США, 1945-1964: Эпоха Холодной войны и перемен

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The history of the United States from 1945 to 1964 was a time of high economic growth and general prosperity. It was also a time of confrontation as the capitalist United States and its allies politically opposed the Soviet Union and other communist states; the Cold War had begun. African Americans united and organized, and a triumph of the civil rights movement ended Jim Crow segregation in the Southern United States. Further laws were passed that made discrimination illegal and provided federal oversight to guarantee voting rights. In the period, an active foreign policy was pursued to help Western Europe and Asia recover from the devastation of World War II. The Marshall Plan helped Western Europe rebuild from wartime devastation. The main American goal was the Containment of communism. An arms race escalated through increasingly powerful nuclear weapons. The Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact of European satellites to oppose the American led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. The U. S. fought a bloody, inconclusive war in Korea and was escalating the war in Vietnam as the period ended. Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, and when the USSR sent in nuclear missiles to defend it, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was triggered with the U. S., the most dangerous point of the era. On the domestic front, after a short transition, the economy grew rapidly, with widespread prosperity, rising wages, and the movement of most of the remaining farmers to the towns and cities. Politically, the era was dominated by liberal Democrats who held together with the New Deal Coalition: Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945), Harry S. Truman (1945–1953), John F. Kennedy (1961–1963) and Lyndon Johnson (1963–1969). Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961) was a moderate who did not attempt to reverse New Deal programs such as regulation of business and support for labor unions; he expanded Social Security and built the interstate highway system. For most of the period, the Democrats controlled Congress; however, they were usually unable to pass as much liberal legislation as they had hoped because of the power of the Conservative Coalition. The Liberal coalition took control of Congress after Kennedy's assassination in 1963, and launched the Great Society. This period of Post–World War II economic expansion witnessed the rapid growth of suburbs and a growing middle class.

The Cold War (1945–1991) was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition between the Soviet Union and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, led by the United States. Although the primary participants' military forces never officially clashed directly, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, a nuclear arms race, espionage, proxy wars, propaganda, and technological competition, e. g., the Space Race.

While Roosevelt was confident he could cooperate with Stalin after the war, Truman was much more suspicious. The United States provided large scale grants to Western Europe under the Marshall Plan (1948–1951), leading to a rapid economic recovery. The Soviet Union refused to allow its satellites to receive American aid. Instead, the Kremlin used local communist parties, and the Red Army, to control Eastern Europe in totalitarian fashion. Britain, in deep financial trouble, could no longer support Greece in its civil war with the communists. It asked the United States to take over aid to Greece. With bipartisan support in Congress, Truman responded with the Truman Doctrine in 1947. Truman followed the intellectual leadership of the State Department, which called for containment of Soviet communist expansion. The hope was that internal contradictions, such as diverse nationalism, would ultimately undermine Soviet ambitions. By 1947, the Soviets had fully absorbed the three Baltic nations, and effectively controlled Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Austria and Finland were neutral and demilitarized. The Kremlin did not control Yugoslavia, which had a separate communist regime under Marshall Tito; They had a permanent bitter break in 1948. The Cold War lines stabilized in Europe along the Iron Curtain, and there was no fighting. The United States helped form a strong military alliance in NATO in 1949 including most of the nations of Western Europe, and Canada. In Asia, however, there was much more movement. The United States failed to negotiate a settlement between its ally, nationalist China under Chiang Kai shek, and the communists under Mao Zedong. The communists took over China in 1949 and the nationalist government moved to the offshore island of Formosa (Taiwan), which came under American protection. Local communist movements attempted to take over all of Korea (1950) and Vietnam (1954). Communist hegemony covered one third of the world's land while the United States emerged as the world's more influential superpower, and formed a worldwide network of military alliances. There were fundamental contrasts between the visions of the United States and the Soviet Union, between capitalist democracy and totalitarian communism. The United States envisioned the new United Nations as a Wilsonian tool to resolve future troubles, but it failed in that purpose. The U. S. rejected totalitarianism and colonialism, in line with the principles laid down by the Atlantic Charter of 1941: self determination, equal economic access, and a rebuilt capitalist, democratic Europe that could again serve as a hub in world affairs.

For NATO, containment of the expansion of Soviet influence became foreign policy doctrine; the expectation was that eventually the inefficient Soviet system would collapse of internal weakness, and no "hot" war (that is, one with large scale combat) would be necessary. Containment was supported by Republicans (led by Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, and general Dwight D. Eisenhower), but was opposed by the isolationists led by Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio.

In 1949, the communist leader Mao Zedong won control of mainland China in a civil war, established the People's Republic of China, then traveled to Moscow where he negotiated the Sino Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance. China had thus moved from a close ally of the U. S. to a bitter enemy, and the two fought each other starting in late 1950 in Korea. The Truman administration responded with a secret 1950 plan, NSC 68, designed to confront the communists with large scale defense spending. The Russians had built an atomic bomb by 1949, much sooner than expected. Truman then ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb. Two of the spies who gave atomic secrets to Russia were tried and executed. France was hard pressed by communist insurgents in the First Indochina War. The U. S. in 1950 started to fund the French effort on the proviso that the Vietnamese be given more autonomy.

Stalin approved a North Korean plan to invade U. S. supported South Korea in June 1950. President Truman immediately and unexpectedly implemented the containment policy by a full scale commitment of American and UN forces to Korea. He did not consult or gain approval of Congress but did gain the approval of the United Nations (UN) to drive back the North Koreans and re unite that country in terms of a rollback strategy. While originally a civil war, it quickly escalated into a proxy war between the United States and its allies and the communist powers of the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. After a few weeks of retreat, on September 15 General Douglas MacArthur conducted an amphibious landing at the city of Inchon (Song Do port). The North Korean army collapsed, and within a few days, MacArthur's army retook Seoul (South Korea's capital). He then pushed north, capturing Pyongyang in October. This advantage was lost when hundreds of thousands of Chinese entered an undeclared war against the United States and pushed the US/UN/Korean forces back to the original starting line, the 38th parallel. MacArthur planned for a full scale invasion of China, but this was against the wishes of President Harry S. Truman and others who wanted a swift end to the war. As a result, Truman relieved MacArthur of command, replacing him with general Matthew Ridgway, who de escalated the fighting to allow for a peace deal to be made. Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 campaigned against Truman's failures of "Korea, Communism and Corruption," promising to go to Korea himself and end the war. By threatening to use nuclear weapons in 1953, Eisenhower ended the war with a truce that is still in effect. An armistice agreement was finally agreed to by the United Nations Command, the Korean People's Army, and the Chinese People's Volunteer Army on July 27, 1953. The war left 33,742 American soldiers dead, 92,134 wounded, and 80,000 missing in action (MIA) or prisoner of war (POW). Estimates place Korean and Chinese casualties at 1,000,000–1,400,000 dead or wounded, and 140,000 MIA or POW.

In 1947, well before McCarthy became active, the Conservative Coalition in Congress passed the Taft–Hartley Act, designed to balance the rights of management and unions, and delegitimizing communist union leaders. The challenge of rooting out communists from labor unions and the Democratic Party was successfully undertaken by liberals, such as Walter Reuther of the autoworkers union and Ronald Reagan of the Screen Actors Guild (Reagan was a liberal Democrat at the time). Many of the purged leftists joined the presidential campaign in 1948 of FDR's Vice President Henry A. Wallace. The House Un American Activities Committee, with young Congressman Richard M. Nixon playing a central role, accused Alger Hiss, a top Roosevelt aide, of being a communist spy, using testimony and documents provided by Whittaker Chambers. Hiss was convicted and sent to prison, with the anti communists gaining a powerful political weapon. It launched Nixon's meteoric rise to the Senate (1950) and the vice presidency (1952). With anxiety over communism in Korea and China reaching fever pitch in 1950, a previously obscure Senator, Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, launched Congressional investigations into the cover up of spies in the government. McCarthy dominated the media, and used reckless allegations and tactics that allowed his opponents to effectively counterattack. Irish Catholics (including conservative wunderkind William F. Buckley, Jr. and the Kennedy Family) were intensely anti communist and defended McCarthy (a fellow Irish Catholic). Paterfamilias Joseph Kennedy (1888–1969), a very active conservative Democrat, was McCarthy's most ardent supporter and got his son Robert F. Kennedy a job with McCarthy. McCarthy had talked of "twenty years of treason" (i. e. since Roosevelt's election in 1932). When, in 1953, he started talking of "21 years of treason" and launched a major attack on the Army for promoting a communist dentist in the medical corps, his recklessness proved too much for Eisenhower, who encouraged Republicans to censure McCarthy formally in 1954. The Senator's power collapsed overnight. Senator John F. Kennedy did not vote for censure. Buckley went on to found the National Review in 1955 as a weekly magazine that helped define the conservative position on public issues. "McCarthyism" was expanded to include attacks on supposed communist influence in Hollywood, which resulted in the Hollywood blacklist, whereby artists who refused to testify about possible communist connections could not get work. Some famous celebrities (such as Charlie Chaplin) left the U. S.; other worked under pseudonyms (such as Dalton Trumbo). McCarthyism included investigations into academics and teachers as well. McCarthyism became a widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of society and was the source of a great deal of debate and conflict in the United States. Investigating private citizens for alleged communist affiliations in government, private industry and in the media produced widespread fear and destroyed the lives of many innocent American citizens. Using innuendo and intense interrogation methods, the "witch hunt" produced blacklists in several industries. In the course of the anti communist investigations in the early 1950s Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were charged in relation to the passing of information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, and they were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. On June 19, 1953, they were both executed. Their execution was the first of civilians, for espionage, in United States history. In addition to communists, and those in the entertainment industry, McCarthy also targeted homosexuals, particularly those employed in the State Department during the Lavender Scare. Using Sumner Wells (the disgraced former Undersecretary of State to Franklin D. Roosevelt) as an example, McCarthy derided the effeminate, scandalous homosexuals who were allegedly controlling United States foreign relations. McCarthy also posed the suggestion that these homosexuals were a security risk to the United States, as their sexuality made them open to blackmail from the Soviet Union. These fears caused the mass firing and outing of homosexuals within the federal government, and a doubling down on homophobic attitudes within the United States.

In 1953, Joseph Stalin died, and after the 1952 presidential election, President Dwight D. Eisenhower used the opportunity to end the Korean War, while continuing Cold War policies. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was the dominant figure in the nation's foreign policy in the 1950s. Dulles denounced the "containment" of the Truman administration and espoused an active program of "liberation", which would lead to a "rollback" of communism. The most prominent of those doctrines was the policy of "massive retaliation", which Dulles announced early in 1954, eschewing the costly, conventional ground forces characteristic of the Truman administration in favor of wielding the vast superiority of the U. S. nuclear arsenal and covert intelligence. Dulles defined this approach as "brinkmanship". A dramatic shock to Americans' self confidence and its technological superiority came in 1957, when the Soviets beat the United States into outer space by launching Sputnik, the first earth satellite. The space race began, and by the early 1960s the United States had forged ahead, with President Kennedy promising to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s—the landing indeed took place on July 20, 1969. Trouble close to home appeared when Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959 and forged increasingly close ties with the Soviet Union, becoming communism's center in Latin America. The United States responded with an economic boycott of Cuba, and a large scale economic support program for Latin America under Kennedy, the Alliance for Progress. East Germany was the weak point in the Soviet Empire, with refugees leaving for the West by the thousands every week. The Soviet solution came in 1961, with the Berlin Wall to stop East Germans from fleeing communism. This was a major propaganda setback for the USSR, but it did allow them to keep control of East Berlin. The communist world split in half, as China turned against the Soviet Union; Mao denounced Khrushchev for going soft on capitalism. However, the US failed to take advantage of this split until President Richard Nixon saw the opportunity in 1969. In 1958, the U. S. sent troops into Lebanon for nine months to stabilize a country on the verge of civil war. Between 1954 and 1961, Eisenhower dispatched large sums of economic and military aid and 695 military advisers to South Vietnam to stabilize the pro western government under attack by insurgents. Eisenhower supported CIA efforts to undermine anti American governments, which proved most successful in Iran and in Guatemala. The first major strain among the NATO alliance occurred in 1956 when Eisenhower forced Britain and France to retreat from their invasion of Egypt (with Israel) which was intended to get back their ownership of the Suez Canal. Instead of supporting the claims of its NATO partners, the Eisenhower administration stated that it opposed French and British imperial adventurism in the region by sheer prudence, fearing that Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's standoff with the region's old colonial powers would bolster Soviet power in the region. The Cold War reached its most dangerous point during the Kennedy administration in the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis began on October 16, 1962, and lasted for thirteen days. It was the moment when the Cold War was closest to exploding into a devastating nuclear exchange between the two superpower nations. Kennedy decided not to invade or bomb Cuba but to institute a naval blockade of the island. The crisis ended in a compromise, with the Soviets removing their missiles publicly, and the United States secretly removing its nuclear missiles in Turkey. In Moscow, communist leaders removed Nikita Khrushchev because of his reckless behavior.

In the 1950s, Latin America was the center of covert and overt conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Their varying collusion with national, populist, and elitist interests destabilized the region. The United States Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated the overthrow of the Guatemalan government (Operation PBSuccess) in 1952. In 1958, the military dictatorship of Venezuela was overthrown. This continued a pattern of regional revolution and warfare making extensive use of ground forces. In 1957, Dr. François Duvalier came to power in an election in Haiti. He later declared himself president for life, and ruled until his death in 1971. In 1959, Fidel Castro overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, establishing a communist government in the country. Although Castro initially sought aid from the US, he was rebuffed and later turned to the Soviet Union. NORAD signed in 1959 by Canada and the United States creating a unified North American aerial defense system.

The overthrow of Fulgencio Batista by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and other forces in 1959 resulted in the creation of the first communist government in the western hemisphere. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 led to a confrontation between the United States, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

In Indonesia in February 1958 rebels on Sumatra and Sulawesi declared the PRRI Permesta Movement aimed at overthrowing the government of Sukarno. Due to their anti communist rhetoric, the rebels received money, weapons, and manpower from the CIA. This support ended when Allen Lawrence Pope, an American pilot, was shot down after a bombing raid on government held Ambon in April 1958. In April 1958, the central government responded by launching airborne and seaborne military invasions on Padang and Manado, the rebel capitals. By the end of 1958, the rebels had been militarily defeated, and the last remaining rebel guerrilla bands surrendered in August 1961.

At the center of middle class culture in the 1950s was a growing demand for consumer goods; a result of the postwar prosperity, the increase in variety and availability of consumer products, and television advertising. America generated a steadily growing demand for better automobiles, clothing, appliances, family vacations and higher education. After the initial hurdles of the 1945 48 period were overcome, Americans found themselves flush with cash from wartime work due to there being little to buy for several years. The result was a mass consumer spending spree, with a huge and voracious demand for new homes, cars, and housewares. Increasing numbers enjoyed high wages, larger houses, better schools, more cars and home comforts like vacuum cleaners, washing machines—which were all made for labor saving and to make housework easier. Inventions familiar in the early 21st century made their first appearance during this era. The live in maid and cook, common features of middle class homes at the beginning of the century, were virtually unheard of in the 1950s; only the very rich had servants. Householders enjoyed centrally heated homes with running hot water. New style furniture was bright, cheap, and light, and easy to move around. As noted by John Kenneth Galbraith in 1958:
"the ordinary individual has access to amenities – foods, entertainments, personal transportation, and plumbing – in which not even the rich rejoiced a century ago."

Automobiles became much more available, after the low production runs in the Depression, followed by the moratorium on production during the Second World War, when factories produced Jeeps and other military transport vehicles instead of cars. Styles became flashier. Boxy and conservative in the first half of the decade, they became lower, longer, wider, and sleeker. Tail fins, chrome, and multicolor paint jobs characterized the late 1950s. It was the beginning of the end for the small auto manufacturers, which were crippled by the Ford GM price war of 1953–1954. Studebaker went under; the others merged into American Motors, whose Rambler chugged into the 1960s. Ford's launch of the new Edsel in 1958 was hotly anticipated, but it was a lemon and was cancelled after only three years. The name "Edsel" became an icon of failure. The 1950s was also the decade when the popular sport Formula One started.

Very little housing had been built during the Great Depression and World War, except for emergency quarters near war industries. Overcrowded and inadequate apartments was the common condition. Some suburbs had developed around large cities where there was rail transportation to the jobs downtown. However, the real growth in suburbia depended on the availability of automobiles, highways, and inexpensive housing. The population had grown, and the stock of family savings had accumulated the money for down payments, automobiles and appliances. The product was a great housing boom. Whereas an average of 316,000 new housing nonfarm units had been constructed each year from the 1930s through 1945, there were 1,450,000 built annually from 1946 through 1955 in all areas, especially suburbs. The G. I. Bill guaranteed low cost loans for veterans, with very low down payments, and low interest rates. With 16,000,000 eligible veterans, the opportunity to buy a house was suddenly at hand. In 1947 alone, 540,000 veterans bought one; their average price was $7,300 (equal to $84,000 in 2020). The construction industry kept prices low by standardization – for example standardizing sizes for kitchen cabinets, refrigerators, and stoves allowed for mass production of kitchen furnishings. Developers purchased empty land just outside the city, installed tract houses based on a handful of designs, and provided streets and utilities, as local public officials race to build schools. The most famous development was Levittown, in Long Island just east of New York City. It offered a new house for $1,000 down, and $70 a month; it featured three bedrooms, fireplace, gas range and gas furnace, and a landscaped lot of 75 by 100 feet, all for a total price of $10,000. Veterans could get one with a much lower down payment. Growth of the suburbs was especially prominent in the Sunbelt regions of the country; one example of a suburb on the West Coast was Lakewood, California, built largely to serve family of aviation workers. Going hand in hand with suburban development was the rise of shopping malls, fast food restaurants and coffee shops. With Detroit turning out automobiles as fast as possible, city dwellers gave up cramped apartments for a suburban life style centered around children and housewives, with the male breadwinner commuting to work. Suburbia encompassed one third of the nation's population by 1960. The growth of suburbs was not only a result of postwar prosperity, but innovations of the single family housing market with low interest rates on 20 and 30 year mortgages, and low down payments, especially for veterans. Meanwhile, the suburban population swelled because of the baby boom. Suburbs provided larger homes for larger families, security from urban living, privacy, and space for consumer goods.

Despite the prosperity of the postwar era, a significant minority of Americans continued to live in poverty by the end of the 1950s. In 1947, 34% of all families earned less than $3,000 a year, compared with 22.1% in 1960. Nevertheless, between one fifth to one quarter of the population could not survive on the income they earned. The older generation of Americans did not benefit as much from the postwar economic boom especially as many had never recovered financially from the loss of their savings during the Great Depression. It was generally a given that the average 35 year old in 1959 owned a better house and car than the average 65 year old, who typically had nothing but a small Social Security pension for an income. Many blue collar workers continued to live in poverty, with 30% of those employed in industry in 1958 receiving under $3,000 a year. In addition, individuals who earned more than $10,000 a year paid a lower proportion of their income in taxes than those who earned less than $2,000 a year. As Socialist leader Michael Harrington emphasized, there was still The Other America. Poverty declined sharply in the 1960s as the New Frontier and Great Society especially helped older people. The proportion below the poverty line fell almost in half from 22% in 1960 to 12% in 1970 and then leveled off.

The farm population shrank steadily as families moved to urban areas, where on average they were more productive and earned a higher standard of living. Friedberger argues that the postwar period saw an accelerating mechanization of agriculture, combined with new and better fertilizers and genetic manipulation of hybrid corn. It made for greater specialization and greater economic risks for the farmer. With rising land prices many sold their land and moved to town, the old farm becoming part of a neighbor's enlarged operation. Mechanization meant less need for hired labor; farmers could operate more acres even though they were older. The result was a decline in rural farm population, with gains in service centers that provided the new technology. The rural non farm population grew as factories were attracted by access to good transportation without the high land costs, taxes, unionization and congestion of city factory districts. Once remote rural areas such as the Missouri Ozarks and the North Woods of the upper Midwest, with a rustic life style and many good fishing spots, attracted retirees and vacationers.

The popularity of television skyrocketed, particularly in the US, where 77% of households purchased their first TV set during the decade. The social mores about sex were particularly restrictive, characterized by strong taboos and a nervous attitude for prudish conformity, to the point that even the softcore pornography of the time avoided describing it. The social mores of the decade were marked by overall conservatism and conformity. The Day the Earth Stood Still hits movie theaters launching a cycle of Hollywood films in which Cold War fears are manifested through scenarios of alien invasion or mutation. Resurgence of evangelical Christianity including Youth for Christ (1943); the National Association of Evangelicals, the American Council of Christian Churches, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (1950), Conservative Baptist Association of America (1947); and Campus Crusade for Christ (1951). Christianity Today was first published in 1956. 1956 also marked the beginning of Bethany Fellowship, a small press that grew to be a leading evangelical press. Carl Stuart Hamblen, a religious radio broadcaster, hosted the popular show "The Cowboy Church of the Air". Hugh Hefner launched Playboy magazine in 1953. Disneyland opens in July 1955.

Abstract expressionism was popular in New York City in the 1950s. This movement acquired its name for combining the German expressionism's emotional intensity with the anti figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. Jackson Pollock was one of the most influential painters of this movement, creating famous works such as No. 5, 1948. Color Field painting and Hard edge painting followed close on the heels of Abstract expressionism, and became the idiom for new abstraction in painting during the late 1950s. The term second generation was applied to many abstract artists who were related to but following different directions than the early abstract expressionists. Bay Area Figurative Movement was an important return to figuration and a reaction against abstract expressionism by artists living and working on the West Coast in and around San Francisco during the mid 1950s.

The 1950s were a time of fashion evolution. At the beginning of the decade, fitted blouses and jackets with rounded (as opposed to puffy) shoulders and small, round collars were very popular. Narrow pant legs and capris became increasingly popular during this time, often worn with flats, ballet inspired shoes, and Keds/Converse type sneakers. Thick, heavy heels were popular for low shoes. Socks were sometimes worn, but were not as necessary as they are now. Circle skirts (like the classic poodle skirt) were very popular. They were often hand decorated with various patterns or beads to make them unique and worn over petticoats. Shirt dresses with large, contrasting buttons were also stylish. Early 1950s women wore small hats over hair cut short, à la Audrey Hepburn. As the 1950s progressed, so too did fashion, until, by the end of the 1950s, the Jackie Kennedy look was in style. A lines and loose fitting dresses became more and more popular, and jackets took on a boxy look. Other Mad comics imitators during the 1950s included Cracked, Sick, Crazy, and Panic, produced by future Mad editor Al Feldstein.

Television, a commodity virtually unheard of during the Second World War, was now prevalent in most American homes by the mid to late 1950s. Television also increasingly became a medium for which to advertise products.

Following the end of Reconstruction, many states adopted restrictive Jim Crow laws which enforced segregation of the races and the second class status of African Americans. The Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) accepted segregation as constitutional. Voting rights discrimination remained widespread through the 1950s. Fewer than 10% voted in the Deep South, although a larger proportion voted in the border states, and blacks in the northern urban areas had shifted wholesale to the Democrats during the New Deal era. The return of many black soldiers following the end of World War II led a wave of racial violence to sweep through the south in 1945 46, becoming a national issue and prompting the Truman administration to focus increasingly on civil rights. The Fair Employment Practice Committee had been established in June 1941 via executive order by President Roosevelt to prevent discriminatory practices by the federal government in all war related work; following the end of the war, Truman unsuccessfully petitioned to maintain a permanent committee. In 1947, the President's Committee on Civil Rights drafted a report titled, To Secure These Rights, which outlined a ten point agenda on civil rights reform. In 1948, as part of the Fair Deal, President Truman proposed a civil rights agenda to congress which included the elimination of the poll tax, a federal lynching ban, and the establishment of a civil rights division in the Department of Justice. While most of these proposals were rejected by southern Democrats in congress, Truman signed Executive orders 9980 and 9981 in July 1948, which outlawed segregation in the federal government and armed forces, respectively. In September 1957, President Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first major civil rights legislation in nearly a century, paving way to climactic federal civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

In the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, litigation and lobbying were the focus of integration efforts. The U. S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954); Powell v. Alabama (1932); Smith v. Allwright (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer (1948); Sweatt v. Painter (1950); and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) led to a shift in tactics, and from 1955 to 1966, nonviolent direct action was the strategy—primarily bus boycotts, sit ins, freedom rides, and social movements. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark case of the United States Supreme Court which explicitly outlawed segregated public education facilities for blacks and whites, ruling so on the grounds that the doctrine of "separate but equal" public education could never truly provide black Americans with facilities of the same standards available to white Americans. One hundred and one members of the United States House of Representatives and 19 Senators signed "The Southern Manifesto" condemning the Supreme Court decision as unconstitutional. Governor Orval Eugene Faubus (Democrat) of Arkansas used the Arkansas National Guard to prevent school integration at Little Rock Central High School in 1957. President Eisenhower (Republican) nationalized state forces and sent in the US Army to enforce federal court orders. Governors Ross Barnett of Mississippi and George Wallace of Alabama physically blocked school doorways at their respective states' universities. Birmingham's public safety commissioner Eugene T. "Bull" Connor advocated violence against freedom riders and ordered fire hoses and police dogs turned on demonstrators during the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade. Sheriff Jim Clark of Dallas County, Alabama, loosed his deputies during the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" event of the Selma to Montgomery march, injuring many of the marchers and personally menacing other protesters. Police all across the South arrested civil rights activists on trumped up charges.

Although they had white supporters and sympathizers, the Civil Rights Movement was designed, led, organized, and manned by African Americans, who placed themselves and their families on the front lines in the struggle for freedom. Their heroism was brought home to every American through newspaper, and later, television reports as their peaceful marches and demonstrations were violently attacked by law enforcement. Officers used batons, bullwhips, fire hoses, police dogs, and mass arrests to intimidate the protesters. The second characteristic of the movement is that it was not monolithic, led by one or two men. Rather it was a dispersed, grass roots campaign that attacked segregation in many different places using many different tactics. While some groups and individuals within the civil rights movement—such as Malcolm X—advocated Black Power, black separatism, or even armed resistance, the majority of participants remained committed to the principles of nonviolence, a deliberate decision by an oppressed minority to abstain from violence for political gain. Using nonviolent strategies, civil rights activists took advantage of emerging national network news reporting, especially television, to capture national attention. The leadership role of black churches in the movement was a natural extension of their structure and function. They offered members an opportunity to exercise roles denied them in society. Throughout history, the black church served as a place of worship and also as a base for powerful ministers, such as Congressman Adam Clayton Powell in New York City. The most prominent clergyman in the Civil Rights Movement was Martin Luther King Jr. and the top strategist was James Bevel; as Time magazine's 1963 "Man of the Year", King showed tireless personal commitment to black freedom and his strong leadership won him worldwide acclaim and the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. Students and seminarians in both the South and the North played key roles in every phase of the movement. Church and student led movements, such as the Nashville Student Movement, developed their own organizational and sustaining structures. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded in 1957, coordinated and raised funds, mostly from northern sources, for local protests and for the training of black leaders. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, founded in 1957, developed the "jail no bail" strategy. SNCC's role was to develop and link sit in campaigns and to help organize freedom rides, voter registration drives, and other protest activities. These three new groups often joined forces with existing organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), founded in 1942, and the National Urban League. The NAACP and its Director, Roy Wilkins, provided legal counsel for jailed demonstrators, helped raise bail, and continued to test segregation and discrimination in the courts as it had been doing for half a century. CORE initiated the 1961 Freedom Rides which involved many SNCC members, and CORE's leader James Farmer later became executive secretary of SNCC. The administration of President John F. Kennedy supported enforcement of desegregation in schools and public facilities. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy brought more than 50 lawsuits in four states to secure black Americans' right to vote. However, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, concerned about possible communist influence in the civil rights movement and personally antagonistic to King, used the FBI to discredit King and other civil rights leaders.

Truman, a self educated farm boy from Missouri, stood in sharp contrast to the urbane and imperious Roosevelt who kept personal control of all major decisions. Truman was a folksy, unassuming president who relied on his cabinet, remarking "The buck stops here" and "If you can't stand the heat, you better get out of the kitchen." He replaced nearly all of Roosevelt's cabinet, often with old friends from his Senate days. Truman faced many challenges in domestic affairs. His poll ratings were sky high when he took office in April 1945 after Roosevelt's sudden death, then plunged to low levels for most of his eight years in office. The disorderly postwar reconversion of the economy of the United States was marked by severe shortages of housing, meat, appliance, automobiles and other rationed goods. The country was hit by long strikes in major industries in 1946, and Truman's unpopularity was such that the GOP regained Congress in a landslide during the midterms that year, and proceeded to pass the Taft–Hartley Act over his veto. He used executive orders to end racial discrimination in the armed forces and created loyalty checks that dismissed thousands of communist fellow travelers from office. Truman's presidency was also eventful in foreign affairs, with the defeat of Nazi Germany and his decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan, the founding of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan of 1948 to rebuild Europe, the Truman Doctrine of 1947 to contain communism, the beginning of the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift of 1948, the creation in 1949 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military alliance, and a major stalemated war in Korea in 1950–1953. Truman confounded all predictions to win election in 1948, helped by his famous Whistle Stop Tour which reinvigorated the New Deal Coalition. In addition, the short lived GOP dominance of Congress was ended as the Democratic Party regained a comfortable majority in both houses, something they would surrender only once in the next 32 years. His victory validated his domestic liberalism, his foreign policy of containment, and the new federal commitment to civil rights. The Kefauver hearings about country wide organized crime and corruption, were held between 1950 and 1951. The Kefauver Committee, officially the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce, held all of America's attention. It was the first committee made up of senators from around the country organized to not only gain a better understanding of how to fight organized crime, but also to expose organised crime for the conglomerate empire that it was. Headed by Estes Kefauver, the committee traveled the country, investigating all levels of corruption. The defeat of America's wartime ally in the Chinese Civil War brought a hostile Communist regime to China under Mao Zedong. Soon the US became bogged down fighting China in the Korean War, 1950–53. Corruption in Truman's administration, which was linked to cabinet level appointees and senior White House staff, was a central issue in the 1952 presidential campaign. Truman's third term hopes were dashed by a poor showing in the 1952 primaries. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, the famous wartime general, won a landslide in the 1952 presidential election by campaigning against Truman's failures in terms of "Communism, Korea and Corruption."

Eisenhower had been a prospective presidential candidate since the end of World War II, and although he publicly announced himself a Republican, he declined the party's offers to run in 1948. However, four years later, he reconsidered, in part because he believed the Democratic Party had had a monopoly on power for too long (control of the White House for 19 straight years and Congress for 16 of the last 19 years) and it was necessary to restore a proper two party balance. Also, the GOP in their desperation to regain power had begun supporting controversial figures such as Joseph McCarthy. As a national hero, Eisenhower carried every major demographic bloc and all states outside the South in the 1952 presidential election. He ended the Korean War, maintained the peace in Asia and the Middle East, and worked smoothly with NATO allies in Europe while keeping the policy of containing Communism rather than trying to roll it back. The economy was generally healthy, apart from a sharp economic recession in 1958. Eisenhower remained popular and largely avoided partisan politics; he was reelected by a landslide in 1956. While frugal in budget matters he expanded Social Security and did not try to repeal the remaining New Deal programs. The US federal government authorized the Interstate Highway Act in June 1956, and construction had begun by the fall of that same year. The originally planned set of highways took decades to complete. The interstate highway system (using a tax on gasoline) dramatically improved the nation's transportation infrastructure. In long term perspective the interstate highway system was a remarkable success, that has done much to sustain Eisenhower's positive reputation. Although there were later objections to the negative impact of clearing neighborhoods in cities, the system has been well received. The railroad system for passengers and freight declined sharply, but the trucking expanded dramatically and the cost of shipping and travel fell sharply. Suburbanization became possible, with the rapid growth of easily accessible, larger, cheaper housing than was available in the overcrowded central cities. Tourism dramatically expanded as well, creating a demand for more service stations, motels, restaurants and visitor attractions. There was much more long distance movement to the Sunbelt for winter vacations, or for permanent relocation, with convenient access to visits to relatives back home. In rural areas, towns and small cities off the grid lost out as shoppers followed the interstate, and new factories were located near them. In both foreign and domestic policy Eisenhower remained on friendly terms with the Democrats, who regained Congress in 1954 and made large gains in 1958. His farewell address to the nation warned of the dangers of a growing "military–industrial complex."

The very close 1960 election pitted Republican Vice President Richard Nixon against the Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Historians have explained Kennedy's victory in terms of an economic recession, the numerical dominance of 17 million more registered Democrats than Republicans, the votes that Kennedy gained among Catholics practically matched the votes Nixon gained among Protestants, Kennedy's better organization and superior campaigning skills. Nixon's emphasis on his experience carried little weight, and he wasted energy by campaigning in all 50 states instead of concentrating on the swing states. Kennedy used his large, well funded campaign organization to win the nomination, secure endorsements, and with the aid of the last of the big city bosses, to get out the vote in the big cities. He relied on Johnson to hold the South and used television effectively. Kennedy was the first Catholic to run for president since Al Smith's ill fated campaign in 1928. Voters were polarized on religious grounds, but Kennedy's election was a transforming event for Catholics, who finally realized they were accepted in America, and it marked the virtual end of anti Catholicism as a political force.

The Kennedy Family had long been leaders of the Irish Catholic wing of the Democratic Party; JFK was middle of the road or liberal on domestic issues and conservative on foreign policy, sending military forces into Cuba and Vietnam. The Kennedy style called for youth, dynamism, vigor and an intellectual approach to aggressive new policies in foreign affairs. The downside was his inexperience in foreign affairs, standing in stark contrast to the vast experience of the president he replaced. He is best known for his call to civic virtue: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country." In Congress the Conservative Coalition blocked nearly all of Kennedy's domestic programs, so there were few changes in domestic policy, even as the civil rights movement gained momentum.

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald. The event proved to be one of the greatest psychological shocks to the American people in the 20th century and led to Kennedy being revered as a martyr and hero.

After Kennedy's assassination, vice president Lyndon Baines Johnson served out the remainder of the term, using appeals to finish the job that Kennedy had started to pass a remarkable package of liberal legislation that he called the Great Society. Johnson used the full powers of the presidency to ensure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. These actions helped Johnson to win a historic landslide in the 1964 presidential election over conservative champion Senator Barry Goldwater. Johnson's big victory brought an overwhelming liberal majority in Congress.