2. THE ADVENT of EISENHOWER
Explain how conditions favored the
Republicans in the presidential
election of 1952.
Democrats nominated a reluctant
Adlai Stevenson, the governor of
Illinois.
Republicans nominated Gen. Dwight
Eisenhower on the first ballot. Why
was Eisenhower the “perfect”
candidate?
To balance the ticket, Sen. Richard
Nixon from California was selected as
Eisenhower’s running mate.

3. Why was Nixon the ideal running mate for Eisenhower? Explain the events
surrounding the “Checkers” speech and its political significance.

4. The outcome of the election was never in doubt. Motivated by Eisenhower’s last-minute
promise to go personally to Korea to end the war, the voters massively declared for “Ike.”

5. True to his campaign pledge, president-elect Eisenhower undertook a three-day visit to
Korea in Dec. 1952.

6. But even a charismatic “Ike” could not jumpstart peace negotiations. What threat issued
by Eisenhower precipitated a truce seven months later? Was the Korean War a Cold
War victory, or loss? Explain.

7. “IKE” TAKES COMMAND
In Dwight Eisenhower, the man and the hour met. Americans yearned for a period of calm
in which they could pursue without distraction the new visions of consumerism. After
WWII, the Cold War began abroad, and explosive issues of communist subversion and civil
rights divided Americans at home. Americans longed for a reassuring leader, and “Ike”
seemed ready to give it to them.

8. One of the first problems with which Eisenhower had to contend was the swelling
popularity of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the anti-communist “crusader.” How did McCarthy
crash into the limelight in 1950?
Did McCarthy provide any evidence to
support his charges?
Initially, how did Republicans in Congress
react to McCarthy and his “crusading?”
What was Eisenhower’s position on
McCarthy?
McCarthy flourished in the seething Cold
War atmosphere of suspicion and fear. For
four years after 1950, “low-blow Joe”
proved a master at manipulating the media
and playing upon the anxieties of politicians
and the public.
The careers of countless officials, writers,
actors and others were named after being
labeled by McCarthy.

9. McCarthy finally went too far. Explain the series of events. The embattled military
men fought back in 35 days of televised hearings in 1954. The television spectacle
embittered the American public. What was McCarthy’s fate? McCarthy’s legacy
includes representing the dangerous forces of unfairness and fear that a democratic
society can unleash only at its peril.

10. DESEGREGATING the SOUTH
America counted some 15 million black citizens in 1950, two-thirds of whom still made
their homes in the South. There they lived bound by a rigid set of antiquated rules known
as Jim Crow laws, that governed all aspects of their existence, from the schoolroom to
the restroom.

11. Every day of their lives, southern blacks dealt with the bizarre array of separate social
arrangements that kept them insulated from whites, economically inferior, and politically
powerless.

12. Where the law proved insufficient to enforce segregation, vigilante violence did the job.
A Mississippi mob lynched black 14 year-old Emmett Till in 1955 for allegedly leering at a
white woman.
There were token successes in race relations (Jackie Robinson), but overall blacks still
suffered.

13. Increasingly, African-Americans refused to
suffer in silence. The war had generated a new
militancy & restlessness among many members
of the black community.
Identify the two early courtroom victories
won by the NAACP. Who was the NAACP’s
chief legal counsel?
On a chilly day in December 1955, Rosa Parks, a
college educated black seamstress, made history
in Montgomery, Alabama. Describe what she
did, what happened to her, and how the black
community of Montgomery react.

14. The bus boycott was a smashing success for the black community, serving notice that
blacks would no longer submit meekly to the absurdities and indignities of segregation.

15. The Montgomery bus boycott also
catapulted to prominence a young pastor
at Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church, the Reverend Martin Luthur King,
Jr.
Provide a profile for King. Describe his
strategy for winning civil rights for
African-Americans.

16. SEEDS of the CIVIL RIGHTS REVOLUTION
In the 1940’s President Truman was appalled upon hearing about the lynching of black war veterans in
1946. In 1948 he ended segregation in federal civil service and ordered “equality of treatment and
opportunity” in the armed forces. The military brass initially protested, but the Korean War forced
the integration of combat units, without the predicted loss of effectiveness.
Yet Congress stubbornly resisted passing civil rights legislation, and Dwight Eisenhower showed no real
signs of interest in the racial issue. That left only the judicial branch as an avenue of advancement for
civil rights.

17. Breaking the path for civil rights
progress was Chief Justice Earl
Warren, an Eisenhower nomination.

18. How did Eisenhower respond to Warren’s judicial activism?

19. The unanimous decision of the Warren Court in Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka, Kansas, in May 1954 was epochal, for it overturned the earlier Court
decision, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Explain the landmark ruling.
Thus, desegregation, the justices insisted, must go ahead with “all deliberate speed.”

20. Similar suits to Brown’s on behalf of some
200 black plaintiffs in South Carolina,
Virginia, Delaware, and Washington D.C. had
been filed in a coordinated effort led by the
NAACP. They were all merged under Brown’s
name.
A young attorney, Thurgood Marshall, and
other lawyers at the NAACP Legal Defense
and Educational Fund, had worked for years
to establish the legal framework for the
Brown decision.
Their cornerstone argument was that racially
separate schools violated the Constitution’s
equal protection clause.

21. Describe white southern reaction & compliance. Was the Court ruling an effective
end to segregation?

22. CRISIS at LITTLE ROCK
What was Eisenhower’s reaction to the Court’s Brown v. Board ruling? Explain why
Eisenhower was forced to act in September 1957 in Little Rock, Ark. In the same
year, Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act that set up a permanent Civil Rights
Commission to investigate civil rights violations.

26. Blacks meanwhile continued to take the civil rights movement into their own hands.
Martin Luthur King Jr. formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in
1957. It aimed to mobilize the vast power of the black churches on behalf of black
rights.
More spontaneous was the “sit-in” movement launched on Feb. 1, 1960, by four black
college freshmen in Greensboro, North Carolina. Describe this first incident.
In April 1960, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was formed to give more
focus to these efforts.

27. EISENHOWER REPUBLICANISM at HOME
Eisenhower entered the White House in
1953 pledging his administration to a
philosophy of “dynamic conservatism” –
explain the philosophy.
What was Eisenhower’s two primary
goals? Was he successful in achieving
either of the goals?

28. Eisenhower responded to illegal Mexican
immigration with an operation dubbed
Operation Wetback – as many as one million
Mexicans were rounded up and returned to
Mexico in 1954.

29. Eisenhower also sought to cancel the
tribal preservation policies of the
“Indian New Deal,” in place since 1934.
He proposed to “terminate” the tribes
as legal entities and to revert to the
assimilation goals of the Dawes Act of
1887.
Most Indians resisted and the policy
was abandoned in 1961.

30. Ike pragmatically concluded that he could not undo two decades of New Deal and Fair
Deal programs, so he accepted many of them.
And surprisingly, he even did the New Deal one better by backing the Interstate
Highway Act of 1956, a $27 billion plan to build 42,000 miles of interstate highway.

31. The new highway construction created construction jobs, spawned commercial development, and
greatly accelerated the suburbanization of America. What were some of the downsides of the act?

32. A NEW LOOK in FOREIGN POLICY
The Eisenhower Administration repudiated Truman’s “containment” policy – what would be
the new policy? Describe Eisenhower’s strategic strategy – what were its perceived
benefits?

33. Explain how Eisenhower’s stated
strategic strategy proved to be a failure
in application.

34. THE VIETNAM NIGHTMARE
Europe was secure, thanks to the
Marshall Plan, by the early 1950’s, but
the Far East was a different story.

35. Nationalist movements had sought for years to drive the colonial French out of
Indochina. Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, had personally appealed to Pres. Wilson in
1919 to support self-determination in S.E. Asia. Ho Chi Minh increasingly turned to
communist countries for help against the French. What was the U.S. response?
Explain the significance of the Battle of Dienbienphu and the subsequent Geneva
Conference. What was the purpose of the U.S. establishing SEATO?

36. MENACES in the MIDDLE EAST
Increasing fears of Soviet penetration into the oil-rich M.E. spurred Washington to take
action. Explain events in Iran and in Egypt. Events in both countries were driven by
nationalism, which Washington construed as movements toward communism. In 1957
Eisenhower and Congress proclaimed the Eisenhower Doctrine – what did it state?

37. ROUND TWO for IKE
Despite a heart attack in 1955 and a major operation in 1956, Eisenhower still enjoyed
strong public support. Who was the Democratic nominee? What were the messages
of each party? The election of 1956 was a resounding personal endorsement of
Eisenhower.

38. In fragile health, Eisenhower began his
second term as a part-time president.
A key area for the president was labor
legislation. Congress in 1959 passed the
Landrum-Griffin Act. Identify some of
the key provisions of the legislation.

39. THE RACE with the SOVIETS into SPACE
Soviet scientists astounded the world on Oct. 4, 1957 by lofting into orbit Sputnik.
What was the impact in the U.S.?

40. THE CONTINUING COLD WAR
The fantastic nuclear arms race continued
throughout the 1950’s. Explain the crisis
that Soviet leader Kruschev provoked in
1958.
A Paris “summit conference” was scheduled
for May 1960, but it turned out to be a
fiasco. On the eve of the conference, an
American U-2 spy plane was shot down deep
in the heart of Russia. What was the
American response?
The conference collapsed before it could get
started.

41. CUBA’S CASTROISM SPELLS COMMUNISM
An ill-timed “goodwill” tour by V.P. Nixon through South America in 1958 turned into a
fiasco. Latin Americans bitterly resented the U.S. – why? Explain the situation in Cuba
in 1959. What led to bad relations between Fidel Castro and the U.S.? What were
the major impacts of the Cuban Revolution on the U.S.?

42. KENNEDY CHALLENGES NIXON for the PRESIDENCY
As the presidential election of 1960
approached, V.P. Richard Nixon was the
Republican heir apparent. How was he
perceived by both opponents & supporters?
The Democratic race was a free-for-all, with
Massachusetts Sen. John Kennedy prevailing
in the primaries. To appease the South, Sen.
Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson, was
selected as Kennedy’s running mate.

43. In the campaign, bigotry showed its
snarling face. How did Republicans
attack Kennedy?
What was the primary issue of
Kennedy’s attack?

44. Television may well have tipped the scales. If the experts proclaimed that nobody
“won” the debates, then why was Kennedy perceived by the American people as
“winning” the debates? Why was the impact of television ironic for Nixon?

45. On election day, Kennedy won by a rather comfortable margin of 303 electoral votes to
219, but with the breathtakingly close popular margin of only 118,574. Nixon supporters
demanded a vote recount, but Nixon decided to accept the results. Kennedy became the
youngest man to date and the first Catholic to be elected president. Democrats also
swept both houses of Congress.

46. AN OLD GENERAL FADES AWAY
President Eisenhower continued to enjoy extraordinary popularity to the end. Surprisingly to many,
Eisenhower’s second term was as vigorous, or more vigorous, than his first term. And, he consistently
exhibited his clout despite a Congress that was Democratically controlled for 6 of his eight year
presidency. In the final analysis, how would his detractors and supporters rate him as
president?