1950s

HIS 135
Notes on the 1950s

Thinking about the 1950s, there were a number of trneds that I would like to cover. With regard to the Cold War, there was the Thaw:

Nikita Khrushchev
Sputnik
in the us, there was no more of aearth-shattering decision thatn what happened in t Brown v the Board of Education, actually a bunch of cases collapses into one and eheard by the US SUpreme court and ruling that American society was fndamentally screwed-up (an dhow dare the US go areound telling other countries that they were screwed up), argued by Thurgood Marshall
the debut of television (and color television).

Khrushchev and the Thaw

No more importan tfiter than K

Source is http://supol.narod.ru/archive/books/Breznev/brezhnev.jpg

Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Some key dates:

January 1969, President Nixon took office.
November 1969, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) began.
On 12 April 1971 the American ping-pong team (and journalists) became the first Americans to visit communist China since 1949. This became the start of what was later known as "ping-pong diplomacy," as it indicated that something was underfoot in the relationship between the United States and China. After Nixon's visit to China in 1972, a communist Chinese ping-pong team visited the US in that April. (See the ping-pong scenes in the movie, Forrest Gump, 1994.)
9 July 1971, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Advisor, visited China.
21 February 1972, President Nixon went to communist China (the People's Republic of China.), the first time any U.S. President had visited there.
6 May 1972, Nixon traveled to Moscow. (He had, of course, been there before as vice-president!).
26 May 1972, President Nixon and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
27 January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed ending American involvement in the Vietnam War (technically ending the conflict, but that did not happen).
17 June 1973, Brezhnev came to Washington.
27 June 1974, Nixon returned to Russia.

Sputnik

So much for American tehcnological superiotry (and the rocket gap)
Almost as soon as the spirit of detente filled the Cold War air, it began to dissipate. Looking back, there were a number of key events/factors leading to its demise.

No doubt about it, detente was over-sold both to Americans and Russians. Despite friendly talk and nice state visits, there still remained a lot of nuclear missiles pointed at both sides, and most of the same military infrastructure that had deployed those missiles remained in place with their "cold war warrior" mentalités intact.
On 3 January 1975, President Gerald Ford signed into law the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which required that any future expansion of trade between the US and USSR--primarily grain sales by American farmers to Russia--be dependent on improvements of human rights conditions within the Soviet Union. That irritated Russia.
Throughout the 1970s, there was continuing communist activity around the world: Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, Thailand (insurgency), Somalia, Ethiopia, Angola, Central America, El Salvador, Yemen, Benin, Mozambique, etc. That irritated America.
Russian support for Arab nations such as Syria in the Middle East. That irritated America.
President Carter's call for the observance of human rights around the world, especially in communist Eastern Europe. That irritated Russia.
In 1979, the Iranian Revolution and subsequent hostage crisis appeared to show the United States powerless on the world stage. That bothered America.
On 25 December 1979 (Christmas day!), the Soviets invaded Afghanistan to support the communist regime there. That bothered America.
Because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. That bothered Russia.
Also as a result of events in Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter increased the U.S. defense budget and financing of the anti-Soviet Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan began. That irritated the Russians.
The 1980 American presidential election was won by Ronald Reagan who opposed further "concessions" to the Russians in the SALT II negotiations.

Borwn v the Board of Education (Human Rights

It is kind of hard to believe, but the phrase "human rights" was little used in U.S. matters of foreign policy before the 1970s. True, it was in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and true American politicians often spoke of democracy in the world, but the Cold War was being fought by the US in terms of "as long as you are on our side, we don't really care about your country's human rights record or the state of democracy in your country."

That changed when Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency in January 1977. In his inaugural address, he spoke:

The world itself is now dominated by a new spirit. Peoples more numerous and more politically aware are craving and now demanding their place in the sun--not just for the benefit of their own physical condition, but for basic human rights. (Avalon Project)

And, in another speech that year, President Carter noted

we have reaffirmed America's commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy. In ancestry, religion, color, place of origin, and cultural background, we Americans are as diverse a nation as the world has even seen. No common mystique of blood or soil unites us. What draws us together, perhaps more than anything else, is a belief in human freedom. We want the world to know that our Nation stands for more than financial prosperity. (usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/55.htm)

The idea of human rights as a driving force in foreign policy was a novel idea, and it lead Carter to a number of political policies--many of which were very unpopular at the time--such as his support for the Solidarity movement in communist Poland, his support for the end of apartheid in South Africa, the idea of normalizing relations with communist China, etc.

But his desire to improve the human condition in the world was foremost seen in his mediation of the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt which brought the Near East, at the time, one step closer to a lasting peace settlement, which unfortunately has yet to materialize.

Begin, Carter and Sadat at Camp David

In the 1907s, there was one other major event that concerned human rights in the world, and that was the Helsinki Accords. Unfortunately the Accords were something that I recall as being little noticed in the United States at the time except to decry the treaty for its recognition of the Soviet Union's postwar territorial aggrandizements in Eastern and Central Europe.

On 1 August 1975 the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe was signed by the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and the countries of Europe. Since there had been no general peace treaty signed after World War II, the act was seen as legally accomplishing what had, in fact, been done since 1945. While many commentators viewed the Helsinki Accords as a major "win" for the Soviet Union because of the clauses on the inviolability of national borders, which seemed to legalize Soviet territorial gains after World War II, there was something else in the Accords that proved very distasteful to communist and authoritarian regimes around the world.

The Accords contained provisions for the "Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief" and "Equal rights and self-determination of peoples. Once the document was signed, independent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) arose throughout the world, but most prominently in the Soviet Union itself and throughout the communist countries of Eastern Europe, to monitor compliance with the Helsinki Accords and to ensure that basic human rights were not being infringed. Eventually many of these NGOs turned into the International Helsinki Federation and/or the Human Rights Watch.

Television

Well, I added television to the list, and true you could say that it was an important part of the 1950s or even the 1960s, especially given the impact of such things as the Kennedy-Nixon debates, and true, by the 1970s, there were television shows that many families in America were watching (just like in the 1950s):

Happy Days (1974 to 1984)
All in the Family (1971 to 1979) and The Jeffersons (1975 to 1985)
The Waltons (1972 to 1981)

But there was also something different about television in the 1970s. Here are some that came to my mind, listed in no particular order:

The cultural phenomenon that was Monty Python 's Flying Circus, which was originally broadcast by the BBC from 1969 to 1974 (and then after 1975 in the US--usually late at night). When I was in high school, we were always talking about the latest episodes to be shown--I still recall the "Twit of the Year Contest" or the "Spam" skit and song. The troupe broke ground in all kinds of directions. I still often show the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) in my HIS 101 classes.

The Super Bowl went from being a barely-watched, championship game in a bizarrely American sport, to becoming a worldwide cultural phenomenon by the end of the decade. Much of that was due to the dynastic qualities of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

By 1970-71, images of the Vietnam War were on the nightly news of American television every night of the week--Contrast that to the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 where little of that activity makes the evening news. Viewers could see every night the horror that was modern warfare.

Thus, by the 1970s, television covered everything that was happening around the world, and broadcast that information around the world.

In the summer of 1973 (May to August) the major television networks in the United States (ABC, NBC, CBS) began daily broadcasting of the US Senate's Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities which was investigating Richard Nixon and his staff for corruption and illegal activities. I still remember watching a lot of that and Senators Sam Ervin and Howard Baker questioning witnessed, and the testimony of John Dean. A lot of other Americans were watching too, gripped by the tale of corruption and criminal activity that emerged from the Nixon White House.

By the end of the decade, there was a cable TV station, C-Span, that allowed Americans to actually watch what was going on in the US House of Representatives.

Web pages within the course relevant to the 1950s

Some suggestions for further research