American Prosperity and Global Economic Dominance After the Second World War
While most countries in Europe as well as Japan and Russia were crippled by the war, the American economy was completely fortified. Afterwards, industries cleanly transitioned from military supplies and weapons back to consumer goods. These factors helped lead to America’s global economic dominance. Once this authority was established, measures were taken to stabilize the weak global economy. Organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund helped control prices, disintegrate trade barriers, and grant loans to developing countries.
On a domestic level, this global domination created millions of jobs for Americans. Companies started to increase their scope of production and even began to venture overseas for saturated markets. Furthermore, workers benefited from a newfound cooperation between companies and labor unions. They were given steady and secure incomes and, as a result, organized fewer strikes. Consequently, consumers enjoyed more spending money in a deflated economy.
Due to government encouragement, such as the Federal Housing Administration, many families migrated from cities to suburbs. These families married young, had many children, and adopted suburban life. Central to this lifestyle were automobiles, televisions, Christianity, separate gender roles, and a new mass youth culture.
As white middle-class Americans began migrating towards suburbs, minorities moved into the urban centers they left. This influx towards cities was partly explained by America’s new attitude towards immigrants; Asian immigration restrictions were relaxed, Mexicans migrated to Southwest cities, and Cubans fled their oppressive government to Florida. When these people moved to the waning cities, they experienced slum housing, high unemployment rates, and general poverty.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy won the presidential election over Richard M. Nixon. One reason he beat Nixon was the use of television to campaign, which moved emphasis from issues to images. One of his major platforms was implementing “flexible response” measures that would deter attacks by the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Stalin was building the Berlin Wall, effectively destroying what was left of U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations. To combat communism, organizations such as the Peace Corps and Alliance for Peace coordinated relief efforts to countries in need. Unfortunately, this was not enough and confrontations between Soviet Russia and America eventually arose.
The Bay of Pigs invasion failed miserably and led to an even worse relationship between the two powerful states. When Russia built missile sites in Cuba, Kennedy put a blockade around Cuba and came extremely close to a war. For agreeing not to invade Cuba again, America convinced the U.S.S.R. to dismantle their missile sites. This, the Berlin Wall situation, and other crises fueled hostilities in the Cold War.
During all of this, many aspects of domestic life, such as transportation and restaurants, were still segregated by race. The civil rights movement was undertaken by people of all races as well as many students. Their activism included sit-ins and Freedom rides. Nonviolent protests were often met with brutal responses from law enforcement officers, giving the movement strong publicity. At the peak of this movement, which kept gaining momentum, Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech to a quarter-million activists at the Lincoln Memorial, securing his place as the leader of the civil rights movement.
Kennedy’s successor was his vice-president, Lyndon Johnson. Right after he took office, he began to implement his ambitious plans. He was able to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Although not immediately successful, they were a crucial step towards equality. He also pushed federal aid to education, Medicare, and Medicaid. In his “Great Society” program, Johnson did his best to combat the terrible poverty problems urban Americans experienced. To do this, he expanded welfare, food stamps, and other federal benefits. Furthermore, he established the Office of Economic Opportunity, which ran many beneficial programs such as Head Start and the Job Corps. Unfortunately, many of the resources President Johnson put towards these programs eventually went towards the war in Vietnam.
Even while many significant events were taking place overseas, Americans were experiencing changes of their own. Global economic dominance led to great prosperity in America. Many middle-class white families moved from cities to suburbs, minorities and immigrants taking their place. These minorities experienced hardships such as poverty and segregation-issues that President Kennedy and Johnson did their best to combat.
Kirk, John A., Martin Luther King, Jr. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka http://www.law.cornell.edu/ John Kenneth Galbraith The Affluent Society
