28

Collision Courses, Abroad

and at Home: 1946–1960

Collision Courses, Abroad

and at Home: 1946–1960

CONTENTS

■The Chevy Nomad, 1955, exemplified the “breathless but unverbalizable

consequence of the live culture of the Technological Century,” or so gushed

British art critic Reyner Banham.

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Nomad, pictured here, was the brainchild of Edward Cole,

designer of the M-5 tank in 1941. He used a similar V-8

engine to power the Nomad. He highlighted the car’s link

to the war by adding “gun sights” and a jet airplane as the

hood ornament. Driving cars such as this one, Americans

hurtled along the new superhighways that the federal gov-

ernment built in part for military purposes.

The American nation, too, was hurtling into a new

era of Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union—

“cold” because the prospect of real war between the two

superpowers had become unimaginably destructive. In

both countries new weapons loomed larger, each more

menacing than the last. By 1960, hundreds of millions of

people could be wiped out in an instant. The Cold War

between the superpowers turned hot in Korea, the

Middle East, and Latin America. Real foreign spies exacer-

bated fears of domestic subversion.

Postwar complacency soon gave way to racial con-

frontation at home. African Americans who had helped

defeat Nazi racism accelerated demands for fair treatment.

First they challenged Jim Crow segregation in the courts.

When these initiatives encountered segregationist road-

blocks, African Americans turned to nonviolent protests

that they knew would likely trigger violent responses.

From 1946 through 1960, Americans lived danger-

ously in a postwar era of menacing uncertainty. ■

■The Postwar Economy

■Truman Becomes President

■The Containment Policy

■The Atom Bomb: A

“Winning” Weapon?

■A Turning Point in Greece

■The Marshall Plan and the

Lesson of History

■The Election of 1948

■Containing Communism

Abroad

■Hot War in Korea

■The Communist Issue at Home

■McCarthyism

■Dwight D. Eisenhower

■The Eisenhower-Dulles

Foreign Policy

■McCarthy Self-Destructs

■Asian Policy after Korea

■Israel and the Middle East

■Eisenhower and Khrushchev

■Latin America Aroused

■Fighting the Cold War

at Home

■Blacks Challenge Segregation

■Direct Action Protests: The

Montgomery Bus Boycott

■The Election of 1960

■American Lives:

Martin Luther King, Jr.

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