The Baby Boom, Economic Prosperity, and the Cold War 1946–1960
U.S. History 1865–2004
The Baby Boom, Economic Prosperity, and the Cold War 1946–1960
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United States enjoys unprecedented period of internal growth and prosperity as Americans return to normal life after World War II
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Soviet Union emerges as only major U.S. rival, creating intense, prolonged standoff between superpowers; known as Cold War
| 1946 | USSR establishes dominance of liberated nations in Eastern Europe, sets up Communist governments; Churchill uses term “iron curtain” to describe division of Communist Eastern Europe from free Western Europe | |
| USSR refuses to abandon occupation of Iran until United States grants oil concessions | ||
| Baruch Plan concedes sharing of nuclear information with International agency | ||
| United States fights Communist incursion in Eastern Europe by providing aid to capitalists during Greek Civil War | ||
| Atomic Energy Commission established | ||
| 1947 | Truman Doctrine states U.S. intent to fight Communism by helping free nations resist “attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” | |
| Truman orders loyalty investigations and security purges of government workers | ||
| United States announces Marshall Plan to help stabilize Western European governments and accelerate postwar economic recovery in Europe | ||
| House Un-American Activities Committee investigates suspected Communist sympathizers working in motion picture industry; leads to Hollywood blacklist | ||
| Presidential Committee on Civil Rights calls for end to segregation in report entitled “To Secure These Rights”; Truman endorses findings | ||
| Jackie Robinson of Brooklyn Dodgers breaks color barrier in major-league baseball | ||
| First Levittown planned housing community built on Long Island, New York | ||
| Taft-Hartley Act prohibits closed-shop, union-only workplace negotiations | ||
| 1948 | Communists occupy Czechoslovakia | |
| United States reinstates military draft | ||
| USSR blocks all outside access to West Berlin in Berlin blockade; United States and allies respond with Berlin airlift of food and supplies | ||
| Truman elected president after narrow victory over Thomas Dewey | ||
| Israel established as a nation | ||
| Truman orders desegregation of military | ||
| 1949 | North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established | |
| USSR detonates atomic bomb, beginning arms race with United States | ||
| Communists assume power in China | ||
| 1950 | Korean War begins as Soviet-backed North Korean forces invade South Korea | |
| U.S. troops invade North Korea as part of U.N. police action | ||
| China enters Korean War in support of North Korea | ||
| Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents rulings ban segregation at state-college level | ||
| Suspected Communist symathizer Alger Hiss convicted of perjury | ||
| McCarran Act requires Communist Party members to register with U.S. government | ||
| Senator Joseph McCarthy begins rabid anti-Communist campaign, claiming to have list of 205 Communists active in U.S. State Department | ||
| U.S. begins hydrogen bomb program | ||
| 1951 | Truman relieves Gen. Douglas MacArthur of command in Korea | |
| Peace negotiations begin in Korea | ||
| United States begins military boycott of China | ||
| J. D. Salinger publishes novel The Catcher in the Rye | ||
| Dennis et al. v. U.S. ruling upholds conviction, imprisonment of Communist leaders | ||
| Julius and Ethel Rosenberg convicted of espionage; executed in 1953 | ||
| 1952 | United States detonates first hydrogen bomb | |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower elected 34th president | ||
| Ralph Ellison publishes novel Invisible Man | ||
| 1953 | Peace treaty ends Korean War, restores partition of North Korea and South Korea | |
| U.S.-supported coup in Iran deposes prime minister in favor of shah | ||
| Stalin dies; Nikita Khrushchev becomes leader of USSR | ||
| 1954 | Army-McCarthy hearings featured live on television; Senate later censures McCarthy and his power fades | |
| Hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll yields more radioactive fallout than expected | ||
| Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling finds “separate but equal” doctrine inherently unconstitutional, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson | ||
| United States supports coup in Guatemala that deposes elected government | ||
| Eisenhower invokes “domino theory” in insistence that Indochina must not fall to Communist control; continues to pursue Truman’s goal of containment | ||
| French surrender claim in Vietnam after defeat at Dien Bien Phu | ||
| Geneva Peace Accords partition Vietnam, schedule elections for 1956 | ||
| 1955 | Supreme Court orders states to desegregate schools “with all deliberate speed” | |
| Black teenager Emmett Till brutally murdered in Mississippi by several whites; all-white jury finds perpetrators not guilty, sparking national outrage | ||
| Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up bus seat to whites in Montgomery, Alabama; sparks Montgomery bus boycott | ||
| West Germany joins NATO | ||
| Warsaw Pact, Communist bloc’s counterpart to NATO, signed | ||
| Jonas Salk creates polio vaccine | ||
| 1956 | Egypt nationalizes Suez Canal after American and British governments refuse to finance construction of Aswan High Dam | |
| Supreme Court rules public bus segregation unconstitutional | ||
| Elvis Presley becomes national music sensation | ||
| 1957 | USSR launches satellite Sputnik, beating United States into space | |
| 25,000 blacks join Martin Luther King Jr. in prayer pilgrimage at Lincoln Memorial | ||
| Civil Rights Act of 1957 protects black suffrage; first civil rights legislation since 1875 | ||
| Federal troops sent to enforce integration at Little Rock, Arkansas, high school | ||
| King and other black ministers create Southern Christian Leadership Conference | ||
| Jack Kerouac publishes novel On the Road; major prose work of Beat Generation | ||
| 1958 | Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus evades federal integration order by closing Little Rock public schools and reopening as private, segregated schools | |
| National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) founded | ||
| 1959 | Fidel Castro overthrows Cuban government, establishes Communist state | |
| Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun debuts on Broadway | ||
| Alaska and Hawai‘i admitted to Union as 49th and 50th states | ||
| 1960 | Presidential debates (between Kennedy and Nixon) televised live for first time | |
| John F. Kennedy elected 35th president | ||
| Greensboro, North Carolina, lunch counter sit-ins spark waves of student protest in favor of civil rights | ||
| Civil Rights Act of 1960 strengthens existing civil rights legislation |
