by Norman Lowe
the arming of all black people;
the exemption of blacks from military service;
the release of all blacks from jail;
payment of compensation to blacks for all the years of ill-treatment and exploitation by white Americans;
practical on-the-spot help with social services for black people living below the poverty line.
They used the same methods against white people as the Ku Klux Klan had used for years against black people – arson, beatings and murders. In 1964 there were race riots in Harlem (New York) and in 1965 the most severe race riots in American history took place in the Watts district of Los Angeles; 35 people were killed and over a thousand injured. The police harassed the Panthers unmercifully, so much so that Congress ordered an investigation into their conduct. By the mid-1970s the Panthers had lost many of their leading activists, who had either been killed or were in prison. This, plus the fact that most non-violent black leaders felt that the Panthers were bringing the whole Civil Rights movement into disrepute, caused them to change tactics and concentrate on the social service aspects of their activities. By 1985 the Panthers had ceased to exist as an organized party.
(e) Mixed fortunes
By that time great progress had been made, especially in the area of voting; by 1975 there were 18 black members of Congress, 278 black members of state governments, and 120 black mayors had been elected. However, there could never be full equality until black poverty and discrimination in jobs and housing were removed. Unemployment was always higher among black people; in the big Northern cities they were still living in overcrowded slum areas known as ghettos, from which the whites had moved out; and a large proportion of the jail population was black. In the early 1990s, most black Americans were worse off economically than they had been 20 years earlier. The underlying tensions broke out in the spring of 1992 in Los Angeles: after four white policemen were acquitted of beating up a black motorist (in spite of the incident having been caught on video), crowds of black people rioted. Many were killed, thousands were injured, and millions of dollars worth of damage was done to property.
Yet at the same time, a prosperous African American middle class had emerged, and talented individuals were able to make it to the top. The best example was Colin Powell, whose parents had moved to New York from Jamaica. He had a successful career in the army and in 1989 was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first African American to reach the highest position in the US military. In the Gulf War of 1990–1 he commanded the UN forces with distinction. After his retirement in 1993 he became involved in politics; both parties hoped he would join them, but he eventually declared himself a Republican. There was talk that he might run for president in the elections of 2000, but he chose not to. In January 2001, George W. Bush appointed him secretary of state, the US head of foreign affairs. Again he was the first African American to occupy such a vitally important post.
In 2003 it was reported that, because of higher birth rates and immigration, Hispanics or Latinos had become the largest minority group in the USA, making up 13 per cent of the total population; with a total of 37 million they had overtaken African Americans, who totalled 36.2 million (12.7 per cent). At the same time, the birth rate among the white population was falling. Demographers pointed out that if these trends continued, the political parties would be forced to take more account of the wishes and needs of both Latinos and black Americans. In the presidential election of 2000, more than 80 per cent of African American voters backed the Democrats, while in the 2002 mid-term elections, about 70 per cent of Latinos voted Democrat. In 2009 the Democrat candidate, Barack Obama, became the first African American president of the USA.
23.3 ANTI-COMMUNISM AND SENATOR MCCARTHY
(a) Anti-communist feeling
After the Second World War the USA took upon itself the world role of preventing the spread of communism; this caused the country to become deeply involved in Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Latin America and Cuba (see Chapters 7, 8, 21 and 26). There had been a strong anti-communist movement in the USA ever since the communists had come to power in Russia in 1917. In a way this is surprising, because the American Communist Party (formed in 1919) attracted little support. Even during the depression of the 1930s, when a mass swing to the left might have been expected, party membership was never more than 100 000, and there was never a real communist threat.
Some US historians argue that Senator Joseph McCarthy and other right-wingers who whipped up anti-communist feelings were trying to protect what they saw as the traditional American way of life, with its emphasis on ‘self-help’ and ‘rugged individualism’. They thought that this was being threatened by the rapid changes in society, and by developments like the New Deal and the Fair Deal, which they disliked because they were financed by higher taxation. Many were deeply religious people, some of them fundamentalists, who wanted to get back to what they called ‘true Christianity’. It was difficult for them to pinpoint exactly who was responsible for this American ‘decline’, and so they focused on communism as the source of all evil. The spread of communism in eastern Europe, the beginning of the Cold War, the communist victory in China (1949) and the attack on South Korea by communist North Korea (June 1950) threw the ‘radical right’ into a panic.
1 Troop demobilization
The rapid demobilization of American troops at the end of the war worried some people. The general wish was to ‘bring the boys home’ as soon as possible, and the army planned to have 5.5 million soldiers back home by July 1946. However, Congress insisted that it should be done much more quickly, and that the army should be dramatically reduced in size. By 1950 it was down to only 600 000 men, none of them fully prepared for service. This thoroughly alarmed the people, who thought that the USA should be ready to take deterrent action against communist expansion.
2 Fear of espionage
Reports of espionage (spying) prompted Truman to set up a Loyalty Review Board to investigate people working in the government, the civil service, atomic research and armaments (1947). During the next five years, over 6 million people were investigated; no cases of espionage were discovered, though about 500 people were sacked because it was decided that their loyalty to the USA was ‘questionable’.
3 Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs
Much more sensational were the cases of Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Hiss, a former top official in the State Department (the equivalent of the British Foreign Office), was accused of being a communist and of passing secret documents to Moscow. He was eventually found guilty of perjury and given a five-year jail sentence (1950). The Rosenbergs were convicted of passing secret information about the atomic bomb to the Russians, though much of the evidence was doubtful. They were sentenced to death in the electric chair. They were eventually executed in 1953, in spite of worldwide appeals for mercy.
These cases helped to intensify the anti-communist feeling sweeping America, and led Congress to pass the McCarran Act, which required organizations suspected of being communist to supply lists of members. Many of these people were later sacked from their jobs, although they had committed no offence. Truman, who felt that things were going too far, vetoed this Act, but Congress passed it, over his veto.
4 McCarthyism
Senator Joseph McCarthy was a right-wing Republican who hit the headlines in 1950 when he claimed (in a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, on 9 February) that the State Department was ‘infested’ with communists. He claimed to have a list of 205 people who were members of the Party and who were ‘still working and shaping policy’. Although he could produce no evidence to support his claims, many people believed him, and he launched a campaign to root out the communists. All sorts of people were accused of being communists: socialists, liberals, intellectuals, artists, pacifists and anyone whose views did not appear orthodox were attacked and hounded out of their jobs for ‘un-American activities’.
McCarthy became the most feared man in the country, and wa
s supported by many national newspapers. McCarthyism reached its climax soon after Eisenhower’s election. McCarthy won many votes for the Republicans among those who took his accusations seriously, but he went too far when he began to accuse leading generals of having communist sympathies. Some of the hearings were televised and many people were shocked at the brutal way in which he banged the table with rage and abused and bullied witnesses. Even Republican senators felt he was going too far, and the Senate condemned him by 67 votes to 22 (December 1954). McCarthy foolishly attacked the president for supporting the Senate, but this finally ruined his reputation and McCarthyism was finished. But it had been an unpleasant experience for many Americans: at least 9 million people had been ‘investigated’, thousands of innocent people had lost their jobs, and an atmosphere of suspicion and insecurity had been created.
5 After McCarthy
Right-wing extremism continued even after the disgrace of McCarthy. Public opinion had turned against him not because he was attacking communists, but because of his brutal methods and because he had overstepped the mark by criticizing generals. Anti-communist feeling was still strong and Congress passed an Act making the Communist Party illegal (1954). There were also worries in case communism gained a foothold in the countries of Latin America, especially after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959, and began nationalizing American-owned estates and factories. In response, Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress (1961), which aimed to pump billions of dollars of aid into Latin America to enable economic and social reform to be carried out. Kennedy did genuinely want to help the poor nations of Latin America, and American aid was put to good use. But other motives were important too.
By helping to solve economic problems, the USA hoped to reduce unrest, making it less likely that communist governments would come to power in these states.
US industry would benefit, because it was understood that much of the cash would be spent buying American goods (see Chapter 26 for full details).
(b) The military–industrial complex
Another by-product of the Cold War was what President Eisenhower called the ‘military–industrial complex’. This was the situation in which the American military leaders and armaments manufacturers worked together in a partnership. The army chiefs decided what was needed, and as the arms race developed, more and more orders were placed – atomic bombs, then hydrogen bombs, and later many different types of missile (see Section 7.4). Armaments manufacturers made huge profits, though nobody was quite sure just how much, because all the dealings were secret. It was in their interests to keep the Cold War going – the more it intensified, the greater their profits. When the Russians launched the first space satellite (Sputnik) in 1957, Eisenhower set up the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and even more expensive orders were placed.
At any sign of a possible improvement in East–West relations, for example when Khrushchev talked about ‘peaceful coexistence’, the armaments manufacturers were far from happy. Some historians have suggested that the American U-2 spy plane that was shot down over Russia in 1960 was sent deliberately in order to ruin the summit conference, which was about to begin in Paris (see Section 7.3(c)). If true, this would mean that the military–industrial partnership was even more powerful than the super-corporations – so powerful that it was able to influence American foreign policy. The amounts of cash involved were staggering: in 1950 the total budget was around $40 billion, of which $12 billion was military spending. By 1960 the military budget was almost $46 billion, and that was half the country’s total budget. By 1970, military spending had reached $80 billion. A Senate report found that over 2000 former top officers were employed by defence contractors, who were all making fortunes.
23.4 NIXON AND WATERGATE
Richard M. Nixon (1969–74) was Eisenhower’s vice-president from 1956, and had narrowly lost to Kennedy in the 1960 election. On his election in 1969 he faced an unen-viable task – what to do about Vietnam, poverty, unemployment, violence and the general crisis of confidence that was afflicting America (see Section 23.1(e) for his social policies).
(a) Foreign policy
Overseas problems, especially Vietnam, dominated his presidency (at least until 1973 when Watergate took over). After the Democrat majority in Congress refused to vote any further cash for the war, Nixon extricated the USA from Vietnam with a negotiated peace signed in 1973 (see Section 8.3(c)), to the vast relief of most of the American people, who celebrated ‘peace with honour’. Yet in April 1975, South Vietnam fell to the communists; the American struggle to prevent the spread of communism in south-east Asia had ended in failure, and her world reputation was somewhat tattered.
However, Nixon was responsible for a radical and constructive change in foreign policy when he sought, with some success, to improve the USA’s relations with the USSR and China (see Section 8.6(a–c)). His visit to meet Chairman Mao in Beijing in February 1972 was a brilliant success; in May 1972 he was in Moscow for the signing of an arms limitation treaty.
By the end of his first term in office, Nixon’s achievements seemed full of promise: he had brought the American people within sight of peace, he was following sensible policies of détente with the communist world, and law and order had returned. The Americans had enjoyed a moment of glory by putting the first men on the moon (Neil Armstrong and Ed ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, 20 July 1969). Nixon won the election of November 1972 overwhelmingly, and in January 1973 was inaugurated for a second term. However, his second term was ruined by a new crisis.
(b) The Watergate scandal
The scandal broke in January 1973 when a number of men were charged with having broken into the Democratic Party offices in the Watergate Building, Washington, in June 1972 during the presidential election campaign. They had planted listening devices and photocopied important documents. It turned out that the burglary had been organized by leading members of Nixon’s staff, who were sent to jail. Nixon insisted that he knew nothing about the affair, but suspicions mounted when he consistently refused to hand over tapes of discussions in the White House which, it was thought, would settle matters one way or the other. The president was widely accused of having deliberately ‘covered up’ for the culprits. He received a further blow when his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, was forced to resign (December 1973) after facing charges of bribery and corruption. He was replaced by Gerald Ford, a little-known politician, but one with an unblemished record.
Nixon was called on to resign, but refused even when it was discovered that he had been guilty of tax evasion. He was threatened with impeachment (a formal accusation of his crimes before the Senate, which would then try him for the offences). To avoid this, Nixon resigned (August 1974) and Ford became president. It was a tragic end to a presidency which had shown positive achievements, especially in foreign affairs, but the scandal shook people’s faith in politicians and in a system which could allow such things to happen. Ford won admiration for the way in which he restored dignity to American politics, but given the recession, unemployment and inflation, it was no surprise when he lost the 1976 election to the Democrat James Earl Carter.
23.5 THE CARTER–REAGAN–BUSH ERA, 1977–93
(a) Jimmy Carter (1977–81)
Carter’s presidency was something of a disappointment. He was elected as an outsider – ex-naval officer, peanut farmer, ex-Governor of Georgia, and a man of deep religious convictions; he was the newcomer to Washington who would restore the public’s faith in politicians. He managed some significant achievements. He
stopped giving American aid to authoritarian right-wing governments merely to keep communism out;
co-operated with Britain to bring about black majority rule in Zimbabwe (see Section 24.4(c));
signed a second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) with the USSR in 1979;
played a vital role in the Camp David talks, bringing peace between Egypt and Israel (see Section 11.6).
Unfortunately Carter’s lack of experienc
e of handling Congress meant that he had the same difficulties as Kennedy, and he failed to pilot the majority of his reforming programme into law. By 1980 the world recession was biting deeply, bringing factory closures, unemployment and oil shortages. He was a great disappointment to the Christian conservatives, many of whom had voted for him. They expected him to support their call for the banning of abortion and for making prayers a compulsory part of education in state schools, neither of which materialized. Apart from Camp David, Democratic foreign policy seemed unimpressive; even an achievement like SALT II was unpopular with the military leaders and the arms manufacturers, since it threatened to reduce their profits. The Christian Right saw it as a capitulation to ungodly communism. The Americans were unable to take effective action against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan (1979). Just as frustrating was their failure to free a number of American hostages seized in Tehran by Iranian students (November 1979) and held for over a year. The Iranians were trying to force the American government to return the exiled Shah and his fortune, but stalemate persisted even after the Shah’s death. A combination of these problems and frustrations resulted in a decisive Republican victory in the election of November 1980. Ironically the hostages were set free minutes after the inauguration of Carter’s successor (January 1981).
(b) Ronald Reagan (1981–9)
Reagan, a former film star, quickly became the most popular president since the Second World War. He was a reassuring, kindly father-figure who won a reputation as ‘The Great Communicator’ because of his straightforward and simple way of addressing the American public. Americans particularly admired his determination to stand no nonsense from the Soviets (as he called the USSR); he wanted to work for peaceful relations with them, but from a position of strength. He persuaded Congress to vote extra cash to build MX intercontinental ballistic missiles (May 1983) and deployed Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe (December 1983). He intervened in Central America, sending financial and military aid to rebel groups in El Salvador and Nicaragua (see Section 26.3(c)), whose governments he believed to be communist-backed. He continued friendly relations with China, visiting Beijing in April 1984, but he did not meet any top Russian politicians until shortly before the presidential election of November 1984.