Civil Rights Movement(s)1940s-1970sLegal Strategies.docx

Civil Rights Movement(s)
1940s-1970s
Legal Strategies
De jure and de facto
NAACP—
Transportation: Morgan vs. Virginia, 1946
Education: Oliver Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka,
Kansas, 1954
First day of desegregation, Virginia, 1954
Little Rock
Grassroots Strategies
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1957

CORE/Freedom Rides, 1961
Birmingham, 1963
March on Washington, 1963
Results
Civil Rights Act, 1964
24th Amendment, 1964
Voting Rights Act, 1965
End of legalized segregation, right to vote reinstated
Racial liberalism
Film: Freedom Riders
According to the film, what role did young people play in the
fight to end segregation?
Do you think the civil rights struggle would have been effective
without them?
Rosa Parks, 1955
Freedom Rides, 1961
Freedom Riders Attacked, Alabama, 1961

Birmingham, 1963
Films
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UV1fs8lAbg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMFm2dSEwfo
Civil Rights Movements, con’t.
1960s-1970s
Civil Rights Movements
The New Left/Students for a Democratic Society
Civil Rights
Anti-War Movement (Vietnam)

Women’s Movement
Betty Friedan, Feminine Mystique, 1963
National Organization for Women
Civil Rights Movements
LGBTQ Rights
Harry Hay, Mattichine Society
Latino Activism
Social and economic conditions
Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers

Cesar Chavez
1960s Politics
Johnson
Great Society
Medicaid and Medicare
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Arts

Post--War America, 1945--1972
Introduction
"America bestrides the world like a colossus," wrote the
British politician and
historian Harold Laski in 1947. At the time, Europe and
Asia were still digging
themselves out from the rubble of World War II. By
contrast, the United States
mainland had been spared the war's carnage, and its
factories had roused
themselves from their Great Depression slumber to churn
out the weapons of war
that propelled the Allies to victory. America thus entered
the post--World War II
era, according to Laski, possessing "half the world's
wealth" and "more than half
the world's productive capacity."
This global economic preeminence would help usher in a
period of economic
expansion----or "golden age of capitalism"----that would
persist for much of the
quarter century following World War II. The long
economic boom, in turn, helped
underwrite contemporaneous struggles for economic, racial,
and gender equality
in American life. Never had any of America's previous
rising tides lifted so many
boats. Women drew more equal to men. Non--whites drew

more equal to whites.
The poor drew more equal to the rich.
The great American author Phillip Roth would later
describe the immediate post--
World War II expansion as "the greatest moment of
collective inebriation in
American history." But like any drunken bender, it would
eventually give way to a
sobering hangover, arriving in the late 1960s and early
1970s and threatening
some of the gains in racial equality. Over the next
several decades, in fact, the
advances toward greater economic equality made during
the New Deal, World
War II, and post--War quarter century would vanish.
Aircraft Under Construction at a Ford Plant, c. 1941;;
Evaporator Units at Garland
Beet Sugar Refinery, 1971
Section 1: The Post War Boom
• Section Question: Why was the post--war era “the
greatest moment of collective
inebriation in American history”?
• Question: How did the dramatic growth in population
take place in the post--war
period, especially in the Sun--Belt states? Terms:
• American post--war population increase or "baby boom"
• Western population growth
• "Sun belt" and defense industry/div>

• Defense v. social spending
• US dominance of exports
• 60% of world manufactures
What makes the post--World War II rising tide even more
remarkable is the rapidly
increasing number of boats there were to lift. After
witnessing its lowest rate of
population growth during the 1930s, America's increase in
population during the
1940s and 1950s would outstrip any subsequent decade of
the 20th century. The
country ballooned from 132 million people in 1940 to 151
million in 1950 (a 14.5
percent increase). Between 1950 and 1960, the population
grew from 151 to 179
million (a 19 percent increase), and again in the decade
of the 1960s, it increased
another 13.3 percent to 203 million people.
As Depression and World War II era anxieties gave way
to post--World War II
aspirations, Americans married at greater rates and younger
ages during the
1940s and 1950s than at any other point during the 20th
century. These younger
newlyweds had more newborns on average than their
counterparts had during
the first half the 20th century or their own children had
after 1970. Some 50
million babies arrived during the "baby boom" of the
1946 to 1962 period, with
birth rates cresting in 1957 and then tapering off into the
1970s as the "baby
boom" gave way to the "baby bust."
A disproportionate amount of the country's over 50 percent

population increase
from 1940 to 1970 took place in its western states, where
population tripled from
13.9 million to 34.8 million. Within this region, the
Pacific coast states grew by
nearly 200 percent. This included, above all, California,
home to nearly half the
West's inhabitants in 1940 and nearly 60 percent in 1970.
The Golden State
mushroomed from 6.9 million residents in 1940 to 19.9
million by 1970,
supplanting New York as the most populous state in 1962.
Long a nation of peripatetic people inclined to search for
greater socioeconomic
opportunity in the direction of the setting sun, America's
mid--20th century
western migrants often struck gold through federally
funded Cold War defense
contracts. California alone received nearly 25 percent of
all military contracts
(and 40 percent of all federal aerospace contracts), while
the states along the
Pacific coast received almost half of all research and
development contracts
issued by the Department of Defense.
This spending reflected an affinity on the part of military
officials for what they
dubbed the "sunshine belt" (later re--named the "sun
belt")----a sweeping swath of
land arcing from Texas through California. The sunny

skies and wide--open
spaces were ideally--suited for military training, as well as
airplane, ordnance,
missile, and atomic bomb testing.
California and its fellow western states were not
exceptional, but rather, to
paraphrase the great American writer Wallace Stegner, like
America but only
more so. Cold War defense dollars flowed across the
country, constituting a
growing share of the nation's overall economy. Following
a post--World War II lull,
the national defense budget stood at 5 percent of gross
domestic product (GDP)
in 1950.
As the Cold War heated up, however, the national defense
budget (as a percent of
GDP) nearly doubled to 9.3 percent in 1960 and decreased
only slightly to 8.1
percent in 1970 before dropping by nearly half to 4.9
percent in 1980. By contrast,
public social welfare expenditures (as a percent of GDP)
grew only slightly from
8.9 percent in 1950 to 10.3 percent in 1960.
As the Cold War buoyed America's post--World War II
economy in some ways,
World War II did so in others. Spared the home front
fighting that devastated the
fields and factories and roads and bridges of much of
Europe and Asia
(especially Japan), the United States entered the post-
-World War II era with

minimal global economic competition.
Just one of over 100 countries in the world as of 1950,
the United States
nevertheless accounted for over 20 percent of the world's
exports in the late
1940s and 15--17 percent for almost all of the 1950s. The
country's balance of
trade during this same time period tilted in the direction
of more exports than
imports----and remained that way through the 1960s before
shifting in the other
direction in the 1970s.
• Question: How did the GI Bill improve American
economic performance after
the war? Terms:
• G.I. Bill of Rights
• G.I. Bill and labor productivity
• G.I. Bill and new housing
• Homeownership rates
Besides hobbling America's global competitors, World War
II also began the
process of elevating the intellectual caliber of the United
States' work force,
thereby aiding the post--World War II economy in another
way. In 1944, Congress
enacted one of the most transformative pieces of
legislation in US history----the
Servicemen's Readjustment Act, better known as the G.I.
Bill of Rights (or,
simply, G.I. Bill).

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Many of these newly skilled former GIs would find jobs
in the thriving home
construction industry, which the G.I. Bill also did so
much to stimulate. Building
upon the New Deal's Federal Housing Administration, the
G.I. Bill's Veterans
Administration provided public insurance to private lenders.
Lenders were then
able to make more favorable terms for lending to
returning servicemen (down
payments, interest rates, years required to repay),
increasing the number of
homes the GIs purchased. It worked. Between 1945 and
1950, the number of new
housing units started increased by nearly 450 percent
(326,000 to 1,952,000).
This, in turn, helped promote a substantial increase in
home ownership rates----
from 43.6 percent in 1940 to 62.9 percent in 1970. For
many Americans, FHA-- and
VA--mortgage--backed "ranch--style" houses in sprawling
suburbs became the mid--
20th century equivalent of Homestead Act--backed ranches
(and farms) in the
previous century. The lure of the suburban (or, crabgrass)

frontier supplanted the
lure of the western frontier. The West, in general, and
California, in particular,
became synonymous with suburbia----as reflected in Bing
Crosby's song, "San
Fernando Valley," released in the same year that the G.I.
Bill passed.
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Though the cost was not cheap (the G.I. Bill comprised
15 percent, or $14.5
billion, of the entire federal budget in 1948 alone), the
long--term benefits made it a
bargain. A more educated workforce, thanks to the G.I.
Bill, meant a more
productive work force. Labor productivity----the amount of
output per hour of work--
--grew at an average annual rate of 2.8 percent from 1950
to 1973, which would be
37 percent higher than the 1.7 percent average annual
productivity growth rate
from 1973 to 1998.

• Question: What factors contributed to American middle
class prosperity after
the war and in what ways were American government
policies
involved? Terms:
• Labor productivity growth
• Family income growth
• The GDP growth in 1940--70 compared to before and
after
• Unionization
• Poorer people's wealth grows faster than the wealthy
A more productive work force meant a more robust
economy. In 1940--70, the per
capita gross domestic product (or, GDP, the standard
measure of the total market
value of goods and services produced) grew at an annual
average rate of 2.9
percent. This represented a 107 percent increase from the
1.4 percent average
annual per capita GDP growth rate of the period before,
1900--40. This average
annual GDP growth rate was also much greater than the
period after, 1970--2000,
which was only 2.1 percent.
The average annual GDP rate of 1940--70 of 2.9 percent
translated into a 136
percent increase in real per capita (per person) GDP. In
1940 the economy
produced for each person (if it had been distributed
equally) $7,396;; but by 1970
per capita income was $17,449 (in 1996 dollars).
Unfortunately, the rate slowed
considerably from 1970 to 2000, increasing only 87

percent.
Earnings rose in tandem with productivity in the post--war
period. As overall
productivity nearly doubled from the late 1940s to the
early 1970s, so, too, did
real average hourly wages----from $10.67 in 1947 to
$18.74 in 1973 (in 2011 dollars).
In the period after 1970, however, productivity continued
to climb----albeit at a
slower rate----but real average hourly earnings actually
went down to $18.32 in
2000 (in 2011 dollars).
High rates of unionization in the post--WWII period
helped insure that average,
rank--and--file workers benefited from the growth in
average wages. Building upon
protections secured during the New Deal, unions saw their
ranks swell from less
than 15 percent (of the non--agricultural work force) in
the mid--1930s to just under
35 percent for much of the 1950s. Some 90 percent of
union workers belonged to
the American Federation of Labor--Congress of Industrial
Organizations (AFL--CIO)
in 1955.
At that time, manufacturing workers were over half of all
union members. United
States manufacturing comprised nearly 60 percent of the
total manufacturing
output of the 10 leading western industrial countries in
the world. (At 14 percent,

Germany was a distant second.)
Women Model Union Label Clothing at an ILGWU
Fashion Show, c. 1960
America's rising economic tide lifted more boats than ever
before or since, and it
lifted smaller ones more so than larger ones. As the
economy prospered,
incomes not only grew, but they grew at slightly higher
rates for families in the
80th percentile and below, that is middle, working, and
lower class families. The
share of aggregate family income for this large swath of
Americans increased
from 57 percent of total income in 1947 to 59.3 percent
in 1975. In contrast, the
share of all income that went to the top 5 percent, the
highest income families,
decreased from 17.5 to 14.9 percent. Nevertheless, the vast
majority of all
American families prospered. From 1947 to 1973, real
median family income
doubled----from $26,697 to $54,527 (in 2011 dollars).
As it did, homeownership rates grew by nearly 45 percent
in 1940--70, and car
ownership rates climbed by nearly 155 percent in 1945--75
(reaching 1 car
registered for every 2 people in the country). The
percentage of households with
televisions exploded from fewer than 1 in 10 in 1950 to
9 in 10 by 1965. The good
times were quite literally rolling----and more and more

Americans could listen in on
the radios in their new cars or watch on the televisions
in their new homes.
Section 2: Racial Equality
• Section Question: How was legal racial equality
achieved between 1940 and
1982?
• Question: According to Mark Brilliant, how did New
Deal liberalism spur or help
initiate movements toward racial equality? Terms:
• New Deal liberalism
• Government activism
• Definition of minorities
• Carey McWilliams
• Racial segregation in New Deal legislation
• Executive Order 8802
As economic equality peaked in the 1960s, the struggle
against racial----and, later,
gender----inequality followed. As with economic forces,
World War II served as a
critical catalyst for the campaign against racial inequality.
The thriving post--
World War II economy and the increased ideological
acceptance for government
intervention wrought by the New Deal now moved into
the realm of race relations.
If the New Deal ushered in the ideology of modern
liberalism, then World War II

witnessed the rise of racial liberalism. The gospel of
modern or New Deal
liberalism that President Franklin Roosevelt preached
vested unprecedented faith
in the positive influence that government could exert on
the lives of citizens.
Roosevelt transformed the meaning of liberalism from a
synonym for minimal
government and laissez--faire economics into "a belief in
an activist socially
conscious state." By grasping the levers of state power,
New Deal liberalism
promised to deliver what Roosevelt described as "greater
security for the average
man than he has ever known in the history of America."
Anton Refregier, "History of San Francisco," 1948
Racial liberalism took its cue from New Deal liberalism,
but also tried to broaden
its boundaries. It sought to use governmental tools to
build a bridge connecting
Roosevelt's Promised Land to America's not--so--chosen
people, who were
increasingly referred to as "minorities." Sociologist Louis
Wirth defined
"minorities" in 1945 as people whose phenotypical, or
physical, characteristics
served to single them out "as objects of collective
discrimination."
Wirth's definition echoed that of California--based
journalist, lawyer, and activist,
Carey McWilliams. McWilliams focused his attention on

"colored minorities …
[whose] degree of color visibility or physical
differentiation [were] sufficient to
constitute a recognizable difference" with discriminatory
consequences. He drew
a sharp distinction between "colored minorities," on the
one hand, and "foreign--
born 'white' immigrants"----Jews or eastern or southern
Europeans----on the other
hand, who stood a much better chance of being "absorbed,
as their predecessor
groups were absorbed."
McWilliams's distinction was evidenced in New Deal
legislation, which benefited
"foreign--born 'white' immigrants" and their descendants
more so than their non--
white counterparts. The Wagner and Social Security Acts,
for example, exempted
disproportionately non--white agricultural and domestic
workers from their
protective orbits.
The mortgage underwriting guidelines of the Federal
Housing Authority
perpetuated residential segregation;; and Agricultural
Adjustment Administration
payments went to farmers to let their fields lie fallow,
with scant provision for
farm laborers who were disproportionately of Mexican
descent in the West and
African American in the South. Moreover, the New Deal
avoided grappling with
race--specific inequalities, such as Jim Crow laws written
into state statute books
across the country. Nor did it deal with various forms of
so--called "private" and
therefore permissible racial discrimination in businesses,

neighborhoods, banks,
real estate agencies, and unions.
Train Station Waiting Room, Durham, NC, 1940 and
Segregated Drinking
Fountains at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
As World War II approached, African Americans seized
the symbolism of fighting
racism abroad to mount a concurrent battle against racism
at home. Walter White,
leader of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People
(NAACP), captured the essence of the Double V (Victory)
campaign----meaning
victory for racial equality abroad and at home----when he
observed, "It sounds
pretty foolish to be against park benches marked 'Jude'
[Jewish] in Berlin but to
be for park benches marked 'Colored' in Tallahassee,
Florida."
African American labor leader, A. Philip Randolph, applied
this logic to federally--
funded defense work. Randolph's March on Washington
Movement in the early
1940s threatened to bring 100,000 African American
protesters to the nation's
capitol unless President Roosevelt took steps to guarantee
equality of economic
opportunity to African Americans looking for work in war
industries. On June 25,
1941, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802,
barring discrimination in
government--financed defense work and establishing a Fair

Employment Practices
Committee to assure compliance.
Members of the "V" at Home Campaign, 1942
Executive Order 8802 marked the first official presidential
action on behalf of
racial equality since Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation
Proclamation. It also
reflected the extension of the transformed role of
government wrought by the
New Deal into the realm of race relations. Whereas New
Deal liberalism had
unfurled an unprecedented government safety net to the
"average" American, as
Roosevelt maintained, racial liberalism endeavored to
stretch that safety net to
include the non--"average" American. What security had
been to New Deal
liberalism, antidiscrimination and equal opportunity became
to racial liberalism.
These were the terms that figured most prominently in the
racial liberals' lexicon
and best encapsulated their aspirations. "While we have
moved away from
laissez--faire doctrines in economics," wrote Carey
McWilliams in 1943 about the
changes wrought by New Deal liberalism, "we still
anachronistically pursue
laissez--faire theories in population matters." This
conservative approach,
McWilliams believed, was rooted in an inappropriate "fear"
of employing state

power on behalf of "democratic objectives," which racial
liberalism proposed to
correct. Executive Order 8802 marked a critical early step
in this corrective
direction.
African American Defense Workers During the War
• Question: According to Mark Brilliant, what important
pieces of legislation after
the war helped to dismantle legalized segregation and what
was the role of
affirmative action? Terms:
• Linking New Deal liberalism with racial liberalism
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• "I Have a Dream" Speech
• Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Title VII
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
• Fair Housing Act
• 3 steps or goals of civil rights activists
• Affirmative action
• Opposition to affirmative action
• University of California v. Bakke
Civil rights activists for racial equality battled Jim Crow
laws in the South
throughout the 1940s and 50s. However, the less famous
but perhaps more
powerful thrust of racial equality activists across the
country in the same periods
was this campaign to link New Deal liberalism and racial
liberalism, economic

justice and racial justice.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his iconic 1963 "I
Have a Dream" speech,
hundreds of thousands had come to the nation's capital for
a "March On
Washington for Jobs and Freedom," the actual name of
the march. It was very
similar to the March on Washington Movement earlier in
the 1940s that had
demanded equality in defense hiring and yielded Executive
Order 8802. Racial
and economic equality had always mirrored each other,
though the second half of
that equation was always overshadowed.
A year after King's speech in front of the Lincoln
Memorial, Congress enacted the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. Again, the best known feature
of the act was Title II,
which outlawed Jim Crow in places of "public
accommodation" (i.e., private
businesses open to the public, such as movie theaters,
restaurants, hotels, etc.).
The lesser--known provision was Title VII, which revived
and expanded Executive
Order 8802, establishing an Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC).
Its job was to enforce Title VII's prohibition of
employment discrimination on the
grounds of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin
in businesses with 25 or
more employees, as well as labor unions. What Executive
Order 8802 had begun
in 1941 (and numerous states outside of the South had
continued with the
enactment of state fair employment practices laws from
1945 to 1964), Title VII

now extended to the entire country. Four years later,
Congress passed the Fair
Housing Act, which did for fair housing laws in the
states what Title VII did for
state fair employment practices laws.
Dismantling legalized segregation marked a first step down
the road ventured by
civil rights activists toward racial and economic justice.
Erecting anti--
discrimination statutes in labor and housing marked a
second step. The third
step in the late 1960s and early 70s was establishing
affirmative action policies
and programs. Affirmative action involved considering race
as a factor in
employment and higher education admissions decisions in
order to translate
anti--discrimination laws into racially integrated work
places and student bodies.
California Attorney General Stanley Mosk endorsed this
approach. "A pattern of
systematic exclusion may be overcome by a policy of
deliberate inclusion," Mosk
wrote in his April 1964 explanation of the state fair
employment practices law.
When Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote
in his dissent in Plessy
v. Ferguson (1890) that "the Constitution is color blind,"
according to Mosk, it
"was never intended to blind the law to inequities which
arise out of color
distinctions or to cripple the democracy in its efforts to
eliminate such

inequities." Mosk's reasoning did not mean that "quotas"---
-requiring fixed
numbers of minority applicants to be accepted or admitted-
---were legal, but it did
mean that the pursuit of "reasonable racial balance" was.
Two years later, President Lyndon Johnson agreed. "You
do not take a person
who, for years, has been hobbled by chains … bring him
to the starting line of a
race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the
others,' and still justly
believe that you have been completely fair," Johnson
pronounced at a
commencement address delivered at Howard University.
Beyond "equality as a
right and a theory," what was needed was "equality as a
fact and equality as a
result." Equality as a result became the core of the
definition of the affirmative
action legislation that emerged in the mid-- to late-
-1960s—achieving proportional
racial representation in work places and student bodies.
The spread of affirmative action stoked heated controversy.
Its opponents
typically maintained that the end goal of the civil rights
movement was color
blindness. In other words, the goal should be formal legal
equality embodied in
the uprooting of legalized discrimination in a variety of
venues, such as schools,
buses, neighborhoods, lunch counters, voting booths, and
marriage. From this
perspective the turn to color conscious policies, most
typically associated with

the rise of affirmative action, marked both a rupture and
betrayal of original
intent, or the intentions of the founding fathers in the
Constitution.
Proponents argued for practicality over ideological purity.
In the famous Bakke v.
Regents of the University of California (1978), the
Supreme Court justice Harry
Blackmun defended the medical school of the University
of California, Davis,
which had reserved 16 spots for non--white applicants.
Blackmun noted, "In order
to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race.
There is no other way."
Blackmun's colleague on the court, Thurgood Marshall,
added that color
conscious means were necessary to achieve color blind
ends----a "fully integrated
society, one in which the color of a person's skin will
not determine the
opportunities available to him."
Rally against Bakke v. Regents of the University of
California, June 1978
• Question: What are some indicators by the 1980s that
the campaign for racial
equality had made important strides? Terms:
• Education gains for minorities
• White collar v. blue color jobs for minorities
• Growth in African American homeownership rates
A more fully----though far from fully----racially integrated

society had indeed
emerged in America between World War II and the 1970s.
In 1950, the median
number of years of school completed for white males was
5 years greater than
that of black males (12.4 to 7.4). The difference between
black and white females
was 3.3 years (12.2 to 8.9). Twenty years later those
margins had nearly
disappeared, winnowing to .6 years between white and
black males and .3 years
between white and black females.
The declining racial gap in median years of school
completed was accompanied
by an increasing rate of college graduation for blacks
versus whites. Between
1950 and 1980, black male college graduation rates
increased by 379 percent (1.9
to 9.1 percent of all black males) and black female by
250 percent. White male and
female college graduation increased at significantly lower
rates----168 percent (8.8
to 23.6 percent) and 148 percent (6.1 to 15.1 percent),
respectively.
The significantly greater black versus white rates of
increase in education was
even more pronounced in white collar work. Between 1950
and 1980, the number
of nonwhite male professionals climbed 830 percent (from
82,256 men to
765,050), while the number of white male professionals
increased 185 percent (3
million to 8.4 million). During this same time period, the
number of nonwhite male

managers and officials exploded by 918 percent (from
32,382 to 329,542), while
the number of white male managers and officials grew by
155 percent (from
2,163,092 to 5,510,397).
More education and white collar work meant more income.
From 1940 to 1980, the
gap between what black males earned on average to every
dollar earned by white
males narrowed from 55 cents to 73 cents. More income,
in turn, led to more
homeownership. From 1950 to 1980 black household home
ownership rates
increased by 114 percent (from 20.5 percent of non--white
families owning their
home to 43.8 percent) compared to a 63 percent increase
for white household
home ownership rates (from 42.1 percent to 68.6 percent).
Non--white men and
women were still substantially behind their white
counterparts in education,
wealth, and homeownership;; however, they were making
significant strides
toward equality in the post--war years.

Section 3: Gender Equality
• Section Question: What motivated gender equality and
how did an opposition
form against it?
• Question: What strides did women make toward gender
equality in the post--
war years, and in what ways did women not make
progress? Terms:
• Women in the workforce in WWII and later
• Women in higher education
• Jobs in manufactures and service
• Women in the economy
• Median wages of women and men
• "Pink--collar ghetto"
• African American women's gains
As with African Americans, women fought for their own
victory on the homefront
of WWII. To achieve victory abroad in the war, they
joined the WWII workplace,
taking positions, especially in defense manufacturing that
had been traditionally
held by men. When the men returned, women refused to
cede their place in
working life.
In 1940, the civilian labor force included 13 million
women, more than half of
whom were single. Ten years later, the civilian labor
force included 16.6 women,
more than half of whom were married. By 1980 just over
half of all women (45.5
million) were working and more than twice as many

working women were married
than single. Rosie the Riveter and her daughters, in other
words, would not go
home after the war, even after they got married.
As a result, an even more fully gender (as opposed to
racial) integrated society
emerged in America between World War II and the 1970s.
Women, in general, and
white women, in particular closed gender gaps in
schooling and work at rates
that outstripped those of African Americans as a whole.
In 1950, more than 2 times as many men were enrolled
in institutions of higher
education than women (1,560,000 to 721,000, together
totaling 14.3 percent of the
18 to 24 year--old population). By 1979, female
enrollment in institutions of higher
education exceeded that of men for the first time
(6,223,000 to 5,874,000, together
totaling 40.2 percent of the 18 to 24 year--old
population). The gender gap favoring
women only widened as the 20th century drew to a close.
This pattern was also reflected in graduation rates. In
1950, more than 2 times as
many 23 year--old men held bachelor's degrees than 23
year--old women (278,240
to 104,306, totaling 16.1 percent of the 23 year--old
population). Just over 30 years
later, in 1981, women surpassed men on this metric.
Just as more education gave women more access to
employment, so, too, did the

changing nature of the job market. Some 40 million new
jobs were created
between 1950 and 1980. Of these, 30 million were in the
service sector, which
displaced the goods producing/industrial sector as the site
where more
Americans worked. A significant proportion of the new
service sector jobs went
to women, making women, much more so than men, the
beneficiaries of post--
World War II prosperity.
Still, the extent to which women reaped the benefits of
the growing and changing
economy had its limits. More often than not, the
increasing number of women
who were well educated and who had entered the work
force with great
expectations found themselves slotted into highly gendered
stratified jobs. The
lower wages and lower benefits of these jobs constituted
what became known as
a "pink--collar ghetto."
IBM Keypunch Machine Operators, c. 1965;; Receptionist,
2009;; Telephone
Operators, 1958;; Receptionist, 1990
Though women would surpass men in higher education
enrollment and degrees
conferred by the late 1970s and early 1980s, men
nevertheless comprised nearly
two--and--a--half times the number of law school
graduates, over 3 times the

number of medical school graduates, and nearly 7 times
the number of dental
school graduates in 1980. While 10.5 percent of men who
earned doctorates in
1980 did so in engineering, just under 1 percent of
women did. Conversely, in
1980, 33.2 percent of doctorates earned by women were in
education, a field
traditional to women, while only 17.9 percent of men's
doctorates were in
education.
The persistent----if narrowing----gender stratification in
education and employment
during the post--World War II period helps explain the
persistent----and not
narrowing----gender stratification in income. In 1960, the
median earnings for full--
time working women was 49 percent less than men. In
1980, it was 49.7 percent.
During this same time period, racial gaps between the
median earnings of black
and white women narrowed to the point that black
working women possessed
nearly the same median earnings as white working women.
At the same time, the
racial gaps between black and white working men declined
only slightly (from
36.6 percent in 1970 to 34 percent in 1980). Despite this
difference, black men still
had higher median earnings than white women by 16.2
percent in 1970 and 18.3
percent in 1980.

• Question: How did Betty Friedan and other activists
for gender equality tackle
the social and cultural barriers for women in post--war
society? Terms:
• Betty Friedan
• The Feminine Mystique
• Cult of domesticity
• Title IX
• Roe v. Wade
• Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
Besides being consigned to "feminine" jobs, women also
encountered a popular
culture in the mid--20th century that venerated traditional
feminine roles. This
gender conservatism arose despite (or perhaps because of)
the rapidly
increasing number of educated and working women. It also
stood in uneasy
tension with the enthusiastic racial liberalism of the late
50s and early 60s that
propelled the civil rights movement forward.
In response to the double--burden and double--standard
women confronted, Betty
Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963.
Friedan's manifesto indicted
the drudgery of the suburban domestic sphere where the
post--World War II cult of
domesticity sought to slot women as happy housewives
and doting mothers. It
also called attention to the frustration and guilt many of
those same women
encountered as they sought work for wages outside the
home and, in the
process, ran afoul of the "feminine mystique." Friedan's
book became a best--

seller, as well as an opening salvo in the modern
women's movement.
Betty Friedan 1960;; National Organization for Women
leaders, 1968
Thereafter, women continued to buck the "feminine
mystique" when they
prevailed upon Congress to pass Title IX of the Education
Amendments of 1972.
The law extended prohibitions against discrimination
covering race in federally--
assisted education programs to gender. Title IX would
soon become synonymous
with opening the floodgates to women in college athletics.
One year later, women extended to their very bodies the
kind of control they had
secured over their school and work lives. In 1973, the
United States Supreme
Court handed down its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling,
striking down state laws
prohibiting a woman from being able to choose to
terminate a pregnancy.
• Question: According to Mark Brilliant, what strategies
did conservative
activists use to appeal to American voters? Terms:
• Phyllis Schlafly
• Exports after 1970
• Median income after 1970
• Busing and Richard Nixon
• Brown v. Board of Education and Milliken v. Bradley
• "Chocolate cities" and "vanilla suburbs"

• "Great divergence"
The women's movement provoked a backlash, which, in
turn, would contribute to
its most stinging defeat. In 1972, Congress approved the
Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA). Initially proposed in the 1920s in the
wake of the 19th
Amendment's granting women the right to vote, the ERA
proclaimed, "Equality of
rights under the law shall not be abridged by the United
States or by any State on
account of sex."
Opponents of the ERA, like conservative activist Phyllis
Schlafly, insisted that the
ERA would overturn longstanding legal protections women
possessed as
women. They also viewed the ERA as a threat to the
traditional family structure
that feminists like Betty Friedan had sought to challenge.
Their efforts
succeeded. In 1982, the ERA fell 3 states short of the 38
required for ratification.
Though failure to ratify the ERA represented a bitter loss
for the march for gender
equality, it did little to derail the long--term post--World
War II trends involving
women in education and on the job. The marches for
racial and economic
equality, however, faced more formidable roadblocks and
encountered bigger
setbacks.
Rally for Equal Rights Amendment, 1978;; Demonstration
against ERA, 1977

In the case of racial equality, the civil rights movement's
progression from
dismantling legalized segregation (or, Jim Crow) to
legislating anti--discrimination
(fair employment practices, fair housing) to establishing
results--oriented
proportional representation in affirmative action policies
was accompanied by
increasingly popular opposition.
It was one thing, for example, to remove statutory
language from the law books.
This, for example, happened in rather short order from
1945 to 1950 in California
and was, according to Carey McWilliams, "accepted
throughout the state with
scarcely a murmur of audible protest." It was quite
another to establish anti--
discrimination laws, which encroached upon the decisions
of private businesses
and homeowners to hire or promote, or to sell or lease
to, anyone on whatever
terms they chose.
Similarly, it was one thing to strike down school
segregation laws, as the
Supreme Court did for the entire country in 1954,
prompting massive resistance
in the South. It was quite another to go from school
desegregation in the law to
integration in the classroom. When courts, including the
Supreme Court in 1968,
interpreted the principal of desegregation to require
mandatory integration, the
school busing required to achieve it quickly became what
President Richard

Nixon described in 1971 as "by far the hottest" domestic
issue confronting the
country.
Three years later, as the heat generated by busing only
increased, the Supreme
Court issued a ruling that sought to turn it down.
Milliken v. Bradley held that
busing across school district lines----in this case from
schools in Detroit to
schools in Detroit's suburbs----was impermissible, absent
evidence that those
suburbs were complicit in the school segregation in
Detroit.
Twenty years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954),
Milliken v. Bradley (1974)
marked the Supreme Court's first retreat from the steps
being taken to achieve
integration. The nation was rapidly dividing itself into
inner cities and suburbs,
each of which had "economic and racial homogeneity"----a
nation of "Chocolate
cities" surrounded by "vanilla suburbs," in the funk band
Parliament's memorable
formulation. Milliken foreshadowed a trend toward the de
facto (in fact), if not de
jure (in law) re--segregation of America's public schools
that would begin in
earnest in the 1980s.
The Parliaments, 1969
Finally, it was one thing to pass fair employment

practices laws that forbade
racial discrimination in employment. It was quite another
to suggest that there
was racial discrimination because a race was
underrepresented in a school or in
employment. Insisting on affirmative action remedies
became as controversial as
busing.
From the Double Victory campaign through the civil rights
era, proponents of
racial justice sought to insure that racial minorities had
spaces aboard the boats
being lifted by America's rising economic tide. However,
no sooner had the civil
rights movement secured its major congressional legislative
victories in the mid--
60s, particularly with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, than
reduced growth and
prosperity in the 70s began to undermine the
achievements.
Members of the "V" at Home Campaign, 1942;; March on
Washington for Jobs and
Freedom, 1963, Anti--Bakke Protest, 1977
Harder economic times would have an even more
devastating impact on the
march for economic equality. Instead of being widely
distributed, the benefits of
the economy's productivity growth began to be narrowly
concentrated. What
would later become known as the "great divergence" in
income equality took
root. Beginning in the mid--1970s, the share of aggregate

income for middle class
to poor families declined, while the share of aggregate
income for the top 20
percent rose;; the top 5 percent prospered even more.
This marked a complete reversal of the pattern that had
characterized the quarter
century or so after World War II. America's overall
economy continued to grow----
albeit at a slower rate than the 25 years after WWII. But
this rising tide no longer
lifted all boats. Instead, it lifted only bigger boats, while
leaving the smaller ones
grounded, returning America back to levels of income
inequality not seen since
the decade before the Great Depression. The "greatest
moment of collective
inebriation in American history" was over.
Whinery family, Pie Town, NM, 1940, and The Flam
family, San Diego, CA, 1970
Essay: The Post-War World, 1945-1972
Introduction
America dominance of world economy
"The greatest moment of collective inebriation"
Concentration of wealth after 1970
Section 1: The Post War Boom
American post-war population increase or "baby boom"
Western population growth
"Sun belt" and defense industry

Defense vs. social spending
US dominance of exports
60 percent of world manufactures
G.I. Bill of Rights
G.I. Bill and labor productivity
G.I. Bill and new housing
Homeownership rates
Labor productivity growth
Family income growth
The GDP growth in 1940-70 compared to before and after
Unionization
Poorer people's wealth grows faster than the wealthy
Section 2: Racial Equality
New Deal liberalism
Government activism
Definition of minorities
Carey McWilliams
Racial segregation in New Deal legislation
Executive Order 8802
Linking New Deal liberalism with racial liberalism
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I Have a Dream" Speech
Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Title VII
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
Fair Housing Act
Three steps or goals of civil rights activists
Affirmative action
Opposition to affirmative action
University of California v. Bakke
Education gains for minorities

White collar vs. blue color jobs for minorities
Growth in African American homeownership rates
Section 3: Gender Equality
Women in the workforce in WWII and later
Women in higher education
Jobs in manufactures and service
Women in the economy
Median wages of women and men
"Pink-collar ghetto"
Women in professions
African American women's gains
Betty Friedan
The Feminine Mystique
Cult of domesticity
Title IX
Roe v. Wade
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
Phyllis Schlafly
Exports after 1970
Median income after 1970
Busing and Richard Nixon
Brown v. Board of Education and Milliken v. Bradley
"Chocolate cities" and "vanilla suburbs"
"Great divergence"
Lecture/Slides/Problems
Lecture: "The Color of America Has Changed"
"Dominant narrative of the civil rights movement"
4 components narrative: geographic, demographic,
chronological, and
substantive
Geographic: South to everywhere else

Demographic: African Americans and whites
Chronological: Mid-1950s to late 1960s
Substantive: Focus on state-sanctioned segregation
"Long" civil rights movement
Goals of the civil rights reformers
Carey McWilliams and the diverse civil rights movements
Brothers Under the Skin
Racially restrictive housing covenants
Perez v. Sharp and inter-racial marriage
Anton Refregier's mural
California Federation of Civic Unity (CFCU)
Lack of cooperation among movements
Pat Brown
African American's concern for fair housing
César Chávez
Willie Mays case and housing discrimination
California fair housing legislation
Proposition 14
Ronald Reagan
Private property rights vs. civil rights
1966 California gubernatorial election
Bilingual education in California and retreat
The Bakke decision (1978)
Affirmative action in college admissions
Thurgood Marshall's opinion in Bakke decision
Lewis Powell: "race yes, quotas no"
Shifting rationale to promote "diversity"
Problem: Perez v. Sharp
14th Amendment ("Due Process")
Loving v. Virginia
Perry v. Schwarzenegger

California the first state successfully to challenge in court state-
sanctioned prohibitions against interracial marriage
Same-sex marriage uses precedent of inter-racial marriage cases
States that prohibit inter-racial marriage
Problem: Suburbanization and Environmental Movement
Western suburbs
Septic tanks
Water pollution
Modern environmental movement
Clean Water Act of 1972
Locus of environmental movement from state parks to suburbs
John Muir
The Changing American Economy, 1972--present
Introduction
In the wake of World War II, the United States entered
into the
longest period of prosperity and economic stability that it
had
ever enjoyed. The fruits of this prosperity were broadly
distributed. Both major parties were committed to keeping
unemployment low through public investments, and record
levels of union representation improved wages for millions.

Economic growth in these years supported a stable middle
class
of working people who might own their suburban homes
with a
federally guaranteed mortgage, drive to work on federally
financed highways, and send their children to a vastly
expanded
system of affordable public higher education. About one-
-third of
working families enjoyed access to paid vacations,
holidays,
pensions, and health insurance. Legal discrimination,
however,
meant that whites benefited disproportionately.
The booming American economy had resulted in part from
World
War II itself. With the federal military as a guaranteed,
high--
paying customer during the war, American industries had
hired
more workers, bought new technologies, and built new
plants.
The war also largely destroyed international competition
for
many American industries. Unlike much of Europe or
Japan, the
US emerged in 1945 with its industrial infrastructure
intact.
In addition, the depression and war had convinced the
richest

nations that they had more to gain by coordination than
pure
competition. Under an arrangement of international
agreements
referred to as the Bretton Woods system, the US led the
non--
communist world in organizing trade and investment into a
stable framework after the war. International trade was
governed
by rules worked out among the capitalist countries over
many
decades and enforced by the World Trade Organization.
The
rules were put in place to avoid the kinds of instability
that had
preceded the stock market crash of 1929.
Exchange rates were pegged to the US dollar at a fixed
ratio----that
is, other nations defined their currencies in terms of the
dollar,
and in turn the United States defined the dollar in terms
of a set
amount of gold. Thus government action bolstering the US
dollar
gave an advantage to American banks and businesses in
their
international dealings. When the United States entered into
international economic treaties, in short, it did so as the
most
powerful player.
This post--war system----a bigger economic pie, divided
more
equally and stabilized by US--led international controls---
-began to

unravel in the 1970s. It was replaced through 4 related
processes: deindustrialization, automation, globalization, and
financialization. The volatile new service economy that
emerged
from these transformations has returned the country to a
level of
inequality last seen in 1928.
Section 1: Deindustrialization and the Rise of the
Service Economy
• Section Question: How did deindustrialization affect
middle
class America?
• Question: How did the American dollar affect the world
economy in a way that was beneficial to American
business
in the post WWII era? Terms:
• 1971 is first time US imported more goods than
exported
• The world's reserve currency
• The fixed currency system
• Guarantee of US dollars in gold
• The floating currency exchange system
In 1971, for the first time in almost 80 years, the United
States
imported more manufactured goods than it exported----a
sign that

industries in other parts of the world were surpassing
America's
capacity. That same year, President Nixon abruptly ended
the
guarantee that the United States would redeem, or buy,
American
dollars in gold. Thus, the United States dollar was no
longer
guaranteed to be the world's reserve currency, the currency
that
other nations would use to make international transactions.
Nixon's decision recognized the loss of America's former
dominance as an exporter of manufactured goods. US
businesses were changing, moving away from trade in
tangible,
material items toward more volatile financial instruments
and the
sale of currencies themselves. In 1970, for example,
virtually all
the commodities, or goods and services, traded on the
futures
market of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange were tangible
products like grains or gold;; by 2004, about three-
-quarters were
intangible currencies or financial instruments.
Americans had been paying for all those imports of
consumer
goods and oil in dollars. If the foreign firms and
governments
that held those dollars now were to try to redeem, or

buy, them in
gold as promised, US gold reserves would be drained. But
when
the United States suddenly cancelled the promise of
convertibility, all those stable exchange rates were thrown
into
flux.
Exchange rates now "floated" rather than being calculated
against the dollar in a fixed, predictable ratio. The Swiss
franc,
for example, might be worth about 24 cents one month
and 25
cents the next------and if you bought enough francs at the
right
moment, and sold them again in a hurry, you might make
a
considerable profit out of that single penny's difference.
On the other hand, if the slight change in value went the
other
way, your Swiss counterpart would come out ahead. Either
way,
the profits to be made from buying and selling money or
financial
instruments instead of goods or services depended on
volatile
prices and nonproductive investments.
• Question: After 1970, increased productivity did not
improve
wages. How did an increase in the power of businesses
influence this? Terms:

• Rise in prices in the 1970s
• Rise in the price of oil in the late 1970s
• Stagflation
• Income increase 1979--2009
• Inflation--fighting strategies
• Business Roundtable lobbies Congress
• Pro--business influence on Democrats and Republicans
Other signs of deindustrialization hit closer to ordinary
people's
jobs and homes. In the decades after World War II,
productivity
had increased----that is, each individual worker had
produced
more goods and services, and more profits for his
employer. In
response, employees had organized into unions and
collectively
pushed for wages and benefits to increase alongside
profits.
In 1973 that annual growth in productivity slowed down
dramatically;; but growth in wages slowed even more, and
essentially came to a halt. After the early 1970s,
therefore, the
majority of Americans could no longer expect to live
better than
their own parents even when producing more and working
longer
hours. While wages stalled out and unemployment
increased
dramatically, however, prices rose. In the 1970s, many oil-
-
producing countries remade petroleum markets in line with

their
own economic and political interests. When the price of
oil
almost doubled, it boosted the cost of everything it
touched,
from the rush--hour commute to the wheat grown with
petrochemicals on America's massive mechanized industrial
farms. This combination of high inflation, on the one
hand, with
high unemployment and stagnant wages, on the other,
contradicted economic common sense.
A new term, "stagflation," had to be coined for such an
unprecedented development. The administrations of both
Jimmy
Carter and then Ronald Reagan had to choose whether to
make
unemployment or inflation their economic priority, since
actions
to fix one problem could be expected to exacerbate the
other, at
least in the short term. Both chose to address inflation
rather
than unemployment. A robust new economic philosophy
thus
aggressively sacrificed jobs and wages to reining in
inflation.
The new economic orthodoxy represented a social
movement of
financial and corporate actors. Organized into lobbying
groups

like the new Business Roundtable, the nation's largest
corporations influenced tax policy in their favor and
scored
notable victories over organized labor in the 1970s and
'80s.
Concerned about the rising consumer protection movement,
they
also successfully championed legal changes that protected
corporations from lawsuits and insulated them from
responsibility for environmental destruction.
Business Roundtable members are the chief executive
officers of
leading US companies. Listed are a few of the companies
in the
Business Roundtable. While the Business Roundtable
performs a
number of services for the business sector, they became
particularly adept in the 1970s and 80s in lobbying and
influencing Congress for and against legislation. Their
influence
in Washington, D.C., continues to this day.
This newly influential movement opposed collective
bargaining
on the job and public safety nets in favor of strong
private
property rights and militant anti--communism. It argued for
expanding some functions of government, like the military
and
prison systems, while limiting social services. This vision
was

popularized in part through foundations and think--tanks
that
drew their funding from corporate fortunes.
Their influence extended to the White House, where
experts
nurtured by this apparatus became influential economic
advisors. The new economic thinking, moreover, became
necessary to national electoral success by both parties.
Democratic administrations as well as Republican ones
promoted free trade, privatization, and financialization, or
the
process by which banking and trade in currencies becomes
a
dominant part of the economy. The changing economy, in
other
words, remade the political landscape.
• Question: How did working Americans manage to
survive in
an age of wage decline and dropping incomes? Terms:
• Growth of income by social class
• Percentage of working poor
• Growth in low income jobs
• Growth of household debt
• Chinese origins of borrowed money
• Two income household
• The hottest job categories in the service economy
• Underground economy
• Racial component of drug dealing
• Cocaine and crack cocaine
• US incarceration rates compared to other countries

The result was a reversal of the policies that had
increased and
stabilized the middle class since World War II. The top
20 percent
of households saw their incomes rise by almost 50 percent
between 1979 and 2009;; the bottom 20 percent saw theirs
shrink
by more than 7 percent.
Whereas a growing economy had once meant that incomes
grew
for all sectors of the population, after the early 1970s
growth was
concentrated in the very wealthiest households;; middle-
-class
incomes grew much less, and the poorest households lost
ground. The deliberate dismantling of the New Deal after
1970
produced a level of inequality that had not been matched
since
right before the Great Depression. Inequality grew,
moreover,
both in good times and bad after 1970. More than half of
all new
jobs created in the Reagan years paid below the poverty
line.
During the long boom of the Clinton presidency (1992-
-2000), low
unemployment did not mean that the most plentiful jobs
could
sustain families. And even with inflation under control,

some of
the most important items in family budgets became
increasingly
expensive. The costs of housing, transportation, health
care, and
a college education absorbed ever greater shares of family
incomes.
The working poor are classified as people who are
working but
their incomes fall below what the federal government calls
the
poverty line----the minimum income needed to sustain a
family.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics began to more accurately
track
the numbers of working poor in 1987, classifying them as
working for at least 27 weeks or more but with wages
that fall
below the poverty line.
Faced with flat wage rates and frequent lay--offs, but
higher
prices for the economic basics of stable family life,
middle--class
Americans had only a few routes open to them to
maintain their
standard of living and secure their children's futures. One
widespread solution to the shrinking wage was borrowing.
While the owners of American business and industry were

reluctant to pay their employees higher wages, they were
increasingly eager to loan them money to make up the
difference,
now that they had invented ways to package and trade
consumer
debt around the world as a profitable new form of
speculative
currency. In essence, the surplus savings of countries like
China
could be recycled as credit for American households,
whose
continued consumption----with this borrowed money---
-stimulated
production in other parts. Taking on record levels of
household
debt helped plug the gaps caused by stagnating wages and
rising fixed costs, but by itself it was seldom enough to
make up
the difference.
Household debt is the total of all debts incurred from
home
mortgages, home equity loans, auto loans, student loans,
and
credit cards debts, which is then averaged per American
family.
The other major solution was to send another member of
the
household out to earn a paycheck. By 1980, the majority
of
households included 2 earners. Women's movement into the
workforce offset the loss of household buying power
through

unemployment or stagnant wages. With more mothers
working
outside their homes some of their household work had to
be
replaced, and their husbands did not take up the slack.
Even
when husbands and wives both worked full time, women
from
the mid--1980s to the 2010s continued to do about twice
as much
housework as their husbands.
Instead, then, of dividing domestic labor equally, families
that
could afford it relied more on commercial service
providers like
restaurants, day--care centers, and nursing homes that hired
minimum--wage employees. Some families paid other
women to
perform housework and childcare at home----increasingly,
women
who could be paid less than minimum wage because of
their
undocumented immigration status.
Across the board, from domestic workers to doctors,
women
continue to earn 20 to 30 percent less than men in the
same
occupations. A woman in 2008 had to earn a college
degree to
make the same as a man with just a high school diploma.

Conditions that strained middle--class families nonetheless
rewarded many women with new access to meaningful,
challenging, and even relatively well--paid work once new
federal
law prevented discrimination on the basis of sex. Poor
women
experienced these changes differently. Leaving the work of
the
home for paid work, in their cases, usually meant taking
on
stressful, insecure, low--paid jobs without benefits----the
kinds of
jobs that sectors like retail and fast--food relied upon for
their
record profits.
This sharp division in the kinds of jobs available was not
confined to women workers. Despite all the faith placed
in the
"knowledge economy," none of the hottest job categories
of the
2010s required a college education. The single biggest job
category was retail clerk, for example, and the fastest-
-growing
was home health aid. Both pay median wages below the
federal
poverty threshold for a family of 4.
Meanwhile, the business--backed free--market policies
demanded
cuts in the public investments that had raised many
Americans----

especially white Americans----into the middle class during
the
postwar period. To help sway public opinion against the
kind of
social safety nets offered by other industrial countries,
conservatives found a useful scapegoat in the figure of the
"welfare queen."
Ronald Reagan never used the term "welfare queen" in his
speeches. But he did on several occasions tell the story
of an
African American woman, Linda Taylor, to illustrate his
arguments for the reduction of social service programs.
Taylor
was a welfare mother who had committed fraud on a
large
scale not only of the Aid to Dependent Children program,
called welfare, but other major federal programs to help
the
poor. "Welfare queen" became a popular term in politics
and
the media for poor women, particularly African American
women, who received government support.
Resentment toward taxpayer--funded social programs for
the
poor grew as tax structures changed to rely more heavily
on the
middle class than on corporations or the wealthy. Once
the Civil
Rights Act of 1965 forced states to stop denying relief to
black
citizens while providing it for white ones, media coverage

overwhelmingly represented aid recipients as African
American.
In 1996 President Clinton signed a bipartisan bill that
shed many
mothers and children from the welfare rolls. But with
these
welfare moms largely entering minimum--wage work, even
a full--
time job couldn't raise them from poverty, especially as
the
federal minimum wage shrank in real terms to less than
its value
in 1970.
An equally drastic way to handle unemployment lay in the
development of the largest carceral, or prison, state in
human
history. The United States began imprisoning its citizens
at a rate
unseen anywhere in the world at any time, a rate 6 to 10
times
greater than any other industrial nation. In the 30 years
between
1960 and 1990, for example, crime rates in the US and
Germany
were almost identical;; yet over that period, the US
incarcerated
people at 8 times the rate of Germany.
Most of the growth in the incarcerated population came
from new
policies toward non--violent drug offenders. While research
consistently demonstrates that virtually equal proportions of

blacks and whites use and sell illegal drugs, some states
convict
black men at 20 to 50 times the rates of their white
counterparts.
Even after sentences were served, the explosion in racially
skewed nonviolent drug convictions created a pool of
citizens
who could be legally discriminated against in hiring and
shut out
of benefits like student loans, public housing, or food
stamps.
Meanwhile, communities across the country lobbied for
prisons
to be constructed where factories had fled and farms had
collapsed. Taxpayer money could create jobs in building
prisons
and guarding inmates in rural, largely white towns.
Section 2: The Effects of Automation and
Globalization
• Section Question: What is the difference between
automation
and globalization and what impact did the processes have
on American workers?
• Question: How did computers change the American

workplace? Terms:
• Increase pay of CEOs
• Bifurcation of the economy----high wage knowledge
employees,
low wage service sector
• Technological developments from defense contracts
• Automation
• Manufacturing production and employment
• African Americans replaced by automation
The computing revolution enabled the economic
transformations
of the millennial era, the years before and after 2000,
from Wall
Street to Walmart, from the dot--com bubble to the
housing
bubble. But the technology by itself could not
fundamentally
remake work, production, and exchange----even, perhaps,
consciousness itself, through the increasing integration of
networked computers with their human users. Instead, like
all
tools, computers wrought their changes in the hands of
specific
actors, who turned them to particular ends under
historically
unique conditions----and often with unintended
consequences.
Both computers and the networks that multiplied their
power
grew from a complex web of Cold War defense dollars,

publicly
subsidized universities, and private, for--profit contractors.
The
silicon transistor that anchored California's Silicon Valley
and the
entire global microprocessor industry, for example, was
originally developed to withstand the performance demands
of
guiding the first Minuteman ballistic missiles. The Internet
was
born of a Vietnam War--era Department of Defense project
to
connect its research projects at major universities on the
East
and West coasts. Information technology transformed the
American experience of producing and consuming in
important
ways. Changing production involved automation, or
replacing
people with machines. Even during the postwar boom
years,
companies were trying to produce more with fewer
workers----
indeed, that was the definition of the productivity gains
that
underwrote those secure, high--wage jobs.
DARPA and the Internet
As long as overall output grew, the factories were still
dependent
on actual employees. Each individual employee, however,
was
responsible for producing more than previously, so that

new
workers were not hired at the same rate as before.
Between 1957
and 1964, for example, manufacturing output in the US
doubled;;
the number of blue--collar workers, however, fell slightly.
Growing
industry did not necessarily mean growing employment, but
it
did mean relative stability for those already on the job.
But the advent of computer--assisted production---
-developed
through government investment in research and Cold War
markets for military technologies----accelerated the process
of
replacing jobs with machines. The effects hit African
American
workers first, well before the 1970s.
The wartime boom and the executive order forbidding
discrimination in industries that accepted government
contracts
had encouraged millions of black Southerners to leave
behind a
system of racial terrorism and head to greater political
freedom
and economic opportunity. In the northern and western
cities,
however, they were shunted to the worst of the jobs in
auto
assembly, meat--packing, or chemical factories. It was
these jobs
that felt the first brunt of unemployment----twice that of
whites----
when manufacturers built new, automated, computer-

-assisted
plants in the suburbs during the postwar boom years.
Automated Assembly Line of Ford's F--150, Dearborn,
Michigan,
2010
In the increasingly automated factories, these downsized
workers and other close observers could see the outline of
the
future as far back as mid--century. Mathematician Norbert
Weiner,
the father of cybernetics, warned in 1950 that an
"automatic
machine…is the precise economic equivalent of slave
labor. Any
labor which competes with slave labor must accept the
economic
consequences of slave labor."
Immediately after the end of World War II, novelist Kurt
Vonnegut
was working in a GE factory and watching computer-
-operated
milling machines replace skilled work. From that
experience he
created a dystopian fantasy of mass unemployment from
automation in his 1952 novel Player Piano. About the
same time,
at a Ford Motor plant in Ohio, a company manager
showed the
president of the powerful auto union around the newly
automated
plan. Pointing to the robots, he asked, "How are you
going to

collect union dues from these guys?" The labor organizer
replied, "How are you going to sell them Fords?"
• Question: How did the computer create globalization---
-making
the labor and products of world economy available to
American businesses----and ultimately take labor away from
American workers? Terms:
• Wall Street becomes center of international business
networked
through computers
• "Knowledge workers"
• "No collar" workplace
• Dot--com industries
• Computers and the financial industry
• "Casino economy"
• Speculative v. productive investment
Computer technologies quickly moved into many offices,
too,
polarizing the workforce into white--collar and pink--collar
jobs. An
IBM computer in an insurance firm of the 1960s, for
example,
might offer tools that empowered some of the high--end
"knowledge workers." At the same time, it split off more
routine
functions into low--wage, high--stress, monotonous data
processing, overwhelmingly performed by women.
Computerized airline reservations systems built on military

technologies and helped turn air travel from a luxury into
a
relatively commonplace experience. But the computerized
systems also micromanaged the reservation clerks, imposing
a
rigid structure on their interactions with customers,
listening in
on their calls, and generating hourly reports of their
productivity
down to the second. The introduction of computers into
the
workplace meant greater freedom for some, greater control
and
routinization for many more.
Airline Ticketing Agents
In a later wave of innovation, the public money that
subsidized
the Internet sector sparked the rise of the "no--collar"
workplace,
in which companies like Google strove to make work feel
like
play for a select echelon of knowledge workers. Their
"campuses" came equipped with massage therapists, giant
playgrounds, and 24--hour cafeterias to encourage round-
-the--
clock creative labor----the opposite, in some ways, of the
automated drudgery that computerization represented for
low--
wage workers. The dot--com boom of the 1990s was
touched off
by federally subsidized research and infrastructure resulting
in
web browsers that transformed the World Wide Web into

a more
useful tool for accessing goods and services.
New start--ups leapt into the Internet sector and
concentrated on
building public awareness of their brands through
aggressive
marketing rather than creating profits. Indeed, many of
their
services they offered for free, in the expectation that they
could
later charge for them or sell advertising once they
commanded a
large enough market share. The dot--com stocks soared
through
the late 1990s, reflecting widespread optimism about the
future
profitability of the new medium.
The dot--com employees themselves often accepted stock
options in place of straight pay, and the new technology
itself
allowed individuals to speculate on the industry through
Internet
trading. By 2001, many of the speculative new companies
had
burned through their initial public offerings of stock or
venture
capital investments without ever having managed to
produce
revenue, let alone profits. Many failed completely;; others
survived this low and rebounded;; a few were shown to
have
engaged in illegal fraud in an effort to surf the
speculative wave.

Information technology was enormously significant, then,
both
as a tool to change older forms of industrial and office
work and
as a volatile new sector of the economy itself. But
arguably its
greatest impact was the least visible one: The world of
finance
seized on the new tools to change the underlying basis of
the
global economy.
Powerful calculating capacity and instantaneous
communications combined to empower Wall Street to
expand its
products and its markets. Once it became possible to
calculate
vast, complex new forms of financial relationships, respond
to
split--second changes, and track millions of transactions
simultaneously, the investment bankers and bond traders
had
every incentive to alter the rules as well.
The Old Stock Exchange, 1960s, and The New Stock
Exchange,
2000s
The "casino economy"----this explosion of creative,
globalized
financial activity----came at the expense of the older
productive
economy, those post--war factories where workers' rising
productivity and union representation produced stable jobs

with
benefits and rising wages.
Simple arithmetic came into play. Before the Great
Recession
(2007--2009), a dollar invested in the new securities
(partial
ownership in companies or financial entities), a dollar
speculated
on real estate, or a dollar bet on wildly fluctuating
exchange rates
around the world could produce more profit than a dollar
invested in an American factory or a small business.
• Question: How are modern companies organized
differently
than older ones, as an example Nike? Terms:
• Nike makes a brand, it does not own a factory
• "Our industry follows poverty"
• Coca--Cola sales internationally
But while the dollars followed the higher profits into
speculation
rather than productive investment, Americans continued to
need
the kinds of goods that factories produced. In addition to
automating to eliminate employees, businesses therefore
moved
their production----first to the poorer parts of the country,
then to
poorer parts of the world as they succeeded in changing

the
rules of international trade.
Earlier in the 20th century, giants like the Ford Motor
Company
had struggled to get control of the whole chain of
production,
from manufacturing its own steel to generating its own
advertising. In contrast, many companies in the late 20th
century
saw factories, products, and workers themselves as
liabilities
rather than assets.
Instead, the key to profitability lay in cultivating a blue-
-chip brand
name by ever more sophisticated marketing, advertising,
and
celebrity sponsorship. Actually making the products was
less
important and could be outsourced to contractors around
the
world. "[T]he future belongs to companies----like Coca-
-Cola Co.----
that own little but sell much," proclaimed Business Week
in 1998.
The chairman of Nike advised, "There is no value in
making
things anymore."
Lobbying successfully for free trade agreements that
opened
borders to corporations and capital (but not to most
workers),
American companies spread their contracts for
manufactured
goods around the globe. The big brands hunted out the
locations

with the lowest wages and laxest labor controls in order
to
subcontract production at the speed and price the
marketing
demanded. Disney products were made in Haiti for 28
cents an
hour, but as a Disney spokesman said, "We don't employ
anyone
in Haiti." By outsourcing, Disney and others avoided any
responsibility for how the goods they marketed were
produced.
As soon as wages begin to rise in one country, suppliers
are on
the hunt for a cheaper corner of production in another,
from
Colombia to China to Bangladesh. Export processing zones
even
offered a better deal to employers. In return for locating
a factory
to one of these special enclaves in a poor country, a
company
could avoid taxes and labor laws for many years, and
move on
when the holiday ended. "Our industry follows poverty," a
garment manufacturer stated bluntly.
With fewer American factories came fewer of those stable
working--class jobs. Instead, a small number of Americans
would
work in offices and a growing number would slide down
the
employment chain into an expanding pool of traditionally

female
service occupations like retail, childcare, health services,
or food
preparation.
These "McJobs," as they came to be called, commanded
low
wages and the part--time schedules that allowed even
large,
highly profitable companies to avoid paying benefits. Not
coincidentally, they largely lacked union representation, so
the
major tool that had allowed employees to improve working
conditions and compensation in earlier decades was not
available to these workers.
The McJobs remained dominated by white women and
people of
color, but under pressure from the low--wage economy,
white
men's jobs, too, came to look more like them. At the
same time,
the export of jobs did not mean that factory workers
around the
world moved into the kind of middle--class stability that
Americans had enjoyed mid--century under different
policies,
because the company could always move on.
Thus, while international trade itself was nothing new, the
globalization of the late 20th century was quite different
in a
number of ways from what had gone before: The old
firms had
largely employed Americans to make the goods;; by 1980,
in
contrast, 80 percent of the revenues of US corporations

actually
came from overseas production.
At the same time, they came to depend more heavily on
overseas
consumers of their products than ever before, often
dissolving
the distinction between "domestic" and "international"
markets.
By the mid--1990s, for example, 4 out of every 5 bottles
of Coca--
Cola were sold outside the US What was an "American"
corporation, then, when only a fraction of both production
and
consumption was based at home?
And with a minority of workers and customers in the US,
why
should a company keep its profits at home if taxes or
interest
rates or regulations elsewhere were more favorable?
Liberia, for
example, designed its ship registration laws to the
specifications
of US oil companies, so that they could register ships
there and
avoid complying with American labor law. Financial firms
closed
up shop in the US and reincorporated in Bermuda, where
the US
insurance industry had drawn up the legal system to their
liking.
Rather than antagonize such companies into pulling up
stakes,
governments had to acquiesce, or agree, to their

preferences.
Political positions came to be measured in part by their
effect on
stock prices, and corporate taxes, which had once provided
a
third of US public revenues, now accounted for little
more than
10 percent.
Section 3: The Financialization of the American
Economy
• Section Question: What is financialization and how did
it
impact the American middle class?
• Question: How did American financial institutions
encourage
Americans to get themselves into debt and why? Terms:
• How inflation affected the economy
• Increase in household debt
• Reduction in corporate income taxes
• NINA mortgages
• Financialization
• "Vast casino economy"
The inflation of the early 1970s created the opportunity
for this
technology--assisted revolution in finance that stretched
from
international investment banks all the way down to
individual
households. Inflation meant that money sitting in a savings

account was actually losing value. The modest, safe levels
of
interest it was earning in a traditional bank could not
offset these
losses, and meanwhile prices on goods and services would
continue to rise. By the same token, inflation meant that
money
borrowed as credit was worth more today, when it was
spent,
than in the future, when it had to be paid back. The
logic of
savings versus borrowing, in other words, was turned on
its
head. Households therefore borrowed more, increasing the
demand for credit. The trend only accelerated through the
turn of
the 21st century;; from 1975 to 2007, total household debt
more
than quadrupled.
Aware that they were in effect losing money in traditional
savings
accounts, American consumers also sought out other places
to
put their savings in the hopes of higher returns. To win
the
business of these potential new small investors, financial
institutions had to figure out ways around the federal
regulations
that had been put in place during the Great Depression of
the
1930s to stabilize banks and protect the deposits of
ordinary

people.
One way to avoid these regulations was to bundle together
many
small investments into a larger instrument, like a money
market
mutual fund. These funds could buy and sell short--term
debt that
earned a higher rate than the safer, regulated accounts.
This kind of investing went against many Americans'
cautious
approaches to their savings. So financial institutions
innovated
in the 1970s with new ways to market their new financial
instruments to individual households, just like any other
consumer product. "We took ideas from Proctor and
Gamble,"
one equity firm told a reporter. "If one company can sell
fifteen
different brands of soap flakes, why can't another peddle
as
many bond funds?"
Marketing directly to middle--class households stressed by
inflation and unemployment turned out to work. From an
initial
$1.7 billion in 1974, the money market funds came to
hold $200
billion by 1982----much of it from Americans who had
never
invested before.

Soon, other regulations that had limited stock market
trading by
smaller investors were dropped. Firms like Charles Schwab
rushed in to offer stock brokering services to people who,
a
decade earlier, would largely have put their money into
risk--free
savings accounts or certificates of deposit. As regulation
after
regulation fell to the new conservative political pressure,
investment firms found new ways to bundle and sell
household
debt, from credit cards charges to the cornerstone of
American
middle--class life----the home mortgage. This new way to
sell
household debt gave American households access to cheap
credit from around the world to offset stagnant incomes.
It gave
the architects of US economic policy a way to make US
investments attractive for foreign wealth. Overseas
investors had
been sitting on the US dollars with which America paid
for its oil
and consumer imports. Now, the new derivatives offered
an
enticing new place to put that money.
• Question: How did the financialization process
eventually lead

to the Great Recession with devastating results for the
American middle class? Terms:
• Mortgage--backed securities process
• Percentage of subprime mortgages
• Collateralized debt obligations
• Mortgage--backed securities and the Great Recession
• Gordon Gekko and the investing climate
And it wasn't just international investors who leapt at the
chance
to earn interest on their savings by loaning it to
homebuyers. The
new Reagan--era regulations encouraged pension funds and
other retirement savings plans to invest in these new
financial
instruments as well. By the end of the 1990s, outstanding
mortgage--backed securities totaled 1 trillion dollars.
With so many customers lining up on both sides of the
transaction, the private mortgage market aggressively
pursued
people who could not easily qualify for cheaper, safer
credit.
Borrowers who had been shut out of federally guaranteed
mortgages in the postwar decades were increasingly sought
as
customers for "subprime mortgages."
These subprime mortgages were riskier and more expensive
for

the borrower, because of high fees, and higher, variable
interest
rates, meaning that the interest was not set but changed
with
money markets. Mortgage companies made their money on
the
fees generated by writing new mortgages. They then
quickly sold
the mortgages to the brokers to bundle and slice and
securitize.
Thus, the brokers had every incentive to write as many
loans as
possible. If the borrower defaulted down the road, the
brokers'
money had already been made.
This new model of pooling many households' debt, then
slicing it
up and selling it off as different kinds of securities
(where
investors could own the debt and the interest that was
paid on it),
created a whole new market in consumer debts. Besides
these
collateralized mortgage obligations, there were now other
"collateralized debt obligations" such as credit card debts,
student loans, and corporate bonds. These were also
bundled,
sliced up, and sold around the world. The changes in law
and
oversight that allowed for securitization----for turning
individual
debts into securities that could be bought and sold---
-helped
finance the most influential sector of the economy.
At the end of the 20th century and the opening years of
the new

millennium, Americans produced debt the way they had
built
cars in an earlier generation. To justify the new rules that
encouraged this boom in financial speculation, the newly
influential conservative economists argued that the stock
market
was an instrument for channeling investment into
productive
industries. If people at the top of America's business
world were
permitted to collect a larger share of the nation's wealth,
the
reasoning went, they would then turn and invest it in
building
new factories and creating new jobs for everyone else.
Instead, it became what one scholar calls a "vast casino,"
where
short--term profits could be made by betting on
fluctuations in
financial markets around the world. The old cycle of
economic
panics and crashes that had been deliberately stabilized by
national policies in the post--war decades now returned in
full
force, for the first time since the Great Depression.
The new financial instability made headlines first with a
series of
sleazy insider--trading scandals in 1986. Individual white-
-collar
crooks like junk--bond king Michael Milken were easy to

understand. They cheated, they broke the law, and they
gamed
the system. Less comprehensible to most people were the
systemic failures, like the stock market crash of October
1987
and the subsequent meltdown of the savings and loan
industry
that had built itself up on risky real estate speculation.
Insider trading was a clear case of breaking the rules. In
contrast,
these wider financial disasters were proof that the rules
themselves had changed. Sophisticated forms of gambling
were
now entirely legal, yet they produced even worse outcomes
than
the cheating and illegal dealing. Without clear--cut villains
in real
life, many Americans sought to make sense of the risky,
high--
stakes world of finance through best--selling novels like
Bonfire
of the Vanities, or memoirs like Liar's Poker. Both novels
made
the booming world of high finance seem as glamorous as
Hollywood.
Stories like these dramatized individual narratives of the
free--
wheeling, cocaine--powered young bond--traders as a new
kind of
hero. They were attractive for their brash, rule--breaking

audacity
but also repugnant for their amoral methods----much like
cowboys
or gangsters of earlier stories. In 1987, director Oliver
Stone's
movie Wall Street gave the Reagan era one of its most
lasting
emblems in the character of Gordon Gekko, a ruthless
corporate
raider. He advises his young protégé that "Greed is good."
Gekko
is the movie's villain, but as the Soviet bloc crumbled
and
capitalism emerged triumphant in the Cold War, audiences
from
Manhattan to Moscow interpreted him as a hero.
• Question: What was the impact of the Great Recession
on the
finance institutions and the American middle
class? Terms:
• The Great Recession
• The bailout
• The progress of the social classes in 2000--2010
If these earlier crises were difficult to comprehend, then
the
worst financial calamity since the Great Depression left
the
nation dazed and, in many cases, destitute. Housing prices,
it

turned out, could not climb endlessly. When they started
to fall in
2006, people who had borrowed against that future
promise were
caught short. The financial wizards and their sophisticated
algorithms had miscalculated, and they turned to the
federal
government to make up the difference.
The nation began to slide into a recession in December
2007. But
it soon became clear in September 2008 that this was no
ordinary
or mild recession. In the space of a little over one
month, some of
the largest financial institutions in the world went
bankrupt, sold
themselves out to competitors, or submitted to public
oversight
in return for accepting $700 billion dollars in the federal
bailout.
In short, the US government and other governments around
the
world were forced to buy significant shares of the banking
institutions rather than let the world economy slide into
an even
worse depression. Ironically, after 30 years of anti-
-government
ideology and deregulation, the financial champions of free

markets demanded a level of government participation that
would have shocked the most ardent communists of the
Cold
War.
From the cusp of the 1970s, the economic landscape of
the 2010s
would appear a precarious wilderness indeed. American life
in
the twentieth century had been organized around the
corporation. These corporations set the pattern for
production,
employment, ownership, development, even family life and
leisure.
Essay: The Changing American Economy, 1972-present
Introduction
Bretton Woods system
4 Processes of the Modern American Economy:
Deindustrialization,
Automation, Globalization, and Financialization
Section 1: Deindustrialization and the Rise of the Service
Economy
1971 is first time US imported more than exported
The world's reserve currency
The fixed currency system
Guarantee of US dollars in gold
The floating currency exchange system
Slowdown in productivity and growth in wages in 1973
Rise in prices in the 1970s

Rise in the price of oil in the late 1970s
Stagflation
Income increase 1979-2009
Inflation-fighting strategies
Business Roundtable lobbies Congress
Pro-business influence on Democrats and Republicans
Growth of income by social class
Percentage of working poor
Growth in low income jobs
Growth of household debt
Chinese origins of borrowed money
Two income household
The hottest job categories in the service economy
The underground economy
Racial component of drug use and dealing
Cocaine and crack cocaine
US incarceration rates compared to other nations
Section 2: The Effects of Automation and Globalization
Increase pay of CEOs
Bifurcation of the economy--high wage knowledge employees,
low
wage service sector
Technological developments from defense contracts
Automation
Manufacturing production and employment
African Americans replaced by automation
Wall Street becomes center of international business networked
through
computers
"Knowledge workers"

"No collar" workplace
Dot-com industries
Computers and the financial industry
"Casino economy"
Speculative vs. productive investment
Nike makes a brand, it does not own a factory
"Our industry follows poverty"
Coca-Cola sales internationally
Section 3: The Financialization of the American Economy
How inflation affected the economy
Increase in household debt
Reduction in corporate income taxes
NINA mortgages
Financialization
"Vast casino economy"
Mortgage-backed securities process
Percentage of subprime mortgages
Collateralized debt obligations
Mortgage-backed securities and the Great Recession
Gordon Gekko and the investing climate
The Great Recession
The bailout
The progress of the social classes in 2000-10
Effects of the 4 processes (deindustrialization, automation,
globalization, and financialization) on American workers in the
last
40 years
Lecture/Slides/Problems
Lecture: The Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement

Experience of gay and lesbian service in WWII
Psychology used to stigmatize gay and lesbian Americans
Lavender Scare
"Sexual perverts" and a national security risk
Executive Order 10450
Private and defense employers follow the government
State department investigations
Suicides and resignation
Supreme Court ruling in 1969 against federal employment
discrimination
Local and state crackdown following the Lavender Scare
Mattachine Society and common or group interests
Same-sex politics and the 1960s
"Right to privacy"
The protest against the American Psychology Association
Compton Cafeteria and Stonewall Inn
"Gay Pride" celebrations
Harvey Milk
New Christian Right
AIDS
Gay and lesbian fight for civil rights at local level
Election of Ronald Reagan in 1980
Reagan cuts social services
Christian right
Jerry Falwell
C. Everett Coop
Reagan speech in 1987
Lawrence v. Texas
LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender)
Gay marriage
Hawaii decision in 1993
Federal and state Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

US v. Windsor
Problem: The Rodney King Riots
Rodney King incident
Los Angeles Riots
Proof of aggressive policing
LAPD and police brutality claims
Trial in white neighborhood
Different interpretations: Law and order problem vs. protest and
resistance
The New Deal system of social provisions that created a
mass
American middle class represented the political power of
industrial employees. A third of the stable tax base that
funded it
came from American corporations rooted to their national
base
of workers and customers. With American business as well
as
the American military triumphant in World War II, the
United
States had brokered the rules of international trade and
investment.
Forty years later, markets themselves lay down many of
the rules
for American life through socially embedded tools like

information technology and securitization. Both corporations
and
governments respond to the imperatives of financial
markets,
seeking to attract capital from a global cast of potential
investors. For employees, this reorientation has meant an
end to
stable employment, a slide into low--wage, no--benefits
service
work, and a rise in risk. For citizens, it has meant the
reduction of
the social safety net, a shrinking public sphere, and
record
inequality.
The Conservative Turn, 1972--2000
Introduction
The conservative turn in American politics was one of the
most
important developments of the postwar period. As a
generation of
scholars has recounted, American politics shifted to the
right following
the turmoil of the 1960s.
While the forces of conservatism emerge out of nowhere
in the 1970s,
the organizational infrastructure of the movement and its
influence in
the Republican Party gained substantial strength in these

decades. The
impact of conservatism on national political debate,
moreover,
intensified.
Yet the history of conservatism in these years was one of
twists and
turns rather than a straight story of success. Nor was it a
triumphal
story. Conservatism had to contend with powerful
institutional,
ideological, and partisan forces that strongly opposed its
objectives.
Prominent Republican and Conservative Leaders, 1970-
-2000
The conservative turn in American politics was built on
top of the
foundations that had been created by liberalism throughout
the 20th
century. As was evident in the evolution of the movement
in these
critical decades, proponents of conservatism had to learn
how to adjust
to these limitations in the process of governance.
Conservatives gradually recalibrated their strategy. They
focused less
on the broad transformative ambitions of Republican
presidents who
had inhabited the White House. Instead, they developed a
more
confrontational and aggressive legislative style of combat
that has

defined the movement since the early 1990s.
Conservatives lost faith in the ability, or willingness, of
Republican
presidents to hold true to the values of conservatism.
They increasingly
embraced a strategy of obstructionism and procedural
warfare in
politics in Congress. Their goals were to prevent the
creation of new
programs, to weaken the institutional and budgetary
foundation of
existing policies, and to create a process that continually
undermined
American faith in government.
This essay examines 3 crucial moments that capture the
transformation
of conservatism. In 1974, the important conservative
organization, the
Heritage Foundation, was established. In 1984, the
conservative
champion, President Ronald Reagan, moderated his
positions as he
sought reelection. In 1990, Republican President George H.
W. Bush
broke his campaign oath not to raise taxes, both
infuriating and
galvanizing congressional conservatives
Section 1: The Heritage Foundation, 1974
• Section Question: Why does Zelizer regard the
founding of the Heritage
Foundation a critical development in the rise of the

conservative
movement?
• Question: What type of people created the Heritage
Foundation? What was
its purpose? Was it successful? Terms:
• The marketplace of ideas
• Heritage Foundation
• Brookings Institution
• Paul Weyrich
• Ed Feulner
When conservatism was young in the 1970s, the movement
had grand visions of
what it could accomplish. Many of the activists who were
involved in building the
movement had aspirations that they could fundamentally
transform public
opinion and shift national debate toward the right.
This was the reason that proponents of conservatism in
the 1970s devoted an
inordinate amount of energy to the politics of ideas. They
hoped that they could
combat the intellectual firepower of liberalism in the
universities, media, and
think tanks (organizations of experts on social policy).
Within the Nixon administration, speechwriter Patrick
Buchanan had been urging
fellow Republicans to take these steps, if they wanted to
really change
Washington. The attention paid in these years toward the
marketplace of ideas
captured a moment when most conservatives felt that they
were outside the

political establishment. Once they entered into the halls of
power, they retained
grandiose visions of what they could accomplish.
Founding of Conservative Journals
Their goal was to transform the way that Americans
thought about politics.
During the 1970s, there was a massive proliferation of
philanthropists and
business leaders who funded the creation of new think
tanks and the
reorganization of existing institutions.
The most important was the Heritage Foundation. In 1973,
a group of
conservative entrepreneurs teamed up to establish the
organization. It was aimed
to match the liberal Brookings Institution, the prestigious
think tank in Dupont
Circle in Washington, D.C., which had been influencing
politics since the
Progressive Era. They dreamed of having a direct impact
on congressional
debate and to put forward ideas that a Republican
president could carry with him
into the White House.
Edwin Feulner had been an aide to Congressmen Melvin
Laird and Phil Crane as
well as an analyst at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. Paul
Weyrich was an aide to Colorado Senator Gordon Allott
and the innovator who
used direct mail to reach conservative donors. Each had

Civil Rights Movement(s)1940s-1970sLegal Strategies.docx

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