1945-1975 The USA by 1975: its place as a Superpower; the limits of social cohesion; new cultural developments, including the role of women and the position of African-Americans Flashcards
What was the impact of Watergate?
For more than 40 years the power and authority of the president had grown.
This meant that other branches of government, both the Supreme Court and Congress, found it impossible to limit what the president did. However, after Watergate there was a new determination to enforce limits on what a president could do.
The Watergate affair left the position of the presidency much weakened by 1975. Many Americans were disillusioned with their system of government and felt that the president had too much power. They no longer had confidence in or respect for their own politicians and government.
What was the economy like by 1975?
After the Second World War, the USA had experienced a prolonged economic boom and in the 1970s was still the most advanced economy in the world.
However, the boom was clearly over by the 1970s. When Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon as president in 1974, he inherited high inflation, which had reached nine per cent in 1976, and a high rate of unemployment of 5.4 per cent. This was known as stagflation’, which meant slow economic growth with high unemployment and rising prices.
Ford also inherited an energy crisis. In 1973, the Arab oil-producing countries had imposed an oil embargo in retaliation to US support for their great enemy, Israel, especially during the Yom Kippur War. As oil prices rocketed, the New York stock exchange prices plummeted. The USA, like other countries, suffered even further when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quadrupled the price of oil in December 1973.
What was the USA’s position in world affairs by 1975?
By the mid-1970s the USA was not only one of the two superpowers, but had assumed a global role as the so-called champion of democracy against the spread of Communism. The more direct confrontation symbolised by the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 (page 250) had given way to a new approach - détente - with both China and the Soviet Union, culminating in the Helsinki Agreements of 1975 (page 254). The conflict in Vietnam ensured that the American public and Congress were far more inclined to monitor any future crisis that looked likely to lead to ‘another Vietnam’. For example, when the USSR intervened in Angola in 1974, Nixon and Kissinger failed to persuade Congress to vote for US military intervention.
The USA was also increasingly involved in events in the Middle East, especially the conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbours, providing material and diplomatic support for the Israelis. During the War of Yom Kippur of 1973, Nixon and Kissinger were able to restrain the Israelis and, at the same time, prevent Soviet intervention on the side of the defeated Arab states. However, US support for Israel had serious economic repercussions. In 1973, the Arab nations imposed an oil embargo in retaliation for the Americans supplying arms to Israel.
What was the position of African Americans by 1975?
Although African Americans had made great gains in the 1960s with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, there was still a long way to go. Politically, there was progress by the mid-1970s with increased representation for African Americans. For example, while there were no black mayors in 1960, in the 1970s a black mayor was elected in Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleveland, Birmingham, Oakland and Atlanta. The number of African Americans in Congress had increased from eleven in 1970 to eighteen by the end of the decade.
Socially, however, there were some improvements. For example, the proportion of black families earning over $10,000 a year was three per cent in 1960 but had increased to 31 per cent by the beginning of the 1970s. However, black male teenage unemployment was 50 per cent and half of black teenagers dropped out of high school before graduation. An African American child was twice as likely to die before the age of one as a white child, and twice as likely to drop out of school.
What was the position of Native Americans by 1975?
Of all the minority groups, the Native Americans were still by far the worst off.
Many lived on reservations. Unemployment among Native American Indians was ten times higher than other Americans; on average they lived twenty years less than everyone else and the suicide rate was one hundred times higher than for whites. Their plight was highlighted by events at Wounded Knee, Dakota, which was occupied by several hundred Native Americans in March 1973. This was the site of the brutal massacre of nearly 200 Indians by the US Army in
1890. The protestors presented the Government with a list of grievances that included broken treaties. Two hundred FBI agents and other police surrounded Wounded Knee and the siege achieved national and international publicity and encouraged much public support tor the plight of the Native American Indians.
The Government did agree to look into their grievances.
Women
What was the position of women by 1975?
Women’s rights had changed dramatically since the early 1960s. These changes had been stimulated by new attitudes to work, sex, family and personal freedom. Over two-thirds of female college students rejected the idea that a woman’s place was in the home. Most women now expected to work for most of their lives, even if they had young families. More and more women were entering what had been seen as traditionally masculine occupations, such as medicine and law.
However, there was still much to be done. Women only received 73 per cent of the salaries paid to professional men and still dominated low-paid jobs.
Moreover, 66 per cent of adults who were classified as poor were female. There were still relatively few women in positions of power, whether at local, state or national level.
By 1975, the great optimism of the 1960s inspired by the presidency of Kennedy and the achievements of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King had given way to the cynicism of Nixon and the Watergate scandal. The USA was indeed a superpower but with a divided society.
