Domestic Policy under Harry S Truman: April 12, 1945 – January 20, 1953
I.
Entering the presidency
1. With the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, Vice President Harry S. Truman assumed the Oval Office. Truman had the challenge of having his presidency lie in the shadow of FDR.
2. The public related well to Truman, thinking him hard-working and honest
3. In domestic policy, two related issues -- the future of New Deal liberalism and the reconversion of the American economy from a war-time to a peace-time footing -- topped his agenda.
II. Twenty-Two Points
1. In September 1945, Truman presented to Congress a lengthy and rambling twenty-one point message that nonetheless attempted to set the post-war political and economic agenda. This came to be Truman’s platform, later called the “Fair Deal”. Among the 22 points:
i. Provide political and economic reform in the postwar world
ii. Public works programs
iii. A “full employment” bill
iv. Increased minimum wage
v. Extend fair employment practices under the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC)
vi. Extend the social security system
vii. National health insurance system
III. Labour
1. Republicans in Congress took up Truman’s challenge and passed the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which limited the power of labour unions by curbing union participation in politics, by approving state “right to work” laws, and by allowing the President to block strikes through a judicially mandated eighty day “cooling-off” period.
i. Truman vetoed Taft-Hartley in June 1947, declaring that it “would take fundamental rights away from our working people.”
ii. Congress overrode the veto; Truman, in turn, vowed to carry out the law’s provisions and he even employed several of them -- including the court injunction -- to bring an end to some strikes. Nevertheless, in opposing Taft-Hartley, Truman recaptured the support of organized labour.
2. Labour tried to organize in the South and West with “Operation Dixie” under the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) but this proved unsuccessful.
i. Racism between blacks and whites prevented the movement from unifying effectively to secure its success
3. The Full Employment Act initially sought to establish a full employment national budget with study to determine the degree of federal activity needed to sustain full employment
i. When signed into law in February in1946, federal commitment was scaled down from full to “maximum” employment, discretionary rather than mandatory
IV. Veterans
1. The 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (the GI Bill) provided Relief for veterans, providing pay and a maximum of 52-weeks of unemployment compensation. The GI Bill also provided for an employment service, educational benefits, business loans and home and farm loans guarantees.
i. 7.8 million veterans used the GI Bill’s education benefits while 3.8 million took advantage of loan guarantees within the next ten years, costing a little over $20 billion.
V. Price Control and Inflation
1. Truman proposed extending the authority of the Office of Price Administration (OPA) in his January 1925 address. He believed that price ceilings and allocation quotas had to be retained so as to not trigger inflation from a worsening of labour-management conflict over wages.
i. Polls showed that Americans were in favour price controls in early1946, but there was strong congressional opposition
2. The Price Control Act of 1946 extended the OPA but anti-control amendments emasculated the measure. Truman vetoed it. Prices rose as a result.
3. Inflation continued to be a problem in 1947 and 1948 as well, although prices did not rise as steeply as they had in 1946.
i. Food prices, in particular, continued to soar.
a. The rise in the price of meat -- which doubled over a two-week period in the summer -- received the most attention. In response, the government reinstituted price controls, angering meat producers who then withheld meat from the market. A New York Daily News headline read, “PRICES SOAR, BUYERS SORE, STEERS JUMP OVER THE MOON.”
ii. Truman suggested a return to price controls, albeit with the knowledge that congressional Republicans would reject such a measure -- which they did.
iii. Republicans passed legislation mandating economic controls and rationing, which Truman signed, though he declared these bills “pitifully inadequate.”
VI. Civil Rights
1. His unsuccessful 1945 proposal to extend the Fair Employment Practices Committee (or FEPC, a war-time agency that monitored discrimination against African Americans in hiring practices of government agencies and defense industries), was, in part, an effort to court black voters so important to the Democratic Party.
2. In the summer of 1947, Truman became the first President to address the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), to whom he declared his forthright support of African-American civil rights.
i. Speaking to a crowd of 10,000, Truman declared that “The only limit to an American’s achievement should be his ability, his industry, and his character.”
3. A few months later, his blue-ribbon civil rights commission -- which he had appointed in the wake of the failure to extend FEPC -- produced a report titled, To Secure These Rights, a detailed and unabashed brief for civil rights legislation.
4. In October 1949 Truman appointed William R. Hastie as a circuit court judge, which was the highest judicial post ever held by a black at this time
5. In December 1949, the Federal Housing Administration announced that it would cease the financing of property strictly on the basis of race, creed or colour.
6. In May 1950, the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces (Fahy Committee) formally abolished segregation of the armed forces
i. Truman had sent an executive order in 1948 to secure this
VII. The “Fair Deal”
1. Truman announced an ambitious agenda in early 1949 after the 1948 election, which he called the “Fair Deal.” ("Every segment of our population and every individual has the right to expect from our government a fair deal.")It was a collection of policies and programs much desired by liberals in the Democratic Party:
i. economic controls
ii. repeal of Taft-Hartley
a. unsuccessful, Truman was met with overwhelming Republican opposition
iii. an increase in the minimum wage
iv. expansion of the Social Security program
v. a housing bill,
a. vigorously opposed by the American Medical Association and never made it to the floor of either house
vi. national health insurance
vii. development projects modeled on the New Deal’s Tennessee Valley Authority
a. called the “Columbia Valley Administration”, his proposals were blocked and received opposition from powerful oil and natural gas industries
viii. liberalized immigration laws
ix. ambitious civil rights legislation for African-Americans.
2. The Housing Act of 1949 expanded federal role in mortgage insurance and issuance and the construction of public housing. Also:
i. Financed slum clearance programs under “urban renewal” projects
ii. Extended federal money to build more than 800 000 new housing units
iii. Extended insurance authorization of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
3. The Social Security Act of 1950 created a significant expansion of social security coverage to the elderly and raised minimum wages.
4. The Brannan Plan in 1949 proposed to support all farm products, not just a few, and to translate support into units, such as ten bushels of corn. The plan entitled each farmer to price support for eighteen hundred units, no more, eliminating the advantage of the large farmer. In addition, it proposed direct subsidies instead of government loans and purchase agreements.
i. Republicans would not support it. They preferred to let prices fall and de-claimed against subsidies in favour of disguised payments, such as price supports and conservation awards.
5. Truman regarded the “Fair Deal” as an opportunity to refashion the Democratic party into an alliance of urban dwellers, small farmers, labour, and African-Americans.
6. Whatever enthusiasm remained for the Fair Deal was lost, after the summer of 1950, amidst preoccupations with the Korean War.
VIII. Corruption
1. One of the president's principal errors in handling the corruption issue was his loyalty to an old Missouri friend from World War I days, his military aide, Major General Harry H. Vaughan.
i. Vaughan accepted several freezers, and one of these appliances found its way to 219 North Delaware Street, the president's house in Independence. Vaughan also was friendly with a few individuals who procured federal contracts for a fee of 5 percent.
ii. The term "fivepercenter" became a political epithet.
iii. General Vaughan was not transferred but remained in the White House for Truman's entire administration.
2. The RFC naturally attracted employees who made themselves useful to borrowers and left government employ for private enterprise; one of them, unfortunately from Missouri, presented his wife, a secretary in the White House, with a mink coat worth $9,540, paid for by a lawyer for a firm seeking an RFC loan. Congress abolished the RFC in 1953.
3. There was similar corruption within the federal government particularly in the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). The BIR offered similar temptations and too many political appointments to collector-ships in regional offices around the country. The BIR was the most sensitive government bureau because its operations touched all taxpayers.
i. In his last months in office, he reorganized the BIR by reducing the numbers of regional districts and collectors and placing almost all of the bureau's personnel under civil service.
IX. Mobilization
1. America rapidly demobilized following 1945, from a peak of 12 million in 1945 the American armed forces shrank to 3 million in 1946 and then to 1.5 million by min 1948. Demobilization occurred by course of the public and could not be controlled by Truman.
2. In December 1950, Truman won congressional passage of the Defense Production Act and issued an executive order creating the Office of Defense Mobilization.
i. The Defense Production Act allowed the president to allocate materials, services and facilities to promote national defense and control the civilian economy in doing so.
ii. The Office of Defense Mobilization oversaw mobilization activities.
iii. Somewhat surprisingly, mobilization proceeded with few hitches: unemployment stayed low; inflation remained in check, albeit for a sharp, one-time surge in the last half of 1950; the hording of consumer goods subsided quickly; and military production increased.
iv. Nevertheless, many Americans complained about the government’s intervention in the economy, especially its controls on credit.
3. By the end of 1951, the nation’s steel industry faced a possible shut-down as labour and management could not agree on a new contract.
i. Government mediation during the first several months of 1952 failed to end the stalemate.
ii. Throughout the ordeal, Truman’s objectives were to avert a strike, maintain steel production, and stay on good terms with labour, an important Democratic constituency.
iii. In April, with no agreement in sight, Truman used his presidential authority to seize the steel industry; for the time being, it would be administered and overseen by the federal government.
iv. The seized steel companies took Truman to court to overturn his action. In June 1952, the Supreme Court declared the seizure unconstitutional by a 6-3 vote.
Domestic Policy under Dwight D. Eisenhower: January 20, 1953 – January 20, 1961
I. Entrance into presidency
1. In 1952, the Democrats chose Adlai E. Stevenson, the witty governor of Illinois, while Republicans rejected isolationist Robert A. Taft and instead chose World War II hero Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for president and anticommunist Richard M. Nixon to be his running mate.
2. Grandfatherly Eisenhower was a war hero and liked by everyone, so he left the rough part of campaigning to Nixon, who attacked Stevenson as soft against Communists, corrupt, and weak in the Korean situation.
i. Nixon then almost got caught with a secretly financed “slush fund,” but to save his political career, he delivered his famous, touching “Checkers Speech,” in which he talked about his family and specifically mentioned his cocker spaniel.
ii. The “Checkers speech” showed the awesome power of television, since Nixon had pleaded on national TV, and even later, “Ike,” as Eisenhower was called, agreed to go into studio and answer some brief “questions,” which were later spliced in and edited to make it look like Eisenhower had answered questions from a live audience, when he didn’t.
iii. This showed the power that TV would have in the upcoming decades, allowing lone wolves to appeal directly to the American people instead of being influenced by party machines or leaders.
3. Ike won easily (442 to 89), and true to his campaign promise, he flew to Korea to help move along peace negotiations…and failed…but seven months later, after Ike threatened to use nuclear weapons, an armistice was finally signed (but was later violated often).
i. 54,000 Americans had died, and tens of billions of dollars had been wasted in the effort, but American’s took a little comfort in knowing that Communism had been “contained.”
II. Domestic Policy in Eisenhower’s first term
1. Eisenhower came into the White House pledging a policy of “dynamic conservatism,” which stated that he would be liberal with people but conservative with their money.
2. Ike decreased government spending by decreasing military spending, trying to transfer control of offshore oil fields to the states, and trying to curb the TVA’s by setting up a private company to take their places.
3. The Department of Health Education and Welfare (HEW) was established in 1953
i. The secretary of HEW, Oveta Culp Hobby condemned free distribution of the Salk anti-polio vaccine.
4. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson tackled with agriculture issues, but despite government purchase of surplus grain, which it stored in giant silos costing Americans $2 million a day, farmers didn’t see prosperity.
i. The Agricultural Act of 1954 sought to establish flexible price supports for certain commodities for the purpose of gradually lowering price supports and therefore reducing government involvement in the marketing of agricultural products.
ii. 1955 the Department of Agriculture began its Rural Development Program to help small farmers with low incomes
iii. 1956 the Soil Bank Program was established for the purpose of reducing acreage for certain crops and included several irrigation and reclamation projects.
5. Eisenhower also cracked down on illegal Mexican immigration that cut down on the success of the bracero program by rounding up 1 million Mexicans and returning them to their native country in 1954.
i. With Indians, though, Ike proposed ending the FDR-style treatment toward Indians and reverting to a Dawes Severalty Act-style policy toward Native Americans, but due to protest and resistance, this was disbanded.
6. However, Eisenhower kept many of the New Deal programs, Social Security and unemployment insurance.
i. In 1953 Eisenhower extended the Social Security program to cover 10.5 million new workers
7. Under the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, Eisenhower championed the creation of the Interstate Highway System in 1956 which built 42,000 miles of interstate freeways. It connected the country and allowed for easy transportation of people and goods.
i. The origins of its creation were for it to act as a national “highway defense system” in the case where mass evacuation of a city or mobilization of armed forces was needed.
8. Eisenhower only balanced the budget three times in his eight years of office, and in 1959, he incurred the biggest peacetime deficit in U.S. history. Still, critics said that he was economically timid, blaming the president for the sharp economic downturn of 1957-58.
i. Eisenhower kept the raised taxes due to the Korean War in place until 1954, believing that the budget should be balanced.
9. The Eisenhower antitrust policy initiated antitrust actions as a way of protecting competition and ultimately limit the need of government intervention in the form of regulation.. The administration enforced antitrust in several cases based on the Sherman Act, which forbids monopolization or attempts thereto, and Section 7 of the Clayton Act, which interdicts actions that may lead to monopoly. The Eisenhower antitrusters were active in enforcing both. Some cases included
i. 1949 case attempting to divorced Western Electric from AT&T
ii. 1950 case concering Eastman Kodak Corporation in an attmpt to have the Coropration alter its marketing procedures
iii. 1949 case in which the Justice Department brought suit to force Du Pont to give up its G.M. shares
iv. Halting mergers between Seabrook Farms with Minute Maid, Bethlehem Steel with Youngstown Sheet and Tube and Schenley with Park and Tilford Distillers
III. Domestic Policy in Eisenhower’s second term
1. In 1956, Eisenhower again ran against Stevenson and won easily by a landslide. The GOP called itself the “party of peace” while the Democrats assaulted Ike’s health, since he had had a heart attack in 1955 and a major abdominal operation in ’56.
i. Democrats won the House and Senate.
2. After Secretary of State Dulles died of cancer in 1959 and presidential assistant Sherman Adams was forced to leave under a cloud of scandal due to bribery charges, Eisenhower, without his two most trusted and most helpful aides, was forced to govern more.
3. Labour:
i. A drastic labor-reform bill in 1959 grew from recurrent strikes in critical industries.
ii. Teamster chief “Dave” Beck was sent to prison for embezzlement, and his successor, James R. Hoffa’s appointment got the Teamsters expelled out of the AF of L-CIO.
1. Hoffa was later jailed for jury tampering and then disappeared in prison, allegedly murdered by some gangsters that he had crossed.
iii. The 1959 Landrum-Griffin Acct was designed to bring labor leaders to book for financial shenanigans and prevent bullying tactics.
1. Anti-laborites forced into the bill bans against “secondary boycotts” and certain types of picketing.
IV. The Civil Rights Movement
1. Blacks in the South were bound by the severe Jim Crow laws, and were segregated in every aspect of society, from schools to restrooms to restaurants and beyond.
i. Only about 20% of the eligible Blacks could vote, due to intimidation, discrimination, poll taxes, and other schemes meant to keep Black suffrage down.
2. Where the law proved sufficient to enforce such oppression, vigilante justice in the form of lynchings did the job, and the White murderers were rarely caught and convicted.
3. In his 1944 novel, An American Dilemma, Swedish scholar Gunnar Myrdal had exposed the hypocrisy of American life, noting how while “every man [was] created equal,” Blacks were certainly treated worse than Whites.
i. Even though Jackie Robinson had cracked the racial barrier by signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, the nation’s conscience still paid little attention to the suffering of Blacks, thus prolonging their pain.
4. However, with organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, such rulings as the 1950 case of Sweatt vs. Painter, where the Supreme Court ruled that separate professional schools for Blacks failed to meet the test of equality, such protestors as Rosa Parks, who in December 1955, refused to give up a bus seat in the “Whites only” section, and pacifist leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., who believed in peaceful methods of civil rights protests, Blacks were making their suffering and discrimination known to the public.
V. Civil Rights under Eisenhower
1. The 1954 landmark case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, reversed the previous 1896 ruling of Plessy vs. Ferguson by saying that “separate but equal” facilities were inherently unequal, thus ending segregation.
i. In August 1953 Attorney General Herbert Brownell reported to the president that the Supreme Court requested the Justice Department to file a brief for the case of desegregating public schools. In December 1953 the Justice Department filed a brief that was opposed to segregation.
ii. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as chief justice, who on May 17 1954 declared “separate but equal” schools unconstitutional
iii. Eisenhower was not enthusiastic for the Brown case because of the backlash it created amongst southern conservatives.
iv. However, while the Border States usually obeyed this new ruling, states in the Deep South did everything they could to delay it and disobey it, diverting funds to private schools, signing and “Declaration of Constitutional Principles” that promised not to desegregate, and physically preventing Blacks to integrate.
a. Desegregation occurred slowly: in 1954 the District of Columbia, 64% of all public schools continued to be at least 98% one race.
b. Ten years after the ruling, fewer than 2% of eligible Black students sat in the same classrooms as whites.
2. Eisenhower refused to issue a statement acknowledging the Supreme Court’s ruling, and he even privately complained about this new end to segregation, but in September 1957, when Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, mobilized the National Guard to prevent nine Black students from enrolling in Little Rock’s Central High School, Ike sent troop sot escort the children to their classes.
i. That year, Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act since the Reconstruction days, an act that set up a permanent Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of civil rights and authorized federal injunctions to protect voting rights.
3. Meanwhile, Martin Luther King, Jr. formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which aimed to mobilize the vast power of Black churches on behalf of Black rights—a shrewd strategy, since churches were a huge source of Black power.
4. On February 1, 1960, four Black college freshmen launched a “sit-in” movement in Greensboro, North Carolina, demanding service at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter, thus sparking the sit-in movement.
5. In April 1960, southern Black students formed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, to give more focus and force to their civil rights efforts.
Domestic Policy under John F. Kennedy: January 20, 1961 – November 22, 1963
I. The Presidential Election of 1960
1. The Republicans chose Richard Nixon, gifted party leader to some, ruthless opportunist to others, in 1960 with Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. as his running mate; while John F. Kennedy surprisingly won for the Democrats and had Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate.
2. Kennedy was attacked because he was the first Catholic presidential candidate ever, but defended himself and encouraged Catholics to vote for him, and if he lost votes from the South due to his religion, he got them back from the North due to the bitter Catholics there.
i. In four nationally televised debates, JFK held his own and looked more charismatic, perhaps helping him to win the election by a comfortable margin, becoming the youngest president elected (but not served) ever.
3. During the campaign, the "number one domestic problem" which Kennedy and his economic advisers hammered at was the "resumption of economic progress and growth." In his 1960 acceptance speech Kennedy referred to his domestic and foreign policy as “The New Frontier”.
i. In his campaign Kennedy had promised that if elected he would immediately "with the stroke of a pen" issue an Executive Order declaring illegal discrimination
ii. Promises made could not be acted upon because of the nature of the 87th Congress (and later a more conservative 88th), which was elected along with President Kennedy November, 1960. The new House of Representatives was made up of 160 Democrats from the West and North, 101 Southern and border state Democrats, and 174 Republicans
1. Kennedy received strong opposition from the south throughout his term
II. Conditions in America and Changing Economic Patterns
1. In the 1960s, 30 to 40 million Americans were living in poverty.
i. During the early 1960s, the heads of about half the families living in poverty held jobs, and one out of every four impoverished family heads had full-time employment all year long.
2. The economy really sprouted during the 50s, and the invention of the transistor exploded the electronics field, especially in computers, helping such companies as International Business Machines (IBM) expand and prosper.
3. Aerospace industries progressed, as the Boeing company made the first passenger-jet airplane (adapted from the super bombers of the Strategic Air Command), the 707.
4. In 1956, “white-collar” workers outnumbered “blue collar” workers for the first time, meaning that the industrial era was passing on.
i. As this occurred, labor unions also labored, since most of their members were industrial workers.
ii. Women appeared more and more in the workplace, despite the stereotypical role of women as housewives that was being portrayed on TV shows such as “Ozzie and Harriet” and “Leave It to Beaver.”
a. More than 40 million new jobs were created.
5. Women’s expansion into the workplace shocked some, but really wasn’t surprising if one observed the trends in history, and now, they were both housewives and workers.
i. Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique was a best-seller and a classic of modern feminine protest literature.
III. Kennedy vs. Southern representatives
1. Under the rules of Congress all proposed bills had to be passed on by House Committee on Rules before they could be presented to the whole House for a vote. Congress at this time was dominated by Republicans and conservative Democrats who were mostly Southerners, and Kennedy wanted to balance this by expanding the Rules Committee from 12 to 15 members. This was approved by a vote in the House at the end of January, 1961 and was the first major issue brought to head by Kennedy.
i. Kennedy was able to get much of his domestic programs through the Congress throughout his term.
2. The growing urbanization of the United States led Kennedy to propose the establishment of a new Cabinet position, the Department of Urban Affairs.
i. Because it was known that the President would appoint as Secretary of Urban Affairs, Robert Weaver, the head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, and a black man, the House Rules Committee killed the bill by a 9-6 vote. All the Southern representatives voted against the bill.
3. The importance of Southern support also led Kennedy to postpone, until November, 1962, signing the Executive Order outlawing segregation in Federally funded housing facilities, which he had initially promised to pass immediately after being elected.
IV. Kennedy’s Domestic Policy
1. In 1961 Kennedy’s goal was to pump enough money into the economy to reduce unemployment, alleviate conditions of poverty and hunger, accelerate the economic growth rate of the country, and to achieve the "extension of equality of opportunity."
2. By Executive Order Kennedy established a Pilot Food Stamp Program in May 1961 for people who had little money and were living on the edge of starvation. Set up in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan, the program distributed surplus foods to the needy in exchange for stamps which were purchased from the Federal Government at rates far below the normal cost of food products.
i. In 1962, the program was expanded to include other states, many of which were in the South.
3. The Area Redevelopment Act, passed by Congress in 1961, was an effort to move industry into distressed areas to create employment and to stimulate their economies.
i. The cost of the program was $400,000,000, and when $500,000,000 in additional funds was requested in 1963, Congress cancelled the program.
4. Amendments to the National Defense Education Act in 1963 added $730 million for states and localities for funding vocational training programs.
5. Also in the first months of his presidency, Kennedy:
i. Allotted $258,000,000 for early payment of Veteran Life Insurance Dividends Congress passed his recommendations for an increase in social security rates for widows and retirees.
ii. Released $724,000,000 in unspent highway construction funds for use by the various states.
iii. A $300,000,000 urban renewal program called the Omnibus Housing Bill was passed by Congress for the construction of housing in rural, metropolitan, and urban areas. The initial request of $700,000,000 annually was cut drastically by Congress.
iv. Increased the parity given farmers for not producing on certain portions of their land, and because a huge farm surplus in grains and wheat was costing the government some $500,000,000 a year for storage of such pro ducts, he successfully had Congress approve a program through which farm surplus could be reduced. This was accomplished through expanded welfare distribution, increased exports through the Food for Peace Program, and a reduction in the wheat and feed allotments.
v. Due to consistently high rates of unemployment, Congress passed a Kennedy recommendation that unemployment insurance temporarily be extended. The unemployed would be paid the insurance for thirty-nine weeks rather than twenty-six weeks.
1. The funds for the program would be generated through a temporary increase in the payroll tax.
2. In relation to this, the Aid to Dependent Children Program was established in 1961 to assist dependent children of the unemployed.
vi. Kennedy’s proposal to increase the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour and to bring within the new wage structure 4.5 million additional workers was passed by Congress after three months under the Fair Labor Standards Act in September 1963.
1. It excluded laundry workers, who were initially included in the bill. These workers, residing predominantly in the South, were almost entirely all black.
6. Congress passed Kennedy’s 1962 proposal to grant a 7 percent tax credit for business investment in new machinery and depreciable credit
i. However it refused in the same year to revoke the tax credit granted to share holders on their first $50 of dividends.
ii. Congress had also spent almost a year discussing Kennedy’s 1963 top priority eleven billion dollar income tax reduction and two and a half billion dollar corporate tax reduction program. The bill was delayed so long by Congress that by the time Kennedy was assassinated no final vote had been taken in Congress.
1. Although the bill passed under President Johnson, it is not certain that the bill ever would have passed under Kennedy because of Southern opposition.
2. The bill’s purpose was to generate spending and investment
7. To keep inflation under some control, Kennedy had continually prodded business and labour to keep their price increases and wage demands under some control. The United States Steel Company, however, announced on April 10, 1962, that it was increasing the price of steel six dollars a ton despite an agreement engineered by Kennedy and Secretary of Labor, Arthur Goldberg, that steel companies would not increase their prices if labour would agree to a new contract without a wage increase.
i. After being informed privately of the increase by Roger Blough, President of U.S. Steel, Kennedy had the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, look into the question of whether or not collusion of steel companies had occurred, since most companies raised their prices along with U.S. Steel.
ii. Senator Estes Kefauver scheduled an investigation by his Anti-Trust Subcommittee, while the House Anti-Trust Committee held its own hearings. The FBI and the Justice Department made midnight calls on reporters who had information on the price hike. Public opinion, through the use of television, was also carried along.
iii. The pressure on business was immense since Kennedy acted aggressively. Seventy-two hours after the price hike had been announced; U.S. Steel rescinded its action.
8. The balance of payment problem was apparent in the US as gold flowed out of the country at the yearly rate of two billion. To combat this, Americans were permitted to carry into the United States with them only $100 of duty-free products, a reduction of $400. At the same time a program to entice Europeans to visit America was initiated. The results were successful.
9. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 provided federal funding for mental health centres under the National Institution of Mental Health. It allowed for the reduction of institutionalization.
V. Kennedy and Civil Rights
1. In order to please the South in Congress, Kennedy had to postpone his Executive Order regarding Federal housing almost two years, and laundry workers who were essentially all black were excluded from the new minimum wage law.
2. In 1961 by Executive Order Kennedy did establish the integration of the Coast Guard Academy and created the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.
i. The Committee had little enforcement power
3. In 1961, Freedom Riders from the North travelled to the South to test the desegregation of interstate travel facilities outlawed since 1950. Beaten, set on by dogs, sometimes killed, these blacks struck the conscience of the nation. The Federal Government was forced to insure their protection and to insure the integration of the Federal facilities.
4. In late September 1962 in Mississippi, Governor Ross Barnett refused to permit a black student, James Meredith, to enter the State University in Oxford, though he had been accepted by the university. On national television Kennedy announced September 30 that he had federalized the Mississippi National Guard to ensure Meredith's entrance.
i. "No man," he said, "however prominent or powerful, and no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law . . . and our Constitution." Although Meredith was now on the campus, white mobs surrounded the university, seeking him. Two people were killed as shooting erupted. Twenty thousand troops were sent into Oxford to quell the rioting and the mobs. They remained for weeks.
5. By late 1962, organizations were established in the South to increase voter registration among blacks
i. Through voting, it was hoped pressure could be created upon both state and Federal governments to end discrimination. Whites and blacks travelled South to aid in the registration drive.
ii. Southern whites responded by burning churches where organizational meetings were held, bombing homes of black leaders, and, at times, murdering blacks involved in the drives.
iii. By early 1963, the little success achieved by blacks from 1954 on, allowed them to think that conditions could improve.
6. Kennedy acted on February 28 by presenting to Congress a Civil Rights Bill.
i. He called on Congress to approve the appointment of Federal voting referees to determine registration qualifications of applicants "in any county in which fewer than 15 percent of the eligible number of persons of any race claimed to be discriminated against are registered to vote."
ii. He also asked that voting suits brought under the Federal Civil Rights Statutes be accorded speedy treatment in the courts, and that legislative prohibitions should be established to insure the different registration tests were not given to blacks and whites in the South.
7. Over the next four months segments of the South responded to Kennedy’s plea for equal rights. A "nonviolent resistance" campaign, led by Martin Luther King, was organized in Birmingham, Alabama, in April to force the desegregation of public facilities with boycotts, sit-ins, and demonstrations through mass arrests.
i. More than 3,000 blacks were hauled off to jail while others were assaulted with fire hoses, police dogs, clubs and fists.
ii. The campaign which went on into May brought an increasingly violent reaction as black homes were bombed and burned.
iii. Meanwhile; the Kennedy bill slowly made its way through the various Congressional committees
8. Congress was then presented with the Civil Rights Act of 1963.
i. Kennedy was assassinated before he was able to see this Act become law. It eventually became the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under the Johnson administration
ii. The provisions incorporated the February recommendations and barred unequal application of registration procedures and rejections for minor errors.
iii. It made a sixth grade education a presumption of literacy.
iv. The Attorney General was granted the power to initiate court suits on behalf of defendants who believed they were discriminated against in the registration process.
v. Also Public Accommodations Provisions barred discrimination in restaurants, hotels, motels, and places of amusement if the discrimination were supported by state laws or action.
vi. Discrimination was barred under any federally assisted activity, while employers and unions were called upon to end discrimination. The Attorney General was permitted to intervene in private suits where persons alleged denial of equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment, and where he found the case to be of general public importance.
9. Public pressure for passage of this historic bill was immense. On August 28, more than 250,000 people marched in Washington in support of the bill and heard black speakers, including A. Philip Randolph, the march's organizer, and Martin Luther King call for full equality for all people in America.
i. Kennedy’s relations with Congress, however, remained poor. Although he had major Republican support, including that of the two key Republicans. House leader Halleck and Senate Minority leader Everett Dirksen, the bill struggled through committee. Only on November 21 was the bill passed out of the House Judiciary Committee and into the House Rules Committee. Kennedy died the following day.
10. Kennedy passed the Equal Pay Act in June 1963 for the elimination of sex-based discrimination.
Reichard, Gary W. Politics as Usual: The Age of Truman and Eisenhower. Harlan Davidson, 2004.
Krieg, Joann P. Dwight D. Eisenhower: Soldier President, Statesman. Greenwood Press, 1987.
Schwab, Peter. Shneidman, J. Lee. John F Kennedy. Twayne Publishers, 1974.
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