its problems. Many domestic and foreign policy issues surfaced in the '50s that the United States would grapple with in the years ahead. Throughout the country, while many Americans enjoyed the fruits of an “affluent society,” poverty was more widespread than most believed, and the struggle for civil rights by minorities, particularly African-Americans, became a national concern. Internationally, the Cold War continued. Although Eisenhower initiated the first steps toward improving relations with the Soviet Union, the United States became involved in Southeast Asia and offered pro-Western governments in the Middle East and Latin America financial and military support.

For middle-class Americans, the 1950s were a time of prosperity. Even with three recessions during the eight years of the Eisenhower administration, the country's per capita income rose and inflation remained low. Americans had more discretionary income, and they spent it on cars, homes, television sets, and an array of other household appliances. By 1960, more than 60 percent of Americans owned their own homes, and three quarters of the households in the country had television sets. Much of this consumer spending was done on credit, with bank loans, installment buying, and credit cards (which were introduced in 1950).

The physical well being of Americans was as good as their economic health. Advances in medicine included new antibiotics and, perhaps most important, a successful vaccine against poliomyelitis, a disease that had crippled millions of children. Dr. Jonas Salk announced his discovery of a polio vaccine in 1953, and four years later, Dr. Albert Sabin developed a vaccine that could be taken orally. With a nationwide inoculation program, polio disappeared from the United States.

Suburban America. The influx of people to the suburbs that began after World War II continued unabated throughout the 1950s. Meanwhile, population growth slowed in cities and decreased in rural areas, and by 1960, nearly 40 percent of all Americans lived in suburbia. The growth of these “bedroom” communities, where residents lived on the outskirts of town and commuted to work, meant that the automobile became more important than ever before. As the number of cars increased, so did the demand for gasoline and better roads. Although people were willing to drive or take public transportation to work, they were not willing to go to the city to shop. Consequently, shopping centers became a distinctive feature on the suburban landscape during the decade, and cities' central business districts showed signs of decline.

Labor in the Fifties.The composition of the labor force changed dramatically in the 1950s. Factory employment declined because of improvements in productivity and technology, while the number of white-collar jobs in the clerical, sales, and service sectors grew. Although union membership began to drop late in the decade, organized labor made significant gains. The internal strife within the union movement ended in 1955 with the merging of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations into the AFL-CIO. Workers in many industries won settlements that linked wages to cost-of-living increases.

The number of women working outside the home increased significantly in the '50s. By 1960, nearly 40 percent of American women had joined the workforce, and married women with school-age children represented a significant proportion of that number. Women continued to earn considerably less than men for doing the same job, regardless of whether they worked in a factory or office, or in a profession such as teaching or nursing. The fact that so many women worked outside the home ran counter to the myth in popular culture that emphasized the importance of traditional gender roles. Advertising, mass circulation magazines such as Life, and television's situation comedies sent the message that women should focus on creating a beautiful home and raising a family.

Modern Republicanism. Although some Republicans hoped that Eisenhower would dismantle all of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs, the president realized that doing so was neither possible nor desirable. In fact, Eisenhower supported some components of the New Deal, such as Social Security, whose coverage was expanded to the self-employed, farm workers, and military personnel; and the federal minimum wage, which rose to $1 an hour during his administration. However, the president's domestic agenda did reverse some New Deal trends. For example, Eisenhower focused on reducing the federal budget, which included cutting farm subsidies, abolishing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, keeping inflation in check, and promoting private rather than public development of the nation's energy resources. Despite Eisenhower's concern for fiscal responsibility, he was prepared to increase spending to get the country out of the 1953, 1957, and 1958 recessions. Modern Republicanism represented a pragmatic approach to domestic policy. Committed to limiting the role of the government in the economy, the administration was ready to act when circumstances demanded it.

Eisenhower's modern Republicanism embraced two major public works projects — the St. Lawrence Seaway and the interstate highway system. The Seaway, a joint American-Canadian effort completed in 1959, gave ocean-going ships access to the Great Lakes. The Interstate Highway Act, passed in 1956, authorized the federal government to finance 90 percent of the cost of building the interstate system through a tax on automobiles, parts, and gasoline that went into the Highway Trust Fund. The 30-year construction program skewed the nation's transportation policy in favor of cars and trucks and resulted in reduced spending on urban mass transit and railroads.

The Other America. Although the economy grew in the 1950s, not everyone experienced prosperity. Michael Harrington's The Other America (1962) documented poverty in the United States and revealed that, by 1960, 35 million Americans lived below the poverty line (defined as a family of four with an annual income of less than $3,000). Despite the expansion of Social Security, older Americans often lived in substandard housing with inadequate food and medical care. Poverty crossed color lines, affecting whites in rural Appalachia, Mexican-American migrant farm workers in the Southwest and California, Native Americans on reservations, and inner-city minorities, including blacks and Puerto Ricans.

Because poverty was not recognized as a national problem until the 1960s, federal policy in the 1950s often contributed to the situation rather than to help resolve it. During and after World War II, for example, the braceroprogram brought Mexican workers to the United States to work on American farms. Although the workers were expected to return to Mexico at the end of the harvest or the labor contract, many opted to stay and became illegal aliens. Millions were deported in 1953–55 when a recession made having jobs available for American citizens essential. One of the most notable “roundups” of illegal immigrants occurred in Texas during the summer and fall of 1954 when 80,000 Mexicans were deported in Operation Wetback. When prosperity returned in the mid-1950s, so did invitations to Mexican guest workers.

Popular culture. In 1954, Congress added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, and the phrase “In God We Trust” was included on all U.S. currency in the following year. While these changes were subtle reminders of the ideological struggle of the Cold War (Americans believed in God; Communists were atheists), they also reflected the mood of the country. The United States experienced a religious revival in the 1950s, with more than 60 percent of Americans reporting they belonged to a church or synagogue, as opposed to less than 50 percent before World War II. Evangelist Billy Graham, Protestant minister Norman Vincent Peale, and Roman Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen emerged as the spokespersons for the revival, and they used the newest mass medium — television — to carry their message to millions of Americans. Sheen had a weekly television program called Life is Worth Living, and Graham's crusades were later televised as well.

Television replaced the radio as the dominant form of home entertainment. The number of television sets in American homes grew from a few thousand at the end of World War II to nearly 46 million by 1960. TV Guide became the nation's leading magazine, and food companies introduced frozen meals called TV dinners. Although the most popular television programs were situation comedies (I Love Lucy), game shows (The$64,000 Question), and adult westerns ( Gunsmoke), television in the 1950s was not the “vast wasteland” that critics often claimed. Television proved that it could be a potent force in shaping politics and public opinion. For example, Nixon's “Checkers” speech, which was carried on TV, kept him in the running for vice president in 1952, and the televised Army-McCarthy hearings proved that the senator from Wisconsin was a dangerous demagogue, a point that was emphasized on Edward R. Murrow's See It Now exposé in 1954. Murrow's series, which ran from 1951 to 1958, also brought the plight of migrant farm workers to the attention of Americans.

Drawing the largest audience of teenage television viewers was Dick Clark's American Bandstand, a program showcasing the music of rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll grew out of the African-American rhythm and blues (R & B) tradition when, around 1954, white singers began imitating R & B groups or melding R & B and country styles. Despite charges that it was “race music” and contributed to juvenile delinquency, performers such as Bill Haley and the Comets (“Rock Around the Clock”) and, most notably, Elvis Presley made rock 'n' roll a youth music phenomenon. Rock 'n' roll also helped to bring black artists such as Chuck Berry into the entertainment mainstream.

American Foreign Policy

Although during his 1952 campaign Eisenhower attacked the Truman administration's containment policy as not forceful enough, Eisenhower made no attempt to “roll back” communism during his eight years in office. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles frequently spoke of helping to liberate the “captive peoples” of Eastern Europe, but when opportunities to do so arose during East Germany's labor unrest in 1953 and Hungary's revolt against the Soviet Union in 1956, the United States offered no assistance. Eisenhower favored a less confrontational approach to the USSR and sought a variety of means to check Russian influence around the world.

Brinkmanship, massive retaliation, and the domino theory. Possession of nuclear weapons gave the United States leverage in foreign relations, allowing it to use the strategy of brinkmanship and the threat of massive retaliation to deter communist expansion. Brinkmanship indicated a willingness to go to the very brink of war, including the determination to use nuclear weapons, to force a belligerent country to back down. Massive retaliation referred to American readiness to use its large nuclear arsenal to stop aggression. Both concepts were tied to the economics of the Cold War: brinkmanship and massive retaliation relied on the nuclear deterrent to intimidate the Soviet Union and China, and it was considered much cheaper than building up conventional armed forces to do the same job. The nuclear option provided the United States with “more bang for the buck.” In 1953, Eisenhower's threat of a nuclear strike broke the deadlock in the Korean truce talks. The United States was also prepared to use nuclear weapons to defend the islands of Quemoy and Matsu claimed by Taiwan (Nationalist China) in 1955 against aggression from Communist China.

Foreign policy was also shaped by the domino theory, which claimed that if one country in a region fell to communism, the other countries in that area would quickly follow. Eisenhower first outlined the theory in response to events in Indochina. France's long struggle to hold on to its colony in Asia ended in 1954 with the signing of the Geneva Accords. Under the terms of the Accords, Laos and Cambodia became neutral states, while Vietnam was divided along the 17th parallel, with the Vietminh under nationalist Communist leader Ho Chi Minh in control of the North and France and the State of Vietnam (which became the Republic of Vietnam in 1955) governing the South. Elections were to be held in 1956 to unify the country. Worried that the Communists would gain control of the entire country in the elections, neither the United States nor the South Vietnamese supported the Accords. American policy at the juncture was twofold: The United States offered support, including military aid, to Ngo Dinh Diem's South Vietnam government (even as communist guerrilla activity increased in the late 1950s), and it created a new alliance partnership — the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization ( SEATO) — to prevent the spread of communism in southeast Asia. Despite its name, SEATO was not a defensive pact and did not have an “attack against one is an attack against all” provision, as NATO did. SEATO's members — the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, France, and the United States — agreed to do little more than consult.

The Middle East and the Western Hemisphere. Eisenhower's policy in the Middle East was to restrict Russian influence and to keep the oil supply open to the United States and other Western countries. Both of these ends were served in 1953 when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engineered a coup in Iran that returned the pro-Western shah to power. In the mid-'50s, tensions arose in Egypt when Gamal Abdel Nasser, an Egyptian nationalist who came to power in 1952, decided to build a dam on the Nile at Aswan and to use the hydroelectric power to modernize his country. The United States and Great Britain had planned to provide financial assistance for the project, but they backed out of the loan in 1956 when Egypt established stronger ties with the USSR and Eastern Europe. Nasser responded to the withdrawal of funds by announcing plans to nationalize the Suez Canal and use the revenues from the tolls for the Aswan High Dam project. This announcement prompted Israel to invade the Sinai Peninsula in late October, followed by a joint British-French attack on Egypt in early November. Opposing the military action, the United States and the Soviet Union worked through the United Nations to bring about the withdrawal of the foreign troops. Even though American support was critical in ending the Suez Crisis, the position of the Soviet Union in the Middle East was stronger in its wake. The president's reaction to the heightened Soviet influence was to state that the United States would use military force if necessary to resist communist aggression in the region. Under this policy, known as the Eisenhower Doctrine, more than 14,000 American soldiers were sent to Lebanon in 1958 at the request of the pro-Western government.

Although the era of direct American intervention in the affairs of countries in the Western Hemisphere ended with Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy in the 1930s, the United States continued to influence Latin American politics, using covert operations to bring about political change. In 1954, for example, the CIA supported the overthrow of the government of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala, as it had done in Iran the year before. Coming to power through a democratic election, Arbenz supported agrarian land reform, and his order expropriating unused land from the American-based United Fruit Company triggered the coup. The United States' involvement in the revolt was well known and spurred anti-American demonstrations during Vice President Richard Nixon's goodwill tour of Latin America in 1958. Meanwhile, on New Year's Day 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba. The Cuban Revolution was approved of by the United States until Castro began to fill key posts in his government with communists. When the United States placed an embargo on Cuban sugar exports, Castro turned to the Soviet Union for economic and military aid.

Relations with the Soviet Union. Eisenhower believed that the best way to improve Soviet-American relations was through face-to-face meetings, or summit conferences. The first summit conference with the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France was held in Geneva in 1955. Although nothing substantive came out of the summit, there was a noticeable lessening of tensions between the countries that was attributed to the “spirit of Geneva.” That spirit quickly dissipated, however, when Russian tanks put down the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and after the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in 1957, demonstrating that the Soviet Union could launch long-range nuclear missiles against the United States. Sputnik also triggered the “space race,” generated talk of a “missile gap” between the United States and the USSR, and led to the passage of the National Defense Education Act (1958), which provided funding for programs in science, math, and foreign language studies, as well as student loans and fellowships.

Summit diplomacy resumed in 1959, when Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev met at Camp David, the U.S. presidential retreat, and the Soviet leader toured the country. However, a summit conference in Paris in May 1960 ended almost as soon as it began when Khrushchev revealed that an American U-2 spy plane had been shot down over the USSR. Eisenhower tried to claim that the plane had strayed off course while collecting weather data, but Khrushchev was able to show the world the captured pilot (Francis Gary Powers), the spy cameras, and the photographs of missile sites. Faced with such evidence, Eisenhower was forced to admit that U-2 spy missions had been operating over Russia for four years. Although his personal diplomatic efforts with the Soviet Union ultimately failed, the president did leave an important legacy in foreign policy. In a speech he gave shortly before leaving office, Eisenhower warned of the close relationship that had developed between the armed services and American industry. Since the end of World War II, military contracts had become a major source of income for many sectors of the economy. Eisenhower cautioned that the military-industrial complex had become powerful enough to exert an “unwarranted influence” on how the United States acted in the world arena.

The Civil Rights Movement

What little had been accomplished during the Truman Administration with regard to civil rights was done by the president himself through executive orders that prohibited discrimination in the federal government and ended segregation in the armed services. During the Eisenhower administration, Supreme Court decisions and organized protests by African-Americans themselves challenged Jim Crow laws. Eisenhower, although he had little faith in the power of the judiciary alone to end discrimination, assumed full responsibility for seeing that the rulings of federal courts were obeyed. Congress, on the other hand, moved slowly to enhance the legal status of blacks and other minorities.

Brown v. Board of Education. In 1950, the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Education Fund decided to challenge the legal heart of segregation — the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had established the “separate but equal” doctrine. Several cases on public-school segregation were making their way through the federal judiciary at this time, and the first to reach the Supreme Court was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. In 1954, the Court, under the new Eisenhower-appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren, ruled that “separate but equal” schools for blacks and whites were inherently unequal and therefore were a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A former attorney general and governor of California, Warren recognized that the decision had to be unanimous if it was going to have a significant impact across the country, and he worked hard with the other justices to gain consensus. Although the Court did not provide a blueprint as to how the decision should be carried out, in 1955 it ordered the desegregation of the public schools “with all deliberate speed.”

Eisenhower ordered the immediate desegregation of schools in Washington, D.C., which were under federal jurisdiction, and the process went smoothly in some of the 21 states that had legally segregated school systems. In other states, however, opposition to desegregation was strong. The Brown decision led to a revival of the Ku Klux Klan and to the creation of White Citizens Councils in the South to defend segregation. In March 1956, 100 southern senators and congressmen signed the Southern Manifesto, which accused the Court of abuse of judicial power and sought the restoration of “legal” segregation.

The most direct confrontation came at the beginning of the 1957 school year in Little Rock, Arkansas. In September, nine African-American students were scheduled to enroll in the all-white Central High School. Defying the federal order to integrate, Governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the nine students from entering the school. Faubus withdrew the Guard in response to a court order, but when the teenagers tried to attend classes, an angry mob surrounded the school and the students were forced to leave. As a result, President Eisenhower sent in the Regular Army and federalized the National Guard to protect the students and to make sure they were allowed to go to school. The incident had important consequences. It marked the first time since Reconstruction that the federal government had taken concerted action to protect the rights of African-Americans. Additionally, television extensively covered the events in Little Rock, and the virulent racism of white students and adults built support for the civil rights movement.

The Montgomery bus boycott. While riding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person, as the law required. She was arrested and fined. The African-American community in Montgomery, under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., responded with a boycott of the city bus system. Because blacks made up the majority of riders, the action had a serious effect on transit revenues, but local leaders still refused to change the law. The boycott continued until November 1956 when the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public transportation was unconstitutional. The events in Montgomery helped make King the recognized leader of the civil rights movement and gave credence to his nonviolent approach to racial justice. He became the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957.

Congress could not help but notice both the decisions of the Supreme Court and the growing activism of African-Americans themselves. With the backing of Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson, Congress passed the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 created the Commission on Civil Rights to investigate cases in which the right to vote was denied on the basis of race or where the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was violated. The law was strengthened somewhat through the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which gave federal judges the power to appoint arbitrators to ensure that blacks were allowed to register and vote.

Hispanics and Native Americans. The discrimination faced by other minorities in the United States did not attract the same public attention as the struggle of blacks and, in some instances, was more subtle. For instance, Mexican-Americans might not be served in a restaurant in Texas, but no body of law existed (as in the case of African-Americans) that regulated their interactions with whites. Official segregation of Mexican-Americans in public education began to unravel in the late 1940s through action of the federal and local courts, and their integration was never as contentious an issue as it was with African-Americans. Like blacks, Hispanics formed their own organizations to press for full equality. One such organization, the American GI Forum, was established when a Texas funeral home refused to bury a Mexican-American veteran of World War II. The League of United Latin American Citizens, better known as LULAC, was another important voice for Hispanics in the 1950s.

The Eisenhower administration was intent on fully integrating Native Americans into the dominant culture. In 1953, the government instituted the so-called termination policy, under which the Bureau of Indian Affairs provided fewer federal services to Native Americans, encouraged tribes to sell off their lands, and offered incentives to individuals and families to leave the reservations. At the heart of termination was not only the belief that the maintenance of the reservation system prevented full assimilation but also pressure from states and corporations that wanted to gain control of tribal lands containing valuable timber and mineral resources. Although the policy was phased out in the late 1950s, it did bring about a significant rise in the number of Native Americans living in cities. However, only 10 percent of those who left the reservations found jobs, and for many, urban life meant unemployment, poverty, and alcoholism.

The Kennedy Years

From the aura of idealism surrounding John F. Kennedy, the youngest person ever elected president, to the confrontations in the streets at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the 1960s began as an era of expectation and hope and drew to a close in discord and division. Throughout the '60s, the country experienced upheavals created by an increasingly unpopular war, a civil rights movement that led to demands for ethnic power, and political violence on an unprecedented scale, including the assassinations of President Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. The decade was also a time of heightened social awareness, in which legal barriers to equality began to tumble, and a concerted effort was made, albeit unsuccessfully, to address the problems of the poor and underprivileged.

In 1960, the Republicans chose Richard Nixon, Eisenhower's Vice President, for their presidential candidate and named Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., former Massachusetts senator and the ambassador to the United Nations, as his running mate. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts emerged from a crowded Democratic field to win his party's nomination, and he selected Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas to balance the ticket. Kennedy's success in the primaries had eliminated any concerns that his being a Roman Catholic would become an issue in the campaign.

The 1960 campaign was hard fought. Nixon had been a highly visible vice president, having assumed some presidential duties when Eisenhower was hospitalized twice during his administration with a heart condition. Even so, Kennedy — who was less well known and had, at best, a mediocre record in Congress — managed to put Nixon on the defensive by blaming the Eisenhower administration for the economic recession that the country was experiencing and by decrying the decline of American international influence. The turning point in the race was a series of four debates between the two candidates that were televised nationwide. Although most people believed that in substance the candidates' arguments were evenly matched, Kennedy looked better than Nixon on television; he appeared younger and more in control. On election night, Kennedy's margin of victory in the popular vote was just over 100,000, the smallest amount in 75 years. The shift of a few thousand votes in pivotal states like Illinois would have given the election to Nixon.

The New Frontier. Kennedy referred to his domestic and foreign programs as “a New Frontier.” However, with no clear electoral mandate and a conservative coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans in control of Congress, Kennedy was unable to get major pieces of his domestic program approved. Significant federal aid to education that was earmarked for school construction, teacher salaries, and scholarships failed. Legislation for hospital and nursing care for the elderly, known as Medicare, faced the determined opposition of the American Medical Association, as Truman's proposals had a decade earlier. The plan for a Department of Urban Affairs, which would have addressed the problems of housing and crime in the nation's cities, was also rejected.

Despite the resistance he met in Congress, Kennedy did succeed in getting some significant portions of his domestic agenda enacted during his 1,000 days in office. The Housing Act (1961), for example, provided $5 billion for urban renewal and new housing construction. The Minimum Wage Act (1961) raised the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour and increased the number of workers eligible for minimum wage. Additionally, the Social Security Act was amended in 1961 to provide benefits to those who retired at the age of 62 rather than 65. Kennedy's most enduring legacy, the Peace Corps, was the embodiment of his inaugural address challenge to Americans to serve their country. Created by executive order in 1961, the Peace Corps bridged the gap between domestic and foreign policy. Through the program, Americans volunteered in developing countries around the world as teachers or to share their technical skills. The president also had success in reviving the economy through increased defense spending and tax cuts, all the while keeping inflation under control. Foreign trade was given a boost by the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which gave Kennedy the authority to significantly lower tariffs and to eliminate duties completely on certain goods exported by both the United States and the newly formed European Economic Community (the Common Market).

Kennedy and civil rights. Throughout most of his presidency, Kennedy paid little attention to civil rights. He introduced civil rights legislation only in June 1963, and by that time, African-Americans were pushing the movement in new directions. In early 1960, demonstrations known as sit-ins began to force the desegregation of lunch counters and restaurants in the South. Blacks, often college students, sat down at a lunch counter and refused to leave until they were served. Getting service could sometimes take months. Similar nonviolent tactics were used to integrate other public facilities, such as libraries, beaches, and swimming pools. In the following year, the Congress of Racial Equality ( CORE) organized the first “freedom rides,” in which both blacks and whites rode buses throughout the South to integrate bus terminals and to demand the enforcement of the Supreme Court decision banning segregation from interstate transportation. Through these efforts, Jim Crow laws gradually lost their influence.

In the fall of 1962, James Meredith, an African-American student, obtained a federal court order allowing him to enroll at the University of Mississippi. When Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett prevented him from doing so twice, U.S. Marshals were sent to enforce the court ruling. Violence erupted on campus, leading to two deaths and several injuries. At this point, Kennedy sent in federal troops to restore calm and to ensure that Meredith was protected while he attended class. In June 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace personally kept two black students from attending summer school at the University of Alabama. He quickly backed down, however, when the president federalized the Alabama National Guard and sent it to the university.

To pressure Congress to enact Kennedy's civil rights bill, black leaders organized a massive march on Washington, D.C., in August 1963. More than 200,000 blacks and whites gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial to hear Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Although certainly a high point in what has been called the “integrationist” phase of the civil rights movement, the march did not fulfill its objective. Congress had still taken no action on civil rights legislation when the president was assassinated in November 1963.

Kennedy's foreign policy. Cuba provided the Kennedy administration with both its greatest foreign policy failure and its greatest success. Soon after taking office, Kennedy learned of a CIA plan to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro using Cuban exiles living in the United States. Although the president approved the Bay of Pigs invasion (April 1961), he withheld crucial American air support at the last minute. The operation was a disaster and resulted in the Soviet Union increasing direct military aid to Cuba.

Tensions between the USSR and the United States, which were already high because of Berlin and the construction of the Berlin Wall (August 1961), intensified in October 1962, when aerial photographs revealed that the Russians were constructing medium-range missile sites in Cuba. Faced with this nuclear threat to the United States, Kennedy acted quickly. On October 22, he ordered a naval blockade around Cuba to prevent the Soviet Union from bringing in any more missiles and insisted that the Russians dismantle and remove any missiles already there. The Cuban missile crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, ended four days later when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev backed down and conceded to Kennedy's demands. The missiles were shipped back to the USSR, and in return, the United States promised not to invade Cuba and (in a much less publicized move) removed its own missiles from Turkey.

Soon after the missile crisis, American-Soviet relations began to improve. A “hot line” telephone link was established between Washington and Moscow to facilitate communications between the superpowers. In August 1963, with the Soviet Union increasingly concerned about a possible threat from China, the USSR, Great Britain, and the United States signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited nuclear testing in the atmosphere or underwater. France and China, who had recently become nuclear powers, refused to sign the agreement. The signing of the treaty with the Soviet Union did not mean, however, that Kennedy was no longer wary of communist expansion.

Kennedy significantly increased American aid to South Vietnam, in the form of both military equipment and advisers. By the end of 1963, there were 16,000 U.S. military personnel in the region. As the communist Viet Cong increased their presence in the countryside, the Kennedy administration supported the plans of the South Vietnamese Army to depose the increasingly unpopular President Ngo Dinh Diem. After Diem was killed during the coup on November 1, 1963, the United States recognized the new government, which turned out to be a succession of military leaders who hardly bothered to construct even a facade of democracy. Kennedy supporters claim that the president was moving toward a withdrawal from Vietnam after the 1964 election; critics believe that he accepted the domino theory, viewing Communism as a monolithic entity, and would have escalated U.S. participation in the conflict. In any event, Lyndon Johnson made the critical decisions about American involvement in Vietnam.

The assassination of Kennedy. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas. The president was in Texas to help resolve the differences between the liberal and conservative wings of the Democratic Party in the state before his 1964 reelection bid. Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine with ties to the Soviet Union and Cuba, was accused of the murder. A few days after Oswald's arrest, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby killed Oswald — an event that was captured on national television.

Kennedy's death shocked the nation and the world. President Johnson appointed a 17-member commission, chaired by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren, to investigate the assassination. The Warren Commission issued its report in September 1964, concluding that Oswald had killed Kennedy and that both Oswald and Ruby had acted alone. The report, however, left many questions unanswered and did not put to rest the idea that the assassination was the culmination of a conspiracy.

Johnson and the Great Society

Johnson's personality and political style contrasted sharply with the urbane and cultured Kennedy. A rough-edged Texan with a vulgar vocabulary, Johnson had supported New Deal reforms and had wielded considerable political power as Senate majority leader. As president, he used his political skills to enact what remained of Kennedy's programs. He also used his influence to push through a flood of new laws intended to help the poor and minorities and to create what he called the Great Society — a country in which poverty, disease, and racial injustice would be eliminated through government reforms. Unfortunately, his domestic initiatives fell victim to the deepening crisis in Vietnam, which drained valuable resources from domestic concerns and eroded Johnson's public support.

The Great Society. Johnson was able to persuade Congress to enact a wide range of programs following Kennedy's assassination. Having grown up poor, the president knew first hand what poverty meant, and he declared a war on poverty early in 1964 through the Economic Opportunity Act. The act provided funds for the Job Corps, which secured employment for inner city youths; established the Head Start program, to give disadvantaged preschoolers an early opportunity in education; and set up a domestic version of the Peace Corps known as VISTA, or Volunteers in Service to America.

Following his landslide victory over Republican conservative Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election, Johnson used his popular mandate to expand the Great Society. In 1965, after almost 20 years of inaction on the issue, Congress finally passed Medicare, which provided Americans over the age of 65 with medical insurance, and Medicaid, which allotted federal grants to states for medical coverage of the poor. Money was earmarked for the Appalachian area, one of the most severe pockets of poverty in the country, through the Appalachian Regional Development Act (1965). Billions of dollars were channeled into housing reform through rent subsidies for low-income families and the “model cities” program to rehabilitate substandard residential buildings. The nation's schools received the federal funding promised under Kennedy with substantial grants to both elementary and secondary school education. Also created were the Department of Housing and Urban Development (1965 — headed by Robert C. Weaver, the first African-American to serve in the cabinet) and the Department of Transportation (1966), as well as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities (1965). Additionally, the first serious attention was given to the environment with the enactment of the Water Quality Act (1965) and the Air Quality Act (1967).

Civil rights under Johnson. Johnson's Great Society also addressed racial injustice. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public accommodations, authorized the attorney general to file suits to desegregate schools, and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate complaints of job discrimination. During the “freedom summer” of 1964, CORE and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ( SNCC) organized the Mississippi Summer Project, a voter-registration drive in the South. In March of 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., coordinated a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, for black voting rights that was often marred by violence. Combined with the ratification of the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which outlawed the poll tax in federal elections, the Selma march marked a shift in civil rights tactics from seeking integration to stressing political power. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspended literacy tests in counties where less than 50 percent of the eligible voters had cast ballots in 1964, provided for federal examiners to register voters, and gave the attorney general the authority to begin litigation against the poll tax. In 1966, the Supreme Court struck down the poll tax in all elections. The combined effect of these measures was to dramatically increase the number of African-Americans registered in the South, from approximately one million in 1964 to more than three million by 1968, which ultimately transformed the Southern political landscape.

Neither the Great Society programs nor the civil rights legislation could prevent outbreaks of violence in the black neighborhoods of American cities in the 1960s. At the heart of the issues in the urban north was the lack of economic opportunity and political power. A major riot broke out in Los Angeles in August 1965 that left 34 people dead and cost more than $30 million in property damage. Rioting continued over the next several summers in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Newark. Finally, in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968, unrest broke out in more than 100 communities across the country.

At the same time, new black leaders were emerging to challenge King's integrationist and nonviolent philosophy. Malcolm X, the leader of the Black Muslim movement (also called the Nation of Islam), rejected integration and preached pride in the African heritage. He was assassinated in 1965 after he broke with the Nation of Islam. Similarly, Stokely Carmichael of the SNCC became an advocate of Black Power and moved the SNCC away from its original coalition of black and white students into black militancy. He became involved with the radical Black Panther Party that was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966. The shift from integration to separatism cost the civil rights movement white support in the late 1960s.

Blacks were not the only minority struggling for equality. Cesar Chavez, the founder of the National Farm Workers Association (1962), organized a nationwide strike of grape pickers and boycott of grapes (and then lettuce) to fight for improved wages and working conditions for migrant labor. Meanwhile, young Mexican-American activists called themselves Chicanos and demanded bilingual education programs in the public schools and Chicano studies at universities. Of all the ethnic groups in the country, however, Native Americans were in the most desperate position; they had the highest unemployment rate and the lowest life expectancy. In 1968, the American Indian Movement ( AIM) was founded to advocate for Native American rights. In the following year, Native Americans occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to dramatize their demands for enforcement of their legal rights, tribal autonomy, and restoration of tribal lands.

Johnson and Vietnam. In August 1964, two North Vietnamese patrol boats reportedly fired on American destroyers operating in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson charged that these were unprovoked attacks and used the incident to persuade Congress to act. Through the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (August 1964), the president was authorized to take any action necessary to repel attacks against U.S. forces and to prevent further aggression. The resolution became the official sanction to escalate American involvement in Vietnam. In early 1965, Johnson ordered the bombing of North Vietnam to stop the flow of men and material to the south. Operation Rolling Thunder, as the air campaign was called, continued until the spring of 1968. The first American combat troops were sent to Vietnam in March 1965 and the scope of their responsibility quickly shifted from defensive (protecting U.S. installations) to offensive operations. The number of ground troops rose incrementally, and just under 500,000 were committed to the war by 1968.

Much like the troop build-up, opposition to the war in the United States developed slowly. The first teach-ins, which questioned why the United States was fighting in Asia, were held on college campuses in the spring of 1965. Antiwar protests increased over the next several years, and more and more criticism was heard from the mainstream of American society, including such senators as William Fulbright and Robert Kennedy, who argued against Johnson's policies. Opposition grew as the cost of the war (which gutted many Great Society programs) rose, the number of American casualties mounted, and people's horror intensified as they viewed the conflict — America's first televised war — each evening on television. A key factor in shaping the public's attitudes toward the war was the Tet Offensive, which began on January 30, 1968.

North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces took advantage of the lunar New Year (Tet) truce to launch a month-long attack against more than 100 cities and military bases in South Vietnam. During the offensive, Hue, the former administrative seat of Southern Vietnam fell, and the American embassy in Saigon was briefly occupied. Although the campaign proved to be a military disaster for the North, it had a great psychological impact in the United States. Public opinion shifted against the war as many Americans became convinced that the war could not be won in the traditional sense. Tet also had a direct effect on American politics. Johnson's popularity plummeted in the wake of the offensive, and the president announced that he would not seek a second term. He also stopped most of the bombing over the North and peace talks with the North Vietnamese began in Paris in May 1968.

The Counterculture of the 1960s

The 1960s were a period when long-held values and norms of behavior seemed to break down, particularly among the young. Many college-age men and women became political activists and were the driving force behind the civil rights and antiwar movements. Other young people simply “dropped out” and separated themselves from mainstream culture through their appearance and lifestyle. Attitudes toward sexuality appeared to loosen, and women began to openly protest the traditional roles of housewife and mother that society had assigned to them.

The New Left. Left-wing politics in the 1960s attracted primarily middle-class college students. The Students for a Democratic Society ( SDS), founded at the University of Michigan in 1960, was the organizational base for the New Left. The term “New Left” was coined in the group's 1962 Port Huron Statement, which criticized the lack of individual freedom and the power of bureaucracy in government, universities, and corporations and called for participatory democracy. Leaders of the SDS believed that colleges were a natural base from which to promote social change. Before opposition to the Vietnam War mushroomed, issues that touched on student freedom, such as dress codes, course requirements, discrimination by sororities and fraternities, and minority admissions, were hot topics on campus. When the administration tried to control political activity at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 1964, the Free Speech Movement was formed. The tactics the Berkeley students used at the time — sit-ins and taking over college buildings — became common forms of antiwar protest. In the spring of 1965, SDS supported a nationwide campaign against the draft. On campuses, demonstrations included draft card burnings, confrontations with military recruiters, and sit-ins to protest ROTC programs. Additionally, companies that were closely involved with the war effort, such as Dow Chemical (which manufactured napalm), were targeted when they came to a university to recruit. Off campus, antiwar protestors demonstrated at Army induction centers with picket lines and sit-ins.

In the first six months of 1968, more than 200 major demonstrations took place at 100 colleges and universities across the country, involving more than 40,000 students. The most celebrated of these early demonstrations was the confrontation at Columbia University in April 1968. The issue being protested was not the war, but the school's decision to displace black housing to build a gymnasium. The local SDS chapter, along with black students, commandeered several buildings on campus for almost a week. When the police were called in, 700 students were arrested and 150 injured as the buildings were cleared out. The occupation received national and international news coverage, Columbia's president resigned, and the plans for the gymnasium were dropped. It was an apparent victory for the SDS, but it was short-lived. The organization soon splintered, with its more radical elements, such as the Weathermen, openly espousing confrontational politics. The best known off-campus violent episode involving the New Left occurred in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention when police brutally confronted antiwar demonstrators from the Youth International Party ( Yippies) and the National Mobilization Against the War in Vietnam organization.

Hippies. Like the members of the New Left, the Hippies were mostly middle-class whites but without the political drive. Their hallmarks were a particular style of dress that included jeans, tie-dyed shirts, sandals, beards, long hair, and a lifestyle that embraced sexual promiscuity and recreational drugs, including marijuana and the hallucinogenic LSD. The sex and drug culture were reflected in the rock music of the time by such groups as Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead and performers like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. Although some young people established communes in the countryside, hippies were primarily an urban phenomenon. The Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco and the East Village in New York were the focal points of the counterculture for a brief period from 1965 to 1967.

A landmark counterculture event was the Woodstock Festival, held in upstate New York in August 1969. Billed as “three days of peace, music, and love,” the promoters expected a large crowd but not the 300,000 to 400,000 people who actually attended. In spite of the large numbers, there were no serious problems; adequate medical care was available — mainly for drug-related emergencies — and the police decided not to try to enforce drug laws. A Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway in California a few months later did not go as well. With the police unable to provide adequate security because they did not have enough notice of the event, Hell's Angels were hired for crowd control. The bikers beat one person to death, and several more deaths resulted from accidents and drug overdoses.

Sexual politics. While the general permissiveness of the counterculture encouraged sexual freedom, other factors also contributed to the change in attitudes toward sexuality. Oral contraceptives became available, and by 1970, 12 million women were “on the pill.” The use of other means of birth control, such as diaphragms and IUDs, also increased. Many states had already legalized abortion, and the new women's movement was committed to making the procedure even more widely available. Throughout the sexual revolution, which lasted until the onset of the AIDS crisis in the mid-'80s, the birth rate declined and the number of abortions, unwed mothers, and divorces rose.

The starting point for contemporary feminism was the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which argued that women should be allowed to find their own identity, an identity not necessarily limited to the traditional roles of wife and mother. The number of women attending college skyrocketed during the 1960s, and many became involved with both the New Left and the civil rights movement. Even these organizations remained dominated by men, however. During the takeover at Columbia University, for instance, women were assigned duties such as making coffee and typing. Consequently, although the political activism of the 1960s was a catalyst for women's liberation, feminism became most effective when it created its own groups. In 1966, the National Organization for Women ( NOW) was formed to address such issues as allotting federal aid for day-care centers for working mothers, guaranteeing women the right to an abortion, eliminating gender-based job discrimination, and ensuring equal pay for equal work.

Women, however, were not the only group that began to demand equality in the 1960s. Laws against homosexuals were common, and groups like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis had campaigned for years with little effect against gay discrimination. In June 1969, the attempt by the New York City police to close down the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan, led to days of rioting and to the formation of the Gay Liberation Front. The treatment of homosexuals and lesbians gradually became a national civil rights issue.

The Nixon Presidency

In March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek a second term, a decision due at least in part to the strong showing of Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota in the New Hampshire primary. After Johnson's announcement, Vice President Hubert Humphrey entered the race, and soon he and Senator Robert Kennedy of New York were the main contenders for the Democratic nomination. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968 after his victory in the California primary, and Humphrey won the nomination at the violence-marred Democratic convention in Chicago in August. The Republicans turned to Richard Nixon, who had made a remarkable political recovery following his defeats in the 1960 presidential election and the 1962 gubernatorial race in California. Nixon chose Spiro Agnew, the little-known governor of Maryland, as his running mate. While Humphrey defended the Johnson Administration's Vietnam policy, Nixon emphasized law and order and his “secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam. American Independent party candidate George Wallace of Alabama appealed more directly to conservatives who were frustrated with the counterculture and the inability of the United States to win the war. Although his standing was damaged somewhat by the demonstrations at the Democratic convention, Humphrey gained popular support as the election drew near. Nixon won by a narrow victory in the popular vote, with just over 500,000 votes separating him from Humphrey; Nixon's margin was much more decisive in the electoral college, where he had 301 votes to Humphrey's 191. Wallace ran a national campaign, but his base of support was primarily in the Deep South, where he took five states. The Democrats remained in control of both the House and the Senate.

Nixon's major accomplishments were in foreign policy. He formally ended the more than 20-year freeze in American relations with the People's Republic of China and promoted closer ties with the Soviet Union through détente, the use of increased contact between countries to reduce political tensions. Nixon's domestic agenda included the New Federalism, a policy that sought to limit the power of the federal government, and the challenge of keeping inflation under control while the country drifted in and out of recession. Whatever successes Nixon had on the world scene or at home were overshadowed by the Watergate scandal, which ultimately cost him his presidency.

Nixon and Vietnam. Nixon's secret plan for ending the war was Vietnamization, in which the South Vietnamese gradually took over the fighting while the United States withdrew American troops, intensified the bombing of North Vietnam, and continued to provide financial support to South Vietnam for the war effort. Between 1969 and 1972, U.S. forces shrunk from 500,000 to 30,000, and peace talks continued in Paris. Although Vietnamization allowed the United States to extricate itself from the war, the policy did little to weaken the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in the field. Nixon was also responsible for expanding the war. In March 1969, the United States began bombing North Vietnamese supply routes in Cambodia, and ground troops invaded the country in April 1970. Widening the war to a neutral country provoked new demonstrations on college campuses, and four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.

There appeared to be a breakthrough at the Paris Peace Talks as the 1972 elections approached, but it did not materialize. In December 1972, Nixon ordered heavy bombing of the North and the mining of the Haiphong harbor. Although this “Christmas bombing” was widely criticized, it led to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. Under the terms of the accords, the last American combat troops left Vietnam in March, and North Vietnam released the final group of U.S. prisoners of war. U.S. involvement in the war had cost 58,000 Americans lives and $150 billion. A few months after the cease-fire went into effect, the fighting resumed between North and South Vietnamese forces. North Vietnam launched a major offensive in the spring of 1975 that led to the fall of Saigon in April and the subsequent unification of Vietnam under northern control.

China, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East. In 1969, Chinese and Russian troops clashed along their common border, and the long-standing rift between the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union seemed to be widening. Nixon recognized that the old view of a monolithic communist world was obsolete and saw an opportunity to play China and the USSR against each other to the advantage of the United States. He also believed that improving relations with China might lead China to put pressure on North Vietnam to end the war. An American table tennis team was welcomed in China in 1971, and this incident of “ping-pong diplomacy” paved the way for a secret visit by Nixon's top foreign policy advisor, Henry Kissinger, in July. In February 1972, the president himself visited China and normalized relations between the two countries. Formal diplomatic relations were not established until 1979, but trade and cultural exchanges increased almost immediately.

Just a few months after his China visit, Nixon met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. In addition to agreeing to a sale of surplus American wheat to the USSR, the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (or SALT) agreement was signed. Both countries agreed not to develop new antiballistic missile (ABM) systems and to limit the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles each country was able to deploy. The Soviet Union had achieved rough parity with the United States in nuclear weapons, and the parameters of the agreement forestalled a costly new arms race that the Russian economy could not have afforded.

The SALT I agreement (there would later be a second set of SALT negotiations, known as SALT II) did not mean that the Cold War was over. When Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in October 1973, the United States provided massive aid to Israel that helped turn the tide of the Yom Kippur War, while the Soviet Union supported the Arab states. The most important consequence of the conflict was the decision of the Arab countries to place an embargo on oil shipments to the United States. The embargo lasted from October 1973 to March 1974 and was accompanied by a substantial increase in crude oil prices by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Americans faced a major fuel shortage (which underscored how dependent the country had become on foreign oil), and gasoline prices skyrocketed, contributing to rising rates of inflation.

Nixon's domestic policy. An important element of Nixon's domestic policy was the restoration of power to state and local governments. At the heart of his New Federalism was revenue sharing. Congress passed revenue sharing legislation in 1972, which allowed Washington to provide grants to states and cities to use as they saw fit, rather than having the federal bureaucracy set the priorities. The president also tried, with less success, to overhaul the welfare system. Key parts of the plan, drafted by liberal sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan, called for providing recipients with a minimum annual income and requiring them to work or enter job-training programs. Despite his stand against big government, Nixon supported programs that increased federal regulatory authority. He backed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which was passed in 1969 and established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970, and he endorsed the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1971 to enforce appropriate workplace standards to protect labor. Nixon was less sympathetic to minorities than Johnson had been. Believing that integration was moving too far too fast, he wanted to delay the desegregation of the schools in Mississippi and opposed court-ordered busing. The four justices Nixon appointed to the Supreme Court where not judicial activists, and the Court became more conservative on social issues.

The most daunting domestic issue Nixon faced was the economy. Fighting the war in Vietnam and paying for Johnson's Great Society had led to inflation, which Nixon first tried to control by increasing interest rates and cutting federal spending. Inflation remained high and unemployment increased, a condition that economists labeled stagflation. Early in 1971, Nixon accepted a deficit budget that he hoped would stimulate the economy. He then instituted wage and price controls in August that remained in effect until January 1973. When most of the controls were lifted, inflation returned and worsened with the onset of the energy crisis later in the year. Economists and the government would grapple with the problem for most of the decade.

Watergate. In June 1972, five men were arrested while breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. After it was revealed that one of the men arrested was James McCord, the security coordinator for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), the White House denied any culpability for the break-in. Nixon went on to win a landslide victory for a second term over Democratic candidate Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, but the Watergate scandal would not go away.

The investigative reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the Washington Post prompted the Senate in February 1973 to open hearings on the administration's involvement in the burglary. Televised Watergate hearings began in May 1973, and the American people were shocked as the widening scandal unfolded with testimony about the Nixon administration's enemies list, misuse of government agencies, and trading for political favors. When the Senate committee learned about the taping system in the Oval Office in July 1973, it demanded that the tapes be turned over. Nixon claimed executive privilege and refused to give them up. In October 1973, he ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating the matter for the Justice Department. Richardson refused and resigned, as did the deputy attorney general. When Nixon ordered Solicitor General Robert Bork to fire Cox, Bork complied, and Leon Jowarski replaced Cox. The resignations and dismissal became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

As the Watergate scandal continued, Vice President Agnew resigned and pleaded no contest to charges of income tax evasion and bribery in a case stemming from his term as governor of Maryland. Nixon named Congressman Gerald Ford as the new vice president, and Congress confirmed the appointment. After a year of legal wrangling, the Supreme Court ordered the president to turn over the Oval Office tapes to the House Judiciary Committee, which was considering impeachment, in July 1974. The committee approved three articles of impeachment covering obstruction of justice and abuse of power, and it was clear that the full House of Representatives would vote for impeachment. Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974, and Gerald Ford became president.

The United States under Ford and Carter

Watergate seriously eroded public confidence in government, and the task of Nixon's successors was to restore that confidence. Faith in Washington was not easily regained, especially when, after just a month in office, Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon for any crimes he may have committed while he was president. Although the pardon was intended to put the Watergate scandal behind the nation, many saw it as politics as usual. Jimmy Carter's ensuing promise never to lie to the American people helped to get him elected, but he did not work well with Congress and lacked the leadership the country needed.

Ford's challenges. Gerald Ford faced the same economic problems as Nixon and was no more successful in dealing with them. The unexpected combination of inflation and high unemployment continued to plague the country. The president focused on inflation and launched the Whip Inflation Now ( WIN) campaign, a voluntary effort that called on Americans to save their money rather than spend it. The campaign, with its red and white WIN buttons, had little effect. Ford also reduced spending and the Federal Reserve Board raised interest rates, but the recession worsened and unemployment reached nine percent. Only then did the administration shift gears and try to stimulate the economy through a large tax cut.

In foreign affairs, Henry Kissinger stayed on as secretary of state, providing continuity for American foreign policy. Détente with the Soviet Union remained a high priority, and in late 1974, Ford and Brezhnev met to work out the basis for the SALT II agreement (the negotiations of which had begun in 1972 and would continue into the Carter administration). In August 1975, at a summit conference held in Helsinki, the two leaders agreed to recognize the postwar boundaries of Western and Eastern Europe. Brezhnev also agreed to permit more Soviet Jews to emigrate, a decision helped perhaps by Congress having linked trade with the Soviet Union to Jewish emigration. In the Middle East, Kissinger continued his shuttle diplomacy of traveling back and forth between Israel and Egypt, begun after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In the fall of 1975, Israel agreed to return most of the Sinai Peninsula, which had been captured during the 1967 Six-Day War, to Egypt. The Ford administration also presided over the final act of the Vietnam War. In April 1975, the president asked Congress for $1 billion in aid for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and was refused. However, by that time, no amount of money could have prevented the North's victory, and news footage of the South Vietnamese civilians desperately trying to get in to the American embassy in the hours before Saigon fell provided some of the most enduring images of the end of the conflict.

The election of 1976. Ford faced a serious challenge for the Republican nomination from Ronald Reagan, the conservative former governor of California. Although Ford was named the presidential candidate at the convention, the platform that he ran on reflected the views of Reagan and the right wing of the Republican Party — an increase in military spending, opposition to détente, a balanced budget, and school prayer. To ensure conservative support, Senator Robert Dole of Kansas was chosen as the vice-presidential candidate. The unlikely Democratic nominee was Jimmy Carter, who had served one term as governor of Georgia. He struck a responsive chord among the voters with his honesty, easy-going style, and the fact that he was a Washington outsider. To balance the Democratic ticket, Carter chose Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota — a man with strong liberal credentials and experience in Congress — as his running mate.

The election did not generate a great deal of public interest. In fact, voter turnout was the lowest in almost 30 years. Carter was able to rebuild the New Deal coalition of labor, minorities, the South, and urban voters with an important twist. His success in the South, where he won every state except Virginia, had less to do with his own background than the overwhelming support he received from African-Americans. Ford, on the other hand, was strong among whites, consistently so across the Midwest and West. Although by the end of the campaign he was able to close the large lead that Carter had in the polls, it was not enough. Carter won by nearly 1.7 million popular votes, and a comfortable margin in the electoral college, with 297 votes to Ford's 241.

The economy and the energy crisis. The economy remained the country's main domestic issue. Carter reversed Ford's policy of dealing with the inflation side of stagflation by first attacking high unemployment. Carter found, as his predecessors had, that there was a serious cost for increasing spending on public works to provide jobs — inflation soared. In fact, during his four years in office, inflation doubled in part because of a new round of oil price increases by OPEC and also because using interest rates to moderate the problem was not effective. Interest rates were so high that both new home construction and the sale of older houses dropped sharply.

Even before oil prices went up for the second time in the decade, the United States was in the midst of a major energy crisis. In the spring of 1977, the president submitted a comprehensive package of energy legislation to Congress that included the creation of the Department of Energy, the use of higher taxes and tax incentives to encourage conservation, the development of new sources of oil and natural gas, and the promotion of alternative fuels and nuclear power. Only the Department of Energy was approved; furthermore, an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in March 1979 discredited nuclear energy in the United States. OPEC price increases in 1979 raised the cost of a barrel of crude to over $30 (compared to $3 dollars in 1973) and resulted in gasoline price hikes to more than a $1 a gallon (as opposed to 40 cents in 1973) and the return of long lines at the gas pumps.