Bob H. Reinhardt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469624099
- eISBN:
- 9781469625102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469624099.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter tells the story behind the start of the global effort to eradicate smallpox. On May 19, 1965, the World Health Assembly (WHA) passed Resolution WHA18.38, which devoted the assembly and ...
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This chapter tells the story behind the start of the global effort to eradicate smallpox. On May 19, 1965, the World Health Assembly (WHA) passed Resolution WHA18.38, which devoted the assembly and its administrative body (the WHO) to “the world-wide eradication of smallpox.” While previous assemblies had made similar such declarations in vague (and unfunded) support of the eradication program proposed by the USSR in 1958, this particular resolution had the political, technical, personnel, and financial backing of the United States, under the leadership of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The American commitment to smallpox eradication represented a step toward a Global Great Society: a liberal effort to engage the decolonizing Cold War world by manipulating the nonhuman world, including diseases.Less
This chapter tells the story behind the start of the global effort to eradicate smallpox. On May 19, 1965, the World Health Assembly (WHA) passed Resolution WHA18.38, which devoted the assembly and its administrative body (the WHO) to “the world-wide eradication of smallpox.” While previous assemblies had made similar such declarations in vague (and unfunded) support of the eradication program proposed by the USSR in 1958, this particular resolution had the political, technical, personnel, and financial backing of the United States, under the leadership of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The American commitment to smallpox eradication represented a step toward a Global Great Society: a liberal effort to engage the decolonizing Cold War world by manipulating the nonhuman world, including diseases.
Benjamin Looker
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226073989
- eISBN:
- 9780226290454
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226290454.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Against a backdrop of 1960s urban strife and decline, some racial liberals used stories and images to conjure forth a utopian neighborhood future. As chapter 7 contends, this impulse surfaced most ...
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Against a backdrop of 1960s urban strife and decline, some racial liberals used stories and images to conjure forth a utopian neighborhood future. As chapter 7 contends, this impulse surfaced most compellingly in works for children. In the bestselling picture books of Ezra Jack Keats or on the set of television's Sesame Street, the city neighborhood emerged as a multiracial peaceable kingdom, a Great Society achieved at the block level. Crafted with didactic intent, these portrayals were designed as models for an urban tomorrow in which the nation's painful racial legacy could be overcome through relationships forged on stoops and corners. However, various critics on the left would protest that such works ignored the structural roots of poverty while breezily universalizing the particularities of inner-city existence. Characterized by unresolved tensions between pungent realism and harmonious fantasy, these and similar texts signaled the possibilities and contradictions in a Great Society vision that sought urban redemption through neighborhood ties.Less
Against a backdrop of 1960s urban strife and decline, some racial liberals used stories and images to conjure forth a utopian neighborhood future. As chapter 7 contends, this impulse surfaced most compellingly in works for children. In the bestselling picture books of Ezra Jack Keats or on the set of television's Sesame Street, the city neighborhood emerged as a multiracial peaceable kingdom, a Great Society achieved at the block level. Crafted with didactic intent, these portrayals were designed as models for an urban tomorrow in which the nation's painful racial legacy could be overcome through relationships forged on stoops and corners. However, various critics on the left would protest that such works ignored the structural roots of poverty while breezily universalizing the particularities of inner-city existence. Characterized by unresolved tensions between pungent realism and harmonious fantasy, these and similar texts signaled the possibilities and contradictions in a Great Society vision that sought urban redemption through neighborhood ties.
JEFFREY C. ALEXANDER
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199744466
- eISBN:
- 9780199944163
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199744466.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
From the early 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt created the New Deal during the Great Depression, to the mid-1960s, when Lyndon B. Johnson launched the Great Society during a much more affluent ...
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From the early 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt created the New Deal during the Great Depression, to the mid-1960s, when Lyndon B. Johnson launched the Great Society during a much more affluent time, the pendulum of politics in America swung magisterially and seemingly inexorably to the left side. In the four decades following, the same pendulum swung to the right. The decades-long decline of liberal political fortune came in part because of social backlash. From the New Deal to the Great Society, there had just been too much equality, too much progressive social change, too much government, and too much disruption of settled manners, mores, and entrenched elites. There was bound to be growing resistance and the return to political power of the Republican side. While political movements are deeply affected in part by social forces, their fate is decided to some extent by whether they provide these social forces with effective rhetoric and voice.Less
From the early 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt created the New Deal during the Great Depression, to the mid-1960s, when Lyndon B. Johnson launched the Great Society during a much more affluent time, the pendulum of politics in America swung magisterially and seemingly inexorably to the left side. In the four decades following, the same pendulum swung to the right. The decades-long decline of liberal political fortune came in part because of social backlash. From the New Deal to the Great Society, there had just been too much equality, too much progressive social change, too much government, and too much disruption of settled manners, mores, and entrenched elites. There was bound to be growing resistance and the return to political power of the Republican side. While political movements are deeply affected in part by social forces, their fate is decided to some extent by whether they provide these social forces with effective rhetoric and voice.
Ocean Howell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226141398
- eISBN:
- 9780226290287
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226290287.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
For more than a century commentators have referred to San Francisco's Mission District as a “city within a city.” This book demonstrates that it was no accident that the neighborhood came to be ...
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For more than a century commentators have referred to San Francisco's Mission District as a “city within a city.” This book demonstrates that it was no accident that the neighborhood came to be thought of this way. In the aftermath of the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906, Mission residents (“Missionites,” as they proudly referred to themselves) organized to claim the right to plan their own neighborhood. Mission-based groups mobilized a politics of place and ethnicity to create a strong identity, one that was explicitly white. Organizations like the Mission Promotion Association wielded decisive influence in planning debates through the Progressive Era and the 1920s. Local power waned through the New Deal and immediate post-World War II period, but institutions like the Mission Merchants' Association and the Catholic parish church of St. Peter's carried on the neighborhood planning tradition. In the 1960s, the federal urban renewal program and Great Society programs, particularly Model Cities, would give neighborhood residents the impetus to organize anew. The resulting groups, like the Mission Coalition Organization and the Mission Model Neighborhood Corporation, mobilized a politics of multiethnicity and again asserted the right of the neighborhood to plan for itself. The book concludes with the dissolution of the Mission Coalition Organization in 1973. But it also demonstrates that the neighborhood's recent anti-gentrification organizing cannot be explained without reference to the Mission's longstanding tradition of community-based planning, a tradition that dates back at least as early as the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906.Less
For more than a century commentators have referred to San Francisco's Mission District as a “city within a city.” This book demonstrates that it was no accident that the neighborhood came to be thought of this way. In the aftermath of the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906, Mission residents (“Missionites,” as they proudly referred to themselves) organized to claim the right to plan their own neighborhood. Mission-based groups mobilized a politics of place and ethnicity to create a strong identity, one that was explicitly white. Organizations like the Mission Promotion Association wielded decisive influence in planning debates through the Progressive Era and the 1920s. Local power waned through the New Deal and immediate post-World War II period, but institutions like the Mission Merchants' Association and the Catholic parish church of St. Peter's carried on the neighborhood planning tradition. In the 1960s, the federal urban renewal program and Great Society programs, particularly Model Cities, would give neighborhood residents the impetus to organize anew. The resulting groups, like the Mission Coalition Organization and the Mission Model Neighborhood Corporation, mobilized a politics of multiethnicity and again asserted the right of the neighborhood to plan for itself. The book concludes with the dissolution of the Mission Coalition Organization in 1973. But it also demonstrates that the neighborhood's recent anti-gentrification organizing cannot be explained without reference to the Mission's longstanding tradition of community-based planning, a tradition that dates back at least as early as the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906.
Linda Sargent Wood
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195377743
- eISBN:
- 9780199869404
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195377743.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The epilogue contends that holism's story is one of neither complete success nor complete failure. While holistic understandings drifted into the culture in deep and important ways, capturing ...
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The epilogue contends that holism's story is one of neither complete success nor complete failure. While holistic understandings drifted into the culture in deep and important ways, capturing imaginations and motivating action, holistic projects did not remain constant. Instead, the 1960s version was an episodic moment in the long history of holistic thought, a period of high interest in one of the cycles of an old impulse that had very real consequences. Marked by the prosperity of the time, global cultural exchanges, new scientific and technological knowledge, shifting immigration patterns, and a medley of religious views, holists dreamed of achieving equality. Their communal ideals matched the exuberance of others who plotted to send a man to the moon; create a modern‐day Camelot; or rechart global relations through the United Nations, the World Federation of Churches, the international community of scientists, and the Peace Corps. Creating the Great Society seemed entirely possible. But this moment did not last. As the 1960s wore into the 1970s, the sensibility shifted to reflect a more individualistic era. Holists again manipulated and remade holism to meet new circumstances. Consequently, this anthology of ideas lost much of its communitarian drive and optimistic impulse in exchange for more personal, local articulations.Less
The epilogue contends that holism's story is one of neither complete success nor complete failure. While holistic understandings drifted into the culture in deep and important ways, capturing imaginations and motivating action, holistic projects did not remain constant. Instead, the 1960s version was an episodic moment in the long history of holistic thought, a period of high interest in one of the cycles of an old impulse that had very real consequences. Marked by the prosperity of the time, global cultural exchanges, new scientific and technological knowledge, shifting immigration patterns, and a medley of religious views, holists dreamed of achieving equality. Their communal ideals matched the exuberance of others who plotted to send a man to the moon; create a modern‐day Camelot; or rechart global relations through the United Nations, the World Federation of Churches, the international community of scientists, and the Peace Corps. Creating the Great Society seemed entirely possible. But this moment did not last. As the 1960s wore into the 1970s, the sensibility shifted to reflect a more individualistic era. Holists again manipulated and remade holism to meet new circumstances. Consequently, this anthology of ideas lost much of its communitarian drive and optimistic impulse in exchange for more personal, local articulations.
Brandon K. Winford
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780813178257
- eISBN:
- 9780813178264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813178257.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
Chapter 6 demonstrates the limitations of “black business activism” during the 1960s while focusing on urban renewal in Durham, North Carolina. Durham’s urban renewal program began in 1958, as a ...
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Chapter 6 demonstrates the limitations of “black business activism” during the 1960s while focusing on urban renewal in Durham, North Carolina. Durham’s urban renewal program began in 1958, as a consequence of the Housing Act of 1954 and the state’s fledgling Research Triangle Park (RTP) initiative. The urban renewal program paved the way for an infrastructure that ultimately provided linkages in the physical landscape between RTP, the University of North Carolina, Duke University, North Carolina Central University, and North Carolina State University. Wheeler became the lone black member on the Durham Redevelopment Commission, the group responsible for administering the Bull City’s urban renewal program. I argue that, in part, Wheeler’s support for the federally funded urban redevelopment program fit within his own framework of how best to implement the gains already being won by the civil rights movement. The chapter also examines the “War on Poverty” in North Carolina in the context of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. It does so through trying to better understand Wheeler’s involvement with the North Carolina Fund (NC Fund), an antipoverty agency created by Governor Terry Sanford in 1963. The Fund became the model for President Johnson’s national reform agenda.Less
Chapter 6 demonstrates the limitations of “black business activism” during the 1960s while focusing on urban renewal in Durham, North Carolina. Durham’s urban renewal program began in 1958, as a consequence of the Housing Act of 1954 and the state’s fledgling Research Triangle Park (RTP) initiative. The urban renewal program paved the way for an infrastructure that ultimately provided linkages in the physical landscape between RTP, the University of North Carolina, Duke University, North Carolina Central University, and North Carolina State University. Wheeler became the lone black member on the Durham Redevelopment Commission, the group responsible for administering the Bull City’s urban renewal program. I argue that, in part, Wheeler’s support for the federally funded urban redevelopment program fit within his own framework of how best to implement the gains already being won by the civil rights movement. The chapter also examines the “War on Poverty” in North Carolina in the context of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. It does so through trying to better understand Wheeler’s involvement with the North Carolina Fund (NC Fund), an antipoverty agency created by Governor Terry Sanford in 1963. The Fund became the model for President Johnson’s national reform agenda.
Amy C. Offner
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691190938
- eISBN:
- 9780691192628
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691190938.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, ...
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In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, community workers, and architects went south with the gospel of the New Deal on their lips, but Latin American realities soon revealed unexpected possibilities within the New Deal itself. In Colombia, Latin Americans and U.S. advisors ended up decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. By the 1960s, they had remade the country's housing projects, river valleys, and universities. They had also generated new lessons for the United States itself. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, U.S. social movements, business associations, and government agencies all promised to repatriate the lessons of development, and they did so by multiplying the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to dismantle the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. This book brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury statebuilding. The untold story of how the road from the New Deal to the Great Society ran through Latin America, the book also offers a surprising new account of the origins of neoliberalism.Less
In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, community workers, and architects went south with the gospel of the New Deal on their lips, but Latin American realities soon revealed unexpected possibilities within the New Deal itself. In Colombia, Latin Americans and U.S. advisors ended up decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. By the 1960s, they had remade the country's housing projects, river valleys, and universities. They had also generated new lessons for the United States itself. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, U.S. social movements, business associations, and government agencies all promised to repatriate the lessons of development, and they did so by multiplying the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to dismantle the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. This book brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury statebuilding. The untold story of how the road from the New Deal to the Great Society ran through Latin America, the book also offers a surprising new account of the origins of neoliberalism.
Amy C. Offner
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691190938
- eISBN:
- 9780691192628
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691190938.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter focuses on David Lilienthal when he returned to the US public eye. Businessmen who had long shaped and implemented domestic policy faced a grave crisis of legitimacy, and Lilienthal cast ...
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This chapter focuses on David Lilienthal when he returned to the US public eye. Businessmen who had long shaped and implemented domestic policy faced a grave crisis of legitimacy, and Lilienthal cast his lot with corporate executives desperately seeking a place in the Great Society. Corporate executives who had spent the early postwar decades wringing profits from international development, military, and Indian policy brought a distinctive perspective to insurgent demands for social justice, state action, and community control at home. Lilienthal belonged to a cohort of skilled institution builders, publicists, and political strategists who carried that lesson from the supposedly “underdeveloped” world to domestic business associations, government advisory boards, and community action programs of the 1960s. As far as these men were concerned, grand questions about the role of the private sector in public life had been resolved by the time the War on Poverty began, and the Great Society seemed an opportunity to consolidate their gains across domestic and international spheres.Less
This chapter focuses on David Lilienthal when he returned to the US public eye. Businessmen who had long shaped and implemented domestic policy faced a grave crisis of legitimacy, and Lilienthal cast his lot with corporate executives desperately seeking a place in the Great Society. Corporate executives who had spent the early postwar decades wringing profits from international development, military, and Indian policy brought a distinctive perspective to insurgent demands for social justice, state action, and community control at home. Lilienthal belonged to a cohort of skilled institution builders, publicists, and political strategists who carried that lesson from the supposedly “underdeveloped” world to domestic business associations, government advisory boards, and community action programs of the 1960s. As far as these men were concerned, grand questions about the role of the private sector in public life had been resolved by the time the War on Poverty began, and the Great Society seemed an opportunity to consolidate their gains across domestic and international spheres.
Mark Krasovic
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226352794
- eISBN:
- 9780226352824
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226352824.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This book follows community action – the idea, popular in the years of the Great Society, that marginalized people should participate in designing and implementing public programs that affect their ...
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This book follows community action – the idea, popular in the years of the Great Society, that marginalized people should participate in designing and implementing public programs that affect their lives – as it plays out in Newark, New Jersey, over the course of the 1960s. It focuses on three main manifestations of this idea: the War on Poverty’s Community Action Program, police-community relations programs, and investigative riot commissions. Newark, the book argues, is where community action was stretched to its limits: where locals grabbed hold of the idea and the federal resources that animated it and used them to shape policy, programs, and cultural narratives to their own ends. They recognized community action as a political, even more than an economic, opportunity as they sought greater access to the city’s urban renewal plans, its police department, and city hall itself. This movement produced a response from those hoping to secure existing structures of power, often using their own version of community action. After Newark’s 1967 riots, detractors at the local and national levels turned on community action as the cause, while its proponents used its resources to attempt an alternative reading of events. In the aftermath, as federal support for community action declined and resources were diverted increasingly toward law enforcement and market-oriented modes of urban development, Newarkers found new outlets for their political energy in electoral drives toward city hall and new tools of community development.Less
This book follows community action – the idea, popular in the years of the Great Society, that marginalized people should participate in designing and implementing public programs that affect their lives – as it plays out in Newark, New Jersey, over the course of the 1960s. It focuses on three main manifestations of this idea: the War on Poverty’s Community Action Program, police-community relations programs, and investigative riot commissions. Newark, the book argues, is where community action was stretched to its limits: where locals grabbed hold of the idea and the federal resources that animated it and used them to shape policy, programs, and cultural narratives to their own ends. They recognized community action as a political, even more than an economic, opportunity as they sought greater access to the city’s urban renewal plans, its police department, and city hall itself. This movement produced a response from those hoping to secure existing structures of power, often using their own version of community action. After Newark’s 1967 riots, detractors at the local and national levels turned on community action as the cause, while its proponents used its resources to attempt an alternative reading of events. In the aftermath, as federal support for community action declined and resources were diverted increasingly toward law enforcement and market-oriented modes of urban development, Newarkers found new outlets for their political energy in electoral drives toward city hall and new tools of community development.
Jane Berger
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813037950
- eISBN:
- 9780813043111
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813037950.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
During the 1960s, the public sector became a critical source of employment for African Americans. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, often critiqued for lacking a jobs-creation component to ...
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During the 1960s, the public sector became a critical source of employment for African Americans. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, often critiqued for lacking a jobs-creation component to combat structural male unemployment, nonetheless dramatically expanded the public sector. In Baltimore, civil rights activists built on the momentum of earlier equal-employment campaigns to win government jobs for black workers. Because most of the new positions were in the human services, black women outpaced black men in entering the government workforce. To be sure, African Americans were concentrated at the bottom of employment hierarchies. By the end of the decade, however, unionization improved the conditions of employment for most government workers. In a city undergoing rapid deindustrialization, unionized public-sector jobs helped many black families weather the storm and, in some cases, move up the economic ladder.Less
During the 1960s, the public sector became a critical source of employment for African Americans. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, often critiqued for lacking a jobs-creation component to combat structural male unemployment, nonetheless dramatically expanded the public sector. In Baltimore, civil rights activists built on the momentum of earlier equal-employment campaigns to win government jobs for black workers. Because most of the new positions were in the human services, black women outpaced black men in entering the government workforce. To be sure, African Americans were concentrated at the bottom of employment hierarchies. By the end of the decade, however, unionization improved the conditions of employment for most government workers. In a city undergoing rapid deindustrialization, unionized public-sector jobs helped many black families weather the storm and, in some cases, move up the economic ladder.
Aaron Major
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780804788342
- eISBN:
- 9780804790734
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804788342.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Economic Sociology
This chapter explores the complexities of international monetary power in the late postwar period by looking at the rise and fall of the Great Society, which was followed shortly by the demise of the ...
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This chapter explores the complexities of international monetary power in the late postwar period by looking at the rise and fall of the Great Society, which was followed shortly by the demise of the Bretton Woods system. While the international community became concerned about the high rate of American economic growth in 1966 and 1967, the Johnson administration resisted calls to slow the economy and even introduced new expansionary policies. The reason for this is that the United States had registered a couple of strong years of balance of payments surpluses in the middle of the decade and had been able to pay back many of its international debts. This finding highlights that it was not balance of payments deficits per se that put an end to national growth experiments but rather the ability of foreign monetary authorities to leverage financial dependency.Less
This chapter explores the complexities of international monetary power in the late postwar period by looking at the rise and fall of the Great Society, which was followed shortly by the demise of the Bretton Woods system. While the international community became concerned about the high rate of American economic growth in 1966 and 1967, the Johnson administration resisted calls to slow the economy and even introduced new expansionary policies. The reason for this is that the United States had registered a couple of strong years of balance of payments surpluses in the middle of the decade and had been able to pay back many of its international debts. This finding highlights that it was not balance of payments deficits per se that put an end to national growth experiments but rather the ability of foreign monetary authorities to leverage financial dependency.
Bryan Hardin Thrift
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049311
- eISBN:
- 9780813050133
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049311.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
In the years after President Johnson’s 1964 landslide election, white voters in eastern North Carolina and the rest of the South grew disenchanted with liberalism. Helms recognized that racial ...
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In the years after President Johnson’s 1964 landslide election, white voters in eastern North Carolina and the rest of the South grew disenchanted with liberalism. Helms recognized that racial backlash and the unpopular Vietnam War presented conservatives with their best opportunities in a generation. Helms’s pious incitement proved central to Republican victories in 1966 and 1968. The issues that most upset Helms allowed him to make the case against Democrats. He stoked viewer unease over black voters, the Great Society (especially the War on Poverty), the Watts riot, the black power movement, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, leftism at the University of North Carolina, and the sexual revolution. He defended literacy tests and portrayed African Americans as menacing. He transformed traditional U.S. isolationism into a rejection of cooperation and compromise with other nations. Helms, though, did not just criticize liberal efforts. He advocated the values of the small-town South as a conservative alternative. He played a role in building private schools and charities and proposed a private affirmative action plan. Helms’s solutions would leave local elites in control and keep out the federal government. Change in race relations would occur slowly if at all.Less
In the years after President Johnson’s 1964 landslide election, white voters in eastern North Carolina and the rest of the South grew disenchanted with liberalism. Helms recognized that racial backlash and the unpopular Vietnam War presented conservatives with their best opportunities in a generation. Helms’s pious incitement proved central to Republican victories in 1966 and 1968. The issues that most upset Helms allowed him to make the case against Democrats. He stoked viewer unease over black voters, the Great Society (especially the War on Poverty), the Watts riot, the black power movement, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, leftism at the University of North Carolina, and the sexual revolution. He defended literacy tests and portrayed African Americans as menacing. He transformed traditional U.S. isolationism into a rejection of cooperation and compromise with other nations. Helms, though, did not just criticize liberal efforts. He advocated the values of the small-town South as a conservative alternative. He played a role in building private schools and charities and proposed a private affirmative action plan. Helms’s solutions would leave local elites in control and keep out the federal government. Change in race relations would occur slowly if at all.
William G. Howell, Saul P. Jackman, and Jon C. Rogowski
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226048253
- eISBN:
- 9780226048420
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226048420.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
The three case studies in this chapter, in one way or another, challenge the general claims of this book. With the federal government’s entrance into education policymaking in the late 1950s, we see ...
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The three case studies in this chapter, in one way or another, challenge the general claims of this book. With the federal government’s entrance into education policymaking in the late 1950s, we see the nationalizing effects of events—in this instance, the launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik—that do not involve an actual military conflict. In Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War, we see a president’s military policy dictated, at least in part, by concerns about consolidating peace-time domestic policy achievements. And in Bush’s efforts to privatize Social Security, we see how wars that once furnished substantial executive influence subsequently hampered the president’s policy agenda.Less
The three case studies in this chapter, in one way or another, challenge the general claims of this book. With the federal government’s entrance into education policymaking in the late 1950s, we see the nationalizing effects of events—in this instance, the launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik—that do not involve an actual military conflict. In Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War, we see a president’s military policy dictated, at least in part, by concerns about consolidating peace-time domestic policy achievements. And in Bush’s efforts to privatize Social Security, we see how wars that once furnished substantial executive influence subsequently hampered the president’s policy agenda.
Robin Marie Averbeck
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646640
- eISBN:
- 9781469646664
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646640.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
In this intellectual history of the fraught relationship between race and poverty in the 1960s, Robin Marie Averbeck offers a sustained critique of the fundamental assumptions that structured liberal ...
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In this intellectual history of the fraught relationship between race and poverty in the 1960s, Robin Marie Averbeck offers a sustained critique of the fundamental assumptions that structured liberal thought and action in postwar America. Focusing on the figures associated with “Great Society liberalism” like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, David Riesman, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Averbeck argues that these thinkers helped construct policies that never truly attempted a serious attack on the sources of racial inequality and injustice.
In Averbeck’s telling, the Great Society’s most notable achievements--the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act--came only after unrelenting and unprecedented organizing by black Americans made changing the inequitable status quo politically necessary. And even so, the discourse about poverty created by liberals had inherently conservative qualities. As Liberalism Is Not Enough reveals, liberalism’s historical relationship with capitalism shaped both the initial content of liberal scholarship on poverty and its ultimate usefulness to a resurgent conservative movement.Less
In this intellectual history of the fraught relationship between race and poverty in the 1960s, Robin Marie Averbeck offers a sustained critique of the fundamental assumptions that structured liberal thought and action in postwar America. Focusing on the figures associated with “Great Society liberalism” like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, David Riesman, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Averbeck argues that these thinkers helped construct policies that never truly attempted a serious attack on the sources of racial inequality and injustice.
In Averbeck’s telling, the Great Society’s most notable achievements--the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act--came only after unrelenting and unprecedented organizing by black Americans made changing the inequitable status quo politically necessary. And even so, the discourse about poverty created by liberals had inherently conservative qualities. As Liberalism Is Not Enough reveals, liberalism’s historical relationship with capitalism shaped both the initial content of liberal scholarship on poverty and its ultimate usefulness to a resurgent conservative movement.
David R. Jardini
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262082853
- eISBN:
- 9780262275873
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262082853.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
The present chapter explores RAND’s development of analytical management techniques for military purposes and the diffusion of these methodologies from the military context into broader social ...
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The present chapter explores RAND’s development of analytical management techniques for military purposes and the diffusion of these methodologies from the military context into broader social welfare policy-making applications. It concentrates on three main issues, first providing a brief discussion of RAND’s history, focusing on the processes of intellectual production at RAND and the ways in which the creation of techniques there was shaped by a military context. Second, the chapter traces the dissemination of RAND’s systems methodologies from the corporation’s quasi-academic setting to the highest echelons of the U.S. national security structure. Finally, it examines where and how RAND’s methodological innovations diffused beyond the military establishment into programs of the “Great Society.” In general, the chapter traces the consequences of Cold War technical development for American democracy and argues that the widespread adoption of centralized, elitist policy making in the federal government may have contributed to the alienation many Americans feel toward the national government.Less
The present chapter explores RAND’s development of analytical management techniques for military purposes and the diffusion of these methodologies from the military context into broader social welfare policy-making applications. It concentrates on three main issues, first providing a brief discussion of RAND’s history, focusing on the processes of intellectual production at RAND and the ways in which the creation of techniques there was shaped by a military context. Second, the chapter traces the dissemination of RAND’s systems methodologies from the corporation’s quasi-academic setting to the highest echelons of the U.S. national security structure. Finally, it examines where and how RAND’s methodological innovations diffused beyond the military establishment into programs of the “Great Society.” In general, the chapter traces the consequences of Cold War technical development for American democracy and argues that the widespread adoption of centralized, elitist policy making in the federal government may have contributed to the alienation many Americans feel toward the national government.
Young Ick Lew
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824831684
- eISBN:
- 9780824871000
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824831684.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter details events in Syngman Rhee’s life during and after his stint as president of the Korean Provisional Government (KPG). Topics covered include the four men who opposed Rhee in Beijing ...
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This chapter details events in Syngman Rhee’s life during and after his stint as president of the Korean Provisional Government (KPG). Topics covered include the four men who opposed Rhee in Beijing and Shanghai, as well as his perception of each of them; setbacks in Rhee’s diplomatic efforts with the United States at the Washington Disarmament Conference of 1921–1922; his impeachment by the Shanghai Provisional Government in March 1925; his decision to reshape the principles and direction of the Comrade Society of Great Korea to suit his needs, shifting its focus away from the importance of the Shanghai Provisional Government and placed instead on Rhee’s legitimacy as the sole leader of the Korean independence movement; and Rhee’s business ventures.Less
This chapter details events in Syngman Rhee’s life during and after his stint as president of the Korean Provisional Government (KPG). Topics covered include the four men who opposed Rhee in Beijing and Shanghai, as well as his perception of each of them; setbacks in Rhee’s diplomatic efforts with the United States at the Washington Disarmament Conference of 1921–1922; his impeachment by the Shanghai Provisional Government in March 1925; his decision to reshape the principles and direction of the Comrade Society of Great Korea to suit his needs, shifting its focus away from the importance of the Shanghai Provisional Government and placed instead on Rhee’s legitimacy as the sole leader of the Korean independence movement; and Rhee’s business ventures.
Newell G. Bringhurst (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042256
- eISBN:
- 9780252051081
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042256.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Ezra Taft Benson, as President Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture from 1953 to 1961, emerged as a leading spokesman for political conservatism on matters dealing with farming. After leaving that ...
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Ezra Taft Benson, as President Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture from 1953 to 1961, emerged as a leading spokesman for political conservatism on matters dealing with farming. After leaving that post in 1961, Benson felt compelled to expand his conservative agenda to other matters during the turbulent 1960s, specifically the threat of communism and the fledgling civil rights movement. A by-product of Benson's unrelenting concern with these issues was his willingness to entertain the possibility of national political office, culminating in two efforts in 1968. The first was an attempt by the so-called “Committee of 1976”--a John Birch front group to draft Benson as its third-party presidential candidate, along with South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond as a vice-presidential running mate. When this effort failed, George Wallace, Alabama's pro-segregationist governor, actively sought Benson as his vice-presidential running mate on his self-styled American Independent Party ticket. This essay considers the following questions: Why did Benson feel compelled to thrust himself into the national political arena in a controversial, confrontational manner? What role did Benson's Mormonism play in this effort? How did Mormon leaders and the rank-and-file members react to Benson's presidential ambitions? Less
Ezra Taft Benson, as President Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture from 1953 to 1961, emerged as a leading spokesman for political conservatism on matters dealing with farming. After leaving that post in 1961, Benson felt compelled to expand his conservative agenda to other matters during the turbulent 1960s, specifically the threat of communism and the fledgling civil rights movement. A by-product of Benson's unrelenting concern with these issues was his willingness to entertain the possibility of national political office, culminating in two efforts in 1968. The first was an attempt by the so-called “Committee of 1976”--a John Birch front group to draft Benson as its third-party presidential candidate, along with South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond as a vice-presidential running mate. When this effort failed, George Wallace, Alabama's pro-segregationist governor, actively sought Benson as his vice-presidential running mate on his self-styled American Independent Party ticket. This essay considers the following questions: Why did Benson feel compelled to thrust himself into the national political arena in a controversial, confrontational manner? What role did Benson's Mormonism play in this effort? How did Mormon leaders and the rank-and-file members react to Benson's presidential ambitions?
Françoise N. Hamlin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835494
- eISBN:
- 9781469601694
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807869857_hamlin.10
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter focuses on President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty programs. Johnson, a Texan, acknowledged the extent of southern isolation. He dreamed of a Great Society that could take care of ...
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This chapter focuses on President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty programs. Johnson, a Texan, acknowledged the extent of southern isolation. He dreamed of a Great Society that could take care of its own and all of its citizens could enjoy its freedoms and be the positive contrast to the threatening global spread of Communism. Johnson pushed his War on Poverty programs through Congress and opened up a whole new chapter of activism and local political involvement in the South.Less
This chapter focuses on President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty programs. Johnson, a Texan, acknowledged the extent of southern isolation. He dreamed of a Great Society that could take care of its own and all of its citizens could enjoy its freedoms and be the positive contrast to the threatening global spread of Communism. Johnson pushed his War on Poverty programs through Congress and opened up a whole new chapter of activism and local political involvement in the South.
Sylvia Ellis
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813044569
- eISBN:
- 9780813046174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813044569.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter discusses how and why civil rights was a priority for President Johnson during his first two years in the White House. Within days of becoming president, after the shocking assassination ...
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This chapter discusses how and why civil rights was a priority for President Johnson during his first two years in the White House. Within days of becoming president, after the shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy in Johnson's home state of Texas, LBJ signalled his overwhelming commitment to the civil rights cause. He met regularly with civil rights leaders to discuss legislative developments, the appointment of African Americans to key political positions, and the Great Society programs that benefited the African American community. The high point of his association with the civil rights movement came with the passage of two pieces of landmark legislation: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Chapter 4 discusses the part played by the Selma to Montgomery marches in Johnson's legislative plans and examines the high political cost of his commitment to civil rights after his overwhelming victory in the 1964 presidential electionLess
This chapter discusses how and why civil rights was a priority for President Johnson during his first two years in the White House. Within days of becoming president, after the shocking assassination of John F. Kennedy in Johnson's home state of Texas, LBJ signalled his overwhelming commitment to the civil rights cause. He met regularly with civil rights leaders to discuss legislative developments, the appointment of African Americans to key political positions, and the Great Society programs that benefited the African American community. The high point of his association with the civil rights movement came with the passage of two pieces of landmark legislation: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Chapter 4 discusses the part played by the Selma to Montgomery marches in Johnson's legislative plans and examines the high political cost of his commitment to civil rights after his overwhelming victory in the 1964 presidential election
Mark Boulton
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813042077
- eISBN:
- 9780813043456
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813042077.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter explores the political debates surrounding the passage of the 1966 Cold War G.I. Bill, the first G.I. bill of the Vietnam era. Unlike the earlier World War II and Korean Conflict wartime ...
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This chapter explores the political debates surrounding the passage of the 1966 Cold War G.I. Bill, the first G.I. bill of the Vietnam era. Unlike the earlier World War II and Korean Conflict wartime G.I. bills, the 1966 bill covered all noncombat Cold War veterans and, therefore, proved to be far less generous. Politicians from Great Society liberals to fiscal conservatives deemed that these later veterans had not earned the right to more substantial benefits because they had not faced fire directly. The bill made no distinction between veterans serving in peacetime conditions and Vietnam combat veterans. Consequently, Vietnam veterans were left with a G.I. bill significantly less generous than the one awarded to their predecessors. This chapter reveals how the 1966 bill fell prey to the nuances of both the liberal and conservative economic philosophies of the mid-twentieth century and left a legacy of bitterness among Vietnam veterans.Less
This chapter explores the political debates surrounding the passage of the 1966 Cold War G.I. Bill, the first G.I. bill of the Vietnam era. Unlike the earlier World War II and Korean Conflict wartime G.I. bills, the 1966 bill covered all noncombat Cold War veterans and, therefore, proved to be far less generous. Politicians from Great Society liberals to fiscal conservatives deemed that these later veterans had not earned the right to more substantial benefits because they had not faced fire directly. The bill made no distinction between veterans serving in peacetime conditions and Vietnam combat veterans. Consequently, Vietnam veterans were left with a G.I. bill significantly less generous than the one awarded to their predecessors. This chapter reveals how the 1966 bill fell prey to the nuances of both the liberal and conservative economic philosophies of the mid-twentieth century and left a legacy of bitterness among Vietnam veterans.