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.
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.
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.
Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195329117
- eISBN:
- 9780199949496
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195329117.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
This chapter shows that amid the aspirations of the Great Society, the expectation that non-elderly welfare recipients should seek wage work became hitched to the demands of older Americans for care. ...
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This chapter shows that amid the aspirations of the Great Society, the expectation that non-elderly welfare recipients should seek wage work became hitched to the demands of older Americans for care. Home care became a jobs program on the cheap. Senior activists won the Older Americans Act and Medicare. But rather than a middle-class entitlement, long-term care became more tightly identified with welfare when Medicaid turned into the chief means to obtain such services. Through manpower training and “New Careers,” the War on Poverty made AFDC recipients into home aides: poor mothers could become rehabilitated by caring for other poor, dependent, or incapacitated people. But civil rights, seniors, public sector unions, and welfare rights activists challenged the state over the nature and extent of social assistance. Their struggles would reshape home care again, this time through confrontations between state governors and county welfare offices; public sector unions and government employers; welfare mothers and mayors. This history illuminates the shift in the aim of the welfare state from providing security to the ending of dependency.Less
This chapter shows that amid the aspirations of the Great Society, the expectation that non-elderly welfare recipients should seek wage work became hitched to the demands of older Americans for care. Home care became a jobs program on the cheap. Senior activists won the Older Americans Act and Medicare. But rather than a middle-class entitlement, long-term care became more tightly identified with welfare when Medicaid turned into the chief means to obtain such services. Through manpower training and “New Careers,” the War on Poverty made AFDC recipients into home aides: poor mothers could become rehabilitated by caring for other poor, dependent, or incapacitated people. But civil rights, seniors, public sector unions, and welfare rights activists challenged the state over the nature and extent of social assistance. Their struggles would reshape home care again, this time through confrontations between state governors and county welfare offices; public sector unions and government employers; welfare mothers and mayors. This history illuminates the shift in the aim of the welfare state from providing security to the ending of dependency.
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.
Albert Weale
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199684649
- eISBN:
- 9780191765063
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199684649.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
We cannot directly infer from common property resource regimes the principles to govern great societies. Hayek has argued that there can be no social justice in great societies, but this view relies ...
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We cannot directly infer from common property resource regimes the principles to govern great societies. Hayek has argued that there can be no social justice in great societies, but this view relies upon a mistaken theory of parliamentary legislation and a misunderstanding about the scope of social justice. In looking at the great transformation, we note that the political institutions of great societies rest upon an historical consolidation of authority that creates a fundamental pluralism of interests. The political institutions are representational democracies, Westminster systems or liberal constitutionalist. The most notable feature of the economy in the great society is the economies of scale associated with the division of labour. The household ceases to be the basic unit of production. Although there is a movement from community to association, the great society creates its own forms of interdependenceLess
We cannot directly infer from common property resource regimes the principles to govern great societies. Hayek has argued that there can be no social justice in great societies, but this view relies upon a mistaken theory of parliamentary legislation and a misunderstanding about the scope of social justice. In looking at the great transformation, we note that the political institutions of great societies rest upon an historical consolidation of authority that creates a fundamental pluralism of interests. The political institutions are representational democracies, Westminster systems or liberal constitutionalist. The most notable feature of the economy in the great society is the economies of scale associated with the division of labour. The household ceases to be the basic unit of production. Although there is a movement from community to association, the great society creates its own forms of interdependence
Erin Ryan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199737987
- eISBN:
- 9780199918652
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199737987.003.0003
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
Chapter three reviews the history of American federalism as a story of competition between compelling principles in tension with one another, stretching the legal framework in one direction and then ...
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Chapter three reviews the history of American federalism as a story of competition between compelling principles in tension with one another, stretching the legal framework in one direction and then overcorrecting in another. Visualizing operative federalism theory as a four-dimensional pendulum, the chapter describes it swinging freely over time among the independent federalism values—pointing to a favorite at one period in history and another in a different era. Ongoing uncertainty about how judicial doctrine should resolve these issues is reflected by the Court’s vacillating case law over this time period. Chapter three traces the swing of the pendulum through American history, casting its arc in terms of shifting theories about how best to balance competing values. Its fluidity reflects the combined forces of gradual ideological oscillation and occasionally violent tug of war as social events impact the evolution of interpretive federalism theory. The chapter begins with the difficulties that the pioneers of American federalism faced in deciphering what their new concept of dual sovereignty would mean in practice, from the national bank to the southern nullification challenges to the Civil War. Dual federalism emerged as the theoretical touchstone of the nineteenth century, establishing the classical idealism for which later dualist models would yearn. Even so, the challenges of jurisdictional overlap were clear as early as the Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention’s replacement of the Articles of Confederation. The chapter then explores federalism’s tug of war during the second half of American history, focusing on the twentieth century. It reviews the Progressive and Lochner eras, the Great Depression and the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement and Great Society eras that led to the entrenchment of cooperative federalism under the Warren Court, and finally the New Federalism challenge under the Rehnquist Court.Less
Chapter three reviews the history of American federalism as a story of competition between compelling principles in tension with one another, stretching the legal framework in one direction and then overcorrecting in another. Visualizing operative federalism theory as a four-dimensional pendulum, the chapter describes it swinging freely over time among the independent federalism values—pointing to a favorite at one period in history and another in a different era. Ongoing uncertainty about how judicial doctrine should resolve these issues is reflected by the Court’s vacillating case law over this time period. Chapter three traces the swing of the pendulum through American history, casting its arc in terms of shifting theories about how best to balance competing values. Its fluidity reflects the combined forces of gradual ideological oscillation and occasionally violent tug of war as social events impact the evolution of interpretive federalism theory. The chapter begins with the difficulties that the pioneers of American federalism faced in deciphering what their new concept of dual sovereignty would mean in practice, from the national bank to the southern nullification challenges to the Civil War. Dual federalism emerged as the theoretical touchstone of the nineteenth century, establishing the classical idealism for which later dualist models would yearn. Even so, the challenges of jurisdictional overlap were clear as early as the Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention’s replacement of the Articles of Confederation. The chapter then explores federalism’s tug of war during the second half of American history, focusing on the twentieth century. It reviews the Progressive and Lochner eras, the Great Depression and the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement and Great Society eras that led to the entrenchment of cooperative federalism under the Warren Court, and finally the New Federalism challenge under the Rehnquist Court.
Matt Grossmann
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199967834
- eISBN:
- 9780199370726
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199967834.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
The chapter reviews policy development over time, arguing that the unique features of a single period of policymaking better explain policy history than macro politics models relating political ...
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The chapter reviews policy development over time, arguing that the unique features of a single period of policymaking better explain policy history than macro politics models relating political inputs to policy outputs. From 1961–1976, the American federal government enacted hundreds of significant new public policies that dramatically expanded its scope and responsibility. The period effect associated with the Long Great Society is the most important determinant of changes in the productivity and policy direction of all branches of government since 1945. Changes in public opinion, partisanship, and ideology predict neither this era’s success nor the aggregate patterns of policy change outside of the period. A large and diverse cross-issue governing network—held together by a core of interest groups, long-serving legislators, and four successive presidents—enabled extensive liberal policymaking. Rather than a policymaking system responsive to public opinion or party control, what emerges is a single unique era driven by system-level changes in the governing network.Less
The chapter reviews policy development over time, arguing that the unique features of a single period of policymaking better explain policy history than macro politics models relating political inputs to policy outputs. From 1961–1976, the American federal government enacted hundreds of significant new public policies that dramatically expanded its scope and responsibility. The period effect associated with the Long Great Society is the most important determinant of changes in the productivity and policy direction of all branches of government since 1945. Changes in public opinion, partisanship, and ideology predict neither this era’s success nor the aggregate patterns of policy change outside of the period. A large and diverse cross-issue governing network—held together by a core of interest groups, long-serving legislators, and four successive presidents—enabled extensive liberal policymaking. Rather than a policymaking system responsive to public opinion or party control, what emerges is a single unique era driven by system-level changes in the governing network.
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.
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.
Ocean Howell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226141398
- eISBN:
- 9780226290287
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226290287.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This introductory chapter gives a broad overview of the book. It also lays out a framework for how to understand neighborhoods. They rarely have official status, and are instead cultural constructs ...
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This introductory chapter gives a broad overview of the book. It also lays out a framework for how to understand neighborhoods. They rarely have official status, and are instead cultural constructs whose very existence depends upon the ongoing investments (psychological and material) of residents. Neighborhoods are also constantly in flux. The chapter illustrates this by showing how the borders of the Mission have changed dramatically across the twentieth century. The chapter shows that neighborhood identity has been inextricably bound up with ethnic identity. Finally, the chapter argues that more histories should focus on smaller urban scales, rather than only on the municipal scale.Less
This introductory chapter gives a broad overview of the book. It also lays out a framework for how to understand neighborhoods. They rarely have official status, and are instead cultural constructs whose very existence depends upon the ongoing investments (psychological and material) of residents. Neighborhoods are also constantly in flux. The chapter illustrates this by showing how the borders of the Mission have changed dramatically across the twentieth century. The chapter shows that neighborhood identity has been inextricably bound up with ethnic identity. Finally, the chapter argues that more histories should focus on smaller urban scales, rather than only on the municipal scale.
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?
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.
Ocean Howell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226141398
- eISBN:
- 9780226290287
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226290287.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
Neighborhood groups like the Mission Council on Redevelopment and later the Mission Coalition Organization were eager to collaborate with the SFRA. But under urban renewal law, the SFRA was unable to ...
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Neighborhood groups like the Mission Council on Redevelopment and later the Mission Coalition Organization were eager to collaborate with the SFRA. But under urban renewal law, the SFRA was unable to give neighborhood groups veto power over any specific plan. Primarily for this reason, neighborhood groups came out against the plan, eventually succeeding in blocking it. Soon thereafter, Mayor Joseph Alioto nominated the Mission for a grant under Model Cities, a Great Society program that funded neighborhood-based planning efforts. Thus was created the Mission Model Neighborhood Corporation (MMNC), a local planning authority. Collaborating with the SFRA, the MMNC built public housing, began social programs, and had a number of other successes. Though it was a multiethnic organization, it received some challenges from the Latino left, particularly a group called Los Siete de la Raza. However, the chapter argues that the ultimate failure of the organization is best explained by the Nixon administration's defunding of Model Cities.Less
Neighborhood groups like the Mission Council on Redevelopment and later the Mission Coalition Organization were eager to collaborate with the SFRA. But under urban renewal law, the SFRA was unable to give neighborhood groups veto power over any specific plan. Primarily for this reason, neighborhood groups came out against the plan, eventually succeeding in blocking it. Soon thereafter, Mayor Joseph Alioto nominated the Mission for a grant under Model Cities, a Great Society program that funded neighborhood-based planning efforts. Thus was created the Mission Model Neighborhood Corporation (MMNC), a local planning authority. Collaborating with the SFRA, the MMNC built public housing, began social programs, and had a number of other successes. Though it was a multiethnic organization, it received some challenges from the Latino left, particularly a group called Los Siete de la Raza. However, the chapter argues that the ultimate failure of the organization is best explained by the Nixon administration's defunding of Model Cities.
Ocean Howell
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226141398
- eISBN:
- 9780226290287
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226290287.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
By the 1960s the urban renewal program was well underway, and it was largely controlled by the downtown planning regime. The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) had cleared over 1,280 acres in ...
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By the 1960s the urban renewal program was well underway, and it was largely controlled by the downtown planning regime. The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) had cleared over 1,280 acres in the Fillmore (or Western Addition) neighborhood, displacing more than 13,500 people, mostly African Americans. As the built environment of the Mission District deteriorated, local institutions began to worry that the SFRA might be planning something similar for their neighborhood. They also worried that the coming BART stations might trigger speculative displacement. In response, a social service agency called the Mission Neighborhood Centers (MNC) produced a study of the Mission in 1960. The document identified problems with a deteriorating environment and inadequate services, but also identified strengths in the neighborhood's multiethnic character and longstanding institutions.Less
By the 1960s the urban renewal program was well underway, and it was largely controlled by the downtown planning regime. The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) had cleared over 1,280 acres in the Fillmore (or Western Addition) neighborhood, displacing more than 13,500 people, mostly African Americans. As the built environment of the Mission District deteriorated, local institutions began to worry that the SFRA might be planning something similar for their neighborhood. They also worried that the coming BART stations might trigger speculative displacement. In response, a social service agency called the Mission Neighborhood Centers (MNC) produced a study of the Mission in 1960. The document identified problems with a deteriorating environment and inadequate services, but also identified strengths in the neighborhood's multiethnic character and longstanding institutions.
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.
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.
Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199965540
- eISBN:
- 9780199360833
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199965540.003.0002
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
This chapter explains the history of regulation in the United States. Since its founding, the United States has had alternating periods in which government was perceived as an essential partner in ...
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This chapter explains the history of regulation in the United States. Since its founding, the United States has had alternating periods in which government was perceived as an essential partner in building a good society and periods in which government was seen as a hindrance. Each cycle lasts about a generation, and the latest antigovernment, neoliberal period is coming to a close. By way of example, the early 19th-century Mercantilist period witnessed the construction of the nation's basic economic infrastructure; the Populist/Progressive period at the end of the 19th century saw the establishment of the modern administrative state with the creation of the government institutions needed to combat concentrated corporate and industrial power; and the 20th-century's New Deal/Great Society era expanded economic and democratic participation for more and more citizens. Interspersed with those pro-government generations were three laissez-faire periods that experienced growing economic inequalities and democratic declines.Less
This chapter explains the history of regulation in the United States. Since its founding, the United States has had alternating periods in which government was perceived as an essential partner in building a good society and periods in which government was seen as a hindrance. Each cycle lasts about a generation, and the latest antigovernment, neoliberal period is coming to a close. By way of example, the early 19th-century Mercantilist period witnessed the construction of the nation's basic economic infrastructure; the Populist/Progressive period at the end of the 19th century saw the establishment of the modern administrative state with the creation of the government institutions needed to combat concentrated corporate and industrial power; and the 20th-century's New Deal/Great Society era expanded economic and democratic participation for more and more citizens. Interspersed with those pro-government generations were three laissez-faire periods that experienced growing economic inequalities and democratic declines.
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.
