Contemporary America: 1970 to The Present (Handbook to Life in America, Vol IX)

Volume IX

Contemporary America 1970 to the Present

Volume IX

Contemporary America 1970 to the Present

Rodney P. Carlisle general editor

Handbook to Life in America: Contemporary America, 1970 to the Present Copyright © 2009 by Infobase Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An Imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York, NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Handbooks to life in America / Rodney P. Carlisle, general editor. v. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 1. The colonial and revolutionary era, beginnings to 1783—v. 2. The early national period and expansion, 1783 to 1859—v. 3. The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1860 to 1876—v. 4. The Gilded Age, 1870 to 1900—v. 5. Age of reform, 1890 to 1920—v. 6. The roaring twenties, 1920 to 1929—v. 7. The Great Depression and World War II, 1929 to 1949—v. 8. Postwar America, 1950 to 1969—v. 9. Contemporary America, 1970 to present. ISBN 978-0-8160-7785-4 (set : hc : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8160-7174-6 (v. 1 : hc : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8160-7175-3 (v. 2 : hc : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8160-7176-0 (v. 3 : hc : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8160-7177-7 (v. 4 : hc : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8160-71784 (v. 5 : hc : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8160-7179-1 (v. 6 : hc : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-08160-7180-7 (v. 7 : hc : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8160-7181-4 (v. 8 : hc : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8160-7182-1 (v. 9 : hc : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4381-2700-2 (e-book) 1. United States—Civilization—Juvenile literature. 2. United States—History—Juvenile literature. 3. National characteristics, American—Juvenile literature. I. Carlisle, Rodney P. E169.1.H2644 2008 973—dc22 2008012630

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Contents

Volume IX

Contemporary America 1970 to the Present preface









vii







1

  2  Family and Daily Life





21

  3 Material Culture





35

  4  Social Attitudes





47

  5 Cities and Urban Life





63

  6 Rural Life







79

  7 Religion









97

  8 Education







111

  9  Science and Technology



125

  1  Introduction

10 Entertainment and sports 11 Crime and Violence 12 Labor and Employment 13 Military and Wars 14 Population Trends and Migration 15 Transportation 16  Public Health, Medicine, and Nutrition INDEX





139 157 173 187 207 221







237







253

Preface

“But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values . . . ?” —Alan Greenspan

The flavor of daily life in previous eras is usually only vaguely conveyed by

examining the documents of state and the politics of the era. What people ate, how they spent their time, what entertainment they enjoyed, and how they related to one another in family, church, and employment, constituted the actual life of people, rather than the distant affairs of state. While governance, diplomacy, war, and to an extent, the intellectual life of every era tends to be well-documented, the way people lived is sometimes difficult to tease out from the surviving paper records and literary productions of the past. For this reason in recent decades, cultural and social historians have turned to other types of physical documentation, such as illustrations, surviving artifacts, tools, furnishings, utensils, and structures. Statistical information can shed light on other aspects of life. Through examination of these and other kinds of evidence, a wholly different set of questions can be asked and tentatively answered. This series of handbooks looks at the questions of daily life from the perspective of social and cultural history, going well beyond the affairs of government to examine the fabric and texture of what people in the American past experienced in their homes and their families, in their workplaces and schools. Their places of worship, the ways they moved from place to place, the nature of law and order and military service all varied from period to period. As science and technology advanced, the American contributions to those fields became greater and contributed to a different feel of life. Some of this story may be familiar, as historians have for generations commented vii

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on the disparity between rural and city life, on the impact of technologies such as the cotton gin, the railroad and the steamboat, and on life on the advancing frontier. However in recent decades, historians have turned to different sources. In an approach called Nearby History, academic historians have increasingly worked with the hosts of professionals who operate local historical societies, keepers of historic homes, and custodians of local records to pull together a deeper understanding of local life. Housed in thousands of small and large museums and preserved homes across America, rich collections of furniture, utensils, farm implements, tools, and other artifacts tell a very different story than that found in the letters and journals of legislators, governors, presidents, and statesmen. fresh discoveries Another approach to the fabric of daily life first flourished in Europe, through which historians plowed through local customs and tax records, birth and death records, marriage records, and other numerical data, learning a great deal about the actual fabric of daily life through a statistical approach. Aided by computer methods of storing and studying such data, historians have developed fresh discoveries about such basic questions as health, diet, lifeexpectancy, family patterns, and gender values in past eras. Combined with a fresh look at the relationship between men and women, and at the values of masculinity and femininity in past eras, recent social history has provided a whole new window on the past. By dividing American history into nine periods, we have sought to provide views of this newly enriched understanding of the actual daily life of ordinary people. Some of the patterns developed in early eras persisted into later eras. And of course, many physical traces of the past remain, in the form of buildings, seaports, roads and canals, artifacts, divisions of real estate, and later structures such as railroads, airports, dams, and superhighways. For these reasons, our own physical environment is made up of overlapping layers inherited from the past, sometimes deeply buried, and at other times lightly papered over with the trappings of the present. Knowing more about the many layers from different periods of American history makes every trip through an American city or suburb or rural place a much richer experience, as the visitor sees not only the present, but the accumulated heritage of the past, silently providing echoes of history. Thus in our modern era, as we move among the shadowy remnants of a distant past, we may be unconsciously receiving silent messages that tell us: this building is what a home should look like; this stone wall constitutes the definition of a piece of farmland; this street is where a town begins and ends. The sources of our present lie not only in the actions of politicians, generals, princes, and potentates, but also in the patterns of life, child-rearing, education, religion, work, and play lived out by ordinary people.



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volume ix: contemporary America As in prior years, the material culture and social lifestyle of Americans in the decades following 1970 was shaped by the changing winds of international affairs, as well as by the forces of technological innovation, economic cycles, and population shifts. In the early 1970s, the United States struggled to bring an end to its involvement in Vietnam, with the withdrawal of troops in 1973 under a truce agreement. Two years later, North Vietnam mounted a fullscale invasion of the South, and Saigon fell to North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong insurgents. As a consequence, many South Vietnamese who had fought against the Communists fled the country as refugees. In neighboring Cambodia, a brutal regime under the Khmer Rouge conducted mass executions, also leading to tens of thousands of Laotians emigrating as political refugees. Thus, in the middle and late 1970s, for the first time in American history, the United States saw massive immigration from Southeast Asia. At the same time, harsh economic conditions in Mexico and Central America drove both legal and illegal immigration to the United States. Technology continued to bring both subtle and obvious changes to the American lifestyle. Although various forms of color television had been invented in the 1930s and 1940s, regular color television broadcasting began in the 1950s. By 1980, about half the television sets sold in the United States were capable of receiving color broadcasts. In 1975, Sony Corporation introduced the Betamax video taping system, and in 1976 JVC introduced the VHS tape format. For the next decade, the two systems competed for dominance in the market, with tape-rental stores offering both formats. By 1993, no more Betamax tapes were being sold, as the VHS format emerged victorious in the competition. A decade later, the laser-readable compact disc format began the process of supplanting tape as the medium for recording television and motion pictures for home viewing. The first cell phone broadcast towers were experimentally introduced in 1973, with the first large and bulky cell phones marketed by Motorola in 1983. Weighing two pounds, and extremely costly, over the next years, both the size and cost of the phones declined, and by the end of the century, cell-phone use had spread across all age sectors and around the world. Phones were made smaller and lighter, and new features were added. Other electronic technologies proliferated through the 1980s and 1990s, affecting daily life in subtle and obvious ways. Perhaps the most significant was the development of the Internet in the 1990s, allowing individuals with home computers connected via telephone lines (and later by coaxial cable and by wireless) to communicate with other computers. By the turn of the century, e-mail usage and Internet access to research and commercial sites had become commonplace, allowing innovations such as online shopping, online publishing, and rapid international communication. Social commentators noted that the communication revolution created a phenomenon of



Contemporary America

a “flat world” in which many industries could readily employ staff in India or the Philippines at local wages to provide information, services, and support to customers of corporations around the world. Global positioning satellites provided for in-car navigation systems linked to computerized maps that helped drivers orient themselves and find locations. Just as technology had worked in earlier decades to begin to homogenize American culture and to reduce regional and sectional differences, technology in the early 21st century appeared to be moving international cultures closer together. Social trends already present in the United States in the 1960s continued. In a striking development, both the Civil Rights movement and the women’s movement appeared to achieve a victory in the year 2008, with an AfricanAmerican man and a white woman contesting for the Democratic nomination to the office of president. The election of Barack Obama in that year demonstrated that the racial bar to advancement that had troubled America ever since the days of slavery had been removed in the political arena. In less symbolic, but perhaps even more important ways, women and African Americans continued to break invisible barriers in education and employment. Nevertheless, disproportionate numbers of the poor in America continued to be single mothers and African Americans. As the Cold War came to a conclusion with the Velvet Revolutions of 1989–93 that replaced Marxist-Leninist regimes in Eastern Europe with democratically elected governments, the unification of Germany in 1990, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it appeared that a “new world order” might emerge. However, hopes for an extended period of peace were immediately shattered in 1990 with the invasion of Kuwait by the army of Iraq under the leadership of Saddam Hussein. The brief Gulf War in 1991 saw the rapid defeat of the Iraqi army by an international coalition headed by the United States. Part of the backlash against the large American troop presence in Arabia was the emergence of a militant Islamicist movement among Muslims around the world, in which the Taliban government of Afghanistan was a key factor. The Taliban government suppressed women’s rights in Afghanistan and imposed a strict and often cruel version of Islam in that country. The Taliban regime harbored an international terrorist organization, al Qaeda (or “the base”). Although al Qaeda was responsible for several acts of terror, the most well known and shocking to the American public was the attack of September 11, 2001. The end of the Cold War had appeared to suggest that the world would be entering a period of extended peace in which the “dividend” of reduced military expenditures could be turned toward improving the human condition not only in the United States, but also around the planet. However, the two wars in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan demonstrated that the hope for a period of universal peace was ill-founded. To a great extent, the rise of mili-



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tant Islamicism appeared to be based on a rejection of much of the growing worldwide modernism, and what the conservative religious leaders of that movement saw as the decline of morality in the West. The impact of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, was widely felt throughout American culture. Most obviously, perhaps, was the change in security practices in air travel, with stepped-up inspection of luggage and screening of passengers. Even more widespread was the appearance of new security systems around the country, with local county courthouses, government buildings, and police stations installing electronic scanning equipment and posting guards. Within a few years, Americans changed their habits, accepting that they could not enter many public buildings, libraries, and sporting events, without first passing through an inspection of the contents of their pockets, backpacks, handbags, and briefcases. Economic cycles, apparently beyond the ability of governments to fully control, continued to affect the daily life of Americans. In the 1970s, oil embargoes by the oil producing states’ cartel, OPEC, led to a worldwide spike in prices and widespread petroleum shortages in the United States. During the middle and late 1970s, a period of “stagflation” set in, during which the economy appeared locked in a cycle of rising prices, coupled with little real growth of the economy. A recession in the early 1980s, and then in 2000 the collapse of a boom in electronic based companies, the so-called dot-com industries that had established Web sites and sought to capitalize on the new methods of Internet business, caused another drop in stock market values. By 2006, the economy appeared prosperous, spurred on by a housing boom and easy credit for both mortgages and other credit-funded purchases and student loans. That prosperity, however, was troubled by phenomenal increases in petroleum prices. A worldwide financial crisis in late 2008 appeared to herald a much more severe downturn cycle, which has characterized the world economy every 60 to 80 years. Although Americans tended to blame the crisis on various aspects of the American economy, it was clear that the troubled state of the economy was a worldwide condition. Banks and credit institutions failed around the planet, from Iceland to Belgium, and from Russia to Latin America. As governments scrambled to take measures to shore up financial institutions, the length, severity, and impact on daily lives of the economic crisis could not be predicted. The decades from the 1970s to the early 21st century saw the promise of American life—with prosperity, technologically-supported comforts, and increased social justice, come closer to realization. At the same time, economic cycles, world conditions, and technology itself all reflected trends that cast doubts on whether the promise would be fulfilled. Rodney Carlisle General Editor

Chapter 1

Introduction

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” —President Bill Clinton

The 1970s unfolded in the midst of an ongoing and unpopular war in

Vietnam that cast a shadow on these years and undermined American confidence in government and in the political leadership of the country. A general cynicism had been implanted in the national psyche, and it spread to infect many layers of society. Conspiracies triggered the national imagination since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and subsequent developments in these years reinforced new suspicions. The first year of the new decade was also the midpoint in President Richard M. Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew’s first term in office. Peace negotiations and promised troop withdrawals were slowed by the high levels of continuing combat. The lack of decisive victories in the context of a draining guerilla war against an indefatigable enemy made all government actions and policies seem pointless. However, withdrawal meant a Communist victory and a damaging Cold War reversal. Nixon sent American troops into Cambodia in 1970 and into Laos in 1971 in an attempt to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines. In addition he ordered an intensive bombing campaign against North Vietnam. It was hoped that such actions would force the North Vietnamese into serious peace negotiations and move the stalemated Paris talks, which had been going on since 1968, forward. 1



Contemporary America

A wounded soldier from the Vietnam War leaving a plane on a stretcher at Andrews Air Force Base on March 8, 1968. Such scenes set the stage for the public’s loss of confidence in government in the 1970s.

Domestically Nixon looked at ways to curtail some of the social and welfare policies of President Johnson’s Great Society. He vetoed new legislation in education and in welfare and health. In general he held back approved congressional allocations of funds if he opposed the programs. His Southern Strategy geared to winning over the south as a Republican block meant in some instances pausing the federal government’s previous pursuit of racial correctives. This was particularly the case in regard to the highly controversial busing programs that were designed to achieve better racial balances in school integration. In addition the 1960s boom stalled, and numerous economic problems accelerated. Recession and inflation became serious concerns that led to an unpopular system of wage and price controls. Kent State Shootings The May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, symbolized for many the worst excesses of the Vietnam War being imported onto home soil. In this instance students and others protesting Nixon’s Cambodian Incursion, which he announced on April 30, were fired upon by Ohio National Guard troops. The troops were sent onto the campus by Ohio Governor James Rhodes at the request of the Kent Mayor, Leroy Satrom, to quell any disturbances that threatened civil order. The 13-second shooting spree



Introduction



cost the lives of four students and injured nine others, including one who was permanently disabled. The shootings led to the closing of many American universities, and caused a strike reportedly involving over eight million students. Subsequent investigations and trials exonerated the guardsmen from responsibility, and suggested that the firings were justified as a self-defense measure in the face of violent acts on the part of the students. However an out-of-court settlement with the State of Ohio was eventually reached that paid over $600,000 to those wounded and to the parents of those killed. Within 10 days of this incident a further shooting involving a police confrontation occurred at Jackson State College (now university) in Jackson, Mississippi, in this case with AfricanAmerican students. Police responded to student rioting that included fires and overturned cars. The student action was supposedly linked to harassment by white motorists on Lynch Street, and to the unfounded rumors that Fayette County Sheriff Charles Evers, brother of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers, had been killed. This protest does not seem directly linked to the Vietnam War protests. When students failed to disperse, and as they advanced after midnight toward a women’s dormitory, police opened fire and two students were killed and 12 injured. The exact circumstances behind the shootings remain unclear, but no police officers were convicted of unlawful shooting. The response seemed excessive though, with over 460 rounds battering the site. Jackson State contributed to the image of a violently divided nation. Even in the face of domestic problems and a continuing unpopular war, the Nixon-Agnew ticket secured an overwhelming victory in the 1972 election, defeating the antiwar liberal Democratic Senator George McGovern, and his vice presidential running mate Sargent Shriver. The Nixon ticket won a significant 60.7 percent of the popular vote. This put Nixon into the category of other landslide winners such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, A May 1, 1970, call for a protest against Nixon’s foray into Cambodia during the Vietnam War. and Warren G. Harding. His



Contemporary America

Electoral College vote produced a record tally of 521 votes, losing only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. However victory celebrations were short-lived, for the administration was soon facing serious charges of political spying, dirty tricks, and highlevel cover­-ups that stemmed initially from the June 1972 Watergate building break-in of Democratic Party offices. This crime was later linked through congressional and Senate hearings to a variety of impeachable offenses. Nixon was forced onto the defensive, a situation made worse by Vice President Spiro Agnew being embroiled in other areas of impropriety, specifically illegal IRS deductions and bribery charges. These charges led to Agnew’s resignation and his replacement by Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford. As the evidence of wrongdoing accumulated, the Nixon presidency was permanently tarnished as was general public confidence in politics. Professing innocence to the bitter end, Nixon nevertheless resigned on August 9, 1974, becoming the only U.S. president to resign. Gerald Ford was elevated to the presidency without the benefit of election, and he controversially pardoned Richard Nixon, preventing any further prosecutions. Although disgraced, Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, did achieve a number of diplomatic successes. These included visiting and opening negotiations with Communist China, which helped improve relations and end China’s isolation. Nixon also pursued a policy of détente with the Soviet Union in an effort to curb the arms race, which led to the first of the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties (SALT). In 1973 a cease-fire was reached with North Vietnam, essentially ending America’s role in the Vietnam War. For the South Vietnamese, the cease-fire proved to be only a lull in the fighting. Oil Crisis The oil crisis of the 1970s provided the first indications that American and world demands for ever more petroleum were increasingly dependent upon foreign-based supplies. This made American security and the American economy vulnerable. The immediate cause of this crisis was the 1973 Yom Kippur War when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which was founded in 1960 and mostly comprised of Middle Eastern Arab nations, punished those Western countries supporting Israel with an oil embargo. The American response was limited to acts such as the enforcement of a national maximum speed limit of 55 mph and by the creation in 1977 of the Department of Energy. In addition there was the 1978 National Energy Act and the establishment of a Strategic Petroleum Reserve to see the nation through times of international interruptions in supply. The first of a series of debates began on various forms of renewable energy such as wind, solar, coal, and nuclear technologies to replace the reliance on petroleum. There was also talk to reduce demand by moving toward better mass transit systems, and increasing fuel efficiency in American cars.



Introduction



These demands lost their significance as the price of oil declined from a high of $106 per barrel (adjusted for inflation to 2008 dollars) in 1979 to about $20 (in 2008 dollars) per barrel in 1986. This came at a time when OPEC dominance declined, as other countries increased petroleum supplies. The oil crisis revealed how vulnerable U.S. security was to third world developments, and in particular the stability of the Middle East with its vast reserves. American needs would lead to closer ties to Middle Eastern states such as Saudi Arabia, which was further complicated by America’s relationship to Israel. Often these ties led to American acceptance of and cooperation with undemocratic states in the region, and in extensive military sales to these states. In an effort to secure these crucial oil supplies, the U.S. military presence increased in the Persian Gulf where much of the world’s tanker traffic passed. Failure to address this dependency and reduce consumption by repeated administrations allowed the crisis to continue into the 21st century. The Ford and Carter Administrations Gerald Ford’s presidency, which lasted from 1974 to 1977, was unusual because of the circumstances of his appointment rather than election to office. As president, Ford continued Nixon’s policy of détente with the Soviet Union. He signed the Helsinki Accords, which was a key step in moderating Cold War hostilities. Ford also extracted many of America’s South Vietnamese supporters at the time of the Communist takeover of South Vietnam. Back home, economic problems persisted, including the mixed package of inflation and recession known as stagflation that had plagued the Nixon years. In the midst of these difficulties Ford attempted to stimulate the economy with tax cuts as well as improve special education provisions for American children. He also survived a 1975 assassination attempt while visiting Sacramento. Workers unfurl a poster of vice presidential Ford gained the 1976 Repubcandidate Walter Mondale at the Democratic National Convention on July 15, 1976. lican presidential nomination



Contemporary America

Anti-immigrant and anti-Iranian sentiments surfaced during a student protest in Washington, D.C., on November 9, 1979, during the Iran hostage crisis.

with Senator Bob Dole as his running mate, but lost the presidential election by a narrow margin to the Democratic candidates, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter and Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota. Many pundits believe that his pardon of Richard Nixon significantly hurt his popularity and his legacy. As president, Jimmy Carter faced mounting difficulties both at home and abroad. He attempted to improve the organization of the federal government by creating new cabinet level departments, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, both areas needing renewal and direction. He ended price controls on domestic petroleum production, but American oil dependency on foreign sources grew unabated. Carter attempted a number of foreign policy initiatives to increase the prospects for peace and better international relations. He supported the Camp David accords, which attempted to end hostilities between Egypt and Israel. Signed in 1978 by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minster Menachem Begin, the accords were a hopeful first step toward peace in the region. Carter also transferred authority over the Panama Canal and Panama Canal Zone from the United States to Panama in an effort to improve America’s Latin American image. This gesture brought considerable domestic criticism, particularly involving concerns over future American security. The administration also supported second-round agreements with the Soviet Union in the form of SALT II, which furthered nuclear disarmament. In general



Introduction



the Carter presidency campaigned to extend worldwide human rights. However the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran undermined the Carter presidency. The revolution replaced the Shah of Iran’s pro-U.S. government with a hostile Islamic religious regime. It also created uncertainty in the global oil market. Matters were made worse by the Iranian seizure of the American embassy and the taking and humiliation of American hostages. Carter’s attempted hostage rescue ended in disaster, and made his presidency appear hopelessly weak. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan also threatened détente and increased suspicions that the Soviet Union was expanding its interests toward the Middle East. The Carter administration began supporting Islamic resistance movements and forged links with Pakistan. This contributed to the Jihadist revival in the area. As a further political gesture, Carter ordered the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The Reagan Administration Carter’s unpopularity in the face of the energy crisis, the slumping economy, and the Iranian hostage crisis made his reelection in 1980 difficult. The Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan, with George H. W. Bush as his running mate. The Reagan and Bush ticket won an impressive victory that seemingly gave them a mandate for substantial change in order to revive America’s diplomatic and economic fortunes. This mandate included Republican control of the Senate for the first time since 1952. In practice Reagan’s policy of supply-side economic programs, labeled Reaganomics, included major tax cuts in 1981 to stimulate the economy, and more limited government in keeping with conservative beliefs. Reagan worked to rebuild American prestige and benefited from much popular support. Iran’s return of the hostages during the beginning of his first term helped restore national pride. He implemented a major military build up to confront the Soviets from a position of strength, and pursued an agenda of individual freedom. The economy rebounded and during his terms in office the Gross Domestic Product grew at a steady 3.4 percent. Unemployment rates slowly improved as many new jobs were created. Reagan survived an assassination attempt in 1981 by John Hinckley, Jr., which increased his popularity. The United States also joined a multinational peacekeeping mission in war-torn Lebanon, which had endured civil conflict since 1975. This mission produced a disaster in the form of the Beirut barracks suicide bombings of 1983 that cost the lives of 241 U.S. marines. This event led to American withdrawal from the area in 1984, and undermined American participation in future peacekeeping efforts. Also in 1983, in response to the existence of a Marxist-Leninist regime in Grenada, and fearing an expanded Cuban-Soviet presence in the hemisphere, Reagan ordered an invasion of the island in the name of protecting Americans’ lives and property. Success was rapid, and a friendly Grenadian government was established.



Contemporary America

Reagan Revolution

In 1980 actor and former Republican governor of California Ronald Reagan wrested the White House from Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, who had won election in 1976 as a political outsider in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Reagan’s advisors were politically savvy, and his campaign was run by advertising executives who were expert at selling products to the American public. Representatives were dispatched around the country to determine what Americans families wanted in a president. Consequently, conservative positions on abortion and anti-busing policies became a focus of the Reagan campaign. Even though he gave relatively few press conferences, Reagan became known as the “Great Communicator” because he was proficient in promoting his own image. Once in office, Reagan and his advisors set about dismantling Democratic social welfare programs that had been in place for decades. At the same time, they increased defense spending from $134 billion to $290 billion. Reagan’s economic plan called for reducing taxes on incomes and profits with the expectation that such reductions would stimulate investment and expansion of businesses. However, former Budget Director David Stockman insisted in his 1986 tell-all, The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed, that Reagan made budget cuts in hit or miss fashion without really understanding the consequences of his actions. By 1983, 35 million Americans were living in poverty, and the daily lives of the poor, children, minorities, and women were made more uncertain as the Reagan Revolution gained steam, slashing government funding for job training, college loans, food subsidies, Medicare, day care, and senior citizen programs. Views on abortion became a litmus test for federal judges, and the conservative U.S. Supreme Court came as close to removing the right to obtain abortions as they could without actually overturning Roe v. Wade. Throughout his eight years in office, Ronald Reagan lived up to his nickname, “the Teflon President,” managing to sidestep responsibility for fiascos that included a $2.6 trillion deficit, a $152.7 trade deficit in 1988, and the Iran-Contra scandal. However, despite his failures in the domestic arena, Reagan is still well-regarded for President Reagan raising a glass at a White House state dinner in 1981. his role in ending the Cold War.



Introduction



Two of the hostages held in Iran, Lieutenant Colonel Donald M. Roeder, left, and Colonel Thomas E. Schaefer, celebrate their arrival at Andrews Air Force Base on January 27, 1981, after their release at the start of Reagan’s presidency.

Reagan’s re-election in 1984 came against Democratic candidate Walter Mondale and his vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. His victory was a crushing defeat for the Democrats, taking every state except Mondale’s home state of Minnesota. Reagan’s second term saw him press for an end to the Cold War through a position of strength in dealing with the Soviets. He found a more receptive Soviet leadership under new Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. Communications steadily improved, leading to further nuclear arms reduction agreements and better relations between the two countries, at the same time as the Communist state felt the strains of reform. Furthermore Gorbachev’s attempts at revision from inside the fabric of the old Soviet empire revealed such insurmountable problems in the single-party state that fundamental political change was the only way out. Reagan also called for new ways of resisting nuclear attack, and backed proposals for a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to provide a shield against such attacks. In addition he financed a costly war on drugs to reduce the huge impact illegal drugs were having on American lives and communities. The major scandal of the Reagan years involved the Iran-Contra affair, which became news in 1986. Iran-Contra concerned the covert sales of arms

10

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to Iran in exchange for money used to finance the Contra forces who were attempting to overthrow the leftist regime in Nicaragua. These activities led to major criticism of Reagan, and to the indictments and convictions of 11 members of his administration, as well as much international condemnation. However he escaped direct blame, and his enormous popularity recovered by the time he left office in 1989. Reagan is best remembered as a bulwark against Communism who believed, against the judgments of many, that the Cold War could be won and not just contained. He rebuilt conservative Republicanism in a time of growing prosperity. The ultimate success of his economic policies is still debated, however it is clear his military programs were costly and contributed to a major expansion of the national deficit. The George H. W. Bush Administration The 1988 presidential election saw the nomination of Reagan’s Republican Vice President George H. W. Bush for the presidency, with Indiana Senator Dan Quayle as his vice presidential running mate. The Democrats’ presidential nominee was Governor George Dukakis of Massachusetts, with Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen as his vice president. The result was another sizable victory in both the Electoral College and popular vote for the Republicans; Bush benefited from the Reagan legacy and a poor Dukakis campaign plagued by errors. A strength of the Bush presidency was in its foreign policies, which produced dramatic successes in Panama in 1989 when Bush ordered American troops to remove Panamanian President Manuel Noriega, who was denying democratic process, as well as allowing his country to be a base for illegal drug transit and money laundering. Following Noreiga’s capture, he was tried and convicted of drug trafficking offenses in 1992 and sentenced to 40 years in a U.S. prison. The Berlin Wall also fell in 1989, and within two years the entire Soviet Union, including its hold on Eastern Europe, was in meltdown, spelling an end to Soviet Communism. President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 sparked a major international crisis, undermined the oil market, and set the stage for the Persian Gulf War. The United States led a multinational coalition that drove Hussein from Kuwait and rapidly destroyed the Iraqi military resistance. The ground invasion stopped after 100 hours, and armistice negotiations began that left the Ba’athist regime in power. Saddam remained defiant, brutally suppressed internal rebellion, and used his propaganda machine to turn defeat into victory. The failure to remove Saddam’s regime at this time left problems for future presidents. Under terms of the peace, Iraq was placed under United Nations sanctions, which were violated at every opportunity, particularly through the later Oil for Food Program. In July 1991 the Bush administration negotiated with Gorbachev further strategic arms reductions in the form of the START I treaty. In addition along



Introduction

11

with Mexico and Canada, the Bush presidency pushed forward the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) negotiations, signed in 1992, to eliminate many tariffs and other trade regulations that restricted cross-border trade development. The Clinton Administration By the end of his term in office Bush faced a Democratically controlled Congress that was committed to raising taxes. He also faced a huge national deficit and high unemployment of 7.8 percent. These poor economic figures undermined Bush’s 1992 re-election campaign against Democratic nominee Governor William Clinton of Arkansas, whose running mate was Senator Al Gore of Tennessee. In addition a third-party alternative, led by Independent Ross Perot and his vice presidential running mate James Stockdale, split the vote. The result was a Democratic victory with 43 percent of the popular vote, against 37 percent for Bush and 18 percent for Perot. Although the Electoral College vote was sizeable, the split ticket made Clinton a minority presidential choice in terms of the popular vote. The arrival of Bill Clinton at the White House in 1993 was interpreted as a new beginning for the nation and the Democratic Party. Clinton was a Baby Boomer, the third-youngest president, and from a Southern state, giving the party a new, more centrist outlook. Clinton was labeled a New Democrat, a position that shied away from the party’s traditionally liberal East and West coast orientation. Clinton supported the NAFTA agreement and his administration unsuccessfully explored healthcare reform under the auspices of his wife, the future Secretary of State and 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. There was also budgetary reform and the lowering of taxes for the poor. The economy also took off during his administration producing a surge of peacetime growth, prosperity, and surpluses. However early controversies surrounding the White House Travel Office firings and the use of FBI files led to the first of what would prove a series of ethical questions directed at the Clinton presidency. In addition, 1994 marked the beginning of the Whitewater land deal controversy that would plague Clinton throughout the terms of his presidencies, particularly when in the hands of Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Although he was not convicted, fines were imposed, and Clinton’s law license was suspended. Such issues contributed to a Republican resurgence, which led after 1994 to Republican control of both houses of Congress, making life even more difficult for the president. Nevertheless the 1996 election saw Bill Clinton reelected along with his vice president, Al Gore. Again he benefited from a divided electorate. Besides the Republican presidential nominee, Senator Bob Dole, and his vice presidential running mate, Congressman Jack Kemp, Ross Perot also stood as an Independent on the presidential ballot. Clinton won

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49 percent of the popular vote, against Dole’s 40 percent and Ross Perot’s 8 percent, revealing a decidedly split electorate, but the Electoral College gave Clinton a convincing 70 percent victory margin. Clinton’s second term was marred by domestic scandal stemming from his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. When news broke of the affair in 1998, the White House was thrown on to the defensive and placed under further investigation. Clinton’s behavior absorbed the nation and severely discredited the presidential office. It also led to impeachment proceedings for perjury and obstruction of justice that were drafted by the House; however the Senate in 1999 failed to deliver the two-thirds majority needed for conviction and Clinton survived. In foreign affairs the problem of Saddam Hussein remained, and the issue of regime change was mooted. There was also further military action in Iraq in the form of Operation Desert Fox in 1998, supposedly to enforce sanctions. In addition the Clinton administration led the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, which stemmed from the conflict over Kosovo and what many perceived as the genocide committed by the Serbian regime. Furthermore Clinton hoped through the Camp David negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel that a meaningful peace could be arranged. However, the agreement failed when President Arafat launched the second Intifada and continued violence ended hopes of a peaceful resolution to years of conflict. Clinton’s departure from the presidency in 2001 was welcomed in many conservative quarters. However even in the face of all the scandal, Clinton maintained a degree of popularity, and a successful economy pardoned many sins. Nevertheless the 141 presidential pardons in his final days in office have continued to raise questions about the ethics and sobriety of the Clinton leadership. The George W. Bush Administration The 2000 presidential election did little to abate the political controversies and divisions within the nation. Texas Governor George W. Bush and his vice presidential running mate Dick Cheney became the Republican standard bearers. Opposing the Bush ticket was the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Al Gore, who chose as his running mate Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. The election results produced significant controversy when Bush was awarded the presidency by a narrow victory in Florida that gave him an Electoral College vote of 271 to Gore’s 266. More upsetting for many was the fact that Gore received over 543,000 more popular votes than Bush. This proved the fourth time in U.S. history that this has happened. Independent candidate and environmental campaigner Ralph Nader drew 2.7 percent of the popular vote in 2000, and by splitting the Gore vote he in effect benefited the Bush campaign. The Florida vote count seriously poisoned the political waters and led to recounts and ac-



Introduction

13

cusations that the Republican victory was manipulated by a Republican state administration, not to mention a conservative Supreme Court. This led to a persistent belief by anti-Bush forces that this was a stolen election. However the vote was eventually certified by a joint session of Congress. Nevertheless the result split the nation and gave rise to a powerful mythology that the Bush administration was illegitimate and therefore not acceptable. George W. Bush’s first term began on January 20, 2001 under the cloud of Florida, which seemingly made Clinton’s legacy of controversies and impeachment old news. The Bush administration arrived with a supposedly ethical conservative agenda many thought driven by religious right forces in the Republican Party. One of the first initiatives was a $1.3 trillion tax cut to stimulate the economy, which ultimately passed with some Democratic support. However, the Bush presidency was soon shaped by the events of September 11, 2001, when Islamic terrorist attacks against New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon cost thousands of lives. The attacks, using hijacked airliners as bombs, was acknowledged as the work of al Qaeda, planned in Afghanistan, and carried out primarily by Saudis. This act of war differed from past warfare because it was launched by a worldwide terrorist organization, and not a specific state. Due to its serious impact, the Bush administration responded with the October 2001 announcement that the nation was engaged in a war on terror, first directed against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Bush administration also extended the war to include Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. It was feared that Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programs

President George W. Bush addressing emergency workers at the World Trade Center site in New York City three days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

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could possibly offer support and weapons to al Qaeda. This extension of the conflict led to the controversial March 2003 invasion of Iraq, which after a short campaign overthrew the Saddam government. This initial military success and the accompanying tide of Bush popularity were slowly undercut by a rising insurgency in Iraq that cost American and Iraqi lives. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction was the first of many challenges to the central premise of the invasion, and to the Bush administration’s handling of the war. During the 2004 campaign for reelection, Bush and Cheney were opposed by Democratic nominee Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and his running mate North Carolina Senator John Edwards. The Democratic assumption was that the growing unpopularity of the war and of the Bush presidency in general would lead to an easy victory. However Kerry failed to convince the public of his credentials to lead the country at a time of war. Bush won reelection by a 50 percent to 48 percent margin in the popular vote that also produced a more convincing Electoral College tally of 282 votes to Kerry’s 252. George W. Bush’s Second Term George W. Bush’s second term was consumed with the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq. The conflict seemed full of false starts and promises until tactical and strategic reorganizations in the form of a troop surge in 2007 started to produce better results. The surge came after the removal of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whose unpopularity grew as conditions in Iraq worsened. Dissatisfaction with Bush and the war effort was also reflected in Democratic congressional triumphs in the 2006 elections. Domestically much of the Bush agenda such as tighter immigration controls and social security reform was stalemated. Budget deficits also grew enormously as federal spending escalated. The Bush administration’s handling of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina crisis further damaged the administration’s public image for competency, although criticism was more muted when applied to local and state responses to the same event. In the closing years of his presidency the rising price of oil and a credit crunch in the financial sectors further undermined confidence in what was a generally buoyant and successful economy. In foreign affairs the targets of Bush’s “Axis of Evil” remained largely in place. Furthermore, the rising nuclear ambitions of Iran reflected an inability to achieve clear and decisive policy directions after Iraq. The Pakistan border provinces still harbored Taliban and al Qaeda forces who used the region to stage attacks that prevented Afghanistan’s emergence from decades of conflict. Democracy in the Middle East did not spread beyond Iraq and peace between Palestine and Israel according to a “peace roadmap” remained plagued with problems made worse by growing Iranian influence in Lebanon and within the Palestinian Hamas movement. Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip made negotiations for peace with Israel ever more difficult.



Introduction

The 2008–09 Economic Crisis

Many U.S. households and corporations built up record amounts of indebtedness beginning in the 1980s and continuing into the 2000s. A housing bubble that peaked in 2005 and a subsequent mortgage crisis were key components of an economic slowdown that escalated into a recession in 2008. That year, wages stagnated or fell and businesses began massive rounds of layoffs. Rising unemployment and underemployment hurt consumer confidence and many households and businesses cut back on spending, deepening the crisis. Low interest rates made real estate a popular form of investment, driving a period of skyrocketing real estate values and record profits. Many people purchased houses with “exotic” or “subprime” mortgage loans that required little or no money down, interest-only payments, or adjustable rates (ARMs) that locked in a low interest rate for the first five years, only to subsequently reset at higher rates. Many homeowners also acquired home equity lines of credit to take advantage of the increases in their homes’ values. Others speculated in real estate by purchasing houses, fixing them up, and selling them for a higher price in a process known as “flipping.” As profits grew, many banks loosened lending restrictions to enable people with low incomes or poor credit to borrow. Investment banks purchased and repackaged mortgages for the investment market, providing cash for banks to make further mortgage loans. By 2008, however, real estate prices had stagnated and then dropped as the housing bubble burst. The housing supply grew as demand fell and owners in financial difficulty could no longer sell or refinance before defaulting, especially as ARMs began resetting at much higher interest rates. Many simply walked away from their homes rather than face foreclosure. Foreclosures left banks with repossessed properties that represented a loss even if they could sell. Banks and other institutions that had invested in or insured mortgage debt, such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, and AIG, suffered devastating losses. Lending institutions could not sell further mortgages, drying up their liquid assets and ensuring the return of tighter lending standards. Failing financial institutions began asking the federal government for aid, bringing greater scrutiny to questionable business practices such as the awarding of huge bonuses to their executives. The U.S. federal government’s response to the economic crisis, known as an economic stimulus, involved a variety of spending and tax measures designed to aid economic recovery. In early 2008, Congress passed a $168 billion economic stimulus package and at the beginning of 2009, Congress passed another package of $789 billion. Measures have included continued Federal Reserve reductions in interest rates, public works projects, lowered payroll deductions for federal income taxes to increase workers’ take home pay, and loans to banks, states, and private businesses. Newly elected President Barack Obama signed the bill into law on February 17, 2009.

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Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States and the country’s first African-American president, taking the Oath of Office on January 20, 2009, beside First Lady Michelle Obama.

Bush’s diplomatic endeavors have been defined by some as working outside the established multinational forums such as the United Nations, and his presidency has been criticized as headstrong and unilateral. Nevertheless, there is a long history of previous presidents operating unilaterally to protect America’s interests. It will depend upon Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, to either reverse, modify, or redirect American diplomacy and foreign policy objectives toward new goals in the face of a still dangerous world where enemies and potential enemies abound. The end of Bush’s second term led to a vigorous competition among presidential candidates. Obama eventually secured the Democratic nomination in 2008 after a long contest with Hillary Clinton in the primaries. Obama went on to become the first African American in history to be elected president in a decisive victory over Republican Senator John McCain, with 365 Electoral College votes over McCain’s 173. The popular vote was closer, with 52.9 percent for Obama and his running mate Senator Joseph Biden versus 45.6 for McCain and Governor Sarah Palin, the first female Republican vice presidential nominee. Obama’s inauguration in January 2009 marked the fall of a long-standing racial barrier, and was attended by many veterans of the 1960s Civil Rights movement. American Culture and Society Since 1970 American life also evolved dramatically within this changing and sometimes conflicted political world. Scientific and technological change transformed



Introduction

17

the American landscape, introducing not only a computer revolution, but also sizeable advances in the whole nature of living. This has been translated into a consumer society where every product is available to those with enough income. Many essential products are now largely manufactured abroad and imported. This has produced abundant cheap merchandise, as well as the less welcome result of major balance of payment deficits. In addition this has meant further job losses in the American manufacturing sector, which found its commercial edge declining through competition from cheap labor abroad. During the same period the white collar, service industry base of the American economy that was established in the 1950s has become even more firmly entrenched in employment statistics. The university and private research sectors also delivered improvements to make life more convenient. The appearance of soft contact lenses in the 1970s, and steadily evolving product lines in personal music products were prominent examples. The personal music phenomenon began with assorted players such as Sony Walkman tape players in the 1980s. MP3 players and iPods, with their immense storage capacities and digital quality, later took personal music to new heights. The universal rise of the mobile phone, particularly after the 1990s, created a revolution in personal communications. In the span of these few decades computer storage capacity moved to compact discs (CDs), which replaced floppy discs in the 1990s. DVDs then replaced the CDs in volume and quality. Since the 1980s MRI scanners have advanced early diagnosis and contributed to improved medical solutions that previously seemed impossible. Drug cocktails confronted incurable diseases such as HIV/ AIDS and dramatically extended life expectancy. Better pharmaceuticals increased the longevity and quality of life for an aging Baby Boom generation. Optimistic expectations have also increased the public’s belief that modern medicine holds the key to a better future. This also raised medical care’s economic importance. Music and the Arts In both music and the visual arts, the period after 1970 has been packed with huge developments. Music’s many stylistic directions continued to grow as part of rock and roll’s evolution, and various styles proliferated, including musical theater, heavy metal, country, disco, dance, jazz, and various other crossover forms. The elements of modern hip-hop culture were established during these decades. The arrival of MTV in 1981 turned the music video into a key adjunct in building record popularity. A Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for Wynton Marsalis’s “Blood in the Fields” composition was a key step in marking the significance of the American jazz genre. In 2000 the Grammy Awards developed a Latin music section, reflecting the growing importance of Latino culture in American life. The postmodern revolt in the visual arts in the initial decades after 1970 continued to dominate expression, with performance art gaining a special place. Essentialism in the arts expressed the rise of women and minority artists.

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Although painting was declared dead, avant-garde artists still painted, and established styles found new audiences. The dominance of the English language continued unabated, even with the rise in Spanish speakers, and Nobel prizes for literature recognized the work of Saul Bellow in 1976 and that of Toni Morrison in 1993. Demographic and Social Trends Since 1970 immigration has had a great impact on America’s social life. Over 20 million immigrants arrived after 1965, with half of these immigrants coming from seven countries: Mexico, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Korea, India, and the Dominican Republic, with Mexican and Latino immigration the most numerous. This phenomenon has been particularly felt in the Southwestern United States, where it has been labeled the Reconquista. More Latino and Asian immigrants have altered the ethnic mix of the United States as a whole. In particular the Latino surge has filled many of the country’s low-skill jobs. This has also meant that African Americans’ position as the dominant minority has been challenged by the rise of Latino America. African-American participation in the full fruits of American life has also advanced during this period, although with stops and starts attributed to single­-parent homes, increased numbers of teenage and unwed mothers, drug abuse, and gang violence. These social factors have undermined many strides and successes. Yet incomes have risen with educational opportunities even in the midst of a series of urban educational crises in both funding and declining achievement. Various local and national initiatives have been launched to correct these difficulties, but the problems persist. Nevertheless African-American contributions and participation in the many aspects of American life have grown steadily in these decades, culminating in Obama’s 2008 election as president. Women of all races have made enormous strides in all areas of employment, including gains in professional, managerial, and political careers as the workforce has become increasingly dominated by dual-income family units. Other areas of discriminatory practice, such as that directed against gays and lesbians, have also declined somewhat. However, in contrast to the trend toward increasing acceptance of difference in other arenas, such as the workplace, controversy has escalated over gay marriage, especially after conservative and religious groups turned their attention to the issue. As of 2009, 30 states have enacted bans on same-sex marriages, including Arizona, California, and Florida, where ballot initiatives passed in the 2008 election. While litigation is ongoing, only 10 states and the District of Columbia offer the legal protections of “civil unions” for gays or “domestic partnerships” for unmarried couples, and just Massachusetts and Connecticut issue licenses for gay marriages. In general terms, since the 1970s the extremes of poverty have remained at approximately 12–13 percent of the population, but for most of the nation the



Introduction

19

standard of living has steadily risen as have employment prospects. This has occurred in the midst of a national population rise from 203 million in 1970 to over 300 million in 2008. However, the gap between the richest and poorest Americans has also grown, and the top 20 percent of households accounted for most of the gains in household income after 1975. The most vulnerable include unskilled workers and the many who lack health insurance. An aging population with increasing medical costs poses serious problems, as does the need for elder care, which has put pressure on the nation’s Social Security system. Religion remains a professed central feature of American life that even in the face of an increasingly secular age marks the United States as a faith-based society. This has occurred at a time when faith has become more diverse as other religions such as Islam have taken root. There also remains a vigorous and well organized Protestant evangelicalism that has been politically influential. Such influences have shaped hotly debated political issues from abortion rights to stem cell research. In addition, numerous secular organizations contribute to the moral and ethical direction of the country through a variety of campaigns involving such issues as environmental conservation, animal welfare, and human rights. Society has also witnessed substantial declines in particular demographic and social trends such as accidents and crime rates. This is in the face of popular opinion that life has only become more dangerous and uncertain. Conclusion In the years since 1970 America has grown and become more wealthy and powerful. Prophecies of decline have not been realized, but drawbacks to all this industry and consumption have arisen in the form of new environmental threats, including global warming. Serious flaws in the country’s financial systems were also exposed in the economic crisis that began in 2008. Nevertheless, the United States remains the only superpower, and this status is evident even with the rise of China, India, and Brazil; wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the ongoing threat of terrorism. Theodore W. Eversole

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Further Readings

Bender, Thomas. ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2002. Chafe, William H. The Road to Equality. American Women Since 1962. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Davis, Kenneth C. Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History But Never Learned. New York: Avon Press, 2004. Greene, John Robert. The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1995. Hahn, Peter L. Crisis and Crossfire: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Press, 2005. Harris, John F. The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House. New York: Random House, 2005. Johnson, Paul M. A History of the American People. New York: HarperCollins, 1998. Kelley, Robin D.G. Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Kengor, Paul. The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007. LaFeber, Walter, Richard Polensbury, and Nancy Woloch. The American Century: A History of the United States Since 1941. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2008. Melosh, Barbara. Gender and American History Since 1890. London: Routledge, 1993. Naftali, Timothy and Arthur M. Schlesinger. George H. W. Bush: The American President Series: The 41st President, 1989–1993. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2007. Patterson, James T. Restless Giant: The United States From Watergate to Bush Versus Gore. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America. New York: Scribners, 2008. Sayre, Henry M. The Objectives of Painting: American Avant-Garde Since 1970. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Shibley, Mark A. Resurgent Evangelicalism in the United States: Mapping Cultural Change Since 1970. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. Teaford, Jon C. The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America 1940–1985. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Wills, Gary. Head and Heart: American Christianities. New York: Penguin, 2007.

Chapter 2

Family and Daily Life

“The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works is the family.” —Lee Iacocca

In many ways, daily life in American since the 1970s has become easier,

healthier, and more entertaining because of technological advances. However, these years have also been marked by social upheaval, divisive wars, and a series of economic crises, all of which have brought radical change to the American family. The nature of the new American family has become the subject of intense public debate and controversy, especially in the political arena. The early 1970s were a time of entrenched rebellion, with young people becoming more politicized. The voice of young Americans became stronger after 1971 with the ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18. Youth rebellion was reflected in the greater society, affecting families, sexual mores, race and gender relations, academics, music, and fashion. An important consequence of the counterculture’s campaign for personal and sexual liberation was a dramatic reshaping of family structure. More birth control options meant women could better control the size of their families and explore other goals for their lives. Divorce rates spiked as the pursuit of a happier or more fulfilling life became socially acceptable and even encouraged by the prevailing culture of the so-called Me Decades. Even with the magnitude of these changes and the decline of the traditional nuclear family, contemporary Americans continued to be family oriented. In 21

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1999 a Wirthlin Worldwide poll examined 2,900 individuals in five global regions, asking “If you could create society the way you think it should be, what would that society be centered around?” Responders were asked to choose between family, government, business, church, and the individual. In the United States 67 percent selected family as the most important factor, and another 20 percent opted for church. In all, 90 percent of Americans chose family and religion as the most important factors in the ideal society, ranking these two factors higher than anywhere else in the world. CHANGING DEFINITIONS OF FAMILY Patterns of family life were transformed significantly in contemporary America, partly because of the redefinition of women’s roles. Although more than half of all women worked, they continued to bear major responsibilities for children and housework. Younger fathers did, however, begin taking on significantly more responsibility in these areas than their fathers and grandfathers. The age at which American women married rose in response to societal changes. Between 1960 and 1990 the percentage of women who had been married by the age of 24 dropped from 70 percent to 50 percent. By 2000–03 the median age of American women marrying for the first time was 25 years, as compared to 20.3 to 22.5 years in 1960. In 1970 the birthrate was 2.39 children per female. Within two years, it had fallen to 1.98, placing the United States below the 2.1 rate required for zero population growth. In 1980 the size of families declined still further, with the average number of children dropping to 1.77 before climbing to 2.0 in 1990 and 2.05 in 2000. The divorce rate rose steadily between 1966 and 1981 before beginning a gradual decline. In 1970 87.1 percent of all American families included a mother, father, and at least one child. Within a decade, that number had dropped to 78.5 percent. Most single-parent families were headed by females. Males headed up one in seven white families and one in 13 black families. The rise in single-parent families was particularly significant among teenagers and African Americans. Between 1960 and 1985, the number of births among unmarried teenage mothers skyrocketed, climbing from 15 to 58 percent. In the mid-1980s close to half of all babies born to white teenagers were born to unmarried mothers. Among black teenagers the rate was 90 percent. Single-parent families often paid a heavy economic price. The median annual income for two-parent families was more than $40,000. For divorced mothers, the comparable figure was $16,000, and for never-married mothers it was less than $9,000. Only one in nine single mothers received regular support payments. This was particularly true when fathers remarried. Fathers without second families paid support at a rate of 54 percent as compared to 42 for those who had remarried. At the same time that the number of single-parent families was increasing, more Americans were choosing to remain single. Many couples opted to



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remain childless, and others practiced responsible family planning. In 2000 the average household was made up of 2.59 persons as compared to 3.3 in 1960. In contemporary America, the number of couples who opted to cohabit without benefit of a marriage license also increased. The rate of cohabiting couples surpassed the million mark in 1978. An increase in the number of second and third marriages created a plethora of households with step-parents and step-children that blended with various degrees of success. FAMILY LIFE AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN Women gained a major social voice in 1971 with the publication of Ms. magazine under the leadership of feminist icon Gloria Steinem. The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which would have mandated sexual equality, gained momentum, with 58 percent of Americans expressing support. The amendment failed because of insufficient support in conservative states. Although women broke down barriers in a number of formerly-male bastions, they continued to be paid less than their male counterparts. Most continued to work in low-paying female-dominated jobs. Nevertheless, one half of the 250,000 millionaires reported in 1978 were female. In response to complaints by the women’s movement, the practice of naming hurricanes only

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after females was discontinued in 1978. No-fault divorce, which allowed couples to divorce without either party having to prove “fault” such as adultery or abandonment, as had long been required, had been introduced in California in 1970. It became the norm in most states, but proved to be a double-edged sword for women, as they were often left without the means to support themselves after a divorce. Laws regarding the equitable division of property and the enforcement of child support payments would follow. Women won a major victory in 1976 when television personality Barbara Walters became the first female anchor of a network The feminist leader Gloria Steinem at a news show, with a five-year contract conference on January 12, 1972. and a salary of $5 million. In 1984 Democrat Walter Mondale chose Senator Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, and she became the first woman in American history to run for office on a major party presidential ballot. History was also made in 2007 when former First Lady and New York Senator Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the presidency. Clinton won significant party backing and public support. After a protracted battle in the primaries, her rival Barack Obama went on to become the first African American in history to be elected president, defeating a 2008 Republican ticket that included that party’s first female vice presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. Military Families After Vietnam The Vietnam War stressed both the nation as a whole and the individual families of the three million Americans who were posted there during the conflict. Antiwar protests divided the home front into the 1970s, especially after the United States invaded Cambodia in 1970, escalating the military and political crisis in Southeast Asia. For families who were forced to send servicemen and women abroad into the conflict, the experience could be anguishing. Over 58,000 were killed in Vietnam, and thousands of children lost or never knew a parent. Divorce rates for couples separated by war were high, and even when the marriage survived, soldiers brought home memories of war and may have



Family and Daily Life

The Murphy Brown Controversy

The rise in single parent households and the belief among many conservative Americans that Hollywood glorified the trend led to a political and religious movement to restore what were termed traditional marriages and family values. A key moment in this movement came in 1992, when then Vice President Dan Quayle gave a political speech on the causes of the Los Angeles riots. During the course of his speech, he discussed Hollywood’s threat to family values, using the example of the popular CBS sit-com Murphy Brown. A series of episodes dealt with the character of Murphy Brown, a well-respected news anchor, becoming pregnant. Quayle stated that Brown’s decision to have the child out of wedlock as “just another life-style choice” “mocked the importance of fathers” and evidenced society’s growing “poverty of values.” Although his reference to Murphy Brown was a small moment in a long speech, it sparked an immediate and lasting reaction, both denigrating and supportive, among the listening public. The majority of U.S. single-parent households are headed by divorced or unwed mothers and their biological children, but can also include divorced or unwed fathers, widows or widowers, stepchildren, and/or adopted children. The U.S. Census Bureau also includes couples who are living together without legally marrying, even if both are the biological parents. As traditional gender roles were challenged in the 1970s, attitudes toward sexuality and marriage changed, and as the economy became less stable, many people began delaying marriage and living together before or instead of marriage. At the same time, divorce rates rose sharply as it became more socially acceptable. Women were more likely to be well educated and selfsupporting, which meant that they could consider having children outside of wedlock if they did not find a suitable husband or wish to marry. Alternatives such as adoption and sperm banks also became more acceptable. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2002 more than one-fourth of all children lived in some type of single parent household. As the number of single parent households rose and seemed to become a permanent part of American culture, researchers, politicians, and religious figures began to raise concerns over the difficulties faced by children growing up in these households. Single parents often face challenges such as the necessity to emotionally and financially support their family, make parenting decisions, and arrange for childcare on their own. Children of single parent households are statistically more likely to face such difficulties as lack of health insurance, lower educational levels and higher dropout rates, less adult guidance, more frequent drug and alcohol use, risky sexual behavior and early pregnancy, gang activity, criminal behavior, mental or emotional problems, and suicide. Other analysts noted that many children of single parent households experienced none of these consequences and that the stability rather than form of a family was most important.

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suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which had the potential to alienate them from their spouses who had not shared their experiences. Wars and other military actions continued to play a role in separating family units into the 1980s and 1990s, and the scale of these conflicts increased again after the beginning of American engagements in the Persian Gulf. In 1990, large numbers of American women were separated from their families during the Gulf War when 125,000 members of the reserves and National Guard were called to active duty. This pattern was repeated in the early 21st century when troops were sent to Afghanistan and Iraq after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Veterans of these wars also experienced divorce, post-traumatic stress, and incidents of domestic violence on their return home. Unlike in Vietnam, soldiers who were seriously wounded in these wars had a good chance of surviving because of improved medical care on the battlefield. This meant that many more disabled veterans would be coming home to families who would have to adjust and learn to provide care for them with often limited support and economic resources. FASHIONS, Trends, and Food In the 1970s, women’s fashions mirrored the dichotomous personality of American youth. While short shirts and hot pants were popular, some women preferred high-waisted granny dresses down to their ankles, mid-calf skirts, T-shirt dresses, and shifts. Tie-dyed garments, leather, and denim remained popular with both sexes. Military apparel was sported by males of all ages. In 1980 down-filled quilted coats took the fashion world by storm. Women began wearing ponchos and knickers. After Diane Keaton appeared in Annie Hall (1977), oversized men’s clothing for females was considered fashionable. In the mid-1980s, businesswomen were wearing colorful suits that were both feminine and professional; but by the end of the decade, women’s fashions were softer. Although bright colors dominated, black continued to find favor with women from all walks of life. By the late 1970s, sneakers comprised half of all shoe sales. Fads of the period included eight-track tapes, streaking, Watergate posters of “Tricky Dick,” string bikinis, caftans, discos, all-black ensembles, headbands, harem pants, citizen’s band radios, jump suits, video games, boom boxes, Rubik’s cubes, Sony Walkmans, “Who Shot J.R.?” t-shirts, everything Harry Potter or Hannah Montana, “American Idol,” reality shows, cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, and Internet blogging. Contemporary dances ranged from the hustle of the disco period to the Macarena of the late 1990s. With both parents working to maintain desired lifestyles, dependence on convenience increased in contemporary America, and the trend has been long term. By 1973 families were eating one in three meals outside the home. Many meals were eaten at fast food chains, such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s, or at pizza parlors and delis. Between 1967 and 1974 the num-



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ber of fast food restaurants more than doubled. There were fewer than 1,000 McDonald’s restaurants in 1978. Within seven years that number had more than tripled. In 1979 annual sales for snack foods reached $3.8 billion. The way American shop changed in the 1970s too, as discount stores such as Target, Wal-Mart, and K-Mart were joined by discount specialty stores such as Toys-R-Us, Circuit City, and Best Buy. The proliferation of stores offering a wide range of products was considered essential, but shopping at these stores tended to increase personal debt and dependence on credit cards. MUSIC Rock music continued to be the focus of the American music scene throughout the 1970s. Popular artists included hard rockers such as Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Black Sabbath. Fans of soft rock listened to the Beatles, the Carpenters, Anne Murray, John Denver, and the Osmond Brothers. War protest was a frequent theme among folk artists. Country artists went mainstream with crossover hits by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. The importance of religion in contemporary culture was evident in hits such as “Let It Be,” “Spirit in the Sky,” and “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Elvis Presley continued to be the exception to rock and roll stars that had been forced out of the business when rock was redefined. After he was found dead at his Memphis home on August 16, 1977, Americans bought two million Presley records within 24 hours and elevated Presley to iconic status.

A big box style location of the electronics retailer Circuit City, which went out of business in the financial crisis that began in 2008. Big box stores altered the landscape and reinforced dependence on automobiles, but also brought cheap goods to American families.

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An impromptu sidewalk memorial for the victims of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City.

September 11, 2001

The most significant event to shape the daily lives of contemporary Americans occurred on September 11, 2001, when al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four jets and used them as weapons of mass destruction. Two planes were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. A third rammed the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a fourth crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 lost their lives in the four attacks, and a large number of rescue workers died or were debilitated by contact with toxic materials at Ground Zero, the site where the Twin Towers once stood. For most contemporary Americans, the most lasting effect of 9/11 was the loss of confidence that the United States was safe from attack by foreign terrorists. Daily life in the United States was particularly affected by the immediate passage of the USA Patriot Act and the creation of the Homeland Security Department, which gave the American government the right to bypass constitutional protections in order to identify and stop terrorists. In the most extensive government reorganization since 1947, the Homeland Security Department was assigned the responsibility for coordinating the activities of 22 government agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Criticism of the reorganization came to a head after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. The daily lives of many of the thousands of people who crowded into shelters or were relocated to other cities and states were changed forever. Americans were forced to recognize that it was not only developing countries that suffered from disasters and the health and financial problems that accompanied them.



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Music fans received another blow in 1980 when former Beatle John Lennon was murdered in front of his New York City apartment. In the early 1980s the radio waves were inundated with talk radio stations, providing conservatives with a voice in the media that many felt had been lacking. The introduction of rap and hip hop gave African Americans a chance to express the music of their culture, although both genres continued to be controversial because of content frequently labeled violent, racist, and sexist. By the end of the 20th century, cable and satellite television and radio began offering die-hard rock fans a wide selection of listening options, and the introduction of iPods and MP3 players allowed owners to download music of their own choosing for free or for a nominal fee. TELEVISION In 1970 the average American worker enjoyed 2,750 hours of leisure a year, and much of that time was spent watching television. A 1974 survey indicated that Americans were more inclined to trust the validity of television news than any other source, and newscaster Walter Cronkite became the most trusted man in America. By 1980 American homes had more televisions than bathtubs, and television had become the most significant influence on how Americans

The influential newscaster Walter Cronkite addressing his television viewers during the first presidential debate between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter on September 23, 1976.

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viewed domestic and global politics. Families could purchase cable and satellite services, which offered a broad range of programming. By the 1980s advertisers had become highly adept at marketing products to target particular audiences. A 1980 study, for instance, revealed that children who watched television regularly asked for an average of 13 items a week they had seen advertised on television. The introduction of satellite television forced cable companies to become more competitive, and both industries began offering diverse viewing packages. Television of the 1970s reflected a rising social consciousness. Books and movies based on books exercised major emotional The proliferation of cell phones in the 1990s, impact. Ernest Gaines’s The Auwhile changing daily life, also affected the tobiography of Miss Jane Pittman American landscape, which became dotted with cell towers like the one shown above. (1971), for instance, traced the life of an octogenarian who had witnessed many of the pivotal events in the lives of African-American families. In 1976, the publication of Alex Haley’s ground-breaking Roots focused public attention on the family histories of African Americans descended from slaves. The book compellingly depicted the impact of slaveowners’ attempts to force slaves to renounce their native cultures. Haley’s novel reached television in January 1977. Shown over a six-night period, Roots was watched by 36.38 million American households and claimed an unprecedented 71 percent Nielsen rating. This record held until March 2, 1983, when the final episode of M*A*S*H*, the popular Korean War–based medical comedy, attracted 125 million viewers. The awareness that children could be negatively affected by televised sex and violence led to the implementation of “family-viewing time” in 1975. During family-viewing time, family entertainment was shown before 9 p.m., after which more adult programming would commence. The battle to prevent children being exposed to sex and violence spread to other venues, and ratings systems were established to warn parents about explicit content in movies and music. Television shows in contemporary America became more representative of the population than those of the past, and provided more positive role



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models for young people. Contemporary shows depicted women in career roles in programs such as Cagney and Lacey and L.A. Law, and in nontraditional blended families in offerings such as Kate and Allie and Who’s the Boss? Shows featuring single women, such as That Girl, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Sex and the City broke down perceptions that women were limited to traditional roles. Powerful women who could take care of themselves were depicted in Charmed, a tale of three sister witches. The show became the longest-running show in history featuring female leads. Portrayals of African-American families in the 1970s ranged from the barelymaking-it Evans family in Good Times (1974) to the upwardly mobile Jeffersons (1975). The latter was a spin-off from Norman Lear’s award-winning sitcom All in the Family, which poked fun at liberals and conservatives alike. It was not until 1984 when comedian Bill Cosby brought The Cosby Show to television that the lives of professional African-American families were realistically portrayed on television. As early as 1969, Jim Henson and PBS had introduced multi­cultural characters in the children’s show Sesame Street. The awareness of the need for role models for all children led the Disney Channel to respond to the growing Hispanic population by introducing shows such as Dora the Explorer and Go Diego, Go! NBC fine-tuned multicultural television with its award-winning show Heroes. This program introduced an ensemble cast of characters with super­natural powers portrayed by white, black, Japanese, Arab, and Hispanic actors, as well as those from various immigrant families. CHANGING SEXUAL PATTERNS By the 1970s the sexual revolution was in full swing, propelled by the “make-love-not-war” generation. The so-called singles culture surfaced, introducing singles bars, clubs, and apartments. As Americans became more relaxed about sex, young people became sexually active at earlier ages. Co-ed college dormitories were introduced, and the number of those who were virgins when they married declined significantly. The term “dating services” took on new meaning in the 1990s as the Internet allowed couples to meet in chat rooms, submit profiles to be matched with “ideal” partners, or advertise for a mate on Internet bulletin boards. In 1973 the controversial Roe v. Wade (410 This futuristic television design U.S. 113) decision established a constitutional dates from around 1972.

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This gay rights demonstration on 34th Street in New York City was held on July 11, 1976, seven years after the Stonewall riots of 1969, which are often considered the birth of the modern gay rights movement.

right for women to obtain abortions in the case of unwanted or life-threatening pregnancies. In the conservative 1980s, the right to abortion was repeatedly tested in national and state courts and challenged by abortion rights protesters who were willing to kill physicians and clinic workers to prevent what they considered the murder of unborn babies. What many Americans labeled soft porn was shown in mainstream theaters, and group sex and mate swapping gained favor among certain elements of the population. Feminists led the call to ban the sexual objectification of women. Homosexuals began to go public. Many states repealed sodomy laws, although as late as 1986 the Supreme Court upheld a state’s right to enforce such laws in Bowers v. Hardwick (478 U.S. 186). A strong backlash against gays occurred in the 1980s when information about the HIV/AIDS virus surfaced. Since little was initially known about how the virus spread, some Americans saw AIDS as a judgment against gay lifestyles. Ryan White, a young hemophiliac, and Elizabeth Glaser (the wife of actor Paul Michael Glaser), both of whom contracted AIDS through blood transfusions, helped teach Americans that AIDS was a national, rather than a gay problem. The gay rights movement also made advances in expanding the concept of what a family could be, working toward acceptance of gays adopting children. Gay marriage became a reality in a few states in the 2000s, though it met fierce



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opposition and was overturned in California and specifically banned in other states through the work of social conservatives. Conclusion AIDS was the biggest medical story of the 1980s and 1990s, and the vocal activism it aroused is indicative of long-term changes in American society wrought by 1970s rebellion and the empowerment of previously marginalized people. The past few decades have also been a time in which family structures have grown more varied, women have broken down barriers and expanded their roles, and immigration has further altered the ethnic and racial composition of the country. Popular entertainment gradually acknowledged these changes in families and everyday life, although not without controversy. Mainstream culture and politics reflected the diversity of the country. Elizabeth R. Purdy

Further Readings

Allen, David. Make Love Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History. Boston, MA: Little-Brown, 2000. Carruth, Gorton. The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. Carson, Allan. The “American Way”: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003. Castells, Manuel. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, And Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Chapman, Tony. Gender and Domestic Life: Changing Practices in Families and Households. New York: Palgrave, 2004. Du Noyer, Paul. The Story of Rock and Roll: The Year-by-Year Illustrated Chronicle. New York: Carlton Book, 1995. Goldthorpe, J.E. Family Life in Western Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Grey, Victor. Web Without A Weaver: How The Internet Is Shaping Our Future. Concord, CA: Open Hearth Press, 1997. Harris, C.C. The Family and Industrial Society. Boston, MA: George Allen and Unwin, 1983. Morty, Myron A. Daily Life in the United States, 1960–1990: Decades of Discord. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997. Pante, Ellen M. The American Kitchen 1700 to the Present: From Hearth to High Rise. New York: Facts On File, 1995. Pleck, Elizabeth H. Celebrating the Family: Ethnicity and Family Rituals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

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Reyes, Adelaida. Music in America: Enhancing Music, Expressing Culture. New York: Oxford, 2005. Stockman, David. The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed. New York: Harper and Row, 1986. Wallace, Patricia. The Internet in the Workplace: How New Technology Is Transforming Work. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. West, Elliott. Growing Up in Twentieth Century America: A History Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. Yalom, Marilyn. A History of the Wife. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Chapter 3

Material Culture

“Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought of as poor.” —Robert Mallett

Many historians and journalists have labeled contemporary Ameri-

can society as eclectic, multicultural, and often centered on individual selfexpression, beginning with the “Me Generation” of the 1970s. The 1980s were marked by a rise in status consciousness and a demand for the finest luxury goods. The increasing use of credit cards and home equity loans fueled the decade’s materialism. By the 1990s many Americans began to reject this materialism and instead emphasize moderation, a healthy lifestyle, and natural, eco-friendly products. Old styles returned to fashion as new styles entered the marketplace. Immigrants introduced elements of various cultures into American fashion and home décor. Contemporary American material culture thus reflects the innovation, personal fulfillment, self-indulgence, and growing environmental and health consciousness of many Americans. COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE The 1970s marked the retreat of the austere glass-and-steel Modern (or International) architectural style and the rise of the more decorative and eclectic Postmodern architectural style. Postmodern architects blended a variety of styles, from Classical to Colonial and Victorian to Modern, often within the same building. Postmodern architects considered it important to take the history of the area, as well as the building’s current environment and occupants, 35

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into account. They also utilized local materials and regional building styles. Other notable features included a focus on the everyday life of buildings and a sense of playfulness missing from Modern architectural buildings. Architects like Minoru Yamasaki, most well known for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, received criticism for buildings that some critics considered too ornamental. He believed that art should be an integral part of architecture. Noted examples of Postmodern architecture include the pyramid-shaped Transamerica Building in San Francisco, the classically-styled Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans, the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and the National Air & Space Museum and Union Station in Washington, D.C. Urban architects also continued to place an emphasis on building heights, as evidenced by the 1973 completion of the Sears Tower in Chicago, which was the world’s tallest building at that time. Noted Postmodern architects include I. M. Pei, Philip Johnson, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and the New York Five of Michael Graves, Peter Eisenman, Richard Meier, John Hejduk, and Charles Gwathmey. I. M. Pei designed the plan for Dallas City Hall, the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Robert Venturi designed the Western Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. His firm of Venturi, Rauch, and Scott Brown was one of the country’s leading firms. The New York Five were especially known for their expressive Postmodern house designs. Michael Graves, also an educator at Princeton University, designed the innovative and energy-efficient Portland Building in Oregon. Leading architect Philip Johnson had a long and varied career in both the Modern (International) and Postmodern styles. He began his career in the 1930s as a historian and arThe AT&T (now Sony) building in Manhattan, with chitectural critic who advocatits distinctive top ornament, was designed by Philip Johnson and finished in 1984. ed the Modern style. In 1936 he



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left his position as the director of architecture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York to become a practicing architect. In the 1940s he graduated from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and returned to MoMA, this time as director of its new architecture department. He again left MoMA in 1954 to start a firm with John Burgee. Beginning in the late 1960s, he began to question the Modern style, becoming one of the earliest to design in the Postmodern style. His most famous Walt Disney World’s 1982 Spaceship works include the Glass House in Earth at EPCOT Center was inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes. New Canaan, Connecticut, the IDS Center in Minneapolis, Pennzoil Place in Houston, and the AT&T Building and Seagram Building, both in New York. He popularized Postmodern style in the United States, winning the prestigious Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects in 1978. In addition to the Postmodern ethos, a variety of other influences helped shape the architecture of the period. Environmentally-minded architects sought to create eco-friendly designs and to incorporate eco-friendly products. Other examples included the development of energy-efficient windows and appliances, and the installation of solar panels on some homes and offices. The products of such designs became known as green buildings. A desire for urban renewal led many cities to hire designers to create plans that would revitalize downtown attractions, businesses, and neighborhoods. America’s aging population led to the creation of many nursing homes, active adult retirement communities, and assisted living facilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) required builders to make their buildings wheelchair accessible and user-friendly to all Americans. Theme restaurants like Planet Hollywood and casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and many coastal areas featured colorful, playful designs. Geometric and futuristic designs, such as the innovative geodesic dome introduced in the United States by Buckminster Fuller, dotted the landscape. The eclecticism of commercial architecture would carry over into domestic architecture and interior design. DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE AND FURNISHINGS Postmodern architecture began in the commercial arena, and gradually expanded to influence domestic architecture. One of the most well-known examples of Postmodern domestic architecture is the Frank Gehry House in

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This sprawling new suburban home is representative of what would be considered a typical “McMansion” of the late 1990s and early 2000s housing construction boom.

Santa Monica, California. Architect Frank Gehry remodeled an existing pink suburban home in 1978 to become his private residence. He used a variety of materials, including plywood, corrugated aluminum metal siding, chain link fencing, and glass. The house’s deliberately unfinished appearance represented the Deconstructionist ethic of abandoning traditional structural rules. More common domestic residences of the period came in a variety of styles, from older Colonial, Neoclassical, and Mediterranean styles to newer Modern, Postmodern, Ranch, and A-line styles. An emphasis on heritage and historic preservation, as well as urban renewal movements, coalesced with the reappearance of period styles. Suburban living remained a growing trend. Both suburban and urban neighborhoods were blends of freestanding houses and townhouses and other forms of attached dwellings. Individual styling and decorative ornamental details such as turrets began reappearing and exaggerated styles replaced the stark modern homes of earlier decades. A growing emphasis on bigger, more elaborate homes led to the new slang term “McMansions” to describe the large dwellings that seemed out of place in some neighborhoods still dominated by smaller single-family dwellings. Interior design of the period continued to center on the open floor plans that had gained dominance in the post–World War II period. Low walls, plants, or furniture clusters, rather than dividing walls, defined the functional spaces of many homes. High ceilings and multiple windows flooded rooms with light. The growing use of plants in both homes and offices helped bring the outdoors inside. The eclecticism of Postmodern architecture and the 1970s emphasis on individual styles carried over into interior décor. Other trends included the appearance of fashion designers in the home goods market, the



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Green Movement

Since the 1970s, Americans have realized that certain actions have a negative impact on the environment. As early as 1962, writer Rachel Carson focused public attention on environmental toxins. In Silent Spring, Carson informed Americans that “sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally,” containing the “power to kill every insect . . . to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil.” On April 22, 1970, environmentalists began sponsoring Earth Day, a national grassroots movement to promote environmental protection. Over the next decade, Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Water Pollution Control Act, and the Endangered Species Act, and banned the use of DDT as a pesticide. By the 1980s, scientists had developed comprehensive theories on global warming. While organizations such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the Green Party have long been involved in the effort to convince Americans to use environmentally friendly products and desist from activities that harm the environment, it was not until the late 20th century that the movement entered the mainstream. By the 21st century, polls were showing that the wide majority of Americans supported safe, secure, and sustainable energy. In 2007, the sale of hybrid vehicles rose by 38 percent. The use of fossil fuels became even more important in American households when the price of gasoline climbed as high as $5 in some cities in 2008. Increased support for the Green Movement was partly a response to former Vice President Al Gore’s series of environmental lectures, film, and book, An Inconvenient Truth (2006), in which he contended that future generations would ask, “What were our parents thinking? Why didn’t they wake up when they had a chance?” The Obama administration has signaled the importance of green initiatives with the appointment of leading scientists to high positions, such as the Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy. The administration has ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and introduce more clean energy. Its “New Energy for America” plan proposes to invest $150 billion in clean energy initiatives over 10 years, reduce imports of oil, and stimulate the production and purchase of one million plug-in hybrid vehicles in the United States by 2015.

do-it-yourself (DIY) movement in home repair and interior design, and the popularity of changing a home’s décor over time. Design gurus like Martha Stewart, television networks like Home and Garden Television (HGTV), and design philosophies like feng shui increasingly guided the interior design choices of many Americans.

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Postmodern style affected the design of condominium apartments like this structure on the Delaware River in Philadelphia.

American furniture of the period was also characterized by a variety of eclectic and versatile styles. Modern looks of the 1950s and 1960s enjoyed a resurgence, while Postmodern and high tech styles also flourished. Some furnishings featured traditional lines and colors, while others featured more whimsical and brightly colored designs. Some Americans chose furniture based on its comfort and flexibility, while others chose furniture based on its form and decorative nature. Many furniture pieces were designed to fit together in different arrangements, such as sectional sofas, so they could be adapted to the user’s individual and changing needs. Postmodern architects also designed furniture featuring the same decorative style, such as Frank Gehry’s Easy Edges, Rough Edges, and Gehry Collection lines. Ergonomic furniture that offered to ease back pain and other problems associated with awkward seating appeared in homes and offices. There was also a revival in Craft and folk style furniture and decorative objects, much of it made by hand. Many American homes also included exercise equipment and home gyms, central air conditioning and modern appliances, televisions, VCRs, and personal computers. Car Culture American society became more auto-driven, and most American families owned multiple cars. The car craze of the 1950s continued in a diminished role in the early 1970s. Large sedans like the Lincoln, Cadillac, and Buick,



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and sporty muscle cars like the Mustang and Pontiac GTO remained popular. By the mid-1970s, however, an energy crisis, the growing environmental movement, and competition from fuelMilitary Hummers efficient foreign imports like this one inspired forced American automobile the similarly massive manufacturers to develop cars for the civilian version. compact and subcompact market. An OPEC oil embargo led to gas shortages as Americans waited in long lines to refuel their cars. Many Americans viewed large, expensive “gas guzzlers” as wasteful and pressured carmakers for less expensive and more environmentally friendly choices. Public demand and new tougher regulations for fuel efficiency and environmental emissions also played key roles in the growth of compact and subcompact cars. The search for gasoline alternatives led to the development of battery-operated and hybrid cars. Large cars did not disappear from the market entirely. Station wagons and RVs remained popular choices for vacation vehicles, downsized versions of large sedans appeared, and suburban families bought SUVs and Hummers. Vehicles designed for off-road usage, such as Jeeps and ATVs, also became popular choices. 1970s FASHION Variety, the youth movement, and the continued growth in the popularity of the casual, sporty American Look dominated the clothing and fashions of the late 20th- and early 21st centuries. Americans sought increased wardrobe options as another means of self-expression, and experimented with new looks to create their own distinctive, personal styles. Even haute couture styles changed rapidly from season to season. There was no one key look, but rather a variety of looks from which to choose. Clothes came in a variety of materials as well, from natural fabrics, such as cotton, to synthetic fabrics, such as polyester, and blends of the two. Women’s styles ranged from androgynous to ultra-feminine, hemlines ranged from miniskirts to long peasant skirts, and shoes ranged from stiletto heels to ballet flats. The casual jeans and T-shirt look became a standard daily look. Even men’s fashion presented more style options and color choices, from traditional business attire to sporty weekend looks. The media and celebrities continued to influence fashion and start style fads, as fashion designers broadened their reach by branching out into areas such a fragrances and home décor. Noted designers of the period included Rudi Gernreich, Halston,

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American teenagers have long been attracted to punk styles and their implied subversive messages, which have roots in 1970s youth rebellion.

Anne Klein, Perry Ellis, Tommy Hilfiger, Bill Blass, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Laura Ashley, and Liz Claiborne. The 1970s featured an unstructured individualized look and bright patterns and colors. Clothing inspired by ethnic and foreign cultures was popular. Unisex styles included denim, bell-bottom, and hip hugger pants, T-shirts, sweaters, and long hair for both men and women. It was now considered commonplace for women to wear pants, even for business and evening attire. On the other hand, many women’s clothes featured feminine romantic styling with long flowing peasant or gypsy skirts or harem pants. Form-revealing fashions also gained popularity, as evidenced by the hot pants craze and the introduction of the string bikini. Menswear emphasized the comfortable lifestyle. Popular men’s looks included knit suits, polyester leisure suits, and jackets with wide lapels and excessively wide ties. Many men unbuttoned their shirts and eliminated ties altogether. Popular shoes included large platform shoes, worn by both men and women, as well as clogs, knee-high boots, and espadrille sandals. Popular haircuts included the shag, Dorothy Hamill’s signature bob, and Farrah Fawcett’s long feathered look from the hit television series Charlie’s Angels. Much of the countercultural protest fashions of the 1960s remained popular into the 1970s. The 1960s hippie fashions that made such a revolutionary



Material Culture

The Polyester Leisure Suit

One of the most well-known fashions symbolic of the 1970s was the men’s polyester leisure suit, a fad launched in 1970 by New York designer Jerry Rosengarten. The leisure suit consisted of a shirt-like jacket with wide lapels and collar, a shirt in bright colors and/or gaudy patterns, and matching bell-bottom pants. The most popular and classic leisure suit fabric was the inexpensive and flexible double-knit polyester. Popular colors included navy blue, white, brown, and various pastels, while popular patterns included houndstooth, plaid, and vertical stripes. Contrasting stitching on the jacket was a common feature. Shirts were generally worn open, although buttoned shirts and wide ties or bow ties were sometimes worn. Dangling chains and a matching belt were often worn with the leisure suit. Many leisure suits were reversible, with a different color or pattern on each side. The inexpensive leisure suit fit with the 1970s emphasis on comfortable, fun, informal styles, and many knockoff versions quickly found their way on the market. Manufacturers and retailers marketed the leisure suit as comfortable enough for everyday wear, but also stylish enough to serve as alternatives to the suit or sports coat for the office or evening wear. After reaching their height of popularity in the late 1970s, leisure suits fell out of favor by the decade’s end. They quickly became viewed as a pop culture symbol of the height of 1970s bad taste, earning the nickname “sleazure suit.” Some restaurants and other establishments even implemented dress codes requesting or demanding that patrons not wear them. In pop culture, they are often the characteristic style of slick lounge lizards or bumbling, clueless men. Well-known examples include the Saturday Night Live characters “two wild and crazy guys” and Leisure Suit Larry. The most famous leisure suit was the black-and-white version worn by John Travolta in the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever. A stereotypical polyester leisure suit from the 1970s featuring a bold pattern, exaggerated collar, and flared pants.

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countercultural statement had become a mainstream fashion choice. Mood rings that supposedly changed colors to indicate the wearer’s mood and bright yellow smiley face buttons became best-selling fads indicative of the era’s emphasis on introspection and emotion. Supporters of feminism and the women’s liberation movement continued to wear the slim, boyish, antifashion look of the 1960s and refused to wear high heels, cosmetics, and other feminine trappings. Afros became both a popular hairstyle and a cultural statement. The antimaterialist attitude of many Americans made secondhand clothing, much of it purchased from Army/Navy surplus stores, an antifashion trend. The 1970s also saw the rise of several distinctive styles associated with music genres, such as the punk rock look, the glam (glitter rock) look, and the disco look. Followers of the subversive punk style deliberately sought to appear shocking and ugly through torn black clothing pierced with metal studs, safety pins, or chains, body piercing, and brightly colored hair styled in a Mohawk. The early 1970s glam look originated in Great Britain and was associated with rock stars such as David Bowie, Gary Glitter, and the members of Queen. Glam rockers sought to create a deliberately colorful and artificial look based on a mixture of old-fashioned and futuristic space-themed clothes. The glam look also created a deliberate sexual ambiguity in part through androgynous styles and cross-dressing. Their fans and fashion imitators were referred to as “glitter kids.” The short-lived disco look that became one of the 1970s most recognized pop cultural icons featured color-coordinated polyester pants suits, bell­-­bottom pants, brightly-patterned shirts, and shoes or boots with heels. American culture’s emphasis on casual looks meant the American Look, begun in the post–World War II period by key American designers like Claire McCardell, remained a fashion staple. American consumers sought ready-towear casual separates, denim and T-shirts, and sneakers for everyday wear. Workplace standards in many businesses relaxed, with many businesses offering such perks as Casual Fridays to their workers. Designer sneakers by companies such as Nike and Adidas, often endorsed by superstar athletes like Michael Jordan, became must-have items for many adolescents, leading to parental complaints over the often exorbitant prices. A physical fitness craze and emphasis on healthy living fueled demand for exercise clothes, jogging suits and bras, and yoga pants. An outdoor sport look, featuring items such as plaid hunting jackets and flannel shirts, rugged pants, fleece-lined jackets, and hiking boots, became increasingly profitable for companies like L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer. Even Americans who did not exercise or participate in outdoor activities wore such outfits. 1980s and 1990s FASHION In the 1980s fashion featured a variety of looks, from the more subdued palette of no-nonsense business power dressing, to loud styles and colors deliberately designed to draw attention to their wearers. Suits for men and women



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were straighter and looser-fitting. Popular men’s looks included polo sweaters, pleated trousers such as Dockers, and muscle shirts, which were sleeveless T-shirts. The popularity of Miami Vice led many men to don white or pastel suits. The ecology movement added to the appeal of the natural look and an increasing demand for natural fibers such as cotton. Groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) led movements against the wearing of real animal fur and the use of cosmetic products that had been tested on research animals. Other key 1980s styles included torn jeans, tight pants, leather outfits, leg warmers, parachute pants, leggings, and athletic shoes. Celebrity fashion trendsetters of the decade included Madonna, with her leather, lace, and fishnet stockings, and the one-gloved Michael Jackson. The affluent and status-conscious 1980s saw a returning interest in high fashion and designer labels, as the proper clothing became a sign of power. Style icons such as Princess Diana and Nancy Reagan wore designer business suits and elegant evening gowns. Even jeans and sneakers carried designer labels, and the expensive price tags to match. Meanwhile many designers launched more affordable ready-to-wear lines and clothing companies mass-produced designer knock-offs. The key 1980s business look was the power suit, or power dressing. Women’s power suits featured oversized shoulder pads and were designed to give women clout as they attempted to break through the “glass ceiling” and enter the male-dominated upper levels of the corporate world. Young urban professionals, known as yuppies, sought the finest clothing, cars, gourmet food, and other material possessions as symbols of their success. Fashion standards relaxed, and comfort and individuality returned to the forefront by the last decade of the 20th century, even in business dress. Consumer spending on clothes dropped. Eclecticism continued, with styles ranging from simple natural fabrics and looks, to futuristic high-fashion designs, to ethnic garments. Menswear continued to offer more diversity in both colors and styles. Street looks included the buzz cuts, T-shirts, and boots of the skinheads; the all black garments, pale faces, and heavy make-up of the goths; the ripped jeans and worn flannel shirts of the grunge movement; and the baggy, sagging pants and overload of jewelry (bling) characteristic of hip-hop style. Another popular fashion statement was the use of various color ribbons and plastic bracelets to symbolize support for causes from AIDS awareness to the fight against breast cancer. Conclusion Contemporary American society has been increasingly characterized as a multicultural blend of eclectic heritages and customs. The rise of mass culture and the influence of celebrities also shaped modern American material culture in a variety of ways. Contemporary Americans are surrounded by a wide-ranging panorama of commercial and domestic buildings, home furnishings, cars, and clothes. From Postmodern architecture, with its emphasis

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on eclecticism, to the growth of fashion choices, Americans of the late 20th and early 21st centuries found increasingly individualized ways to express themselves through their material culture. Marcella Trevino

Further Readings

Brune, Michael. Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal. San Francisco, CA: Sierra-Club Books, 2008. Farrell-Beck, Jane and Jean Parsons. Twentieth Century Dress in the United States. New York: Fairchild, 2007. Friedman, Thomas L. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Gould, Richard A., and Michael B. Schiffer. Modern Material Culture: The Archaeology of Us. New York: Academic Press, 1981. Hall, Lee. Common Threads: A Parade of American Clothing. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1992. Kuchler, Susanne and Daniel Miller. Clothing as Material Culture. New York: Berg Publishers, 2005. LeBlanc, Sydney. Twentieth Century American Architecture: 200 Key Buildings. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1993. Leone, Mark P. and Neil Asher Silberman. Invisible America: Unearthing Our Hidden History. New York: H. Holt, 1995. Martin, Richard and Harold Koda. Jocks and Nerds: Men’s Style in the Twentieth Century. New York: Rizzoli, 1989. Mayo, Edith. American Material Culture: The Shape of Things Around Us. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1984. Russell, Beverly. Architecture and Design 1970–1990: New Ideas in America. New York: Abrams, 1989. Schlereth, Thomas J. Cultural History and Material Culture: Everyday Life, Landscapes, Museums. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1992. Strasser, Susan, Charles McGovern, and Judy Matthias. Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Susman, Warren I. Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Welters, Linda and Patricia A. Cunningham, eds. Twentieth Century American Fashion. New York: Berg Publishers, 2005.

Chapter 4

Social Attitudes

“When we’re free to love anyone we choose. When this world’s big enough for all different views . . . We shall be free.” —Garth Brooks and Stephanie Davis

Broadcast on a Friday night at the end of 1969, the first episode of the

sitcom Love, American Style—from which Happy Days would be a spinoff— featured worried parents nervously trying to give a package of birth control pills to their daughter’s boyfriend. Slip them into her drink, they tell him, calling them “vitamins” and trying to convince him that she has a rare deficiency that could harm her if it is not addressed. They have decided that it is inevitable their daughter will have premarital sex, and they fear what could happen if she becomes pregnant as a result. The boyfriend recognizes the pills for what they are, and reacts indignantly. Frustrated, the girl’s father complains that they cannot just talk about things openly. The 1960s were officially over. They had ended, in spirit if not on the calendar, when Jackie Kennedy— widow of Camelot’s president, the assassinated John F. Kennedy—wed Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis in a marriage of mutual convenience. No one pretended it was a love match, not even for the sake of appearances. After the death of Bobby Kennedy, Jackie worried that there was a vendetta against the Kennedys, and needed protection for her children. Onassis wanted an attractive young wife who would not demand too much from him, someone who already knew how to be a wife to a powerful man. Within months after the wedding, they were spending most of their time in different countries. 47

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Across America, more couples were living together “without benefit of marriage,” or “living in sin” as many still called it. Sex among college students was taken for granted, though many Southern states refused to change their laws to reflect it, and so continued to bar opposite-sex visitors from college dormitories. Casual use of marijuana had peaked not only among high school students, but also in the suburbs. At the end of the 1970s, when Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist depicts a married couple with children smoking marijuana as a reminder of the good old days, these are the good old days they were remembering: the cusp of the 1970s, when the least radical elements of the counterculture had been incorporated into the mainstream. Free love never led to widespread promiscuity, but it did destigmatize sex somewhat. Playboy was available at most newsstands, and the pornographic movie Deep Throat would soon become a nationwide sensation. A significant number of Americans under 40 had at least tried an illegal drug, including the majority of the military that had been stationed overseas. Psychedelic imagery was common in mainstream movies, James Bond’s opening credits, and the children’s show The Electric Company, by the makers of Sesame Street. THE ME DECADES Author, journalist, and cultural commentator Tom Wolfe called the 1970s the “Me Decade.” The flurry of religious, cultural, and spiritual change in the 1960s and 1970s was much like the great awakenings of previous eras. But while the Third Great Awakening of the late 19th century was marked by a common interest in social change and the interaction between the religious and secular worlds, this fourth great awakening was characterized by what religious historian Steve Bruce calls “self-religions,” which included not only actual religious movements, but also those in psychology and self-help. From the 1970s on, psychology became something people turned to not just in crisis, not just to deal with mental illness, but also for purposes that might be called recreational. Foremost was the exploration of the self. The appeal of these movements, Wolfe said, was simple: “Let’s talk about ME.” The inevitable, but unhealthy outgrowth of the counterculture’s campaign for personal and sexual liberation had led to Primal Scream Therapy, the Esalen Institute, Synanon, and other movements for which Wolfe had little more than contempt. Primal therapy—often called Primal Scream Therapy because Dr. Arthur Janov’s first book on the subject was called The Primal Scream—was a response to the talk therapies popularized by psychoanalysis. Janov believed that experiencing long-buried feelings and venting them (often through screaming) could have a cathartic effect. Despite some faddish popularity, there is no experimental evidence to support primal therapy. The Esalen Institute was one of the more prominent institutions founded to explore the human potential, by blending Eastern and Western philosophies in a manner



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Since the creation of youth culture in the 1950s and the simultaneous (and exaggerated) fears of juvenile delinquency, there has been increasing attention and concern paid to America’s young people. More money is spent on private schooling than in the past, and public schools are held to a higher standard than would have been thought feasible in past decades. Urban legends circulate with surprising speed, warning parents of dangers to their children. Perhaps in response to the Tylenol tampering murders of the early 1980s, parents were warned about sabotaged Halloween candy—everything from razor blades hidden in apples and chocolate bars, to bubblegum laced with LSD. In many neighborhoods it is unheard of for trick or treaters to receive homemade treats, which unlike store-bought candies are not protected by an individual plastic wrapper to assure the parent that nothing has been poisoned or otherwise tampered with. Parenting has experienced a vast cultural shift. In the 19th century, for many Americans it was sufficient to raise and feed children. They performed chores significantly more laborious than today’s part-time entry-level jobs, and got little to nothing in return, because the work simply needed to be done. The idea that parents had an obligation to put aside money for their children’s college education was as ludicrous as it was impossible for most of the country, even if student loans had existed. The 1970s saw a boom in parenting books, which since then have experienced nearly as many fads and different schools of thought as has dieting, and Tom Wolfe would probably agree that for parents of the Me Decades, “Let’s talk about MY KIDS” is not so far from “Let’s talk about ME.” Far more children than before are sent to ballet lessons, music lessons, and French lessons; jokes and stereotypes about nursery schools with waiting lists, in which there is some truth, abound. While corporal punishment was once the norm both at home and in the schools, most forms of it are nearly universally condemned. Much more worry goes into the influences surrounding children— enough worry that it sometimes seems implied that the last couple hundred generations only managed to grow up through sheer luck. There is more attention paid to the books children read, the television they watch, the movies aimed at them. Something like the Baby Einstein series of educational videos for infants would have been a financial failure only 20 years ago, when Sesame Street seemed sufficient for children of This first aid kit marketed as a “safety all ages; now it is a true American sucsack for kids” might have seemed cess story. excessive to previous generations.

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increasingly popular since the Beats’ explorations in Buddhism. It was a significant part of the larger trend of Americans becoming interested in Eastern religion throughout the 1970s. Synanon was a drug rehabilitation center that transformed into a cult (disbanded by the IRS in the late 1980s). Synanon was especially known for “the Game,” a sort of group talk therapy characterized by its bluntness and brutality, even sadism. Contemporary interventions sometimes rely on a sort of attack therapy, as do Scared Straight programs and the increasingly popular boot camps for troubled teenagers. By all accounts, Synanon’s program was more extreme and had less to redeem it. Another form of attack therapy was used by est (always abbreviated in lower case letters): the Erhard Seminars Training, a two-weekend course offered by Pennsylvanian and former encyclopedia salesman Werner Erhard. Throughout the 1960s, Erhard—like many Americans—had explored both Eastern mysticism and capitalist-spiritualist systems like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. The promise of est was to break down and take apart an individual so the individual could be put together again. It was the most successful of a score of similar movements in the 1970s.

Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking, at work in 1966. While controversial, his work continues to influence popular culture.



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While those may have been easy targets, the human potential movement or awareness movements—the “let’s talk about ME” movements, the selfreligions—have become an integral part of American culture, ingrained in many underlying attitudes. The widespread practice of blogging, keeping an online public or semi-public journal, is a phenomenon of the Me Decades. Like many of the psychiatric and therapeutic practices Wolfe wrote about, it is as much performance as confession, as extroverted as it is introspective. It is another example of turning “let’s talk about ME” into a social, interactive act. A more mainstream psychological trend prominent in this era is transactional analysis (TA), a branch of psychoanalysis developed by Dr. Eric Berne in the 1950s. It was in the 1970s, though, that TA became popular in the mainstream as a pop psychology success. Berne’s books introduced the idea of “transactions” as the stream of communication that flows back and forth between two individuals, both verbally and nonverbally, sometimes in conflict (as when the tone of voice does not match the literal meaning of the words spoken). “Strokes,” further, are instances of recognition, attention, and validation given by one person to another—popularized by Berne as “warm fuzzies” and “cold pricklies.” Many people today are familiar with the idea that we are motivated by the desire for attention, especially as children, and will settle for negative attention if the positive attention is not forthcoming. This is principally Berne’s doing. A rampant bestseller throughout the 1970s and 1980s, I’m Okay, You’re Okay, was written by Berne’s friend and colleague Thomas Anthony Harris, and is often thought to sum up the original Me Decade in a nutshell. It is the permissiveness implied by the title, the suggestion of relativism—no matter how screwed up we may be, no matter what damage we may be doing to each other, “we’re okay”—that the neoconservatives of the 1980s to the present have resisted with so much emotion. Harris also helped to popularize group therapy, and the idea of going to therapy regularly, even when there is no crisis that needs to be surmounted, an idea that has such currency in some circles now that it can be difficult to remember such a thing was once considered ridiculous. THE AGE OF DIMINISHING EXPECTATIONS University of Rochester psychoanalyst Christopher Lasch went even further than Wolfe in his criticism of the contemporary age, referring to the era since World War II as “the age of diminishing expectations” exacerbated by American defeat in Vietnam, the ineffectiveness of American diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, and economic stagnation. Many of the reforms and advances of the 1960s and the countercultural movements soured, stalled, or failed to live up to their promise. Lasch attacked the human potential movement, arguing that a certain strain of therapy had replaced religion as the provider

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An interpreter in colonial dress regales tourists with an account of events leading up to the Revolutionary War at the Colonial Williamsburg attraction in Virginia in 2007.

of comfort for people who could not—or chose not to—actually improve their lives in concrete ways. Instead they took self-improvement classes, spent money on health food that did not make them healthier, learned how to get in touch with their feelings or relate to others, or explored alternative or foreign religions (typically in a very haphazard fashion, like learning French by memorizing a restaurant menu). Personal change and group therapy had replaced the political change sought in the 1960s. Instead of changing the world, Americans had begun focusing on changing how they felt about it. All of this introspection and exploration of the self led to a wave of nostalgia beginning in the 1970s and persisting to today. Historical preservation societies have enjoyed a boom since the end of the 1960s, as have historical recreation theme parks like Colonial Williamsburg and Plimoth Plantation. Every decade seems to have its own Happy Days, a TV show set a few decades earlier for a loving, sometimes lightly mocking portrait of that barely-earlier time. In the 1970s, it was Happy Days in the 1950s; in the 1980s, it was the Wonder Years in the 1960s; in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was That 70s Show. Every generation since the Baby Boomers has been much more invested in the idea of generational identity than previous generations had been, and have been obsessed with generating names and characteristics for one’s cohorts in Generation X, Generation Y, the Millennials, and so on.



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The Me Decades have also seen a rise in white ethnicity, as members of groups that had traditionally integrated into America’s melting pot began to reassert an ethnic identity, such as Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Greek Americans, and Polish Americans. In some cases this may have been a response to an awareness of African-American and Native-American identities as movements centered around those races took prominence. Especially in the case of well-assimilated Americans lining up for Celtic knotwork tattoos because of a single Irish-American grandmother, it may come from a desire to rebel against the perception of that American melting pot as boring, bland, an identity defined by its lack of being anything else: the absence of color. In other cases it was a rebellion against the WASP-dominated image of America, which had long since ceased to be populated primarily by descendants of its British founders. Nowhere was that WASP dominance more obvious or misplaced than in the movie studio’s pleas to Francis Ford Coppola to recast the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather, played by Al Pacino. They wanted Robert Redford. Affirmative Action When deciding a school desegregation case for the Fifth Circuit of the Federal Court of Appeals in 1966, Judge John Minor Wisdom held that schools must take affirmative action to speed up the pace of integration. This meant that school officials were required to take active measures in providing remedies for past discrimination, while dealing with the process of integration in the present. The Supreme Court endorsed affirmative action as a remedy for segregation two years later in Green v. County School Board (391 U.S. 430), which overturned freedom of choice as a method of integrating schools. President Lyndon Johnson threw the weight of the federal government into affirmative action programs, and quota systems were established to make schools more equitable. School officials drew up new school lines in order to adhere to federal guidelines and began busing children across lines to achieve a stipulated racial balance. Protest against busing was swift and furious, spreading throughout the country. In 1971, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education (402 U.S. 1), the Supreme Court determined that in cases of de jure segregation, where school districts had been drawn up simply to enforce segregation, schoolchildren could be bused across school lines to achieve racial quotas. In August 1971, antibusing advocates in Pontiac, Michigan, set off dynamite that demolished 10 school buses just before school was to begin for the year. Over the next three years, with the support of the Nixon administration, the school antibusing movement gained momentum. In 1974, the Supreme Court held that in cases of de facto segregation, where separation of the races occurred in response to community mobility patterns, rather than intentional discrimination, busing across school lines would no longer be endorsed.

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Over time, affirmative action spread beyond lower education to encompass the workplace and higher education. Employers were required to hire and promote specific quotas of African Americans, women, and other minorities in order to comply with federal guidelines. Colleges and universities began setting up affirmative action programs that allowed minority students to be admitted under different guidelines than white students. White students and employees rebelled, turning to the courts for redress. In 1978, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (438 U.S. 265), a divided Supreme Court held that racial quotas violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the 1980s, due to the reshaping of the Supreme Court under the conservative administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the Supreme Court began systematically dismantling legal protections for affirmative action in cases such as Richmond v. J.A. Croson (1988), Ward’s Cove Packing Company v. Atonia (1989), Martin v. Wilks (1989), and Lorance v. AT&T (1989). In response, Congress reaffirmed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which was designed “to strengthen and improve Federal civil rights law” and “provide for damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination.” Culture Wars The concept of culture wars derives from the belief that there are great divides among the American public that shape their political and social views, to the extent that elections are won and lost and policies determined according to those views. Whether or not the United States is in the midst of a culture war is still a hotly debated issue. Some people argue that the concept of an American culture war first surfaced in 1988 with the release of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which depicted a dream sex sequence involving Jesus Christ. The uproar from Christians throughout the United States was significant, and many picketed the movie wherever it was shown. Pat Buchanan, a strident voice of the religious right, announced to the Republican Convention in 1992 that the country was, indeed, in the midst of a culture war. The academic debate about the existence of a culture war began in 1991 with the publication of University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter’s Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Hunter argued that the culture war did exist and that it played a major role in American politics. Those who accept the culture war as fact believe that divisiveness has become entrenched in American society to the point that opposing groups may never be able to reconcile their differences on issues where religion and politics intersect. This argument presupposes that religious and moral issues have more impact on political decisions than classic economic conflicts. Support for the notion of a culture war returned to the front burner during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Clinton impeachment. David Broder of the Washington Post argues



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The Vietnam Veteran

The Vietnam War ended badly and ambiguously for the United States—it was not a war imbued with a shade of nostalgia like World War II. The U.S. government has never admitted defeat in the war, but it has no basis by which to claim a victory except insofar as the spread of Southeast Asian Communism was contained to Southeast Asia. Upon their return, Vietnam War veterans endured hostility from a divided public, had fewer benefits than World War II veterans, and were widely misunderstood. Some also suffered from post-traumatic The flag of the National League of stress disorder. Families of American Prisoners and In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a Missing in Southeast Asia has also crop of movies centered around Vietnam become a symbol of support for veterans, signaling a cultural shift toward Vietnam veterans. a greater willingness to address the life experiences of the men and women who served in Vietnam. The 1976 film Taxi Driver stars Robert Deniro as Travis Bickle, an honorably discharged marine who, traumatized by the war, is unable to sleep at night and resumes his battle on the crime and immoral elements of New York City. Later films began to present more heroic, if still violent, portraits of veterans. They included the Chuck Norris series Missing in Action and the Rambo series, among others. First Blood, the 1982 movie that was the first of the Rambo series, was typical of the new Vietnam Veteran genre. Honorable, competent, but haunted by the past and ready to be turned back into a killing machine at a moment’s notice, John Rambo is a veteran and a drifter who just desires to be left alone. When the local police are unable to stop harassing him, he snaps, going on a killing spree from which he could be talked down only by his former commanding officer, a fellow veteran of the war. These films were followed by a profusion of other movies and books. In the Me Decades the Vietnam War came to be seen as one of the nation’s traumatic experiences, and was eventually picked apart and probed from every conceivable angle.

that during the 2000 election George W. Bush continued to be a viable candidate chiefly because of the importance of moral issues. Morris P. Fiorina, author of the 2006 book Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, believes that the notion of an American culture war is more

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in the minds of journalists who jumped on the bandwagon because perceived societal conflicts were considered newsworthy. According to Fiorina, 80 to 90 percent of the American public holds moderate views on political issues. He contends that the “myth of the culture war” is a result of misinterpreting the connection between election returns and opinion polls. Dividing states into blue and red, he argues, has exaggerated differences among the people who live in those states. Democrat Barack Obama derided the notion of a culture war in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, “We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states, and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.” During the 2008 election, discussions of a culture war resurfaced when Republican presidential candidate John McCain chose Alaska’s Republican governor as his running mate. Sarah Palin opposed abortions under all circumstances, supported a ban on gay marriage, and advocated the banning of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series about a boy wizard who fights the ultimate evil in his fantasy world. The fact that Palin is an evangelical Christian whose views mirror those of the religious right smacked of hypocrisy to some people, because in the past McCain had denounced both Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, two of the most vocal members of the religious right, as “intolerant.” Sexual Harassment In the 1970s a group of feminists coined the term “sexual harassment” to describe behavior in the workplace and academic world that involved unwanted comments, looks, touching, and demands. While women are generally the victims of sexual harassment, they may also be the perpetrators. The emergent women’s movement led the battle for ending sexual harassment, contending that it was usually an attempt to intimidate women. Feminists pointed out that sexual harassment was most common in situations where women comprised a small minority of a particular workforce or academic setting. For the first time, women began to look to the courts for redress of grievances. Between 1971 and 1975, six separate sexual harassment cases helped to establish a clearer understanding of sexually harassing behavior. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission distributed warnings that sexual harassment was a violation of Section 703 of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1986, in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (477 U.S. 57), the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the argument of Mechelle Vinson that sexual harassment constituted a “hostile environment,” and placed the burden on employers and schools to create nonhostile working or academic environments This acknowledgement that employers and school officials could be held liable whenever sexual harassment occurred on their premises resulted in new guidelines detailing what was unacceptable behavior at work and school.



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Behavior that constituted sexual harassment ranged from nonphysical actions such as pressuring someone for dates and telling sexual jokes, to intimidation that included demands for sexual favors or inappropriate touching, to physical violence that was sexually motivated. The issue of sexual harassment exploded on the scene in 1991 when President George H. W. Bush was given the opportunity to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first and only African American on the Supreme Court. Marshall was a pioneer of the Civil Rights movement and had argued the landmark desegregation cases of the 1950s before the court. Bush’s task was made harder by the fact that many prominent African-American lawyers were Democrats. Bush ultimately settled on Republican Clarence Thomas, an African American from Georgia who had little legal experience. Thomas had paid his dues with the Republican party by working with the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. While doing routine background work on Thomas, two journalists learned that a University of Oklahoma law professor named Anita Hill had told several people that she had been sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas. Hill, a Republican, agreed to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was holding hearings on the Thomas nomination. The hearings were broadcast on national television, focusing worldwide attention on the issue of sexual harassment. The Bush administration played the race card, calling the charges a “high-tech lynching,” in an attempt to mitigate damage. Thomas’s nomination was ratified by a vote of 52 to 48. Anita Hill became an instant celebrity, praised and vilified according to individual perceptions. Thomas became one of the most conservative justices on the Supreme Court. The public airing of the charges served to broaden public understanding of what constituted sexual harassment and how it should or should not be handled. Over time, the number of Americans who believed Hill’s testimony increased while the number of people who accepted Thomas’s version declined. Political Correctness Contrary to widespread belief in both the left and the right, there is no clear origin of a political correctness movement, and in fact the term politically correct has been primarily used by conservative commentators and comedians to mock straw man liberalism. Nevertheless there is some truth buried somewhere in that straw: over the last few decades, one of the concerns of some on the left has been to adjust and revise language and behavior in order to increase sensitivity to minority groups. At one point, urban legends circulated about an origin of a “PC movement” at a California college, where allegedly certain terms were outlawed in response to student complaints. These legends are just that, but they reflect an obvious trend. The women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s revised language

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The Internet and Chatting Online

Perhaps nothing in the last 40 years has changed American social interactions more than the extraordinary advances in telecommunications. For a long time the Internet was accessible only to computer professionals, then to college students who knew to seek it out. From the 1990s on (when graphics and high-speed home access were introduced) the Internet became available to the general public as corporations profited from this arrangement. In recent years, the Internet has become available to students and teenagers even while they are in school, whether they are logging on from a school computer, a laptop, or their telephone. Thanks to Amazon.com, Emusic, iTunes, and other vendors, rarity where books, movies, and music are concerned has been nearly wiped out. There is no more need to search a dozen record stores looking for the new release by a little-known band, now that it can be bought online, often directly from the band itself. When seeking something older, one simply checks for it on the eBay website. While this seems a minor thing, commodity is fundamental to many American subcultures, particularly youth subcultures: the hippies had their music, the punks and goths had theirs, and so on. Even aside from purchases, though, Americans are exposed to ideas on the Internet that they might never have run across before. Someone in Wisconsin who is a fan of Arthur Machen’s short stories or the Space: 1999 TV show will have no trouble finding other people to discuss these passions with, as opposed to a few short years ago. Gay teens and adults, perhaps unwilling to come out of the closet, can go online for social support they cannot find offline. Online, people are not always who they say they are. Sometimes they are bots, programs run to provide automated or randomized responses; sometimes they are explicitly role-playing or overtly anonymous; sometimes they are actively lying about who they are. While this has been a factor in online interactions for at least 25 years—since the modem became commonly available to the home computer user—it is the ubiquity of the Internet and the mainstream awareness (and general acceptance) of online relationships and communities that have made it key. Money is not what has made online identity important—the many online scams have become a running joke—but rather, sex is. Several prominent stories hit the headlines every year in which one member of a couple who met online discovers the other half of the couple is not who he or she claimed to be. More and more divorce cases are bringing up online affairs, even when no offline meeting was ever arranged—and indeed, some men and women have left their spouses for people they met online.



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to be more gender-inclusive when possible, such as using the term actor to refer to both men and women of that occupation, using the gender-neutral wait staff and flight attendants in place of waiters and waitresses and stewards and stewardesses, and discouraging the media from the previously common practice of Arguments about politically correct language have extended to the wording on signs such as this one. drawing attention to a female professional’s gender. Terms for race have fallen in and out of fashion: Negro and colored sound wrong to the ear now, Afro-American was short-lived, Chicano is now less common than the more all-purpose Latino, and it is now unorthodox to use Oriental in reference to a person’s ethnicity. This is more a matter of changing social preferences than anything else. There is no oversight to this, no conscious decision being made. But there is a conscious decision behind some changes. Terms like disabled and handicapped came under criticism because they indicate a deficiency in their subject. Retarded fell out of favor because it had become a schoolyard insult. It had originally been adopted to refer to individuals with special developmental needs, specifically because idiot, imbecile, and moron, all of them originally medical terms with no negative meaning, had been adopted as insults. Linguist Steven Pinker calls this the “euphemism treadmill,” in which words adopted as euphemisms eventually take on a negative connotation of their own and have to be discarded. These shifts are often made toward or away from specificity. Cognitive impairment and paraplegic are both more specific than disabled; person of color is more general than Puerto Rican or Korean-American. It is difficult to displace usages through shifts of specificity, though. There will always be a need to refer to some category that includes both paraplegics and the cognitively impaired, always a need to differentiate between Korea and Puerto Rico. Baseball team owner Bill Veeck, who was missing part of his leg, said he preferred to be called crippled in newspaper articles, rather than handicapped. Crippled was a term specific to his condition, and in his mind did not carry the connotation that he was less capable. Other terms that have fallen out of favor were genuinely offensive in origin, and often in usage—as in “Jewed him down” or “I got gypped.” Beginning in the 1960s but especially in the 1990s, cartoons featuring racial caricatures and stereotypes were voluntarily removed from circulation, including not only the blackface caricatures of some old Warner Brothers, MGM, and Disney cartoons,

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The siting of this seasonal Christmas tree, which is accompanied by a menorah, on city property in Washington Square Park in New York remains controversial.

but also the Southern stereotypes of Deputy Dawg and Heckle & Jeckle. Speedy Gonzales cartoons were briefly removed from circulation until the MexicanAmerican community protested, pointing out that a portrait is not a caricature, and that as the hero of the story, there is nothing offensive about Speedy. There has also been a movement to remove reference to religion from public arenas, be they governmental or educational, as in school Christmas pageants and Easter celebrations, school prayer, and so on. This is a controversial issue that is far from being settled to anyone’s satisfaction. All of these shifts have been motivated by different factors. The right tends to lump it all together as political correctness and further ascribes ridiculous beliefs to the lump, particularly for comedic effect. But that mockery comes from a very real observation—that in the past few decades, as old standards have fallen away, they have not always been consistently replaced with new ones; it can be difficult to know what the right thing to say is, and what might or might not offend someone. That concern with offense is a very 19th-century concern—but filtered through the lens of the self-centric Me Decades.



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Conclusion While social attitudes have undergone many transformations since the 1960s, the legacy of that era continues to be felt in the United States. In some ways the countercultural movement grew shallower as it joined the mainstream. Also, as attention turned to self-improvement, personal change, and political correctness, Americans seemed to turn away from wide-ranging issues and instead focus on minutia, such as nuances of language. Nonetheless, more progress toward social harmony in an increasingly multiethnic nation had been made in these years, and was epitomized by the 2008 election of Barack Obama, whose mixed African-American and white heritage would once have barred him from segregated public spaces, not to mention the White House. Bill Kte’pi Elizabeth R. Purdy

Further Readings

Baker, Carrie N. The Women’s Movement against Sexual Harassment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Berne, Eric. What Do You Say after You Say Hello? London: Corgi Books, 1975. Best, Gary Dean. The Retreat from Liberalism: Collectivists versus Progressives in the New Deal Years. New York: Praeger, 2002. Broder, David. “One Nation Divisible; Despite Peace, Prosperity, Voters Agree to Disagree.” Washington Post (November 8, 2000). Dziech, Billie Wright and Linda Weiner. The Lecherous Professor: Sexual Harassment on Campus. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1984. “Endless Culture War.” Economist (v.387/8600, October 4, 2008). Fiorina, Morris P. Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. Hunter, James. Culture Wars: The Struggle To Control The Family, Art, Education, Law, And Politics In America. New York: BasicBooks, 1991. Jay, Gregory. American Literature & the Culture Wars. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Killen, Andreas. 1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America. New York: Bloomsbury, 2006. Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: Norton, 1978. Lytle, Mark Hamilton. America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Mayer, Jane and Jill Abramson. Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

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Pressman, Steven. Outrageous Betrayal: The Real Story of Werner Erhard from est to Exile. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Schulman, Bruce J. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Books, 2002. Steiner, Claude. The Original Warm Fuzzy Tale. Rolling Hills Estates, CA: Jalmar Press, 1977. Zimmerman, Jonathan. Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Chapter 5

Cities and Urban Life

“If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods.” —Harvey Milk

In many ways the tenor of urban life during the early 1970s resembled that

of the turbulent 1960s. This upheaval was apparent with regard to issues of race and political alignments. As a result of expanded political and social activism, African Americans began to gain significant political power in city governments. By 1974 African Americans had been elected to the mayoralty in several major cities, and served on a large number of city councils. Because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the legal rights of African Americans were more secure than ever, but progress toward true social and economic opportunity remained elusive. The number of poor African-American families failed to decline between 1969 and 1980, and the difference between per capita incomes for whites and blacks remained the same. This economic disparity created fragmentation within American cities. The great majority of the nation’s African-American population resided in urban areas, and more than half of these residents lived in inner-city neighborhoods. Analysts spoke of the creation of a permanent urban “underclass” of unemployed and underemployed citizens who relied on welfare, and sometimes illegal enterprises, to sustain themselves within the larger American economy. African Americans, many living in the most dilapidated and impoverished city neighborhoods, comprised a majority of this urban underclass, 63

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A row of decrepit buildings in a black neighborhood in Baltimore in the early 1980s. The boardedup shop on the left features cigarette and alcohol billboards aimed at women and minorities.

with single-parent households, usually headed by women, prominent among this group. Johnnie Tillmon, the first chairwoman of the National Welfare Rights Organization, commented in 1972 on this growing dependency on welfare by poor urban women: “I’m a woman. I’m a black woman. I’m a poor woman. I’m a fat woman. I’m a middle-aged woman. And I’m on welfare. I am a statistic. Welfare’s like a traffic accident. It can happen to anybody, but especially it happens to women.” The comparative affluence of the 1980s raised hopes that racial divisions and related poverty issues would subside in urban America. Yet by 1989 the “ghetto” remained a pervasive phenomenon both within the mindset of the nation, as well as a continuing presence within cities. Child poverty, a decline of social cohesion, eroding public housing and public schools, and dwindling tax bases, all continued to plague African-American neighborhoods. A rising tide of conservative ideology sought to define these conditions in terms both individualistic and moralistic. As a result, many Americans perceived the continuing plight of urban African Americans as self-created and self-perpetuated. This conservative orientation thrived in western and southern cities as they continued to receive an influx of new residents after 1970. For example, Phoenix contained significantly segregated neighborhoods. The Arizona Republic reported in 1984 that “Historically, the city of Phoenix has been a segregated city and census and other data show that it is becoming more so.” According to historian Bradford Luckingham, those African Americans who attained middle-class status in Phoenix often relocated to more affluent sub-



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urban areas, thereby leaving their old neighborhoods, plagued with social and financial dislocation, behind. Unemployment, poor educational facilities, and disintegrating infrastructure undermined African-American neighborhoods in Phoenix. Gang-related violence and drug trafficking spurred one resident to claim, “You can’t walk out your door without being afraid of getting hurt.” When one former mayor was questioned about “minority problems” he responded by testifying that “In Phoenix, we (whites) didn’t feel we had a minority problem. We believed that the minorities had the problem.” More affluent African Americans encountered segregation in less visible forms. Luckingham speaks of an African-American millionaire who moved to an upscale suburb north of Phoenix, but who could still not join a local “lily-white” country club. No doubt the scenario that occurred in Phoenix mirrored conditions in other western and southern cities. URBAN DESPAIR Whether the perception of self-imposed segregation and poverty was accurate or not, the realities of these problems led inevitably to race-related violence. Efforts to end segregated public schools in South Boston elicited remarkably hostile obstructionist tactics by white residents in their ethnic neighborhoods. In 1974 a Massachusetts U.S. District Court judge attempted to implement a busing plan, developed by the state Board of Education, which required students to be transported to different schools in order to end a pattern of illegal segregation. Resistance to the plan by whites in South Boston neighborhoods quickly became violent. The efforts at desegregation ultimately did little to provide better educational opportunities for African Americans and failed to end the deeprooted poverty in South Boston. Today the student population in Boston public schools is overwhelmingly African American and Hispanic, while more affluent white students regularly opt for private and parochial institutions. On May 17, 1980, a Tampa jury acquitted four Miami policemen in the killing of Arthur McDuffie, an African-American businessman, whom they had beaten to death after a motorcycle chase. The event constituted the latest in a series of police brutality cases. Mayhem followed, with African-American mobs attacking whites, and white policemen retaliating with deadly gunfire. Eighteen people lost their lives. This episode paled when compared to the conflagration that occurred in Los Angeles in 1992. In March of that year, four Los Angeles policemen arrested motorist Rodney King, a prison parolee, after a high-speed chase. A private citizen named George Holliday video recorded most of the arrest, which depicted the officers tackling, tasering, and battering King with their batons. The Los Angeles district attorney charged the officers with excessive use of force, but a jury acquitted them after a trial held in the predominantly white city of Simi Valley. African Americans in South Central Los Angeles viewed the acquittal as another episode in a continuing saga of injustice at the

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hands of the city’s legal system. This perception had been sharpened by a relatively light sentence handed down to a Korean-American shop owner for the killing of an African American named Latasha Harlins. The shop owner shot Harlins over a dispute involving a carton of orange juice. This event had also been video recorded. These incidents, combined with high unemployment and pervasive poverty within South Central Los Angeles, triggered one of the worst riots in American history. Between 50 and 60 people were killed and over 2,000 injured during nearly a week of almost unbelievable violence. Televised episodes of the beating of a white truck driver named Reginald Denny, and the sight of Korean store owners firing their guns at African-American and Hispanic rioters and looters, led many Americans to believe that their cities had become cauldrons of despair and death. GROWTH IN THE SUNBELT One of the most noteworthy trends of urban development after 1970 was the continued emergence of the west and south as a locus of city growth. This phenomenon began during the late 19th century, but acquired significant momentum as a result of federal government policy during World War II. The Roosevelt administration implemented the Federal Decentralization of War Industries Program in 1942 as a means to protect American industry from enemy attack. As a result, defense factories and military training facilities appeared in western and southern urban locations. Cities such as Tampa, Houston, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Seattle experienced a remarkable amount of growth in both population and economic activity. This trend continued well after the war, as the federal government’s demand for defense material remained acute during the Cold War. Urban historians have termed this event the “Rise of the Urban Sunbelt,” and have generated broad definitions as to what urban centers resided in this Sunbelt area. Some defined the region as that including cities as far flung as Miami and Portland, Oregon. Federal monetary resources were very important to this Sunbelt urban growth. Despite protestations from Sunbelt residents that government dollars might come with strings attached, the influx of federal resources created a multiplier effect for the emergence of high-tech industry. Sunbelt municipal leaders capitalized on this development by creating a tax and regulatory environment attractive to new business. A low rate of unionization because of Sunbelt state right-to-work legislation appealed to employers. Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix, for example, actively recruited computer, aerospace, and other industries that relied heavily on research and development and a welleducated, technologically-astute, and nonunionized workforce. Job opportunities, climate, and a relaxed outdoor lifestyle proved to be irresistible inducements for newcomers seeking to claim their right to the American dream on the nation’s new urban frontier.



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Sunbelt cities also benefited from being able to capture their peripheral suburban growth and keep these neighborhoods and their relatively affluent residents within the city limits. Undeveloped land surrounding Sunbelt central cities made this possible. Eastern and northern cities (Frostbelt cities) had lost this valuable source of suburban land and its attendant tax dollars many years before to incorporated communities contiguous to their borders. The positive formula of support for business and the trumpeting of attractive environment remained a constant of Sunbelt urban development because of the actions of local governmental officials. In many cases, business leaders and municipal political officials were one and the same. In Phoenix, for example, local business leaders, including a young Barry Goldwater, created and served on a Charter Government Committee, which actively sought to bring new high-tech industrial enterprises to the city. The actions of these Phoenix businessmen and politicos served as an example to Frostbelt cities seeking to remake their economies during the difficult business climate of the late 1970s and early 1980s. City officials from Boston visited Phoenix and studied its success closely before creating a business environment conducive to attracting the Route 128 “Loop” of high-tech and medical research companies. Yet as Sunbelt cities matured in more recent years, they experienced the growing pains afflicting older cities located in different parts of the country. Urban sprawl, traffic congestion, air pollution, institutionalized political

The skyline of Dallas, Texas. With its postwar focus on oil, telecommunications, high technology, and banking, Dallas became a prime example of a Sunbelt city.

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A late 20th-century shortage of low-income housing in urban areas meant homelessness, especially for the mentally ill, persisted in the midst of wealth.

corruption, ethnic and racial antagonisms, and rising crime rates all threatened to undermine the supposed bucolic work and leisure environment. National economic downturns affected Sunbelt cities as dramatically as urban areas in other parts of the country. Traffic studies in Los Angeles, for example, demonstrated that a commuter could travel more quickly through downtown at rush hour on a horse than in an automobile. Such a revelation was particularly disturbing since most Sunbelt cities had either neglected or never constructed mass transit as an alternative to automobile travel. Sunbelt Culture Yet business did not completely consume the culture of Sunbelt cities during these years. Style, sophistication, and other monuments to urban maturity, such as major sports teams, quickly appeared. Historian Carl Abbott points out that California cities “represented the frontier as a land of self-expression.” He also notes that Los Angeles became the “world capital of consumption.” He asserts that “Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive came to rival New York and Fifth Avenue as homes of unlimited charge accounts[ . . . ]. In the 1980s, success was much more likely to mean making it in L.A.” For Abbott, San Francisco became the city where residents could find themselves within a tolerant “culture of civility.” If many Sunbelt cities still experienced population and economic growth during the 1970s, older eastern cities struggled. New York, hit hard by stagflation (a stagnant national economy combined with rising inflation), faced immense



Cities and Urban Life

New York City in the 1970s

In the 1970s, the City of New York experienced major economic and social crises. On May 8, 1970, the Hard Hat Riot erupted at Wall and Broad Streets when 200 construction workers confronted 1,000 high school and college students objecting to the shooting of student protestors at Kent State, the Vietnam War, and the American invasion of Cambodia. The economic slump was partly a response to a middle-class and business exodus to the suburbs. When banks announced in 1975 that they were no longer willing to invest in short-term city debt, it precipitated a financial crisis. President Gerald Ford turned down a request for federal funds. Mayor Abraham Beame prepared to announce that the city would have to declare bankruptcy if a $150 million investment was not forthcoming from the teacher’s union pension funds. That investment allowed the city to avert disaster. On July 13, 1977, New York City was plunged into darkness when lightning struck a Consolidated Edison electrical line, causing transmission lines to shut down automatically. The New York Times announced that the blackout had disrupted “the lives of nearly a million people.” Some New Yorkers were trapped in subways and elevators; others made their way out of theaters, restaurants, shops, and offices in total darkness. Airports shut down. The most immediate problem was looting. According to Robert D. McFadden, “entire store fronts were ripped away” in Brooklyn. One police officer remarked that East Harlem’s Third Avenue looked “like a bomb hit it.” New York’s financial crisis led to major urban decay, accompanied by rising crime rates and a host of social problems. By 1976, 12 million New Yorkers were on relief. Nowhere was decay more evident than in the Bronx, which was home to 60,000 people. Some residents felt the decay had been intensified by the construction of Robert Moses’s Cross Bronx Expressway, which had been designed to connect the Bronx with Long Island and New England. Borough President Robert Abrams insisted that Bronx residents had given up only because they felt “the city was not paying attention” to their neighborhood needs. One of the worst areas of the Bronx was the 42nd Precinct, an area known as Fort Apache because of the drug addicts who roamed the area in packs, committing crimes that ranged from attempted murder of a police detective in the summer of 1971, to stripping Public School 140 of anything considered valuable the following November. The notorious criminal known as the Son of Sam also prowled the streets of New York in the 1970s. After telling police that “to stop me you must kill me,” David Berkowitz admitted to killing six people and wounding seven when he was arrested in August 1977.

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difficulties. Staggering crime rates, immense welfare financial outlays, and social disorder associated with infrastructure failures all signaled a low point in the city’s history. A 25-hour blackout struck New York in July of 1977 resulting in considerable civic strife and looting. During the mayoral administration of Abraham Beame the city avoided bankruptcy only when its teachers’ union agreed to purchase $150 million worth of municipal bonds. REVENUE SHARING The challenges of high crime, declining tax base, infrastructure obsolescence, and surging entitlement costs faced by New York confronted many other American cities. President Richard Nixon responded to this urban financial plight with revenue sharing. This program provided for the return of federal tax monies to states and cities, to be spent for a wide variety of projects and needs. Revenue sharing did not require matching funds from local governments, but was still not universally popular. Critics of the program argued that revenue sharing was inadequate to meet the needs of big cities. Nevertheless, Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter continued revenue sharing. Between 1972 and 1986, money collected in federal taxes was reallocated to city governments, with few restrictions placed on how those funds could be used. Revenue sharing embraced the philosophy that local needs varied, and that elected officials at the municipal level would be more effective at identifying those needs than the federal government. Communities held public hearings to determine how the money would be spent. One of the few stipulations imposed upon cities was that there could be no racial discrimination on how the monies were dispersed. Revenue sharing also required that cities conduct public audits. As a result, smaller towns, as well as large cities, received direct federal monetary assistance. The program operated for 14 years, and its administrative costs were extremely low. A total of $85 billion reached American communities. Revenue sharing continued into the 1980s, although the amounts allocated by the federal government steadily diminished. The Community Development Act Nixon initiated another fiscal program that profoundly affected urban America. As a pillar of his New Federalism, he signed the Community Development Act of 1974 into law. This program funneled federal monetary assistance to cities in the form of a single block grant, rather than through a variety of categorical outlays earmarked for specific purposes. As with revenue sharing, city officials determined how the money would be allocated at the local level. Cities qualified for the block grants by creating a housing-assistance plan and received funding based on factors of population density, housing supply, and depth of poverty.



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Boston’s successful Quincy Market tourist attraction and shopping destination, an early festival marketplace style development, in 2005.

Festival Marketplaces

During the 1970s and 1980s, James Rouse, a visionary urban developer, oversaw the renovation of Boston’s Quincy Market–Faneuil Hall and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor districts. These ventures proved to be remarkably popular and profitable and helped to spawn similar downtown projects in other cities. Baltimore continued its efforts with the construction of Oriole Park at Camden Yards, a new baseball facility completed in 1992. The architects Helmuth, Obata, and Kassabaum of Kansas City modeled Camden Yards after Boston’s Fenway Park, which opened in 1912 and had retained its human scale and downtown neighborhood charm. Cleveland followed suit with the completion in 1995 of a permanent home for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. This unique structure stood as the showpiece for a larger program of downtown revitalization in that city. San Diego’s Old Town and Gas Lamp Quarter, Northampton, Massachusetts’ Thornes Marketplace, Memphis’ Beal Street, and San Antonio’s River Walk all testified to the fact that many urban residents still regarded an economically viable and physically recognizable downtown as essential to a vibrant and attractive city.

The Community Development Act did encourage city officials to become more creative in dealing with persistent problems. But many cities spent their funding on physical improvements rather than social programs. Because of political realities, elected city officials also directed much of their

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block grant monies to suburban neighborhoods, thereby failing to address severe inner-city problems. Inner-City Problems One of the most pervasive of these inner-city problems was the rapid spread of drugs, especially crack cocaine, during the 1980s and 1990s in poor neighborhoods. The money associated with drug trafficking contributed to a proliferation of gang-related violence. The drug trade also exacerbated the AIDS epidemic, as the disease was passed from victim to victim through the use of infected intravenous needles. The need for low-income housing grew substantially by the end of the 20th century. Unsuccessful urban renewal programs, the destruction of the housing stock from demolition, and a reduced commitment by the federal government to the goals of the several National Housing Acts all reduced available affordable housing options. The result was a significant increase in urban homelessness. Many of the urban homeless were the mentally ill, abandoned by the federal government through Reagan-era cutbacks. Many others were single-parent families headed by poor women. It became evident that the worst effects of the low-income housing shortage fell most heavily on these women and on their children. Gentrification also contributed to the reduction in available housing for poor urban Americans. Seeking to experience the “dynamics” of urban life, relatively affluent and upwardly mobile young urban professionals, or yuppies, began to purchase or lease renovated downtown brownstones or other potentially attractive townhouse structures. Usually working in peripheral suburban locations, these yuppies cross-commuted back to the central city at the end of the workday. While the in-migration of these professionals resulted in the restoration of a significant section of inner-city residential areas, the resulting rise in home and apartment rental and purchase prices drove the poorest city dwellers into even more horrific living conditions. Immigration Massive immigration intensified urban poverty and also changed the demographic character of urban life by the 21st century. Only a fraction of these new immigrants were from Europe. Most arrived from Asia, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, and many entered the country illegally. Los Angeles became the major port of entry, but other cities reflected the transformations brought about by this influx almost immediately. For example, 900,000 Cuban immigrants dramatically altered the demographic, cultural, and political identity of Miami. New urban racial and ethnic majorities emerged. Persons of color outnumbered whites in Los Angeles, and the combined number of Latino immigrants totaled more than the African-American population in cities such as Phoenix, San Diego, and San Antonio.



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Drug Abuse and the Drug Culture

In the late 1960s and early 1970s the drug culture and the abuse of hallucinatory drugs increasingly entered the national debate. Television personality Art Linkletter became one of the best-known spokesmen in the campaign against drug abuse after the death of his daughter due to a drug overdose. Excerpted in part below are remarks he made on September 14, 1971, in front of a special United Nations audience.

Until two years ago my life was occupied principally in television and radio in the United States. My specialty was having fun with people. In fact, my best known NBC show for twenty years A 1970 poster calling for community action against drugs in Washington, D.C. was called “People Are Funny.” My ability to talk with young people was featured on the CBS network five times a week, for twenty-five years . . . Then, part of my life died in October 1969, when our beautiful daughter Diane was lost in the aftermath of LSD use. She would have been 21 years old that month. She was a victim of the reckless urge to experiment with hallucinogenic chemicals that became the fashionable thing to do among the young people of the world in the mid-sixties. In Hollywood this insane desire to take pills, marijuana and LSD swept through the film colony, and many, many beautiful young sons and daughters of my friends have been ruined because of their teenage yearning to be “part of the crowd.” That is why I am here today. I am here to tell you something of what I have learned during these past two years. Most of my generation had fixed ideas about drug addicts and dope that have been radically altered through research and knowledge based on fact—not myth . . . Today, we have learned that excessive users of psychotropic or narcotic drugs are sick people and only incidentally criminals. We have learned that pushers are often our own children searching for status or thrills or extra money. We have found out that you cannot stop drug abuse by making stricter laws, bigger jails, or by hiring more policemen . . . And we have learned that it is not a passing fad that will go away with acid rock music or mod clothes. Drug abuse is on the doorstep of the world to stay. It is no new problem . . .

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These majorities altered the political leadership of many cities. In Springfield, Massachusetts, Latino residents attempted to amend the city charter in order to establish a district format for city council member elections. Latinos succeeded in creating such election techniques in Albuquerque and San Antonio and thereby significantly increased their urban political power. African Americans in Richmond challenged the local election process successfully in court, thereby creating city council districts more responsive to their political and economic agenda. Edge Cities According to historians Howard Chudacoff and Judith Smith, the term urban had taken on new meanings by the 21st century: “New designs and functions were altering old images of central cities, suburbs, and various other zones of housing and business. Outside metropolitan borders, ‘exurbs,’ and ‘mall towns’ had grown into major residential and commercial centers [ . . . ].” Orange County, California, became the prototype for such types of residential-commercial urban settings. Retail shopping malls, combined with professional office space and “clean” industrial parks, acted as “nodes” that were interspersed between large tracts of single-family homes. City limit signs provided the only demarcation between contiguous Orange County communities. Almost none of these cities possessed an identifiable downtown section in the traditional sense. Washington Post writer Joel Garreau observed that these “edge cities” were linked by airways and freeways and described them as “centers of the postindustrial, information- and service-oriented future.” Yet the traditional city still held an allure for many Americans. While gentrification reduced the amount of low income housing available to inner-city residents, it did help to ignite interest in the renovation of downtown commercial districts. TERRORISM AND NATURAL DISASTER September 11, 2001, dramatically impacted urban America. Similar to previous disasters, the terrorist destruction of New York’s World Trade Center towers and the simultaneous attack on the Pentagon, demonstrated that civic courage and responsibility, so often attributed to urban life, remained intact in the 21st century. New York firefighters and police officers sacrificed their lives to assist in the rescue of those trapped in the doomed, burning buildings. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani acted decisively and demonstrated steadfastness when he warned Americans that the loss of life attendant with the event could be “greater than we can bear.” President George W. Bush responded by ordering the invasion of Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime protected the al Qaeda hierarchy responsible for masterminding the attacks. He also launched a military assault on Iraq, which he claimed was linked to al Qaeda. The effect of the president’s actions on cit-



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A firefighter working with recovery crews after the terrorist attacks rests for a moment on a steel beam amid the ruins of New York City’s World Trade Center on September 28, 2001.

ies included a reallocation of local and federal funds toward homeland security in order to protect urban infrastructure and points of entry. While necessary to protect the nation from further assault, this shift of attention may have exacerbated traditional urban challenges with regards to housing, poverty, and education. President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind education act into law, but failed to provide sufficient monetary support needed for urban children to successfully navigate the standardized testing the program required. Bush called for faith-based charities and programs to replace federal social and economic safety nets. Relaxed industrial and automobile emission standards threatened cities with a return to the smog-choked air quality of the 1970s. Weaker gun control laws (most conspicuously, exemptions from crime-related lawsuits for gun dealers), made efforts by urban police to protect their citizenry from shootings much more burdensome. Natural disaster struck New Orleans in 2005. Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on the morning of August 29, devastating Mississippi cities from Waveland to Pascagoula. In New Orleans the storm caused the federal flood protection system to almost completely collapse. Catastrophic flooding of the city and most of the surrounding parishes, which lasted for weeks, resulted from the failure of these levees. The storm caused over $81 billion in property damage and took the lives of 1,836 people.

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An Air Force Reserve pararescueman surveys a flooded neighborhood in New Orleans from a helicopter during a mission to rescue survivors. The Air Force Reserve team pulled over 1,040 people from the floodwaters.

The federal government prevented New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf region from receiving assistance from other agencies, while it delayed its own response. The head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Michael Brown, had little training in disaster relief. The president then flew over the flooded city while poorer residents, who could not escape the storm, waded through putrid water to congregate in desperate conditions at the Superdome or the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. While blame for the government’s response can be placed at the local and state level, as much as at the federal level, Katrina raised issues in regards to urban emergency management, environmental policy, poverty, and unemployment. It made Americans painfully aware that, despite the lessons of September 11, the federal government was unprepared to prevent or manage a large-scale urban disaster. Katrina also made clear that it would be the urban poor who would suffer the most from this type of cataclysm. Conclusion Although New York City and New Orleans had faced catastrophes early in the 21st century, urban dwellers across the country continued to have faith in the resilience of the metropolitan way of life. The tolerance and cultural diversity



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Counselors and volunteers comforted Katrina survivors in September 2005 inside the Houston Astrodome, to which many New Orleans residents were evacuated in the days after the storm.

and richness of cities, together with the variety of employment opportunities found only in urban centers, continued to attract new immigrants and youth, suggesting that the age-old attractions of city life would keep American cities vibrant and alive well into the 21st century. Michael Konig

Further Readings

Abbott, Carl. The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1995. Bontemps, Arna and Jack Conroy. Anyplace But Here. New York: Hill and Wang, 1968. Chudacoff, Howard P. and Judith E. Smith. The Evolution of American Urban Society. New York: Prentice Hall, 2004. Farley, Reynolds and Walter R. Allen. The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1987. Glanz, James and Eric Lipton. City in the Sky. New York: Time Life, 2003.

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Katz, Bruce and Robert E. Lang, eds. Redefining Urban & Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. Klein, Milton M., ed. The Empire State: A History of New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Lieberson, Stanley and Mary C. Waters. From Many Strands: Ethnic and Racial Groups in Contemporary America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990. Luckingham, Bradford. The Urban Southwest: A Profile History of Albuquerque, El Paso, Phoenix, and Tucson. El Paso, TX: Texas Western Press, 1982. McCann, Joseph T. Terrorism on American Soil: A Concise History of Plots and Perpetrators from the Famous to the Forgotten. Boulder, CO: Sentient, 2006. McFadden, Robert D. “Lightning Apparently to Blame—Some Subways Affected.” New York Times (July 14, 1977). Roberts, Sam. “When the City’s Bankruptcy Was Just a Few Words Away.” New York Times (December 31, 2006). Schumach, Murray. “Borough Chief Favors Bronx Power.” New York Times (February 13, 1970). Strasser, Susan, Charles McGovern, and Judy Matthias. Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Susman, Warren I. Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Yancey, George. Who Is White: Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003.

Chapter 6

Rural Life

“I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees . . .” —Wendell Berry

In the latter half of the 20th century, America’s rural areas experienced a

remarkable transition. In 1950, nearly 12 percent of Americans still worked in farming occupations, but by 2000 that number had declined to only 2 percent. Large numbers of small family farms had been sold for development or consolidated into massive industrial operations, and mechanization had reduced the need for skilled labor. This left more of the extremely low-wage jobs that were often filled by migrant workers. Resource-driven industries such as mining, logging, and paper mills were in decline or struggling to compete in newly globalized markets. While rural areas experienced some population growth after the 1970s, life and work in rural areas changed significantly, even as the image of a traditional bucolic lifestyle lingered in the American imagination. In some cases, the movement of former urban and suburban people into exurbs or rural areas for their natural beauty and perceived tranquility increased the cost of housing and further pressured other inhabitants.

Farming in the 1970s The 1970s were kind to some rural people. The energy crisis of 1973 and 1974 spurred the search for coal, natural gas, and oil in rural America. The number of jobs in the extractive industries increased during the decade. Moreover, factories and retailers sank roots in the countryside, where wages were low 79

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and labor unions were weak or nonexistent. Native Americans likewise benefited during the 1970s. They established tobacco stores in the countryside and in small towns, taking advantage of the fact that they could sell cigarettes without sales taxes, and so could undercut the prices of other vendors. During the 1970s Native Americans opened casinos on their reservations. These would grow in size and profitability. Retirees from urban and suburban areas settled in picturesque areas of the countryside. Their spending on everything from household items to luxuries benefited rural businesses. The 1970s were a propitious time to farm, especially for the owners of large farms. International demand for American food reached new heights. As a result of his trip to China, President Richard Nixon opened the world’s most populous nation to U.S. food exports. In 1973 crop failure in the Soviet Union led this Cold War adversary to buy U.S. wheat. Drought in the developing world led many nations to buy food from the United States. As a result of these factors, U.S. exports of feed grains increased from 22 million tons in 1970 to 46 million tons in 1973. During these years wheat exports doubled from 21 million tons to 42 million tons, and farm income rose from $34 billion to $69 billion. The U.S. Department of Agriculture urged farmers to expand their operations; many heeded this advice, buying more land on which to grow crops. Young, well-educated people, hoping to get rich quickly, bought land and became farmers. Established farmers, especially those receiving substantial government subsidies, became wealthy in the space of a few years as farmland more than tripled in value between 1971 and 1980. As do many wealthy people, the newly rich farmers displayed their wealth through conspicuous consumption. They built lavish homes, went on cruises, bought yachts, joined country clubs, vacationed around the world, and bought summer cabins. In the Midwest farmers went by the nickname CBF farmers, an acronym that stood for “corn, beans, and Florida,” and that underscored their propensity to winter in Florida. Smaller farmers did not fare so well; they found they had to adapt in novel ways, such as by serving niche markets, or face going out of business. Many sold out to real estate developers, or even to environmental groups purchasing land for conservation purposes. Farm Crisis of the 1980s The farm crisis of the 1980s grew out of the prosperity of the 1970s. Congress had withdrawn price supports in the 1970s in hopes of allowing crop prices to decrease just enough to make U.S. food a bargain for foreign nations to import. Farmers responded by producing record harvests. The surplus of food, as it had during the Great Depression, reduced crop prices. Between 1980 and 1986 the price of corn fell 64 percent and that of soybeans 52 percent. At the same time that farmers were receiving less for their crops, the Federal Reserve Board increased interest rates in 1980 and 1981, making money more



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expensive to borrow and pay back. When farmers needed a high income to repay bank loans, crop prices and income diminished. In 1983 farmers earned only $12.2 billion, compared to $69 billion in 1973, the lowest income since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began collecting this data in 1910. High interest rates inflated the value of the dollar, making U.S. food more expensive to foreign countries. The rising dollar priced U.S. food out of the market, and farmers had virtually nowhere to sell their crops. Having peaked at $46 billion in 1981, the value of U.S. food exports fell 50 percent by 1986. In 1983 Iowa farmers lost on average $2,000. Rather than repaying their debts, farmers were falling further into debt. Whereas farmers were $50 billion in debt in 1970, they were $215 billion in debt in 1985. Farmers lost their assets and then their land. Some who had lost everything even resorted to picking up aluminum cans along the road. Compounding their financial woes was drought, which struck the Midwest and West in 1980 and 1983. In some cases rural life in the 1980s devolved into a nightmare. Children who had seen strangers take away their hogs could not sleep at night for fear that someone would come to take away their parents. In Hills, Iowa, a despondent farmer killed a banker, a neighbor, his wife, and himself. In Nuthton,

After the 1970s, large-scale, prosperous farms like this one in North Central Pennsylvania often faced economic crisis in the 1980s. In 1983 farm income fell to $12.2 billion, the lowest amount since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began collecting such data in 1910.

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Children pass by a crumbling farmhouse while hiking through a rural area. In 2008 only four percent of rural Americans still worked in farm-related occupations.

Minnesota, a farmer and son killed two bankers. In Union County, South Dakota, a Farmers Home Administration agent killed his wife and children before committing suicide. The man left behind a note confessing that he could no longer endure the pressure of his job. In Iowa a Catholic priest lent money to a bankrupt farmer so he could buy his daughter a prom dress. When she learned that her once proud father had accepted charity, she drove the family car off a bridge. Between 1985 and 1987 the number of cases of spousal abuse in Iowa rose from 1,600 to 4,500. In the space of one year between 1986 and 1987, the number of cases of child abuse in Iowa increased from 15,000 to 25,000. In 1987 the number of suicides in Iowa was higher than at any time since the Great Depression. The divorce rate and the incidence of alcoholism both increased in rural America during the 1980s. EARNING A LIVING IN the 21st Century In the 1990s and 2000s those who remained farmers sought new ways to attract consumers. Some became organic farmers, eschewing the use of chemicals. Whereas traditional agriculture used fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides to boost yields and protect crops from insects, organic farmers



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Ethanol

With the gas crisis of the 1970s and the escalating price of gasoline in the early 2000s, contemporary Americans began pushing harder for alternative fuels. Ethanol, which is made from plants such as corn, wheat, barley, and sugarcane, was frequently promoted as the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels. After processing, ethanol can be used by itself or as an additive to gasoline. Some ethanol supporters contend that between 1995 and 2007, gas prices in the United States were lowered between $.17 and $.40 by the addition of ethanol to gasoline. In Brazil, where cars have been designed to run entirely on ethanol, 90 percent of all vehicles use some sort of ethanol. Americans, on the other hand, generally use the 90 percent gasoline/10 percent ethanol mixture known as gasohol because domestic cars are not equipped to run on pure ethanol. Proponents of ethanol argue that because ethanol is infinitely renewable, it is capable of expanding the world’s fuel supplies. Detractors consider ethanol a fad and point out that, unlike gasoline, ethanol cannot be transported through pipelines. More expensive transportation costs, they argue, result in higher gas prices. Detractors are also critical of the fact that ethanol produces less energy than gas, requiring more frequent fill-ups. Critics also point to the fact that diverting grain supplies to produce ethanol has raised the price of essential food products such as corn. The United States leads the world in ethanol production; in 2005, a congressional energy bill mandated that production be raised to 7.5 billion by 2010, an increase of 3.5 billion over production rates of the time. The following year, American refineries began replacing the gasoline additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) with ethanol in response to findings that MTBE contaminates water supplies. Many U.S. farmers have invested in corn production for ethanol and in plants that produce ethanol, which has helped keep the price of corn high. However, with the decline in oil prices and consumption beginning with the financial crisis in 2008, the outlook for ethanol production grew less favorable. Owners were forced to close some U.S. ethanol plants in early 2009, and delayed the completion of others.

boasted that the food they grew free from chemicals, was healthy for the consumer and gentle on the environment. Organic farmers did not attain the yields of traditional agriculture, and organic produce was more expensive than food produced by conventional technologies. Nonetheless organic farmers attracted a loyal clientele of health-conscious consumers in the 1990s and early 21st century. Other farmers raised bison and ostrich as low fat, high

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An African-American cook preparing pies in the kitchen of a migrant worker camp in the mid1970s. Such low-paying service jobs have remained common in rural areas.

protein alternatives to beef and pork. These farmers made their money, not by producing as much food as possible, but by courting consumers in niche markets. In the 1990s farmers for the first time planted genetically modified crops. Farmers planted Bt corn, a type of genetically modified corn resistant to the European Corn Borer, and genetically modified soybeans resistant to herbicides. New versions of old crops entailed risk, for the American public was nervous about the perils of genetically modified crops. Farmers who planted these crops justified their decision on traditional economic grounds: genetically modified crops allowed farmers to capture high yields, a necessity given narrow profit margins. Some rural people found employment in serving farmers and the land they tilled. Entrepreneurs bought, sold, financed, and insured property. Others sold and serviced farm equipment, and still others sold seed fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides to farmers. Other rural people pursued farming as an avocation, deriving the bulk of their income from working off the farm. In some areas part-time farmers as well as others might work in a factory. In other instances rural people found work at a local Wal-Mart, fast food restaurant, movie theater, café, gas station, or supermarket. In small towns near a large city, rural people found work in hotels and motels. These jobs often paid no more than minimum wage, and had little opportunity for advancement.



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Women had a harder time than men finding work, and so were more likely to work for minimum wage. Rural black women worked as cooks and maids, whereas rural black men were janitors and farm laborers. Minimum wage jobs in rural America offered poor medical benefits and these, combined with the dearth of medical services in the countryside, meant that rural Americans had less access to care than was common among urbanites. Not surprising given the dearth of well paying jobs in the countryside, many rural people were poor. In 2002 the poverty rate for the rural population was 14.2 percent, while the rate for those living in urban and suburban areas was only 11.6 percent. Unemployment and underemployment have contributed to this situation, and have been especially serious for racial and ethnic minorities. In 2002, fully a third of African Americans living in rural areas were living in poverty, as were 27 percent of Hispanics. Factors affecting rural employment levels in the 1990s and 2000s include a dramatic rise in part-time employment and a decline in the manufacturing jobs that have traditionally sustained certain rural communities. However, employment has increased in areas that have become tourist destinations or retirement communities. The types of jobs offered there, however, tend to be lower-paying service jobs. As a comparison, in the lumber mills of rural America, workers with seniority once could have expected five years of continuous employment. Those who work in the service sector can expect only

While industrial workplaces such as this steam-powered lumber mill have offered some employment in rural areas, the work is not always steady; unemployment and underemployment have dogged rural families since the 1980s.

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Part of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe’s enormous Foxwoods casino complex in Ledyard, Connecticut, in 2003.

nine to 14 months of employment. With unemployment and underemployment high, rural incomes lagged behind urban incomes into the 21st century. In 2002 the median income for rural households was $34,654, whereas urban households earned a median income of $45,257. Not all rural areas sunk into poverty. Some rural Native Americans have found their way to wealth through gambling. In the 1970s Native Americans opened their first casinos, and by 1993 they had 125 casinos on reservation lands. In the 1990s the Pequot tribe of rural Connecticut grossed $400 million per year from casinos. Affluent families lavished money on new cars and homes. The prosperity that farmers had known in the 1970s graced the lives of some Native Americans in the 1990s and 2000s. Nevertheless, overall poverty rates for Native Americans in rural areas remained very high, at 35 percent in 2002. The poverty among this population is severe; more than half have incomes that reach to less than half of the U.S. poverty line. RURAL LIFE FOR MEXICAN AGRICULTURAL LABORERS In the 1970s Mexicans began to settle in rural Georgia to work in the poultry processing plants. As their numbers grew, Mexicans established their own enclaves in which people spoke Spanish and ate in Mexican restaurants. The local Catholic churches, sensitive to the needs of their Mexican parishioners, conducted the mass in Spanish. Local banks employed Spanish-speaking tellers. Schools allowed Mexican youth, having formed soccer teams, to practice on the school soccer field. As this example suggests, in



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some cases whites drew Mexican agricultural laborers into the larger culture. One woman, the overseer of a labor camp, befriended the children, taking several of them to the Baptist church she attended on Sunday. Others wondered why the Mexican children did not attend their own church, but over time many of the churchgoers came to accept the children as part of their community. Nevertheless the integration of Mexican agricultural workers into the larger culture was not complete. Parents who could not read English could not read notes from school or help their children with homework. A pregnant woman who could not speak English faced special difficulties. In some cases the hospital where she was to give birth had only male translators, leading her to feel embarrassment and a loss of privacy during a doctor’s examination. Mexican farm workers harvested onions and chili peppers in New Mexico. Local whites protested that the Mexicans were taking jobs that they would do, but farmers countered that whites would not work for wages that Mexicans accepted. The farmers, for their part, needed this cheap labor to increase their profits as farm businesses became increasingly strained after the 1970s. In Idaho farmers disparaged their Mexican laborers, believing them to be poor workers, unmotivated and undependable. When tools disappeared, farmers accused Mexicans of theft. When labor camp housing needed repairs, farmers blamed Mexicans for making a mess of their apartments. Farmers denigrated their Mexican workers as uneducated, unwilling to work on Sunday, and unreliable in reporting for work on Monday. Mexicans who

Hispanic workers harvesting green peppers on a large farm. Mexican farm families in Idaho were found to earn only about $7,000 per year doing such work in 1995.

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lived in the United States had grown soft, claimed farmers. They thought it better to recruit workers directly from Mexico. They worked hard and did not complain. Farmers believed that Mexicans, despite their hard work, preferred welfare to a steady job. So poorly did they regard Mexican farm workers that farmers sent their children to school outside the local district so that they would not be in classes with Mexican children. Yet education was not always a priority. Mexican farm workers in Idaho averaged only six years of education and some did not encourage their children to advance through the grades. Some children began around age 12 to work in the fields with their parents to bring This child of migrant laborers was home a little extra income for people photographed drinking from an unsanitary outdoor tap at a labor camp in 1975. who were desperately poor. Their poverty led them to inhabit labor camps, whose apartments, despite their dilapidated condition, they could barely afford. Each apartment had just one room, a wood stove, and no running water. No central heating or insulation in the walls kept inhabitants uncomfortable year round. The apartments had neither windows nor toilets. Several apartments shared a single toilet and shower. An apartment was to house no more than five people, but Mexican laborers pared expenses by living 10 to an apartment. In this environment children were frequently ill. Anything less than docility from Mexican workers often cost them their jobs and housing, because the farmers owned the apartments as well as the land. Those without an apartment slept outdoors or in a car. The sporadic character of work robbed Mexican farm families of earnings, as nearly onethird of Mexicans were unemployed. Despite deplorable conditions, Mexican farm workers managed to maintain their close-knit communities. For example, traveling through Idaho, a migrant family lost a child to illness. Even though the local Mexicans did not know this family and had little money, they raised enough money to enable the family to bury their child. RURAL COMMUNITIES In contrast to what they perceived as the impersonal character of urban life, rural people in the 1990s and 2000s believed that they lived in warm and



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friendly communities. In the countryside people knew everyone in a community. No one remained a stranger for long. People interacted with one another in an open, genuine way. Rural cafes were a gathering place where people had coffee or lunch. The closing of one café led the local farmers to travel to the next town in search of a place to take their morning coffee. Because people knew one another, the adults in a rural community looked after the welfare of all children, not just their own. When one child starred in a school play or on the basketball team, the whole community attended the event to applaud the child. Not only did rural people know one another, they were curious about outsiders. Rural people talked to visitors from the city or from other towns. They were eager to make a good impression on others and joked with one another as a way of showing that they did not take themselves too seriously. Out of the interactions among people emerged trust. In rural areas people thought nothing of leaving their car doors unlocked, secure in the knowledge that they need not fear theft. In general, rural people prided themselves on being both outgoing and good neighbors. They greeted one another on the street, in the schools, and in the cafés. Motorists waved to oncoming traffic. During winter men plowed out the driveways of elderly neighbors, and women took ailing neighbors to doctor’s appointments. They were in such close contact that they learned about and reacted quickly to a crisis. The death of a neighbor or friend mobilized the whole community. Women cooked for the family and looked after the children while the family grieved. Schools were central to the community, hosting parties, dances, Bible study, elections, meetings, even weddings and funerals. Wherever they met, rural people struck up a conversation and engaged in small talk,

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documented housing and sanitary conditions at this migrant labor camp in an unspecified U.S. location in 1975.

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The Southern Corn Leaf Blight

For many years corn has been the principal crop in the Midwest. Travelers through the Midwest often perceive the land as a monotonous stretch of cornfields. All of this corn is hybrid. Scientists made hybrids by crossbreeding two inbred varieties of corn. The progeny of this cross yield more corn and are generally more resistant to insects, diseases, and drought. The production of a hybrid was tedious work. One had to remove the tassel, and with it the pollen, from the variety of corn that one designated the female line. Bereft of pollen, the female line could not pollinate any corn, but it could receive pollen from the inbred variety designated the male line. Seed companies hired A USDA scientist examines a leaf afflicted with Southern hundreds of people, many of them high Corn Leaf Blight. school students, to detassel the female line of corn so that a hybrid could be produced. In the 1950s botanist Paul C. Mengelsdorf discovered a variety of corn that produced no pollen. This corn was an ideal female line because no labor was needed to detassel it. Seed companies quickly adopted the male sterile line, as this corn was called. By 1970 the most widely used male sterile line was the Texas cytoplasmic sterile variety of corn. Seed companies probably could not have foreseen that the Texas line was vulnerable to a new type of disease. In 1969 plant pathologists in the Philippines reported a new fungal disease of corn, the Southern Corn Leaf Blight. Being a fungus, the pathogen spread in hot, humid weather. The reports of the Southern Corn Leaf Blight in the Philippines did not cause alarm in the United States. In 1970, however, the disease spread throughout the United States, recurring in 1971. It killed 15 percent of the U.S. corn crop during these years. In the aftermath of the Southern Corn Leaf Blight many farmers began growing soybeans in rotation with corn to diversify their operations so that they would be less vulnerable to any one disease. Scientists bred new hybrids resistant to the Southern Corn Leaf Blight, and the seed companies discarded the Texas cytoplasmic sterile line. Some companies stopped using male sterile lines of corn altogether, returning to the labor-intensive practice of detasseling corn by hand. The Southern Corn Leaf Blight marked a watershed in American rural life, ending the practice of corn monoculture, the use of male sterile lines of corn in breeding hybrids, and the hubris that led American agriculture to believe it was invulnerable to epidemics.



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not because they had nothing better to do, but because small talk cemented the social ties they had forged. Residents of rural areas understood that their communities were imperfect, and worried about crime, the loss of the family farm, alcoholism, and the use of illegal drugs. Too often the unemployed and underemployed in rural America turned to alcohol and illegal drugs. Young single males also abused alcohol, using it as a way of venting their frustrations. The loss of the family farm reached a crisis in the 1980s, and those who retained their farm into the 1990s remained shaken. The family farm had for decades been the centerpiece of rural life, but in 1990 just six percent of rural residents farmed. The rest worked in a factory or the service sector, all the while retaining the conviction that rural life was, if not perfect, at least better than any other mode of existence. By 2008, the number of rural Americans still involved in farming occupations had dropped to only four percent. EDUCATION IN RURAL AMERICA For rural people education was a means of transmitting values as well as knowledge from adults to children. Because education shaped the character of children, rural people wanted to control their schools. They often insisted that their schools remain autonomous, rather than be subsumed into a large district in a nearby town. Maintaining control of schools, rural notables served on the school board, where they shaped the curriculum and hired teachers. The result was a teaching staff of homogeneous people who shared the values of the community. Rural people were willing to tax themselves, sometimes heavily, to maintain their schools. These schools were central to their communities, hosting social and political functions. School plays and football games unified the community behind the children who participated in these events. Local people actively supported their schools, attending parent-teacher conferences, parties, and dinners. Not all communities were able to preserve their schools as autonomous units. Between 1930 and 1987 the number of rural school districts shrank from 128,000 to 15,000. The surviving schools included 837 one-room schoolhouses in 1984; that number had shrunk to less than 400 by 2005. The one-room schoolhouse has been a fixture of rural life for decades, and its continuation into the late 20th century confirmed that rural people preferred small schools to the large districts that were a feature of urban life. In 2003, the average rural school still enrolled less than 400 students. Curricula varied from college preparatory to vocational courses in agriculture and home economics. Consolidated schools were more likely than small schools to offer a college preparatory curriculum including advanced courses in mathematics and science. Because few rural youth, compared to their urban counterparts, attended college, small rural schools often de­-­emphasized college preparatory courses. Some students did not even complete high school.

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One-room schoolhouses, which have sometimes shared church buildings in the past, survived into the late 20th century in rural areas; as late as 2005 almost 400 were still in use.

In 1988 one-fourth of rural adults did not have a high school diploma. Children of farm workers often left school without a degree in order to work in the fields with their parents. The fact that many rural youth did not graduate high school posed problems for rural America, because high school dropouts had a poverty rate twice that of high school graduates. The growth of the Internet, however, brought new educational opportunities to rural areas. Upper-level students could now finish their diplomas and pursue higher education, including college degrees, through online distance learning. Rural school districts also found that virtual classes, when combined with live teaching, could cheaply supplement their curriculum and make up for a lack of specialized teachers. Once the province of more advanced learners, online courses were used by over one million K–12 public school students in the United States in 2007–08. RELIGION IN RURAL AMERICA In the late 20th and early 21st centuries rural America was overwhelmingly Protestant, with the exception of Catholic areas in Louisiana and the Southwest. The town of Howard, Pennsylvania, for example, with 700 people and another 1,400 in three small villages, had 13 churches, all Protestant denominations. That such a small community as Howard could support 13 churches underscores the fact that rural people were faithful churchgoers. Other



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churches in rural America, seeking to accommodate a diversity of Protestant faiths, were nondenominational. These churches welcomed rural people regardless of their faith. Still other churches were more class-conscious and less accommodating of some people. The rise of large farms in the 1970s concentrated wealth in few hands. Churches ministered to these affluent farmers, and though some may have tried to accommodate working-class churchgoers, they did not succeed. According to one study, working-class churchgoers have tried attending the churches of the affluent but, feeling out of place, usually leave after one or two months. Rural people are conscious of status. More successful in attracting the rural working class were the fundamentalist churches, which preached a simple creed. These churches insisted on a literal interpretation of the Bible. Many of them preached the necessity of a personal relationship with Jesus and had little in the way of a social agenda. Other churches preached social change and were active in rural affairs. These were the churches that held fundraisers for the victims of fire, flood, or other disasters. Rural churches often made converts for life. Rural people tended to attend the church of their youth, even when it was farther than a nearby church of the same denomination. Rural churches, aware of the aesthetic and spiritual value of nature, held retreats at picturesque spots in the countryside. As they had for decades, rural churches paid a low salary to ministers, leading them to seek work at a second church to augment their income. If the second church was in town and paid more than the church in the countryside, a minister transferred his allegiance to the town church. He preached the Sunday service at the church in the countryside, but otherwise left it on its own. These were the rural churches in danger of closing for lack of leadership. Conclusion It has been more than eight decades since the majority of Americans lived in rural areas, and even longer since the majority worked on farms. In 2008 rural Americans accounted for only 17 percent of the total U.S. population. While rural people have succeeded in holding on to some of the community traditions that are still idealized by other Americans, they have faced significant changes in employment opportunities and income. Both the prosperous and poor have had to adapt to changing, and sometimes worsening economic conditions. An underclass of migrant workers has long borne the brunt of the toughest working conditions, but others have suffered too. The hardest-hit rural people have not been able to climb out of the persistent poverty that has afflicted some parts of rural America for decades. In some areas this has led to social problems, such as epidemics of drug abuse, that are surprisingly similar to those in impoverished urban

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areas. These changes and others have affected the rural way of life and threaten to gradually transform the conventional image of rural America in the larger culture. Christopher Cumo

Further Readings

Adams, Jane. The Transformation of Rural Life: Southern Illinois, 1890– 1990. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Adams, Jane. ed. Fighting for the Farm: Rural America Transformed. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Baker, Richard. Los Dos Mundos: Rural Mexican Americans, Another America. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1995. Bedford, Faith Andrews. Country Living Barefoot Summers: Reflections of Home, Family, and Simple Pleasures. New York: Hearst Books, 2005. Castle, Emery N. ed. The Changing American Countryside: Rural People and Places. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995. Danbom, David B. Born in the Country: A History of Rural America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Davis, Michelle R. “Breaking Away From Tradition: E-learning Opens New Doors to Raise Achievement,” Education Week magazine (March 26, 2009). Department of Energy. “Ethanol: The Complete Energy Lifecycle Picture.” Available online: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/ program/ethanol_brochure_color.pdf. Accessed October 2008. Fish, Charles. In Good Hands: The Keeping of a Family Farm. New York: Kodansha International, 1995. Halperin, Alex. “Ethanol Myths and Realities.” Business Week Online (May 19, 2006). Hamilton, Lawrence C., et al. Place Matters: Challenges and Opportunities in Four Rural Americas. Durham, NH: Carsey Institute, University of New Hampshire, 2008. Kelleher, James B. “Rural America Feels Extra Pain as Gas Prices Rise.” Reuters News Service (August 28, 2008). Krauss, Clifford. “Ethanol, Just Recently a Savior, Is Struggling,” New York Times (February 11, 2009). Lee, Sunggyu et al. Handbook of Alternative Fuel Technologies. Boca Raton, FL: CRC, 2007. Luloff, A. E. and Louis E. Swanson, eds. American Rural Communities. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990. McCaffrey, Paul, ed. U.S. National Debate Topic 2008–2009: Alternative Energy. New York: H.W. Wilson, 2008.



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Murphy, Arthur, ed. Latino Workers in the Contemporary South. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001. Pistorius, Alan. Cutting Hill: A Chronicle of a Family Farm. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. Schwartz, Dona. Waucoma Twilight: Generations of the Farm. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. Stewart, James B. and Joyce E. Allen-Smith, eds. Blacks in Rural America. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995. U.S. Census Bureau. Census Atlas of the United States. Available online: http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/censusatlas. Accessed November 2008.

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Chapter 7

Religion

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.” —Garrison Keillor

Religion has been at the center of American life since the Pilgrims first

stepped off the Mayflower in 1620. In every period or generation since, churches have both shaped society and been shaped by larger movements within it. The modern period has been no different. Churches in the United States have had to adapt to realignments in society since the late 1960s, often struggling to find a way to remain relevant in a rapidly changing landscape. THE 1970s: EXPERIMENTATION AND CHANGE Discussion of religion in the 1970s usually focuses on the most outlandish excesses of the period: communes and cults. The decade was well-suited to the development of cults. Young people were feeling the need to create families at a time when traditional family structures seemed to be collapsing; cults allowed them separation from a world that seemed to be nothing but war, famine, and dissent. They also filled a religious need to feel that one was on the path to salvation and eternal happiness. This created a crop of willing participants in the many cults that developed during these years. The general public saw cults as a malignant force in society, just another sign of the cultural chaos of the time. With the Tate–La Bianca murders in Los Angeles in the summer of 1969 by followers of Charles Manson, cultists began to be seen as potential mass murderers. Stories of brainwashing, 97

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slavery, polygamy, child abuse, pornography, and sexual and physical violence against women circulated through the media, and families often turned to the new professional group of “deprogrammers” to physically kidnap their children and return them to their senses. In 1978, fears of mass suicide joined the fear of violence when cult leader Jim Jones convinced over 900 members of his People’s Temple to drink poison-laced Kool-Aid in their remote Guyana commune, following the assassination of Congressman Leo Ryan and a team of investigators, who had traveled to Guyana at the behest of constituents who believed their family members had been brainwashed by Jones. However, this is not the whole story of religion in the 1970s. “Because writers and historians are attracted to extremes,” says historian Mark Oppenheimer, “the story typically told about Nixon-era religion focuses on cults,

Wisconsin v. Yoder

In 1970, a group of Amish parents in New Glarus, Wisconsin, stopped sending their children to local public schools after the completion of the eighth grade. This fit the conservative sect’s belief that children needed only basic literacy, and that too much education would make them too “worldly,” but it violated a Wisconsin law stating that all children must attend school until the age of 16. The parents were convicted of violating the law and fined $5 each. Despite long-standing beliefs about not settling disputes in court, the families, led by Jonas Yoder, appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that complicity with the Wisconsin law violated their religious rights under the Constitution. The Supreme Court agreed with Yoder, handing down a 7-0 decision in the 1972 session. In his written opinion, Chief Justice Warren Burger found that the values and goals of the Wisconsin education law were in “sharp conflict with the fundamental mode of life mandated by the Amish religion.” Amish parents were now free to decide how to educate their children, withAmish children, who often go barefoot, out state interference. walking to school in September 2006.



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sects, Eastern religion, meditation, Moonies, Scientologists, communes.” He believes this is a vast oversimplification of the era, since most of the counterculture movements of the era were short-lived and the majority of people in the country did not join the counterculture. In fact, some of the more conservative old mainline churches actually grew in size during the late 1960s and 1970s. The Catholic Church in America grew 15 percent between 1963 and 1976, and the Southern Baptist conventions added 2.5 million members during the same period. More liberal churches, particularly the Unitarians, did especially well, growing by 30 percent between the early 1960s and the mid-1970s. Most major churches made changes to fit with the times. The Catholic Church showed perhaps the most evolution (so to speak), not only due to changes in American society, but also from the changes agreed to by Rome in the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. Vatican II, as it was usually called, reflected the church’s desire to become a modern, global force for human rights. Among its many changes, Vatican II encouraged the laity (or congregants) to become more involved in the celebration of the Mass, and required Mass to be spoken in the vernacular language of the congregation, rather than Latin. While there was a certain amount of dissatisfaction among many Catholics from the switch to less traditional forms of worship and observation, it could not have happened at a better time: the new church had a much better chance to reach out to young people searching for meaning than it might have a decade earlier. Other, more liberal churches, such as the Unitarians, embraced newlyemerging social groups, particularly gays and lesbians. The Episcopal Church greatly expanded the role of women by permitting the ordination of female priests in 1974. These changes, and others like them, were not accomplished without argument or conflict, or a good amount of soul-searching on the part of each denomination’s membership, but once undertaken they did lead to more tolerant, inclusive houses of worship. THE 1980s: RETRENCHMENT AND REVIVAL A backlash and retrenchment within American religion was inevitable after the social and political shifts of the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1980s, both mainline churches and evangelical Protestantism faced important decisions about how to remain relevant in a society that seemed to be growing more secular by the day. Some denominations liberalized their views and reached out to new populations, while others embraced their conservatism. Author Erling Jorstad calls this period one of “holding fast or pressing on,” as each denomination chose a path. There were bitter wars within most denominations during the 1980s, but the struggle was more visible within the evangelical movement, which by taking on a new public role had gained much more media attention during the

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Pope John Paul II greets the crowd at Yankee Stadium in New York City in October 1979, during one of several such visits to the United States that invigorated the growing Catholic population.

decade. About 25 percent of the American churchgoers identified themselves as evangelicals in the 1980s, and were further split into four main groups: fundamentalist, Pentecostal, mainline, and left-wing. Evangelicals of all types were concentrated in the South and the Midwest, and the movement as a whole was clumped with Southern Baptists in the public mind, in spirit if not formal affiliation. The rise of the religious right, as it came to be called, was a reaction against the growing trend of secularism in the public sphere. During the 1960s and 1970s, prayer had been removed from the schools, abortion had been legalized, pornography was everywhere, drug use was widespread, women were entering the workforce in record numbers, divorce rates were reaching alltime highs, and homosexuality was openly practiced and increasingly socially acceptable. All of this ran counter to Biblical teachings and evangelical beliefs about social order. By the late 1970s, leading evangelicals were interested in gaining political power as a way to influence the legislative and judicial branches of government to change social policy. This led to the development of extra-church structures, which included think tanks, political action committees, law firms, publications, bookstores, colleges and universities, and television and radio stations. These organizations helped spread the gospel of “Christian” behavior and worship, but they also helped the evangelical leadership consolidate power and convince their



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followers—many of whom had long since tuned out of a political process that seemed to be ignoring them—that they could use their votes to elect likeminded Christians to office and begin to turn the tide of “secular humanism” that was destroying the nation. As early as the 1976 campaign season, evangelical groups were using direct mail and donor appeals from television ministries like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and presidential candidate Ronald Reagan was using his history as a born-again Christian to reach out to evangelical audiences. In the 1980 race, all three presidential candidates—Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Jon Anderson— were born-again Christians. Evangelical political action groups would eventually issue statements and even “report cards” on political candidates to help their followers select candidates who reflected their conservative views. They would continue to refine these practices during subsequent election cycles. THE 1990s AND BEYOND: SMALL GROUPS AND MEGACHURCHES By the 1990s, American religion had become more diversified than at any point in its nearly 400-year-long history. Increased immigration since the mid-1960s had brought dozens of new cultures and religious sects into the

Televangelism

Spreading the Word and gaining converts has always been one of the major tenants of evangelical Christianity. In the 19th century, this was accomplished by itinerant preachers walking the countryside holding revivals; by the 1930s, several preachers had switched to radio ministry, with an estimated 10 million listeners by 1946. In the 1950s and 1960s, several preachers, including Billy Graham, had their own programs. By the 1990s, various Christian groups had their own television networks. “Televangelists” argue that television ministries allow them to spread their preaching to a wider audience, and brings the comforts of regular worship to people who are confined to their homes by illness or old age. Christian broadcasting also gives Christian viewers “wholesome” entertainment options they might not find on other channels. Critics, however, argue that TV ministries are deeply flawed, often based on the preaching of one charismatic minister who might not be affiliated with a recognized denomination, or are peddling false doctrines, faith healing, and prophecy that hurts their audiences more than it helps them. Then there is the profit motive: almost all such broadcasting calls on viewers to give financial support. Some televangelists have become wealthy off these donations. There were several scandals among televangelists in the 1980s revolving around money, including one that led to the downfall of Jim Bakker of the PTL Club.

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national melting pot. In the largest urban areas, it was not uncommon to find 500 or more different religious or spiritual groups, ranging from Catholicism to Buddhism, Mormonism, and “Self-Realization Fellowships.” At the beginning of the 21st century, it seemed that every American looking for a spiritual home could find one—or create one of their own. The focus on personal spirituality became as important to many Americans as the fellowship of a group of like-minded congregants. A personal relationship with God was not a new concept, being a chief focus of religious life for many Protestants since before the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century. But the “New Age” movement that began in the 1970s and 1980s and reached full flower in the 1990s was quite different in style and substance than, say, the Transcendental Movement of the mid-1800s. Borrowing heavily from Eastern metaphysics, New Age philosophy was open, fluid, experimental, nondenominational, and based on the idea of creating one’s own spiritual practice as a way to connect with the Divine—a being that did not necessarily have to fit the traditional Western concept of God. Among New Age practitioners were a good number of adherents to modern versions of Wicca or other pagan religions, many of which worshiped goddesses or feminine spiritual figures. As might be expected, New Ageism raised the ire of more traditional Christian groups, who saw it as a symbol of privileged Baby Boomers follow-

The New Age movement helped lead to the popularization of activities like this yoga class, and influenced the environment of some mainstream American churches.



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Catholic Sex Scandals

Beginning in the 1990s, the Catholic Church was rocked by stories of child sexual abuse by priests, with some allegations stretching back over more than 30 years. Numerous lawsuits have uncovered a systematic pattern by the church to shield abusive priests, moving them from parish to parish, not reporting known crimes to the police, and even handing out payouts to prevent victims from pursuing legal action. This allowed pedophile priests to molest children for decades, with the worst abusers violating perhaps hundreds of youngsters in their careers. The number of priests believed to be involved in abuses is very small, but the psychological impact on their victims has been huge. The scandals have had a negative impact on the image of the Catholic Church as well as its bank accounts. By 2007 the U.S. Catholic Church alone had paid out more than $600 million in compensation to victims.

ing “feel-good,” self-centered philosophies far removed from the Bible, and promoting moral relativism in the search for “universal tolerance.” These neopagans were yet another sign of moral decay in a culture that had gone around the bend with self-indulgence. At the same time, the New Age movement helped popularize and mainstream healthy practices like Yoga and meditation, which were then adopted by mainline churches as a way to encourage healthy living or deeper spiritual practices among their parishioners. Even some evangelical Christians benefited from the New Age movement by adopting the self-help language of personal spirituality and giving it a God-centered twist, creating a new subgenre of books designed to help their adherents live a more fulfilling spiritual life. Perhaps the best example of this genre is The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren. Designed as a 40-day long self-guided spiritual journey, it outlines Warren’s views of the five purposes for life on Earth from his Christian perspective. It sold 24 million copies in its first four years in print. Even as more and more Americans were following their personal spiritual path, traditional mainline churches remained a dominant religious force. As the population grew, so did the population of traditional religious groups. In the 1990s, researchers William Newman and Peter Halvorson identified eight “national religious families” that had a foothold in the majority of the 3,000 or so counties in the United States. At the top of the list were 53 million Catholics, followed by 19 million Southern Baptists, 11 million United Methodists, 5 million Evangelical Lutherans, 3.5 million Presbyterians, 2 million Episcopalians, 2 million members of the Assemblies of God, and 1.7 million

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members of the Churches of Christ. Newman and Halvorson also identified eight “multiregional religious families” that had a base in one region of the country, and smaller proportions of adherents throughout. These groups included six million American Jews, 3.5 million Mormons, 2.6 million Missouri Synod Lutherans, 1.9 million American Baptists, two million members of the United Church of Christ, 1.2 million members of the Churches of Christ, 1.1 million members of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and one million members of the Christian Church (Disciples). By the 1990s, there was also significant growth in nondenominational Christianity. Definitions of nondenominational churches vary, but a basic definition is that they are Protestant churches that are not tied to an established hierarchy or convention. Often, they are connected to the ministry of a charismatic preacher. Congregants are usually young, and the congregations are usually small. Most are theologically and socially conservative, and many feel that belonging to a church that is unfettered from a denomination allows them to worship God, rather than the denomination. A high percentage of nondenominational churches are racially mixed. A study by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research found that in 1998, about 12 percent of churches in the United States were nondenominational or independent. The charismatic movement has also increased since 1990. In a 2008 survey, 23 percent of Protestant churches in the United States were charismatic. Almost 40 percent of church-going respondents in the same survey identified themselves as charismatic, including 51 percent of people who were born-again Christians. Nor is the charismatic movement confined to the evangelical wing of Protestantism. About 35 percent of Catholics identified themselves as charismatic in the same survey. Like many religious trends, what constitutes a “charismatic Christian” is difficult to define, since it Nondenominational churches, which make up can vary widely between congreabout 12 percent of U.S. churches, often center around a charismatic preacher. gations, and even from person to



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An Easter program rehearsal on the elaborate stage of the Crystal Cathedral Protestant megachurch in Garden Grove, California.

person. For example, some believe in faith healing, others do not. Vocal or continual prayer (prayer during daily activities, not just in church services), fasting, and proselytizing through personal testimony, rather than intellectual or theological argument are some of the more common charismatic practices. One of the most visible symbols of the growing popularity of evangelical Protestantism is the growth of the megachurch. A large church building with seating for 2,000 or more per service, the megachurch is stylistically about as far away from traditional chapels or cathedrals as one can get. Because they are usually built on the fringes of cities, where land is cheaper, they are sometimes derided as “big-box” churches, like a superstore or a suburban mall, without the sense of community often found in smaller churches. To cater to such large crowds, megachurches often make use of public address systems and theater or stadium seating, to make sure that the minister can be seen and heard. Instead of hymnals or Bibles at each seat, there are usually large projection screens behind the pulpit. Rather than traditional hymns, services often include upbeat, modern “praise” music. Because they draw together bigger groups of people, the average megachurch offers more social activities and groups than smaller congregations can manage, and often becomes a family’s social and spiritual home.

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Three Catholic nuns stand before a wall of memorials and missing posters in New York City after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

End Time Prophecies and 9/11 With the approach of the new millennium, there was an inevitable spike in “end time” prophecy, and this apocalyptic thought continued into the 21st century. Almost all Christian denominations teach that Jesus will one day return to Earth, and almost all world religions prophesy the eventual end of the world, but a branch of evangelical Christianity brings the two together with a sophisticated timeline of events based on the Book of Revelations and other key Biblical passages. Interpretations vary, but in general, believers say that there will be a lengthy period of chaos, war, famine, earthquakes, and other catastrophes, perhaps



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following the arrival of the Antichrist or another false prophet. At some point during this period, called the Tribulation, those who have been saved or born-again will be suddenly raised up to live with Jesus in the heavens. The “Rapture” is seen as a physical event, where people who are going about their daily business will be bodily lifted from the physical world in a single instant, vanishing from the Earth and living as resurrected beings in the skies. The majority of people will be left behind to face persecution and mayhem as God judges those who have not accepted the Word. At the end of the Tribulation begins the Second Coming, when Jesus will return for a 1,000-year reign of peace and tranquility. This literal belief in the coming of the Rapture has spawned movies, songs, books (like the popular “Left Behind” series of novels) and endless Internet speculation, as the faithful scan the daily news and search for signs. Although easy for nonbelievers to dismiss, some have speculated that apocalyptic belief even plays a role in U.S. foreign policy, with evangelical Christians among the most vocal supporters of Israel—since the presence of a Jewish state in the Holy Land is a key scriptural element in the Second Coming. However, how much influence they have is debatable. The events of September 11, 2001, were seized upon as one of the potential signs of the beginning of the End Times. More practically, in the days following the attacks, there was much concern about hate crimes directed against Arab Americans. The Arab-American population in the United States has always been small, with about 1.3 million listed in the 2000 Census, or .42 percent of the total population. Contrary to popular belief, only 25 percent of Arab Americans are Muslim; most are Christian or Orthodox. Post-9/11 repercussions against Muslims were mercifully rare, with one known fatality and some acts of violence directed against mosques or personal property. Evangelicals were generally supportive of President George W. Bush (himself a born-again Christian) and his prosecution of the War on Terror Muslim men praying at a student and the Iraq War. This led to suggesdemonstration in front of a row of tions that some Christians were leadpolice officers in Washington, D.C., on ing a “crusade” against Islam, perhaps November 30, 1979, during the Iran hostage crisis. as a way to speed the Rapture. This is a

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vast oversimplification of Christian beliefs, but has played a role in shaping international opinion of U.S. aims in the Middle East. The Resurgence of Creationism In 1972 the California State Board of Education mandated that creationism be taught alongside evolution. Evolution appalled creationists, whose activity reappeared in the last third of the 20th century. Creationists denied that any life had evolved. Rather, taking the creation account in the Biblical book of Genesis literally, they asserted that God had created all life in its present form in six days. Earth was only 6,000 to 10,000 years old, not 4.5 billion years old as geologists had established through scientific testing. A catastrophic flood had depopulated Earth, leaving a remnant to recolonize the land. All life had descended from this remnant. Weighing both sides, students would decide which to believe. The mandate that creationism receive equal time in the classroom pressured textbook publishers to include creationism in their texts. In 1981 the Arkansas legislature mandated equal time for creationism in its public schools, though a state court invalidated the law in 1983. Undeterred by events in Arkansas, the Louisiana legislature passed an equal time law the next year. Court challenges brought the law before the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down the law in 1987. Since the late 1980s creationists have presented creationism as intelligent design, the assertion that life is too complex to have arisen by evolution. A designer (God) must have created life. In the early 21st century the supporters of intelligent design continued to try to sway school boards with limited success. Conclusion American religions have faced tough challenges in contemporary times. New movements and splinter groups have risen and fallen just as they have throughout the country’s history. The humanist movement has grown, and a 2008 study also found that 15 percent of Americans identified themselves as atheists, up significantly from only 8.2 percent in 1990. Nevertheless, the United States remains a very religious country, and one where an increasing number of faiths are represented in a highly diverse population. The generally peaceful coexistence of these faiths, while sometimes troubled, especially when politics are involved, continues to hold the potential to serve as an example to the world. Heather K. Michon



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Alhstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972. Allen, David. Make Love Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History. Boston, MA: Little-Brown, 2000. Dodds, John W. Life in Twentieth Century America. New York: Putnam’s, 1973. Herbers, John. The New Heartland: America’s Flight Beyond the Suburbs and How it is Changing our Future. New York: Times Books, 1986. Jasper, James M. Restless Nation: Starting over in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Katz, Bruce and Robert E. Lang, eds. Redefining Urban & Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. Lieberson, Stanley and Mary C. Waters. From Many Strands: Ethnic and Racial Groups in Contemporary America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990. Morty, Myron A. Daily Life in the United States, 1960–1990: Decades of Discord. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997. Roberts, Sam. Who We Are: A Portrait of America. New York: Times Books, 1993. Schulman, Bruce J. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Books, 2002. West, Elliott. Growing Up in Twentieth Century America: A History Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996.

Chapter 8

Education

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” —B.F. Skinner

The desegregation of American schools, while unfinished, had improved

access to quality education for racial minorities by the early 1970s. Attention then turned toward breaking down remaining barriers to full access for other groups, including the disabled and girls and women. Other trends in education since 1970 have included opening up alternatives to traditional public education, such as homeschooling and charter schools, and going back to basics to raise educational standards in more traditional environments. NEW ACCESS TO EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS In 1975, fewer than one in five children with disabilities had access to public education. Hundreds of thousands of children with mental disabilities lived in state institutions where they received little or no education. Diagnoses of specific mental disabilities were also problematic. A lack of accurate test instruments led thousands of children to be misdiagnosed and ineffectively educated. Parents had few options in planning for children with disabilities, and there was little financial support for teaching such children within the public school system. Training for teachers did not include attention to the needs of students with mental and behavioral disabilities. Public schools lacked basic access to classrooms, restrooms, and other school facilities for children with physical disabilities. To give two examples, many door frames 111

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A row of schoolbuses, most lacking wheelchair capacity. In 1975, fewer than one in five children with disabilities had access to public education.

were too narrow to allow wheelchair passage, and multifloor schools often lacked elevators, limiting access to upper floors. State and federal court cases in the early 1970s outlined the duties of the state to citizens with disabilities. Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Pennsylvania (1971) established the state’s obligation to provide “to every retarded person between the ages of six and twenty-one ... access to a free public program of education and training appropriate to his learning capacities.” Mills v. Board of Education of Washington, D.C. (1972) required that children removed from regular public school classrooms for reasons of disability must be provided with educational alternatives and periodic review of the adequacy of such alternatives. These cases paved the way for new federal legislation. Congress enacted the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) in 1975. This law guaranteed access to public education for students with mental and physical disabilities between the ages of three and 21. In doing so, Congress placed the burden of compliance on the schools. The EHA also mandated the creation of Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) for each disabled student. For the first time, schools were required to track students with disabilities and to document periodic review of their progress. This enabled better record-keeping and statistical tracking of disabled populations in the education system. The EHA was difficult for many school districts to implement. Many districts lacked the financial capacity to hire trained special education teachers or necessary recordkeeping support staff, and administrators complained that funding special education took already sparse funding away from other students. Further legislation eventually clarified responsibilities for policy implementation and addressed more specific access issues. In 1986, the EHA was



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expanded to cover children from birth to age six, ensuring access to adequate early childhood education. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990, setting standards for the field of education and beyond for physical facilities, employment adaptations, and provision of other public services. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) also passed in 1990, and was updated in 2004. IDEA supported specific transition services to help students with disabilities make the shift from school to adult living. These services included employment planning, job placement, and links to existing community services. IDEA mandated that transition planning should begin no later than age 14, in order to give students with disabilities, and their communities, adequate time to plan and train for adult success. IDEA also provided some desperately needed federal funding support. IDEA stated that the federal government would provide matching funds for up to 40 percent of the costs of educating disabled students, but in practice it never funded more than 10 percent. While schools still struggle with the budget requirements of implementation, over the last three decades educational access for students with disabilities has improved exponentially. TITLE IX AND SEX DISCRIMINATION IN SCHOOLS As part of the Educational Amendments of 1972, Title IX prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program or activity receiving federal funds. While Title IX is perhaps best known for its impacts on school athletics, its initial impacts were far-reaching across classrooms and curricula. It provided grounds for female students to fight discrimination when barred from math and science education, guaranteed access to quality education for pregnant girls and teenage parents, and legally defined sexual harassment in the classroom. It also gave legal grounds for women to challenge university admissions processes when schools accepted unusually low numbers of women regardless of their comparative merit against male applicants. In the arena of athletics, Title IX gave mandates for proportional funding. Schools could no longer field boys’ teams in traditional male-only sports such as football without providing funding for girls’ sports in proportion to the sexes’ enrollment in public schools. Girls accounted for only about one percent of In practice, this meant fieldhigh school athletic ing teams in girls’ sports of participants in 1970, interest as well as in boys’ but made up 42 percent by 2006. sports, not providing male

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“U.S. Education on the Skids”

The 1970s saw increasing debate on the American public education system due to the decline in basic skills among students at all grade levels. Reprinted below is an excerpt of a Los Angeles study of American education conducted by Jack McCurdy and Don Speich examining trends from the 1960s to the mid-1970s. After edging upward for more than a century, the reading, writing and computational skills of American students from elementary school through college are now in a prolonged and broad-scale decline unequalled in U.S. history. The downward spiral, which affects many other subject areas as well, began abruptly in the mid-1960s and shows no signs of bottoming out. By most measures, student achievement is now below the national average of a decade ago. There are, in fact, some indications that the decline—reflected in a wide range of test results and other evidence of academic performance—is growing worse. The decline, a Los Angeles Times investigation shows, encompasses all ethnic groups, all economic classes, and both private and public school students, at most achievement levels in all regions of the nation. Furthermore, there is evidence that over a nine-year span, college students have been doing progressively worse on examinations required prior to entering graduate schools. This would indicate a drop in achievement in higher education as well as elementary and secondary schools. The only exception to this pattern has been in the reading level of pupils in the first three grades, and in science knowledge among college-bound students and college graduates. Test scores in these areas generally either have risen moderately or have held steady over a long period. Evidence from a Los Angeles Times investigation shows that the drop in standards is the result of a shift in social and educational values during the 1960s—a shift to which schools and college both succumbed and contributed by reducing the number of basic academic classes, weakening graduation requirements and emphasizing electives that are academically less demanding . . . . . . curriculum shifts, drops in requirements, grade inflation, rising absenteeism—began in the mid-1960s and then swept through the education system. Not until the 1970s, however, did they have their sharpest impact.



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and female teams in every sport. Title IX provided the basis for lawsuits against schools that discriminated against women and girls, empowering a generation of women to enter new fields of study. Although 36 years later sex discrimination and harassment in schools had not disappeared, the academic and athletic gains of women through Title IX were significant. Within educational classrooms, women’s gains were most evident in higher education. In 2005 females were the majority of collegeenrolled students. In 1970 girls were just over one percent of participants in high school sports. By 2006 they represented 42 percent of athletic participants. Women’s participation in college sports was almost five times the pre-1970 rate. Women also made great strides in historically male career fields, from engineering to mathematics to medicine to biological research. The increased access of women to educational resources had far-reaching social effects, as women continued to enter the work force in record numbers throughout the 1970s. TRENDS IN EDUCATION: HOMESCHOOLING In the 1970s, educational theorists began to question the mandatory nature of public education, and to suggest alternatives. Educational theorist Ivan Illich and John Holt were two notable opponents of compulsory schooling. Illich is perhaps best known for his 1971 work Deschooling Society. In that book, he argued that socioeconomic class differences could never be made up, even if rich and poor attended schools of equal quality, because poor children lacked the educational opportunities outside the classroom that are readily available to middle- and upper-class children. In place of mandatory schooling, he advocated peer education and self-motivated learning through webs of partnerships that would encourage knowledge development instead of consumption skills. John Holt created the concept of “unschooling,” and published several important works of alternative educational theory In 2004 about 2.2 percent of all school-age U.S. children were involved in homeschooling. including How Children Fail

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(1964), How Children Learn (1967), and Teach Your Own: A Hopeful Path for Education (1981). He also founded a journal, Growing Without Schooling, that published until 2005. Raymond and Dorothy Moore are two other noted homeschooling proponents, whose research and curricula have been widely used by homeschooling parents. The public schools faced a bewildering variety of challenges and changes during the 1970s due to new federal laws, new social movements, and a national economic downturn that left many school districts underfunded and understaffed. This combination of circumstances led increasing numbers of parents to seriously consider homeschooling their children in order to provide a quality education. In 1970, only a handful of students were homeschooled by parents who were able to negotiate the maze of regulations and laws requiring mandatory school attendance. By 2004, the number of U.S. students involved in homeschooling was 1.1 million, or about 2.2 percent of all schoolage children, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. THE 1980s: A NATION AT RISK The National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) published a landmark report in April 1983 that shaped U.S. educational policies for the next two decades. “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform” painted a bleak picture of the nation’s public school system and called for sweeping curricular and structural reforms. The report made five recommendations. First, it called for strengthening high school graduation requirements, and put forth “Five New Basics” as a central curriculum during high school: “4 years of English; 3 years of mathematics; 3 years of science; 3 years of social studies; and one-half year of computer science.” Two years of foreign language study were also strongly recommended. Second, the report demanded stricter admissions requirements for colleges and universities. Third, the report called for more time spent on education: more homework assigned, more standardized tests administered, and longer school days and school years as necessary to achieve these academic goals. Fourth, it called for improved teacher training and increased teacher salaries to attract high-quality professionals into the nation’s public classrooms. Finally, it set the primary responsibility for financing and governing schools at the state and local level, while outlining federal interests as identifying the national interest in education, and then helping to fund and support educational programs promoting that interest. This report spurred a back-to-basics movement in public education that addressed some systemic problems, while creating new ones. Task forces and school boards across the country studied the report and discussed the implications of implementing its recommendations. Proponents of these requirements described the importance of academic accountability and teacher credentials, and pointed to two decades of plummeting SAT scores



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Higher Education and Political Protest: The Kent State Shootings

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During the height of the Vietnam War, a national tragedy took place on American soil. Student opposition to the Vietnam War was strong, and by 1970 many were frustrated by the continuation of the war and the draft in spite of their political efforts. When Nixon announced the American invasion of Cambodia on April 30, 1970, student protest movements saw this as an intensification of the war, rather than an effort to bring it to an end. Antiwar campus groups across the nation planned protest activities during the first week in May. One of these was at Kent State University. Protests began on May 1. At first these were peaceful, but late-night incidents in the town of Kent sparked conflict as a crowd coming out of downtown bars began to break windows and throw rocks at police. On Saturday, May 2, campus protestors again gathered at the University Commons, and the campus ROTC building was burned to the ground, although no arsonist has ever been identified. Fearful of the level of violent activity in the town, the mayor asked the Ohio National Guard to come to town and restore order. They began arriving on the evening of May 2. On May 4, 1970, four Kent State students were killed and nine were wounded by members of the National Guard. Estimates vary of the number of students who attended the organized protest on May 4. Approximately 1,300 students gathered on the Commons, despite the presence of 1,000 National Guard troops. Guardsmen attempted to disperse the crowds with tear gas, but the students threw the tear gas canisters back at them and refused to leave. Some students began to throw rocks at the guard members in addition to the canisters. Great confusion surrounds what happened next, but the National Guard members began shooting into the crowd of students. Most bullets fired were clearly aimed at the ground and intended as warning shots. However, four students were killed, two of whom had not even been participating in the protest, but were walking between classes. One of the nine wounded students was permanently paralyzed. One guardsman also received minor injuries. Oddly, all of the students wounded and killed were further away from the guardsmen’s position than the closest protestors, making their injuries and fatalities more puzzling. Why did the guardsmen open fire? Why did they aim where they did? Even a subsequent FBI investigation failed to answer these questions adequately. The events at Kent State sparked nationwide campus protests and over 900 colleges and universities across the country closed. This event marks the only nationwide student strike in U.S. history. It took almost a decade for the victims’ families to receive reparations from the state of Ohio, and the controversy continues as a chain of criminal and civil trials have failed to bring closure to this unfortunate event.

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Innovative School Structures: Charter Schools

Reformers of the U.S. public school system face nearly insurmountable challenges in navigating the many layers of local, state, and federal legislation surrounding education. A century of educational bureaucracy has made it difficult in many school districts to create frameworks for experimentation with educational methods and pedagogies. At the end of the 1980s, urban educators created a new model for educational reforms: the charter school. The first charter schools were actually programs within existing schools. These schools of choice were voluntary programs created in Philadelphia schools in 1989. Students who chose to join these programs were challenged by high academic standards. They often received more attention because of small class sizes. Educators who worked in these programs had the chance to try innovative approaches and educational philosophies, while working free from the restrictions of many traditional public school regulations. Minnesota was the first to pass state legislation enabling the creation of charter schools; it was approved in 1991. In 2008 41 states had charter school laws on the books, and there were over 4,100 charter schools across the country. Charter schools are supported by a sponsor, usually a state or a local school board, that evaluates their success in carrying out their educational charter. A school’s charter outlines its mission, curriculum, target student population, goals, and assessment methods, as well as benchmarks for success. Charter schools are public schools and are nonsectarian, although some are run by private organizations. They usually receive the same perpupil funding per student that other schools in their district receive. Their increased freedom from regulation is countered by their increased accountability to their sponsor, who can close the school if the requirements outlined in the charter are not met. Are charter schools an improvement over traditional public schools? Does the increased freedom in administrative structure result in educational innovations? Research is inconclusive, as some studies point to gaps in charter students’ core subject learning, while others identify increased student achievement in charter schools. The National Charter School Research Project was founded in 2005 to support fair and accurate research into charter school issues and controversies. Their publications provide important resources for state legislators and educators to understand the pros and cons of a charter school approach, as charter schools continue to spread across the United States.



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as justification for changing the educational status quo. Opponents of the NCEE plan criticized its narrow focus, its restriction of access to education at the college level, and the federal government’s lack of funding for the mandates put forth in the report. Many pointed out that the new basic curriculum was a one-size-fits-all plan that did little to address the needs for vocational training, special education, or the non-college-bound student. From 1983 to the early 1990s, the general trend in public school administration was toward implementation of the recommendations of the NCEE report. High school graduation requirements were tightened, although not always in the specific directions the report suggested. Computer science, for one, was rarely required for graduation due to the expense of equipping schools with the necessary technologies, as well as the rapid pace of technological change. Teacher training programs in colleges and universities increased requirements for certification. Many areas of the country were successful in funding increased teacher salaries. These recommendations impacted teachers’ daily classroom practices, as well as students’ overall educational experiences. THE 1990s: “GOALS 2000” AND THE POLITICS OF EDUCATION In 1992, when Bill Clinton came into office, he built on the educational objectives of the previous president, George H. W. Bush. Bush had convened the National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) to set up an infrastructure for developing national education standards, and the panel’s work continued under Clinton. However, in 1994, Republicans regained control of Congress. Prominent Senators and Representatives were concerned about increased federal involvement in public education, and especially about increased federal funding for education. Clinton signed the “Goals 2000: Educate America Act,” which mandated the creation of the National Education Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC). Its purpose was to approve or reject states’ standards. However, no one was appointed to serve on the council due to political opposition. During this time in U.S. politics, the “culture wars” were fought across the national stage. In the area of education, the Civil Rights movement had resulted in an ethnically diversified student population; parents demanded that their histories and cultures be accurately represented in educational curricula. As a result, some educators pushed for new curricular standards incorporating multiculturalism. Others wanted to set clear limits in subject areas such as literature, where established canons of studied works were challenged by the inclusion of minority and female authors. Questions such as “Whose history are we teaching?” led to the significant revision of widely-used textbooks. For example, Native-American writings and speeches were included in standard U.S. history texts to provide perspectives on colonization from the point of view of the colonized. Some educators felt this culturally inclusive approach was long overdue, while others felt that it detracted from or watered down the

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“standard” information students should be learning. Congressmen who reviewed the NEGP standards objected strongly to what was included, particularly in the subject of history. The end result was that the standards developed by the NEGP were overwhelmingly rejected by Congress. While the federal government was in gridlock over appropriate approaches to public education, individual states began to take up the challenge. In 1995, the first National Education Summit was held, and attendees included corporate executives who partnered with state governors to create cultural support for significant education reform. By 1998, 38 states had independently develIn the early 1990s, computer science was not oped standards for education in often required for high school graduation, in part because of the high cost of equipment. some core subjects, regardless of federal government regulation. Often, though, humanities and arts standards were slow to develop for reasons of cultural politics, compared with standards in the areas of math and science that were seen as relatively objective fields of study. 2000 AND BEYOND: “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” In 2001, sweeping federal legislation entitled No Child Left Behind (NCLB) returned America to attempts at a back-to-basics curriculum with similarities to the “Nation at Risk” report of the 1980s. While many of the recommendations were similar in terms of their impacts on students—tougher high school graduation requirements, increased use of standardized testing, and higherquality teachers—the evaluation processes for individual schools were a new addition to public policy. NCLB had four primary pillars: stronger accountability for results, more freedom for states and communities, proven education methods, and more choices for parents. “Accountability” here meant accountability for school performance, and the idea of “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) was introduced as a measure of school success. All public elementary, middle, and high schools



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During the 1989–90 school year, Wendy Kopp was on a mission. Her Princeton undergraduate thesis outlined a national teacher corps program with the potential to reshape U.S. education by bringing qualified teachers into urban and rural schools. Urban educators often faced daunting challenges from personal safety to low-achieving, low-attending students. Rural locations had increasing difficulty attracting qualified teachers to live outside urban and suburban areas. Kopp’s solution to these problems was to raise money to fund a national initiative that became Teach for America (TFA). TFA was aimed at recent college graduates seeking to pay off student debt who were interested in addressing poverty while gaining teaching experience. Participants in TFA make a commitment to service while receiving post-graduate training and working for a contracted time period in an urban or rural classroom. In 2007, over 17,000 teachers were part of TFA. Participants attend an institute where they go through five weeks of intensive training in the basics of classroom management, literacy development, and educational policy. Institute graduates begin classroom teaching in one of 15 impoverished public school districts. They are asked to commit to teaching for two years. Many of them pursue formal teacher education during their years in the classroom in order to meet certification requirements in their states. Most TFA participants are recruited from elite colleges and universities, and their teaching experiences mark their first sustained experiences of American poverty. Because one goal of the program is to recruit highly qualified applicants who might not otherwise consider teaching careers, very few have taken education coursework or have prior teaching experience. With its similarities to the National Teaching Corps (1965–81), some might think TFA’s model of introducing novice teachers into tough classrooms is a recipe for failure. However, several studies of the TFA program based on classroom data indicate that successes are taking place. A 2004 study found that TFA teachers increased student math scores in grades one through five more than their peer teachers within the same schools, and that their students performed as well as those of peer teachers on reading tests. One difference between TFA and older national teacher development programs is its emphasis on a shared philosophy and pedagogy. A TFA office in each target city provides local staff support for teachers facing a variety of classroom challenges. Weekly meetings give TFA teachers in each district a chance to meet, brainstorm, and acquire additional training in grade and subject-specific teaching methods. This continuity of professional development was lacking from earlier programs. In 2008, more than 275 Teach for America alumni served as principals and superintendents across the United States and its territories, and TFA has developed a School Leadership Initiative.

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Test results from 2000 to 2005 show that “No Child Left Behind,” while troubled, has closed the achievement gap between minority and white students considerably in several age groups.

were required to track students in grades three through eight to demonstrate progress in achieving 100 percent compliance with state and local education standards. Schools that failed to meet AYP for two consecutive years were defined as “needing improvement”; students in those schools were to be offered transfer options elsewhere within the district, thus giving parents in failing schools more educational choices for their children. At the end of three years of failing to meet AYP, schools could be closed, reorganized, or taken over by charter organizations or the state. While the goals of increased school accountability and parent choice were laudable, in practice NCLB contradicted other federal education policies and produced problems in implementation. At first, the NCLB legislation contained no exemptions from testing for special education students, who could not be held to conventional progress standards for reasons of mental disability. This meant that schools serving students with special needs would receive lower composite scores, and thus might fail to demonstrate adequate yearly progress. Also, initial interpretations of the policy often valued progress over time instead of overall achievement. Thus, a high-achieving school where classes regularly tested at 95 percent proficient or above could not demonstrate significant yearly progress compared to a school whose students moved from 10 to 21 percent proficient. These problems were addressed in a 2002 revision of the NCLB.



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NCLB aimed to create more freedom for states and communities by requiring states to develop their own educational standards and assessment tests in reading, math, and science by 2007. For reasons of cost and ease of administration, all states chose to develop standardized multiple-choice tests to assess student progress in these three subjects. Federal funds were also tied to this testing development process. Annually, small samples of each state’s students take the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in part to demonstrate that educational standards are reasonably comparable across states. One of the primary criticisms of NCLB is that it encourages “teaching to the test,” or developing test-taking skills over creative and critical thinking skills that are difficult to measure in a multiple-choice format. Also, the policy mandates testing only in certain subject areas. Thus, schools tend to focus attention and teaching time on reading, math, and science, because the schools will be rated on their success in those subjects alone. Non-tested subjects may be neglected or cut from school curricula altogether, including history, social studies, music, dance, theatre, foreign languages, fine arts, vocational training, and any other subjects that fall outside the standardized testing mandates. However, NAEP test results from 2000–05 demonstrate that NCLB has led to higher national achievement scores in reading and math and has closed the achievement gap between minority and white students considerably in several age groups. Conclusion Future administrations will continue re-envisioning the federal government’s role in determining the educational standards of the country. At the same time, the parallel trend of alternative or charter school development has not abated. The changing goals of alternatives to public education signify the progress the United States has made toward greater equity in access to quality education. While from the 1950s to the 1970s private schools known as “segregation academies” were created for whites to avoid government-mandated desegregation, alternative schools are now flourishing for more positive reasons— some even aim specifically to help those who might once have been excluded. Although the risk of resegregation exists with these schools, in 2008 some of the most successful charter schools in the country were those with primarily African-American enrollments. Heather A. Beasley

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Further Readings

Bringuier, Jean Claude. Conversations With Jean Piaget. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Caputo, Philip. 13 Seconds: A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings. New York: Chamberlain Bros, 2005. Chicago Sun-Times. “U.S. Education on the Skids.” (September 5, 1976). Cuban, Larry. How Teachers Taught: Consistency and Change in American Classrooms 1880–1990. New York: Teachers College Press, 1993. Gibboney, Richard A. The Stone Trumpet: A Story of Practical School Reform, 1960–1990. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994. “Goals 2000: Reforming Education to Improve Student Achievement.” U.S. Dept. of Education, 1998. Goldin, Claudia. “A Brief History of Education in the United States.” Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1999. Goodlad, John I. A Place Called School. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Haney, Walt, et al. The Educational Pipeline in the United States, 1970– 2000. Boston, MA: Boston College, 2004. Mondale, Sarah and Sheila Curran Bernard. School: The Story of American Public Education. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001. National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “The Color of Success: Black Student Achievement in Public Charter Schools.” Available online: http://www.publiccharters.org/files/publications/NAPCS_Shades ofSuccessIB.pdf. Accessed November 2008. National Commission on Excellence in Education. “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.” U.S. Department of Education, 1983. Tyack, David B., and Larry Cuban. Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Urban, Wayne and Jennings Wagoner. American Education: A History. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill, 2000.

Chapter 9

Science and Technology

“When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the World Wide Web. —President Bill Clinton

Both science and technology were by 1970 central to the lives of ordinary

Americans, who depended on their cars for mobility, their lights to lengthen the day, their radio and television for news and entertainment, and appliances for easing the drudgery of housekeeping. A number of post–World War II scientific advances evolved solely from battlefield needs, but American scientific achievement in the decades after 1970 also blossomed because of the Cold War space race, new or growing industries, and the funding of academic research. One advance that eventually brought dramatic change to the daily lives of many people did have roots in the U.S. Department of Defense: the Internet. By 1970 physicists, having built large accelerators, smashed subatomic particles into one another at high speeds in an attempt to discover new particles with new properties. Astronomers peered through their telescopes at ever more distant regions of the universe in hopes of learning about its early development. Geneticists were working to identify genes and the traits for which they coded. Some evolutionary biologists were coming to the conclusion, as Ernst Mayr and Sewall Wright had earlier, that evolution was not always a gradual process. The evolutionary biologists in this camp conceived of evolution as long periods of stasis punctuated by rapid bursts of change. Evolution was therefore an episodic rather than a continuous process. 125

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Most promising was the work of agricultural scientists who were in the midst of the Green Revolution, which originated in the development and spread of hybrid corn in the first half of the 20th century. In addition to corn, agronomists had by 1970 bred high-yielding varieties of wheat, rice, potatoes, and several legumes. These crops made it possible for the developing world to feed its burgeoning population. Asia and Latin America benefited the most from these new crops, and Africa the least. Because these crops did best when fertilized and irrigated, they were not suitable for poor peasants who could not afford these inputs, but rather were for prosperous farmers. Scientists and engineers worked in a variety of settings, often universities, foundations, and government agencies. Most scientists and engineers were members of professional associations, and these were quite specialized, admitting the practitioners of a narrow specialty to their ranks. A few broad associations were active, notably the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), but these were the exception, rather than the rule. Scientists and engineers communicated the results of their research by writing papers for peer-review journals. The professional associations sponsored these journals, and these associations included a subscription to a journal as

A geneticist and a technician at work in a sugar beet field in Salinas, California, where they were studying disease resistance in beet breeding lines in the mid-2000s.



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a benefit of membership. Engineers worked on practical problems like the design of a bridge or dam. Applied scientists likewise sought knowledge to solve practical problems, such as the breeding of a high yielding variety of potato. In contrast to engineers and applied scientists, others pursued basic science: knowledge for its own sake, without regard to utility. The Cold War and the Green Revolution both depended on applied science and technology, whereas high-energy physics and astronomy were basic sciences. Applied science, engineering, and technology were closely allied, whereas basic science and technology had little in common, despite the opinions of some scientists to the contrary. These scientists conceived the relationship between basic science and technology as a pipeline. By funding basic science at one end of the pipeline, one reaped technology at the other end. A seductive analogy, it was nonetheless false—basic science seeks knowledge, not technology. GENETIC ENGINEERING and the Human Genome Project The 1944 discovery that DNA is the molecule of heredity and subsequent discovery in 1953 that its structure is a double helix opened the possibility of manipulating it. To accomplish this aim scientists had to find a way of adding fragments of nucleotide bases to a strand of DNA, and of removing other fragments, depending on a researcher’s goal. In 1970 American physician Hamilton O. Smith discovered the first restriction enzyme, which cut out a sequence of nucleotide bases from a strand of DNA. The discovery of the first restriction enzyme stoked the quest to find others. The cutting out of a sequence of nucleotide bases from a strand of DNA led scientists to find a way of joining it with other sequences of nucleotide bases to make a novel arrangement of nucleotide bases. Using the enzyme ligase, which bound nucleotide bases together, American geneticist Stanley Cohen and American biochemist Herbert Boyer cut out a sequence of nucleotide bases from one organism and inserted it into a bacterium in 1973. Not all scientists welcomed this achievement. Those who gathered at the Asilomar Conference in 1974 worried that researchers might bioengineer bacteria with harmful genes—a bacterium that could produce yellow fever virus, for example. Outside the laboratory these bacteria might multiply, threatening an epidemic of yellow fever. The conferees called on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to ban the most dangerous categories of bioengineering and regulate all other categories. The NIH established guidelines for research in bioengineering but by the end of the decade had relaxed most of them. The end of the century brought even more advances in genetic engineering and especially the study of the human genome. The discovery that DNA is a sequence of nucleotide bases in linear arrangement opened the possibility that molecular biologists might determine the order of all three billion nucleotide bases in humans. These nucleotide bases are on the 23 pairs of chromosomes

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Scientist Dr. Milton English loading DNA into a gel on March 17, 2004, at the federally funded National Human Genome Research Institute.

in the nucleus of every cell in the human body. Nucleotide bases form genes; to sequence nucleotide bases in the human genome is therefore to identify all the genes in humans. The identification of all genes in humans was the first step toward learning the traits for which each gene or group of genes codes. The discovery of the genes that cause leukemia and those that cause schizophrenia in 1999, for example, raised hopes that scientists and physicians may learn how to disable the genes and prevent disease. Once researchers identify each gene and the trait it codes for, they will be able to determine what traits, good and bad, each person has. In the near term physicians may be able, for example, to prescribe a regime of diet and exercise for a patient predisposed to developing diabetes. In the long term they may be able to disable the diabetes genes. The Human Genome Project has worked with bioethicists to write guidelines for the use of information derived from the project. The project began in the 1980s as an effort by private biotechnology companies to sequence the nucleotide bases in the human genome. In 1989 the NIH founded the National Human Genome Research Institute and, along with the Department of Energy, began to fund the institute’s work to sequence the genome. From the early days the federal government and private companies worked independently to sequence the genome. In 1999 the institute announced that it had



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sequenced all nucleotide bases on the 22nd chromosome. The next year the institute and the private firm Celera, led by J. Craig Venter, announced that they had a rough map of the genome, and in 2003 the institute announced that it had a more precise map of the genome, though by 2008 not every gene had been mapped. The Human Genome Project revealed that the genome has only 20,000 to 25,000 genes rather than the 35,000 most researchers had expected, raising the question of why humans have so few genes. Researchers now have the task of matching each gene or group of genes to its trait. Bioengineered Medicines and Products Since the late 1970s scientists have bioengineered medicines, crops, and animals. In 1978 the company Genentech bioengineered insulin, manufacturing it in Escherichia coli, a bacterium in the human intestine. Genentech had made this achievement by splicing the sequence of nucleotide bases that codes for the production of insulin into E. coli. In 1982 the Food and Drug Administration approved E. coli-produced insulin for use by diabetics. In 1980 the Boston, Massachusetts laboratory of the Swiss company Biogen bioengineered interferon, a protein that prevents viruses from multiplying in the body. Bacteria with the nucleotide bases to code for the production of interferon yield the once scarce protein in medicinal quantities. In 1986 Merck Research Laboratories bioengineered Recombivax HB, a vaccine against hepatitis B. In 1989 GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals followed with hepatitis B vaccine Engerix B. In 1987 Advanced Genetic Sciences used the bioengineered bacterium Frostban in California strawberry fields to protect strawberries from frost. In 1988 Harvard University scientists bioengineered a mouse susceptible to the growth of tumors so that, once stricken with cancer, it would allow scientists to test new anticancer drugs. In 1990 NIH physician W. French Anderson performed gene therapy on a person, treating a girl with an autoimmune disease. In 1996 and 1997 Monsanto began to market bioengineered varieties of cotton, soybeans, and corn. The bioengineered corn, Bt corn, created controversy when in 1990 a Cornell University study blamed its pollen for killing Monarch butterflies. In 2006 National Institutes of Health scientists bioengineered T-cells, part of the immune system, to target cancer cells, and used these T-cells to treat two cases of metastatic melanoma. SPACE PROGRAM Born during the Cold War, the U.S. space program began as a race with the Soviet Union to land a man on the moon. In July 1969 and again that November the United States landed its astronauts on the moon, and the Soviets abandoned their program to make a moon landing. In 1971 and 1972 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent four more missions to the moon. Leaving the moon for the last time in 1972, NASA turned its attention in

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1973 to the launch and perpetuation of the space station Skylab. NASA intended Skylab to photograph stars and planets, which are seen more clearly in space than from Earth, and to study the effects of weightlessness on the human body. Skylab ended in disaster, falling out of orbit in 1979 and crashing into a desolate region of Australia. By then NASA had cancelled the Apollo program, whose last mission was in 1975, in order to concentrate money and manpower on developing a reusable spacecraft. NASA expected to save money by not having to build a new rocket for every venture into space. Toward this end, on April 12, 1981, NASA launched the first reusable spacecraft, the space American astronauts strike a playful pose while shuttle Columbia, which could weightless inside the doomed Skylab space station on February 1, 1974. carry seven astronauts and 65,000 pounds. Demonstrating the value of its capacity to carry a large payload, Columbia placed two satellites into orbit around Earth on November 11, 1982. The shuttle made space travel seem commonplace, but the illusion that space ventures were routine ended on January 28, 1986, when the shuttle Challenger exploded after takeoff, killing everyone on board. President Ronald Reagan demanded an inquiry, and the Rogers Commission faulted NASA for the design of Challenger. Its O-rings had not expanded to plug the gap between sections of the rocket boosters, causing the propellant to explode. On August 15, 1986, Reagan authorized NASA to resume the shuttle program, though more than two years would elapse before NASA resumed flights with the launch of Discovery. On April 24, 1990, Discovery put the Hubble Space Telescope, the most ambitious astronomical project to date, into orbit around Earth. Despite these successes, disaster struck again. On February 1, 2003, Columbia exploded over Texas as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere. As was true of Challenger, Columbia’s seven crew died. The investigation again blamed NASA for faulty design. Upon takeoff a piece of insulation had broken loose from the shuttle, damaging the left wing. NASA again suspended shuttle flights,



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The fact that stars, planets, and other astronomical objects are clearer when viewed from space than from Earth prompted American astronomer Lyman Spitzer to propose that the United States build a space telescope. The formation of NASA in 1958 made it the obvious candidate to build one, and in 1962 the National Academy of Sciences urged Congress to fund its construction. However, the telescope was not a priority during the Cold War and only in 1978 did Congress decide to fund the project, giving NASA $36 million that year. During construction, the telescope came to be known as the Hubble Space Telescope in honor of American astronomer Edwin Hubble. NASA completed the telescope in 1986 at a cost of $2.5 billion and hoped to launch it that year, but Challenger’s explosion led NASA to cancel missions for nearly two years. Only in April 1990 did Discovery launch the Hubble telescope into space. The quality of images disappointed astronomers who recognized that one of the mirrors was flawed. The telescope could not be fixed from the ground, so NASA would need to send astronauts into space to make repairs. In December 1993 astronauts from the shuttle Endeavour fixed the telescope, and it has since sent photographs of remarkable clarity back to Earth. In 1994 NASA announced the success of the Endeavour mission and showed the public several photographs taken by the telescope. Since the Endeavour mission three other shuttle flights have visited Hubble for maintenance, and NASA scheduled a final mission in 2009. Images from the telescope have led astronomers to refine estimates of the age of the universe and the rate of the universe’s expansion. Among other images, photographs have shown stars in the Astronaut F. Story Musgrave on a space walk to process of formation from repair the Hubble Space Telescope on December 9, 1993. the debris of dead stars.

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resuming them on July 4, 2006, with the launch of Discovery. The space shuttle was only part of NASA’s ambitious plan to colonize space. In 1993 the United States announced that it would join Canada, Japan, and Russia in building, launching, One of the space shuttles, which have been and perpetuating an international central to NASA’s programs since the early 1980s, coming in for a landing. space station. Russia contributed the first piece of the space station in 1998 with the launch of Zarya. One month later NASA launched the second piece of the space station, Unity, which docked with Zarya. In July 2000 Russia docked the third module with Zarya, forming a space station with three compartments. Between 2000 and 2007 the United States and its collaborators made 15 missions to the space station. Astronauts have conducted many experiments, such as protein synthesis, tissue culture, examining the behavior of fluids in space, and observations of Earth. Other research focused on the growing of plants in space as a prelude to the colonization of Mars, an undertaking that would require humans to grow crops on Mars. The space program has also had some significant effects on daily life through the commercialization of NASA’s scientific knowledge and some of its over 6,300 patents. The proliferation of communication and weather satellites, which began with NASA’s work but have been privatized, has vastly increased communication capabilities and improved the forecasting of dangerous weather such as hurricanes. Other inventions include everything from fuel cell technology to the design of Olympic swimmers’ racing suits. COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET The first computers were the size of a room and weighed several tons. The substitution of transistors and chips for vacuum tubes shrunk computers to the size of a television by the late 1960s. To miniaturize computers still further, Intel scientist Theodore Hoff invented the microchip in 1971. Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems marketed the Altair 8800 in 1975, which many historians regard as the first personal computer. It came as a kit that required assembly, and while Micro Systems expected to sell only a few hundred computers, it sold more than 1,000 in the first month. The next year Apple Computer began selling the Apple I computer. Unlike the Altair 8800, the Apple I came fully assembled and sold for $666.66. Apple sold only some 200 Apple Is. More successful was Apple II, which sold some six million units between 1977 and 1993, the final year of production.



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In 1981 International Business Machines (IBM), eager to compete with Apple, marketed the IBM PC with a Microsoft operating system. Intent on consolidating its base of customers, in March 1983 Apple began selling the Lisa, the first computer with a mouse and icons. That September IBM designed a computer chip with 512 kilobits of memory and began selling the PCjr, which was cheaper than its predecessor. In January of the next year, Apple began marketing the Macintosh, which was faster, smaller, and cheaper than the

Personal Computers and the Internet

The post-1970s era was most dramatically changed by the development of accessible home computers, and by the subsequent development of computer links to the world through a global communications enterprise called the Internet. This change challenged established communications formats by offering instant information 24 hours a day. The early personal computers (PCs) known as microcomputers entered the mass market as portable machines in the late 1970s. On April Fool’s Day 1976 Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs launched the Apple I, making it the first computer with a single circuit board and the first in a line of important innovations by the Apple Corporation. Leading the way in the development of software applications for the personal and business computer market has been the Microsoft Corporation founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and partners. By the mid 1980s Microsoft dominated the personal computer operating system market beginning with its MSDOS applications. In 1979 Bill Gates moved the company to Bellevue, a suburb of Seattle, Washington, where it has grown to be the chief force in the computer software market. With more and more software applications becoming available for a multitude of uses, the PC market expanded enormously so that well over a billion PCs were in use worldwide by the early twenty-first century. The coming of the Internet opened up even more possibilities for the PC. In the 1960s universities and research establishments such as MIT and UCLA attempted to link computers to transmit scientific and military information. Work at the Defense Advanced Research Projects perfected ARPANET, which came online in 1969. The term “Internet” entered the parlance after 1974 and suggested a new global system of networking. Private Internet providers and the development of better interfaces, search engines, and e-mail accounts in the 1980s gave the Internet a truly popular function. Endless possibilities now exist for communications, research, games and personal exchanges that have produced a revolutionary transformation in lifestyles and everyday culture.

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Lisa, though even at discount its $2,500 price tag put it out of the reach of many Americans. That December Bell Laboratories designed a chip with one megabit of random access memory (RAM), four times more memory than any other chip. In 1987 Apple marketed the Mac II, the first computer with a color printer. Three years later Microsoft began marketing its operating system Windows 3.0, selling 30 million copies in 1990 alone. In August 1995 Windows 95 came out, and was followed by Windows 98 in An Apple II computer, of which six million units June 1998, the Millennium Ediwere once sold, is now on display at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City. tion in 2000, and XP in 2001. In the 1960s Massachusetts Institute of Technology psychologist Joseph Licklider envisioned a network of computers with each computer able to access information from others in the network. By decade’s end Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) NET connected computers in academe and the Defense Department. In 1971 Raymond Tomlinson, a scientist at defense contractor Bolt, Beranek and Newman, invented e-mail, one of the most popular applications. Two years later, American computer scientists Vinton Cerf and Robert E. Kahn wrote a set of rules to facilitate the linking of computers to the growing ARPANET. In the 1980s government agencies— NASA, the National Science Foundation, the NIH—linked to this network, which was now called the Internet. In 1990 Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN) engineer Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He wrote hypertext mark-up language (HTML) and suggested giving each Web site an address, a universal resource locator (URL). To help people get from place to place on the Internet, computer science student Marc Andreesen invented the Mosaic browser in 1993, the first Internet browser. In 1994 he founded Netscape Communications Corporation and that December Netscape began selling Netscape Navigator 1.0. Eager to compete with Netscape, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 1.0 in 1995. The Internet grew in popularity. Whereas five million Americans used the Internet in 1994, the number soared to 62 million in 1998. Some companies allowed their employees to work from home, a practice known as telecommuting. Having a computer and Internet connection at home, employees could work more freely than at the office. The effects of the Internet went beyond work. Americans could find a sense of community in online chat rooms. Some people in chat rooms became friends, though those who wanted more



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than friendship posted a photograph and brief autobiography on dating sites. Web sites gave Americans information on medical conditions or surgical procedures. Others used the Internet to track and trade stocks, or to scan job ads and post resumes. Colleges and universities offered online courses, an innovation that courted nontraditional students. The Internet allowed travelers to book flights and hotels. By 2007 Internet traffic doubled every 100 days. The popularity of the Internet seemed limitless. The Discovery of Lucy Americans had entered the field of paleoanthropology in the 1930s when a majority of paleoanthropologists believed that humans had originated in Asia. In the 1950s British anthropologist Louis S. B. Leakey challenged this view asserting, as had Charles Darwin, that humans arose in Africa. American paleoanthropologists began working in Africa in the 1960s, and in November 1974 Cleveland Museum of Natural History curator Donald Johanson, along with anthropologist Tom Gray, discovered in Afar, Ethiopia, a 40 percent complete skeleton of a new type of hominid, Australopithecus afarensis. A new species, it was not in our genus, but rather in the genus of the famous Taung child. With her wide pelvis as evidence of a birth canal, Lucy was a woman. Her skull looked simian, but the postcranial skeleton was remarkably human. Lucy walked on two legs, as do humans, though she stood less than

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Lucy and Evolution

On November 24, 1974, anthropologists Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discovered fossil bones of a female hominid of the Australopithecus afarensis species in Hadar, Ethiopia. After finding an arm bone, Johanson and Gray discovered a partial skull, the femur, several ribs, the pelvis, and the lower jaw of the female that was named “Lucy” during a late-night celebration in which the dig team repeatedly played the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Johanson and Gray concluded from her skeleton that Lucy was three feet six inches tall and weighed from 60 to 65 pounds, and would have been around 25 years old when she died of unknown causes some three million years earlier. Donald Johanson realized that discovering Lucy’s remains was “terribly important,” but A cast of the insisted that he “didn’t realize how important skeleton of . . . until we had spent a lot of time in the Lucy, which laboratory studying it.” The discovery of Lucy is about 40 percent catapulted Johanson to worldwide acclaim. He complete. used his celebrity to win grants to finance his digs, undertaking expeditions to Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, and Yemen. In 1981 he founded the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley, California, and served as its director. In 1998 Johanson moved the institute to Tempe, Arizona, and became affiliated with Arizona State University. Although she was equipped to swing through trees, scientists believe that Lucy walked on two feet. Scientists around the world were quick to insist that this finding gave increased credibility to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Echoing this sentiment, Time science reporter Michael Lemonick suggested that Lucy provided the world with “startling evidence that humanity’s ancestors walked the earth more than three million years ago, hundreds of thousands of years earlier than anyone had imagined.” Finding Lucy’s remains inspired other anthropologists, and helped them to obtain funding to pursue additional digs. Other older fossils were later discovered near the site where Lucy was found. In 1994 researchers from the Institute of Human Origins and Israel’s Tel Aviv University discovered the intact skull of a male believed to have been born 200,000 years after Lucy. Journalists dubbed the find “Lucy’s grandson.” When paleontologist Gen Suwa unearthed a tooth fossil some 50 miles north of where Lucy was found, he declared, “I think we’re splitting hairs not to call it the missing link.”



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four feet tall. Johanson dated her remains at 3.2 million years old, making her one of paleoanthropology’s most ancient discoveries. No find outside Africa was nearly as old, confirming that the ancestors of humans must have arisen in Africa and only later migrated to Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. In 1975 Johanson discovered the remains of some 13 Australopithecines that he dated at 3.7 million years. In addition to adults, the remains included one infant and several children. Johanson believed these individuals, dubbed the “First Family,” were related and may have died together in a flash flood. If Lucy was remarkable for the completeness of her skeleton, the Turkana boy, named for Lake Turkana near which he was found, was even more astonishing. In 1984 British anthropologist Richard Leakey, son of Louis, and American anthropologist Alan Walker found a nearly complete skeleton of a boy. Leakey and American anthropologist Tim White asserted that he was 12 years old when he died, but another estimate put his age at nine. Walker and Leakey dated the Turkana boy to 1.5 million years old, half the antiquity of Lucy. A member of either Homo ergaster or Homo erectus, the Turkana boy was much larger than Lucy. He stood five foot three inches tall and might have surpassed six feet had he lived to adulthood. His stout bones must have anchored large muscles, suggesting that the boy might have been faster and stronger than modern humans. An inhabitant of a warm climate, he likely had little hair on his body, numerous sweat glands, and dark skin to protect him from the sun. He made stone tools and hunted game. Able to plan and coordinate hunts, the Turkana boy and his ilk must have been part of a complex social system. Whether he had language is unclear. The fact that his spinal cord was smaller than that of modern humans suggests that the Turkana boy might not have been able to articulate speech. Conclusion While for years space exploration seemed to be the immediate future for science, the space race has changed focus and expensive new manned missions to the moon and beyond have not yet come to pass. Modern scientists have instead reached deep into the past and evolution, into the study of the birth of the universe, and into the human genetic code, among many other influential fields of study. And in the midst of this activity, other scientists were working on an unheralded network of computers that would eventually become the Internet, which has connected people around the world in new ways and brought unforeseen changes to the daily lives of Americans. Christopher Cumo

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Further Readings

Brack, Andre. The Molecular Origins of Life: Assembling Pieces of the Puzzle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. DeVorkin, David and Robert W. Smith. The Hubble Space Telescope: Imaging the Universe. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2004. Harland, David M. The Story of the Space Shuttle. New York: Springer, Chichester and Praxis, 2004. Harland, David M. and John E. Catchpole. Creating the International Space Station. New York: Springer, 2002. Herring, Mark. Genetic Engineering. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Institute of Human Origins. “Lucy’s Story.” Available online: http://www. asu.edu/clas/iho/lucy.html#found. Accessed October 2008. Johanson, Donald and Blake Edgar. From Lucy to Language. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. Kraut, Robert, ed. Computers, Phones and the Internet: Domesticating Information Technology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Lemonick, Michael D. “Lucy’s Grandson.” Time (April 11, 1994). Lemonick, Michael D. “One Less Missing Link.” Time (October 3, 1994). Lewin, Roger. Human Evolution. Malden, MA: Blackwell Science, 1998. Minton, David H. The Boeing 747. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Tab/Aero, 1991. Mueller, Mike. Ford: 100 Years. St. Paul, MN: Motorbooks International, 2003. Palladino, Michael. Understanding the Human Genome Project. London: Pearson, Benjamin, Cummings, 2006. Petto, Andrew J. and Laurie R. Godfrey. Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2007. Spencer, Donald D. The Timetable of Computers: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Computers. Ormand Beach, FL: Camelot Publishing Company, 1999. Wade, Nicholas, ed. The Science Times Book of Fossils and Evolution. New York: Lyons Press, 1998.

Chapter 10

Entertainment and Sports

“Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.” —bell hooks

The social and political upheavals of the 1960s produced a vastly different

American culture in the contemporary period, and entertainment reflected those changes in a variety of ways. Music became even more diverse, with a myriad of subgenres emerging. Empowerment had allowed African Americans to develop new styles that were completely their own, and ethnic music, particularly reggae and Latino pop, became part of mainstream music. After 1970, music also became considerably more explicit. Elvis Presley died, the Beatles broke up, and Americans continued to spend large amounts of money on entertainment. By the 1980s, popular songs were being turned into music videos. The 1990s was a decade of technology as multimedia computers, the World Wide Web, cell phones, iPods, MP3 players, advanced video gaming systems, and digital video recorders changed the entire aspect of American entertainment. The distinction between entertainment and politics also became increasingly blurred. In the 1970s, the Vietnam War and the problems of veterans continued to demand attention. Because the war had become unpopular, the medical, social, and psychological concerns of veterans were often given short shrift. For the first time in history an American president was forced to resign over a political scandal when the Watergate scandal destroyed Richard Nixon’s political career. Democrat Jimmy Carter entered the White House at a time when 139

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By the mid-1980s Americans were spending as much on video rentals as they did at the theater. This typical middle-class living room with an entertainment center illustrates the trend of watching movies at home on videocassettes.

Americans were already facing economic crisis. A perceived oil crisis and the expanding environmental and antinuclear movements proved that American might was not immune to disasters. At the end of the decade, American hostages were taken in Iran, and the president boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics. The 1980s were chiefly characterized by Reaganism and a blurring between politics and entertainment. Ronald Reagan became known as the “entertainment president,” only partly because he had been an actor before becoming the governor of California in 1967. Reagan loved movies and frequently quoted them in speeches. One of his favorite phrases of encouragement was to tell someone to “win one for the Gipper.” The quotation came from a movie in which Reagan had played Notre Dame football player George Gipper, who originated the expression on his deathbed. Vice President Dan Quayle further blurred the line between politics and entertainment when he accused fictional character Murphy Brown of threatening family values. In a speech given in San Francisco, Quayle observed, “It doesn’t help matters that Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman mocks the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another ‘life-style’ choice.” In 1992, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton made saxophonist Kenny G a household name. He also



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revived the career of rock artist Stevie Nicks by using Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” in his campaign. Television entertainment was transformed by a plethora of reality and talk shows in which contestants exposed their talents, or lack thereof, and their personal lives and problems to public view. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey became the wealthiest woman in the entertainment business. In the early 2000s, declining attendance at movie theaters precipitated an industry crisis as audiences chose to remain at home. Popular music: 1970s The foundations of contemporary music were formed by the 1970s, but styles continued to be refined over the following decades. The influence of Elvis Presley and the Beatles persisted until the late 1970s, but rock music declined in popularity as music styles became more eclectic and divisive. Over the previous two decades, the success of rock music had created multinational businesses that targeted teenage consumers. Since large numbers of teenagers had jobs and drove their own cars, they were no longer totally dependent on their parents. This independence allowed teenagers to listen to music that their parents knew nothing about. On May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen killed four protesting students at Kent State University, launching a spate of rebellions. Songs such as Neil Young’s “Ohio” reflected growing fear and frustration: Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We’re finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio. War protests continued to be a major part of the music scene as the death toll in Vietnam grew. On May 9, 100,000 antiwar protestors marched on the nation’s capital. By December 1970, 44,000 Americans had died in Southeast Asia. The women’s movement was in full swing, and women had begun breaking down barriers in employment, education, entertainment, and sports. They also claimed the right to make decisions about their own lives and bodies. Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” became an anthem for the movement: I am woman, hear me roar In numbers too big to ignore And I know too much to go back an’ pretend ‘Cause I’ve heard it all before And I’ve been down there on the floor No one’s ever gonna keep me down again.

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Rock musicians diversified in the 1970s, and artists began singing traditional rock, heavy metal, southern rock, jazz rock, progressive rock, punk rock, and Latin rock. Top artists of the decade were Elton John, Paul McCartney and Wings, the Bee Gees, the Carpenters, and Chicago. Female artists such as Barbra Streisand, Anne Murray, Linda Ronstadt, Bette Midler, Olivia Newton-John, and Roberta Flack also sold well, as did country artists Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, and Tanya Tucker. The soft side of American music was represented by singers such as John Denver, Barry Manilow, the Osmonds, the Captain and Tennille, and the Partridge Family. Many of these artists were popularized by their own television shows. Tragedy occurred in 1970 when Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died from drug overdoses within a month of each other. The following year, rock received additional blows with the deaths of Jim Morrison and Duane Allman. In the mid-1970s, punk rock, with its emphasis on social protest and alternative viewpoints, was brought to the forefront by the popularity of groups such as the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. While subsections of rock reflected the uncertainty of the decade, spiritual songs gained in popularity. In “Spirit in the Sky,” Norman Greenbaum sang: Prepare yourself you know it’s a must Gotta have a friend in Jesus So you know that when you die He’s gonna recommend you To the spirit in the sky In 1973, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s rock opera, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” and Stephen Schwartz’s “Godspell,” were turned into popular movies. That same year, television star John Travolta starred in Saturday Night Fever, and the disco craze began sweeping America. Ethnic music also reached wide audiences in the 1970s. Reggae, known for its afterbeat drumming, had been introduced in the United States in the 1960s, but did not become mainstream until the 1970s. Originating in Jamaica, reggae combined elements of rhythm and blues with African and Jamaican folk music. The genre was dominated by the legendary Bob Marley, who propelled reggae into an international phenomenon with songs such as “I Shot the Sheriff,” “No Woman No Cry,” and “Redemption Song.” Television and film: 1970s In 1973, John Harrington estimated that by the end of life, the average American would spend the equivalent of 20 years watching television. All those hours spent in front of television screens helped to shape American culture. Sometimes the impact of television was positive, as was the case with Alex Haley’s Roots, which introduced a new audience to the evils of slavery and



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Protest at the Oscars

At the 1973 Academy Awards ceremony Marlon Brando won the best actor award for his portrayal of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather. In order to protest Hollywood’s portrayal and the nation’s treatment of the American Indian, Brando did not attend the ceremony and asked Sacheen Littlefeather to read a statement prepared by him. Hostile reaction by the crowd stopped Miss Littlefeather from reading the entire statement. Brando’s protest was particularly noteworthy because of the confrontation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, between federal officials and militant Native Americans. For 200 years we have said to the Indian people who are fighting for their land, their life, their families and their right to be free: “Lay down your arms, my friends, and then we will remain together. Only if you lay down your arms, my friends, can we then talk of peace and come to an agreement which will be good for you.” When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right . . . Perhaps at this moment you are saying to yourself what the hell has all this got to do with the Academy Awards? Why is this woman standing up here, ruining our evening, invading our lives with things that don’t concern us, and we don’t care about?... I think the answer to those unspoken questions is that the motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing him as savage, hostile and evil. It’s hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children watch television, and they watch films, and when they see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds become injured in ways we can never know. . . . I would have been here tonight to speak to you directly, but I felt that perhaps I could be of better use if I went to Wounded Knee to help forestall in whatever way I can the establishment of a peace which would be dishonorable as long as the rivers shall run and the grass shall grow.

the search for identity among African Americans whose ancestors had been brought to the United States by force. In general, television shows tended to be light comedies such as Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Mork and Mindy, and The Love Boat. Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In broke new ground with a group of talented entertainers and rapidfire commentary on life in America. Gunsmoke and Bonanza survived the end

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of America’s love affair with westerns. Variety shows such as The Carol Burnett Show, Sonny and Cher, and The Flip Wilson Show were perennial favorites. M*A*S*H, which took place during the Korean War, garnered large Nielsen ratings. In 1983, the final episode broke all previous records, garnering an audience of 125 million people. 60 Minutes, which had premiered in 1967, continued to be popular. Television producer Norman Lear turned the world of situation comedies upside down with All in the Family, poking fun at conservatives and liberals alike. A national uproar resulted in 1976 when Archie Bunker diapered baby Joey on the show, sending some audience members into a tailspin because of the “full frontal nudity.” More traditional families were represented in shows such as Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons, both of which were based on earlier time periods. In 1975, One Day at a Time broke new ground by featuring a divorced woman (Bonnie Franklin) with two daughters. African Americans were much better represented than in the past. Although Good Times and Sanford and Son were considered stereotypical, The Jeffersons, a Norman Lear spin-off from All in the Family, was about an African-American drycleaner “who finally got a piece of the pie,” which allowed him and his wife to live in a “penthouse in the sky.” Premiering in 1979, Real People served as a forerunner to the reality shows that became a staple of late 20th-century and early 21st-century television. Movies of the 1970s often mirrored national concerns with events of the day. Best Picture awards were given to Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather II, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, and Kramer vs. Kramer. Vietnam and its aftermath both entertained and horrified American audiences, and The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, and Apocalypse Now all dealt with this subject, as did more than 400 documentaries. All the President’s Men, the story of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) who helped to bring down Richard Nixon, presented the drama of the Watergate scandal to movie audiences. The women’s movement and changing perceptions of women’s roles were depicted in movies such as Annie Hall, An Unmarried Woman, Kramer vs. Kramer, and The China Syndrome. With the exception of Grease, a love song to the 1950s, the top movies of the decade were about intergalactic wars, man-eating sharks, little girls possessed by demons, and the Mafia. George Lucas followed his successful 1977 Star Wars with the equally successful Return of the Jedi and The Empire Strikes Back in the early 1980s. Films directed at young audience members included The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Saturday Night Fever, and National Lampoon’s Animal House. Popular music: 1980s As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, violence was rampant in both television and real life. On a final seasonal episode of the popular prime time soap



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Video Gaming

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The first coin-operated video game was marketed in 1971, but it was not until the release of the Atari gaming system in 1976 that video gaming became a national pastime. Over the next several decades the technology of gaming systems steadily advanced. By using digitalized images of actors, gamers experienced a feeling of being inside a game. A video game controller like those now found While virtual reality enhanced in at least 35 million American homes. the gaming experience, it also resulted in a good deal of controversy as games became more explicit in content. According to reports released by the PEW Internet and American Life Projects, in 2000, 97 percent of American youth between the ages of 12 and 17 played video games. A 2008 study revealed that 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls played video games on a regular basis. Nearly a third of them played every day, and another 21 percent played from three to five days each week. PEW senior specialist Amanda Lenhart declared that “It matters what kind of game you play more than how you play it.” However, critics of video gaming maintained that because the minds of young people were still being formed, they were adversely affected by explicit sex, violence, and language in many video games. One of the most violent games in the history of video gaming was Mortal Kombat, released in 1994 amid great controversy. A so-called “blood code,” which allowed gamers to increase the level of violence, was published in virtually every gaming magazine. After the “blood code” was implemented, blood spurted from all figures hit or killed. In a 1994 article for the Alberta Report, Michael Jenkinson noted that the game ends only when “one of the players rips his opponent’s still-beating heart from his chest, tears off his head and spine or reduces his skeleton to cinders with a fire ball.” The release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2005 created the greatest controversy of gaming history when it was revealed that the adults-only game contained a hidden component that, if unlocked, contained sexually explicit interactive scenes. Best Buy, Target, and a host of other retailers immediately pulled the game. New York Senator Hillary Clinton joined the battle, proclaiming “We should all be deeply disturbed that a game which now permits the simulation of lewd sexual acts in realistic graphics has fallen into the hands of young people.” A sex-free version of the game was later released.

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MTV

On August 18, 1981, Music Television, better known as MTV, premiered. The first words spoken on MTV were “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.” This first all-music channel was designed to appeal to middle-class white suburbanites between the ages of 18 and 24. The first video was the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” MTV was the Launched in 1981, MTV quickly drew $20 brainchild of Robert W. Pittman, who million from advertisers. MTV’s Times Square studio features live broadcasts. developed the strategy of artists promoting their songs through short movies. Musicians, corporate sponsors, and the targeted audience embraced the concept. Within its first year, MTV garnered $20 million in advertisements from more than 100 corporations anxious to sell to young people. In its early days, MTV played video after video, exposing its audience to a plethora of songs that were connected only by the themes of irreverence and rebellion. The ad campaign, “I want my MTV” was extremely successful in encouraging America’s young to exert pressure to ensure that MTV became a nationwide phenomenon. MTV was criticized as racist because black artists were a rarity in the early days. The Columbia Recording Company threatened to boycott MTV if the situation were not remedied. Producers responded on December 2, 1983, by introducing Michael Jackson’s Thriller, a 13-minute video featuring the former child singer in a variety of guises. Thriller became the most successful music video in history, rocketing Jackson to superstardom, and sealing MTV’s reputation for being on the cutting age of contemporary music. Since 1986, MTV has become more diverse, presenting programs that offer everything from news and documentaries, to cartoons and game shows. Consequently, the number of videos shown on MTV has declined. MTV’s influence on the music industry has remained constant, even influencing country music. According to country legend Charley Pride, “To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.”

opera “Dallas,” an unknown assailant shot J. R. Ewing, played by Larry Hagman. “Who Shot J. R. Ewing?” products became a national phenomenon. On December 8, former Beatle John Lennon was shot and killed outside his Dakota apartment building in New York City by a crazed fan. Former band mate George Harrison remembered his friend in “All Those Years Ago”:



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We’re living in a bad dream They’ve forgotten all about mankind And you were the one they backed up to the wall All those years ago In the 1980s, for the first time in history, the two most popular artists of the decade were African-American rock musicians. The youngest of the Jackson Five brothers, Michael Jackson had grown up before American television audiences. Jackson’s solo album, Off the Wall, blended rock, punk, and soul into a completely new sound. The introduction of the Thriller album on MTV cemented Jackson’s status as a mega star. Prince became one of the most successful and controversial rock artists in the history of rock music. In 1981, his release of “Dirty Mind” was so explicit that one of his band members left the group. It was the sexually explicit Purple Rain album (1984), however, that created the biggest uproar. The record sold 13 million copies, and the movie of the same name grossed $80 million. The 1980s were also marked by a battle over music rating systems. Tipper Gore, wife of Tennessee senator Al Gore, helped to found Parents Music Resource Center after listening to “Darling Nikki” on Prince’s Purple Rain, which Gore had unwittingly allowed her daughter to buy. Gore insisted that she was not trying to tread on First Amendment freedoms, but only wanted information that would warn parents about explicit content. Some African-American singers turned their attention to rap, which became increasingly popular in the 1980s. Rap was the product of AfricanAmerican and Latino urban ghettos, but it was popularized by New York disc jockeys who brought club music to public attention. By 1979, hip-hop music had appeared on the scene. Hip-hop developed inside the black community partially in response to the refusal of many radio programs to play black artists. The first big hip-hop hit was “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979. By the mid 1980s, hip-hop had entered the mainstream. Country musician Reba McEntire and the groups Alabama and the Oak Ridge Boys took the world of country music by storm, while Gloria Estefan brought Latin rock to mainstream American audiences. The 1980s also saw the rise of Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, James Taylor, Carole King, Pat Benatar, Blondie, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Phil Collins, Tina Turner, Lionel Richie, and Cyndi Lauper. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” from his best-selling 1984 album of the same name, remains one of the iconic songs of the era. In the midst of an uplifting chorus and seemingly patriotic overtones, especially in the music video’s imagery, Springsteen set forth a narrative of a Vietnam Veteran’s return home that made it more of a protest song than some realized. In the 1980s, former Beatle Paul McCartney noted some continuity with previous generations and the tradition of combining music with protest and

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political action that had been so prevalent in the 1960s. While watching the tearing down of the Berlin Wall on television in 1989, McCartney noted that “these escapees from the Communist bloc with their blue jeans and Pink Floyd T-shirts were the children of rock ‘n’ roll, of Elvis and the Beatles.” Television and film: 1980s In the 1980s, 60 Minutes continued to be a staple of Sunday night. Other popular shows included prime time soap operas Dallas, Knot’s Landing, and Dynasty. Situation comedies, such as Happy Days, Three’s Company, the Dukes of Hazzard, Cheers, and Newhart continued to be popular with fans. Family-oriented shows, including One Day at a Time, Eight Is Enough, Kate and Allie, Growing Pains, and Family Ties ranked among the top shows of the decade. Charlie’s Angels continued to titillate male audiences and encourage emulation by female fans. Nontraditional families were also popular, as evidenced by Diff ’rent Strokes, a show about an integrated family headed by a single father, and the genderbending Who’s the Boss in which Taxi actor Tony Danza played housekeeper to an advertising executive (Judith Light). Film actress Angela Lansbury began a new career playing writer-detective Jessica Fletcher on Murder She Wrote. Older women also received a boost with the success of The Golden Girls, which proved that women did not lose their sexuality as they aged. Candice Bergen’s portrayal of television journalist Murphy Brown, loosely based on real-life television journalist Linda Ellerbee, proved that audiences would accept women as curmudgeons as long as they were funny. The biggest success of the latter part of the decade was The Cosby Show, about a pediatrician (Bill Cosby) and his family. Best Picture statues were awarded to Ordinary People, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial, Terms of Endearment, The Killing Fields, Out of Africa, Platoon, The Last Emperor, Rain Man, and Driving Miss Daisy. Popular music: 1990s and beyond By the 1990s, American music was a conglomeration of styles, and rock was no longer the dominant force in popular music. Female artists such as Melissa Etheridge, the Spice Girls, the Indigo Girls, Jewel, and Sarah McLachlan rose to the forefront. In 1996, for the first time in history, 14 of the Top 20 artists were females. This diverse group of women included Tori Amos, Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey, Tracy Chapman, Sheryl Crow, Celine Dion, Janet Jackson, Madonna, Natalie Merchant, Alanis Morissette, Joan Osborne, Leann Rimes, and Wynonna. Drugs continued to be an integral part of the music scene for many musicians, often playing a role in the deaths of highly respected artists. On April 8, 1995, grunge rocker and known cocaine user Kurt Cobain was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in his Seattle home. Some people believe he was murdered, and his death continued to cause controversy for many years.



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MP3 players and iPods, along with online music sales and rampant file-sharing, challenged the music industry to keep pace with technology.

The rise of MTV and the music video turned explicit musical content into graphic visual detail, and certain musical styles continued to generate controversy. One of the most controversial styles was “gangsta rap,” a subgenre of hip-hop. The artists who sang it were predominantly African American, but the chief audience was white suburban youths. Gangsta rap was often violent, depicting what supporters claimed was a realistic portrayal of life in urban ghettos. Feminists were outraged at the blatant put-downs of women in such songs. In early 1990, 2 Live Crew’s “As Nasty As I Wanna Be,” which used sexually explicit language and encouraged violence against women, was banned in Florida, creating an uproar over music censorship. During the 1996 presidential election Republican candidate Bob Dole declared war on Hollywood and the American music scene, insisting that America was experiencing “a nightmare of depravity” brought on by suggestive and violent rap, television shows, and movies. President Bill Clinton, who was also running for election, stopped short of supporting censorship, but he did encourage parents to monitor what their children were listening to and viewing. Television and film: 1990s and beyond The 1990s gave birth to a number of supernatural shows such as the X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Sabrina the Teen-aged Witch, Charmed, and Early Edition. The supernatural was handled from a different viewpoint in Touched by an Angel, in which a group of angels aided individuals in crisis. The 1990s also saw the rise of adult cartoons, including the Simpsons and Family Guy. Situation comedies of the period often starred comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld, Tim Allen, and Roseanne Barr. Kelsey Grammar’s Frasier Crane spun off from Cheers, proving that spin-offs can be extremely successful when deftly handled. The youth drama My So-Called Life, starring

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Claire Danes, provided a clear example of teenage angst of the 1990s. NYPD Blue broke new barriers by showing non-gratuitous nudity on television. The break-out hit of the decade was Friends, which followed the lives and loves of six New Yorkers. In the 1990s, Best Picture honors went to Dances with Wolves, The Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, and American Beauty. The trend toward the supernatural continued into the 21st century with shows such as Ghost Whisperer and Medium, and epic dramas such as Heroes and Lost developed huge enthusiastic fan bases. Gray’s Anatomy dominated medical shows, and the various CSI shows represented police procedurals. When writers went on strike in 2007, it forced networks into broadcasting reruns and more reality-based programming. Despite the rampant claims of too much sex and violence, television proved to be a unifying force on September 11, 2001, when al Qaeda terrorists used passenger jets to attack the United States. The entertainment world rallied to raise money for the families of victims. Entertainers, journalists, and producers also used their talents to raise money for victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In the first decade of the 21st century, the Academy of Motion Pictures chose Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, The Departed, No Country for Old Men, and Slumdog Millionaire as Best Pictures.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency worker monitoring television stations for news related to terrorism on September 27, 2001, in New York City. The screen at right shows a station using a news crawl to deliver more information, an innovation that became widespread at the time.



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The Harry Potter Phenomenon

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By 1970, research studies revealed that almost three-fourths of Americans read less than a book per year. American readers continued to buy books in large numbers, however, and the sale of both paperbacks and hardbacks continued to rise. From 1998 onward, book sales were boosted considerably by the popularity of British author J. K. The seven books in the Harry Potter series sold 400 Rowling. Her seven-book million copies worldwide by 2007, introducing a new generation to reading for pleasure. series featured Harry Potter, a boy wizard, and his two best friends, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, who attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Published in the United States by Scholastic in 1998 as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the first book quickly rose to the top of best seller lists ranging from the New York Times to Amazon.com. When Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was published the following year, it repeated the same pattern. Educators credited Rowling with getting a generation raised on electronic technology to begin reading again. However controversy raged in the United States over what some conservatives labeled a glorification of witchcraft. Consequently, the books ranked among the most often banned books in American history. Fans held Harry Potter parties at book stores around America to await the midnight release of each succeeding title. Scholastic and large book chains raked in profits. Rowling completed the series in 2007 with the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. By 2007, 400 million copies of the Harry Potter books had been sold worldwide, generating $15 billion and making Rowling the first writer in history to become a billionaire. The series has been published in 28 languages. Warner Brothers purchased film rights to the series, which features Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger. After the film version of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was released in 2007, the Harry Potter franchise topped $4.4 billion in gross sales. In addition to the books and movies, Harry Potter proved to be an advertiser’s dream, spawning a range of products that include video games, toys, blankets, mugs, posters, and notebooks.

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Sports and recreation The sporting world received two major blows in the 1970s. On November 14, 1970, 75 football players, coaches, flight crews, and fans from Marshall University were lost in a plane crash in Wayne County, West Virginia. The second tragedy occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics when Arab terrorists killed two Israeli coaches and kidnapped nine Israeli athletes. All hostages were later killed, along with the terrorists, in a shootout with the police. Some of the sports celebrities of the 1970s were the basketball stars Wilt Chamberlain of the Los Angeles Lakers and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Milwaukee Bucks. Also, on April 8, 1974, in front of a crowd of 53,775, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves broke Babe Ruth’s record of 715 home runs. Monday Night Football with Howard Cossell, Don Meredith, and Frank Gifford, was a staple in many American homes, and signified the trend toward greater media attention for sporting events and sports stars. The growth in media coverage of sports in the 1980s and 1990s, especially through cable television, heightened the now worldwide celebrity status of American athletes such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Professional athletes drew increasingly higher salaries, which threatened to change the nature of professional sports and alienate fans. During the 1994–95 season, baseball players even went on strike, resulting in the cancellation of 920 games, and

A horse race at dusk in Texas. After Secretariat won the triple crown in 1973, horse racing found renewed popularity among Americans.



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the World Series was canceled for the first time in history. From the 1980s and into the first decade of the 21st century, sports headlines were often about the latest scandal, rather than about what teams were playing and who was winning. The use of performanceenhancing drugs was at the heart of most scandals. At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, a gold medal winner in the 100-meter race, tested positive for Stanozolol, a performance-enhancing drug popular with body builders. Johnson lost his medal, and steroids were banned from most Olympic and professional sports. In 1990, Congress passed the Anabolic Steroids Control Act, establishing a federal A Little League player takes a swing in April 2007. ban against the use of steroids for athletic purposes, and officials instituted random testing of major and minor league baseball players. Congress subsequently amended the 1990 act, extending the ban to virtually all sports. The following year, Alex Sanchez, an outfielder for Tampa Bay, was suspended under the new guidelines. In December 2007, former Senator George Mitchell submitted a report to the Major League Baseball Commissioner naming 85 players who were suspected of using steroids. The list included such baseball luminaries as Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds. Commissioner Bud Selig responded to the report by saying, “If there are problems, I wanted them revealed. His report is a call to action, and I will act.” Analysis of baseball statistics revealed that average home runs per game fell after the steroid scandal was made public, dropping from 2.56 per game in 2000 to 1.95 by 2008. Accusations of steroid use also plagued professional football. After the Super Bowl of 2004, there were reports that two offensive linemen and the star punter of the Carolina Panthers had filled prescriptions for steroids in the days preceding the game. In 2005, congressional staff members analyzed the results of random drug testing in professional football and suggested that the use of steroids was more widespread than previously thought. In the fall of 2008, reports surfaced charging 185 National Football League players with performance-enhancing drug use, and rumors were rife that other players would later be charged. The cycling world was also beset by charges of steroid use. In 2006, former elite cyclist Tammy Thomas was indicted for obstructing a three-year investigation into steroid use in cycling. After being found guilty on three

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Media coverage of young golf stars such as Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie has renewed interest in the sport among players of all ages in the United States.

felony counts of perjury and one count of obstructing justice, Thomas was sentenced to six months of home confinement. Conclusion Many of the major developments in entertainment that have changed everyday life, such as video games, home cinema, and the Internet, have been offshoots of the digital revolution and other new technologies. Society is just beginning to confront the implications of all of the new media introduced in the 1990s. The Internet has had sometimes contradictory effects, offering the potential for both increased social connection online and greater isolation offline. It has also vastly expanded the average American’s access to helpful information. However, just as television changed Americans’ perceptions of their personal safety, the conduct of the Vietnam War, and their place in the world in the 1960s and 1970s, the new, near constant access to breaking news from both traditional and new media outlets around the world on the Internet has the potential to magnify fears—a circumstance that has always been ripe for manipulation in the political arena. Elizabeth R. Purdy Ralph Hartsock



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Ashby, LeRoy. With Amusement for All: A History of American Pop Culture since 1830. Lexington, KS: University of Kentucky Press, 2006. Campbell, Michael. And the Beat Goes On: An Introduction to Popular Music in America, 1840 to Today. New York: Schirmer, 1996. Carruth, Gorton. The Encyclopedia of American Facts and Dates. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. Christenson, Peter G. and Donald F. Roberts. It’s Not Only Rock ‘n’ Roll. Creskill, NJ: Hampton, 1998. Dickerson, James. Women on Top: The Quiet Revolution That’s Rocking the American Music Industry. New York: Billboard Books, 1998. Gregory, Ross. Cold War America 1946–1990. New York: Facts on File, 2003. Harrington, Jack. The Rhetoric of Film. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1973. Hendler, Herb. Year by Year in the Rock Era: Events and Conditions Shaping the Rock Generations That Reshaped America. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1983. Jackson, David J. Entertainment and Politics: The Influence of Pop Culture on Young Adult Political Socialization. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. Jenkinson, Michael. “Bloodshed, Butchery, and Video Games.” Alberta Report (v.21/5, January 17, 1994). Koffler, Daniel. “Grand Theft Scapegoat.” Reason (v.37/5, October 2005). Kushner, David. “Sex, Lies, and Video Games. Rolling Stone (August 11, 2005). du Noyer, Paul. The Story of Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Year-by-Year Illustrated Chronicle. New York: Schrimer, 1995. Paulson, Amanda and Rich Clabaugh. “Loner Image out for Teens, Video Games often Social.” Christian Science Monitor (September 17, 2008). Rollins, Peter C., ed. The Columbia Companion to American History on Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Starr, Larry and Christopher Waterman. American Popular Music from Minstrelsy to MTV. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Walley, David. Teenage Nervous Breakdown: Music and Politics in the PostElvis Age. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Chapter 11

Crime and Violence

“It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.” —Chief Justice Earl Warren

The 1970s marked the peak of the social revolution that put the United

States into a time of turmoil. It also ushered in the era of a new level of awareness. With television now a staple of the American household, it became more common to see graphic images of crime. These were times that made people paranoid and insecure due to loosening controls on the content shown on television. As the 1970s progressed into the 1980s and later, perhaps the greatest change in American crime was the advancement of technology. It would not only make crime more complicated, but also created a new form of crime: information crime. Information crimes included identity theft, piracy, and computer virus creation. The development of laws and forensic techniques to address crime allowed new insights into the causes and dynamics of crime. Motivations became more clearly understood. For example, scientists discovered that many crimes were caused by or associated with mental illness such as schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder. Another factor was the socioeconomic status of the criminals. More than half of the criminals in jails came from poor or dysfunctional families. In this era of scientific knowledge, crime was understood to be a sign of the times, a barometer of the pressures modern American society exerted on its citizens, pushing them to the breaking point. 157

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WATERGATE As the Vietnam War was winding down, the United States was rocked by a scandal that created further decline in public trust in the government. In June 1972 five men were found to have broken into the office of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C.: Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis. They were placing illegal listening devices within the office. Subsequent FBI investigations linked the break-in to important officials within the Republican Richard Nixon about to board a helicopter Party. Other facts corroborated to leave the White House after turning in his resignation on August 9, 1974. with the Republican connections. One of the burglars was a Republican security aide; another reportedly had $25,000 deposited into his account. While investigations continued, Nixon won the presidential election of 1972. Later on, former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord, Jr. were convicted for the Watergate incident. But as investigations went further, connections were made to Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and counsel John Dean. Soon even President Richard Nixon was implicated. Suspicion increased when Nixon ordered the taping system of the White House shut down, and refused to hand over the tapes. Because of this, calls for impeachment increased among Congress. The Articles of Impeachment were passed by the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 1974, citing obstruction of justice. On August 8 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign from office. The Watergate Scandal was unique because for the first time in the modern age, top American officials were considered criminals. The consensus of the American public was that they should not be exempt from the law. Whether or not Watergate was the first time a U.S. president broke the law, the scandal not only eroded public trust in the government, but also reflected a time when liberalism and civil rights exerted influence. WAR ON DRUGS Perhaps one of the best known criminal practices in recent history is the illegal drug trade. While narcotics and hallucinogenic substances have



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been used since ancient times, it was not until the 1960s that they became popularized as part of the counterculture. Some of the “flower children” who gathered to protest the Vietnam War and conservative society had opium, cocaine, and other narcotics with them. The growing drug culture created a demand that was satisfied by criminal groups such as the Mafia. When the drugs became illegal, it created a new business opportunity for organized crime. The drugs involved were mainly opium and marijuana-based products. However, another popular drug was lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a synthesized substance originally used in a U.S. military project. LSD was made by Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman in 1943. Because it was developed for medical use, it was widely available through legal means, as were drugs like cocaine and heroin. After the Drug Enforcement Agency was founded in 1973, these and many other narcotic substances were declared illegal. But crime organizations like the Mafia and some drug producers in South and Central American countries created large illegal drug trafficking cartels. Drugs were smuggled in private planes, delivery trucks, and other vehicles, as well as carried by hand by border-crossing foreigners.

Bricks of confiscated cocaine. The rapid spread of drugs, especially crack cocaine, during the 1980s and 1990s contributed to a proliferation of gang-related violence.

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The drug abuse culture of the 1980s onward resulted in a strong underground culture of drug-dealing. A whole new subculture emerged. Because of the laws and sanctions on drug trafficking, the drug trade was done clandestinely. However, it became so common one could easily find illegal drug suppliers in almost any major city. Drugs were available anywhere, from nightclubs to school campuses. GANG WARFARE With the influence of the Mafia declining during the 1980s, thanks to the efforts of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, new crime organizations began to form. Gangs in the modern era were different from the gangs of the organized crime era of previous decades. The new gangs were groups that often acted in opposition to mainstream society. In the 1970s gangs were made up primarily of impoverished and marginalized American youth. These gangs were formed sometimes from street groups who banded together for their own protection. However, rivalries and association with organized crime turned the gangs into criminal groups in their own rights. Gangs also had their own culture and symbols, such as hand signs, to identify members. Among the most notable gangs of the time were the Crips and Bloods. The two groups, composed mostly of blacks, were active in the Los Angeles area. They frequently fought each other in violent encounters resulting in injury and death. Both gangs were also heavily involved in illegal drug trafficking. Gangsterism was also associated with hardcore rap music, because many rap artists were gang members. In the 1990s, the image of rap culture would be tarnished when two popular rap artists, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., were both gunned down in separate events. The two men were associated with gangs. In the 21st century, rap music continues to perpetuate the image of African-American artists as violent and associated with organized crime. However, the ethnic group making up most of the gang population today is Hispanic. This group also makes up U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement the most families in the country documented these tattoos during a raid of Latin American gangs in Oklahoma City in 2007. mired in poverty.



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Crime in Popular Culture

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Just as the Golden Age of television started a whole new series of crime films and fiction, newer crime series came out that would reflect the latest understanding of the law enforcement profession. Some of these became iconic representations of the law enforcement world in the 21st century. In 1971 a new genre of police and crime films was heralded by Dirty Harry, starring Clint Eastwood. Dirty Harry is the story of a San Francisco homicide officer, Harry Callahan, on the trail of a mysterious killer named Scorpio, who is based on the real life Zodiac Killer. Callahan’s methods collide with police procedure and his superiors, so he takes out the killer on his own, outside of the bounds of the law. The movie was controversial because it brought up the question of whether police procedures were actually preventing capture of a criminal, and whether it was acceptable to go beyond the rules sometimes. Dirty Harry spawned a whole generation of similar films and TV series, such as Death Wish and Lady Blue, where the loose cannon approach of the cowboy era was used and imitated. Crime also spawned many series based on real life, such as the series Law & Order. CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) capitalizes on forensic science, bringing it into the knowledge zone of the layman, even though forensic experts consider some of the science in the show fanciful. Another iconic work of the silver screen was the classic crime film The Godfather, a film interpretation of the bestselling novel by Mario Puzo. This presented a glorified image of the mob boss, and was based on real Mafia leaders. Since then, other projects such as the cable TV series The Sopranos have depicted life in the mob. Computer games are among the most popular media in the 21st century. Some can be based on fiction stories like Dirty Harry and Sin City. There are the classic detective “whodunit” games. But among the more popular and graphic representations of crime is Grand Theft Auto. First released in 1997, the series gained a reputation as one of the most graphic and explicit portrayals of crime in games. The player takes on the role of a criminal and is exposed to various types of crime such as carjackings, robberies, and assassinations. The sexual content of the games has raised the greatest controversy of all. These representations of crime in the media have raised issues with many groups, especially conservative ones, that have expressed concerns regarding the effects of such images on the young people who are exposed to them. Some media has been thought to influence children to indulge in crime and rebellion. These groups warn parents to closely monitor the media that their children consume, so as to prevent these deleterious effects.

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FOREIGN CRIME GROUPS IN THE United States The Mafia originated in Sicily, and so started out as a foreign crime group. John Gotti was the last major Mafia figure to draw nationwide media attention, and he was arrested and convicted in the 1990s, rendering the Mafia much less powerful than before. During the 1970s and 1980s, awareness of international crime increased within the American public. Groups such as the Chinese Triad and Taiwanese 14K became well-known, especially with greater globalization and international trade. Since the end of the Cold War, the Russian Federation has experienced the strengthening of organized crime, namely the Russian Mafia. With the totalitarian Communist government control gone, Russian crime groups have increased their illegal activities. Most of their operations include drug trafficking, gunrunning, and prostitution. The Japanese Yakuza is yet another known international crime gang. Taken from the numbers Ya (8), Ku (9), and Sa (3), Yakuza represents 20, a losing number in the card game of Hana-fuda, or Flower Cards. Yakuza means gang members are the “bad cards” of society. Yakuza members have been known to cut off a person’s finger as punishment for a transgression or failure. Yakuza members in the United States mixed with the Asian community and formed alliances with Vietnamese and Korean crime gangs, usually dealing in drugs. Like the Mafia, the group has weakened in power in the early 21st century, but it remains a serious criminal threat. These extensive criminal networks forced the FBI to ally with international police organizations such as Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization). Sometimes agents and officers from other countries came to assist American police forces in finding and apprehending criminals of their own country. Because of the extensive international networks that criminals have in the 21st century, efforts to stop crime now require much international cooperation. SCHOOL SHOOTINGS AND JUVENILE CRIME One of the more appalling types of crime to develop in recent years is the school shooting. The first known school shooting was in 1966, when Charles Joseph Whitman killed 14 students at the University of Texas at Austin, after killing his mother and wife. More often, however, children sneak firearms into school and open fire on fellow students and teachers. School shootings are especially The availability of guns like shocking because they happen in this Glock pistol has led some a place where violence is not exAmerican schools to install metal detectors. pected, and the perpetrators are



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Police departments have responded to a variety of threats by adding new equipment, such as this bomb squad trailer belonging to the Marion County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office.

usually juveniles. School shootings became the topic of public debates after the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado on April 20, 1999, by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. This and the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 alerted people to the possible psychological problems and peripheral issues that cause school shootings. Others questioned gun control laws, especially upon learning that some school shooters were diagnosed with mental illness such as severe depression. These shootings continue to occur and they happen without warning. Although they are relatively isolated incidents, there are usually telltale signs that a person may go on a shooting rampage. Critics of law enforcement and school management charge that these telltale signs are often overlooked. School shootings are also part of a more serious tragedy in American society, that of juvenile crime. Juvenile delinquents are under 18 years of age. They are tried in different courts and subject to different laws than adults because the offenders have not yet reached the age of consent. Those who become juvenile delinquents have a greater chance of becoming criminals as adults. While juvenile crimes in the 21st century have declined somewhat from the 1990s, there are still two million arrests per year. Youth often figure in gang crime, petty thievery, auto theft, and drug trafficking. In response, school authorities, community authorities, and families have created programs to prevent children from participating in crime. CYBERCRIME New kinds of crimes are discovered with every advance in culture and technology. Perhaps one of the most well-known new fields is cybercrime, crime that happens in cyberspace. Cyberspace is the term coined for the culture and world created through the Internet’s network of computers.

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This interconnectivity of data presents many opportunities for stealing, and even destroying information. The most common form of cybercrime is the creation of viruses and malware, which is basically software programmed to perform destructive tasks in computer systems. Malware cannot cause hardware to be destroyed instantly, but it can cause loss of data if programmed to erase it. Often malware may interfere in the function of software and cause programs to crash. One of the most serious viruses was known as the Love Letter, and penetrated even the top security programs of the U.S. Department of Defense and overwrote many packets of important data in 2000. Yet another serious cybercrime is data theft. Viruses and other insidious programs, such as trojans, phishing sites, and spyware, can be used to acquire the passwords, credit card numbers, or any other important data stored in the computer’s database. The Love Letter also had this function; it downloaded a password-stealing program. Phishing is a term for a false Web site login page set up by a hacker. A user unwittingly enters his or her username and password, but instead of going to the legitimate Web site, the user’s information goes to the hacker. Because bank accounts and government databases can be accessed through the Internet, data theft has never been easier. Another cybercrime is the defacing of Web pages. Web sites of prestigious companies like Microsoft and IBM have undergone defacement several times. Even the most secure computer systems are vulnerable to attack by unscrupulous and determined hackers. INTERNET PREDATORS Sometimes real-life crimes use the cyberworld as the baiting ground for victims. Stalkers and would-be killers visit online forums and chat rooms and make friends. Then they suggest an in-person meeting with the victim, and upon that meeting or thereafter, the criminal proceeds to carry out his plan of molestation, assault, or murder. Among the more well-known cyberstalker cases is that of Christina Long, a 13-year-old honor student and cheerleader who frequented chatrooms. She socialized with people on the Internet and later met them in person for the purpose of having sex. Unfortunately one of the people she met was a predator. Her body was found on May 20, 2002, in a ravine in Greenwich, Connecticut; she had been strangled. Authorities were able to track down her killer through his screen name, and he was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. There have been cases of online predators arranging meetings with victims and sexually molesting and murdering them. Predators are often male, and many are even married. They post phony profiles designed to appeal to their victims. Their preferred victims are prepubescent girls. The predators often capitalize on their victims’ troubles, offering emotional support while asking the victim to keep their relationship a secret. Sometimes, as in the case of



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Terrorism

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With the September 11, 2001 attacks, terrorism became part of the American vernacular. But another experience of modern terrorism was the 1972 Munich Massacre. That attack was not carried out on U.S. soil, and most American people had hoped that they would remain untouched; however, terrorism would soon arrive on their doorstep. Other recent modern terrorism in America ranges from the 1954 attack on the House of Representatives to the 1975 series of bombings by Puerto Rican nationalists, to the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Capitol, and the 1990 assassination of Jewish Defense League founder Rabbi Meir Kahane. The last event cited is thought to be the first jihad conducted in the United States. The first World Trade Center bombing occurred in 1993. It was masterminded by a man named Ramzi Yousef. A truck bomb was detonated in the underground parking areas with the intention of bringing down the building. In 1995, the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was blown apart by a powerful truck bomb, later deemed the work of Timothy McVeigh, an army veteran and homegrown terrorist. McVeigh was executed in 2001 by lethal injection. When these tragic events in the 1990s were followed by the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States enacted the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism). Some of the provisions of the PATRIOT Act have remained politically controversial because critics have seen them as infringing on civil liberties and rights. The Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City after the bombing on April 19, 1995, which killed 168 people.

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Christina Long, the victims are looking for real relationships, but unwittingly find themselves in the hands of predators. Perhaps the most well-known name among Internet predators is John Robinson, one of the first known serial killers to use the Internet to search for victims. Having been previously arrested in relation to the disappearance of women in Kansas, Robinson was known in BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism) fetish circles online. Among his victims snared online were Izabela Lewicka and Suzette Troutman. When he was arrested in 2000, he was found to have had eight victims. Because of the existence of such predators, American families are advised to supervise their children’s online activities closely. Also, in-person meetings with strangers should not take place without a chaperone. Any messages from an online acquaintance requesting the relationship be kept secret should raise alarms. Today laws are in place to protect children against sexual predators. Enticing a minor into sexual activity through the Internet is now a crime, and laws against harassment and stalking have been updated in 46 states to include forms of “cyberstalking.” FORENSICS Perhaps one of the more defining aspects of modern law enforcement, forensic science changed the image of the police from pure brute force and brass to a scientifically driven organization. Forensics has actually been used since the inception of police work, although a high level of accuracy became possible only in the late 20th century. Crime scenes are cordoned off with yellow tape to avoid contamination of possible evidence by spectators and onlookers. Then the police come in with ready-made kits to collect and contain evidence, including fragments, hairs, shards, and other minute pieces. Sometimes instead of a crime scene, there is a person, such as a rape victim, who has come into contact with the offender, but cannot identify him. Material such as clothing fibers, hair, blood, and semen can provide clues to the offender’s identity through such methods as DNA matching. Another emerging field in law enforcement is ballistics. Ballistics studies the spent ammunition at the scene of the crime. The directions in which shots were fired can help Crime scene evidence markers, to establish who shot a victim, among other such as those used to mark the location of spent ammunition. facts. The type of ammunition is also com-



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This police entomology evidence kit is used by forensic scientists for gathering evidence from insect life from bodies and around crime scenes.

pared with any firearms recovered, and compared to suspects’ statements to confirm their veracity. Photography is also important, recording the composition of the scene, as well as details of damage on a victim’s body and other effects at the scene. Some photographs can turn up clues that contribute greatly to solving the case. Evidence is sent to the crime laboratory for examination and results are studied carefully. Aside from the physical tools, the reasoning powers of the forensic scientist continue to be the most important tool. Forensics experts are basically the Sherlock Holmes of contemporary investigative departments. They make forensics among the most important departments of law enforcement. The evidence-based court system depends on their results in order to make accurate verdicts. At least one forensics expert, however, did not stick to the ethics of her profession. She was Joyce Gilchrist, an Oklahoma forensics expert who was found to have fabricated and distorted evidence in favor of the prosecution. At least one man, Mark Fowler, may have been wrongly put to death because of her. She was soon fired, although she protested her innocence to the end. RACE, MENTAL ILLNESS, AND OTHER RISK FACTORS After many studies of crime, a trend in the 21st century is to connect crime with mental illness and issues of race. Many publicized accounts of crimes show a person disturbed by mental illness and neglected by society despite the availability of social services. This leads to the possibility that crime is

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“Bad Cops” and Police Brutality

One of the greatest fears of American society is that those who are entrusted to protect the citizens have become the criminals themselves. Corrupt police officers have been a problem ever since Charles Becker was convicted for being a corrupt cop in New York during the early 20th century. New Orleans was once known as the murder capital of the world. But its police force was also rife with corruption. One corrupt police officer was Len Davis, who ordered a hit on a woman who had complained about police brutality. Another was Antoinette Frank, a female officer who held up a Vietnamese restaurant and killed two children and an officer in the process. The FBI had to intervene to restore the quality of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD). When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, the NOPD was again the target of criticisms and assaults for sloppy conduct of assistance during the flood, although by this time, they had evolved into a dedicated, professional police force. In 1991, a taxi driver in Los Angeles named Rodney King was stopped by four white officers for speeding, and was subsequently beaten. The incident was caught on tape by a bystander and broadcast on the news. The public was outraged, and called for a trial of the four officers for police brutality. On April 29, 1992, three of the four officers were acquitted, spurring the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Yet another case of police incompetence was putting full trust in James “Whitey” Bulger, a leader of Boston’s Irish mob who was an FBI informant for several years. The information he gave was self-serving; it allowed him to incriminate rivals and enemies, and continue committing crimes. Bulger was never arrested for his crimes due to help from FBI agent John Connolly. Such incidents spawned the concept of inverse surveillance, wherein citizens would watch the police for any other incidents of brutality. Watchdog groups are actively performing this surveillance, while law enforcement has complaint desks to attend to issues of police corruption.

not simply a moral malaise, but rather the result of neglect. Several highprofile serial killers, such as Ed Gein, Edmund Kemper, and Herbert Mullin, were found to have suffered from mental conditions. Other findings on crimes show that not only the criminals, but even the victims, tend to have mental illness. One article cited that one fourth of the population of mentally ill in the United States, three million people, become crime victims. This percentage is much greater than the population of those without a mental illness. However, it remains unclear whether being mentally



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Underwater rescue and recovery equipment used by police divers in Florida to collect evidence, recover stolen property, or locate bodies.

ill actually contributes to the occurrence of crime. The consensus is that the risk is higher of being involved in a crime, whether as offender or victim, when one is mentally ill. When crimes are connected to mental illness in the offenders, there is an option in court called the plea for “not guilty by reason of insanity.” This plea reasons that the offender is not fully aware of his or her actions, and thus should not be held entirely responsible for them. Around 1 percent of crime trials in the United States have an insanity plea, 35 percent of which are for murder. In 1982, John Hinckley, Jr., who tried to kill President Reagan, was acquitted through this plea, but public backlash led to the 1984 U.S. Insanity Defense Reform Act. The insanity plea continues to be controversial in U.S. courts in the 21st century. Usually the failure to address the condition of the offenders is attributed to the failure of the system to reach them. It can happen through discrimination, unintentional process errors, or internal flaws in the system, such as lack of funding. This leads people to criticize the state of mental health services in the United States. Yet another issue being studied is the relationship between race and crime. Since the first reliable statistics were taken, black offenders have always been at the top of crime figures. In 2001 there were eight times as many black offenders in prison as whites, and almost twice as many as Hispanics. However, the accuracy of this statistic can be disputed because it does not include figures for those who commit crimes but are not arrested. In terms of gender,

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The Unabomber Manifesto

Over a span of 17 years a terrorist known as the Unabomber mailed letter bombs to university professors and corporate employees engaged in technological fields. In April 1995 the Unabomber promised to stop sending the mail bombs if his rambling 35,000-word manifesto against technology was published by his deadline. The Washington Post, assisted by the New York Times, published the manifesto in a special supplement on September 19, 1995; it is excerpted below. Ted Kaczynski, a former professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, was arrested in April 1996 by FBI agents for the bombings, pled guilty in January 1998, and was sentenced to life in prison. Altogether 16 bombs were attributed to Kaczynski, injuring 23 people, and killing three. “Industrial Society And The Future” 1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to wide-spread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world... 2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy. 3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later. 4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.



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A jail compound surrounded by barbed wire fencing. The racial imbalance in U.S. prisons has been extreme, with eight times as many black inmates as white ones in 2001.

women are increasingly becoming active in crime, showing increases in imprisonment statistics each year. However, men continue to make up the majority of criminal offenders. There is also evidence to suggest that poverty plays a major role in influencing crime. Most of the offenders are known to have come from low-income or impoverished households, supporting the idea that people turn to crime as the only way to earn a living. Thus, some groups have lobbied that poverty, homelessness, and other issues be addressed in order to reduce crime. Conclusion One striking trend in the 1990s and 2000s has been the significant decline of certain types of crimes even in previously crime-ridden cities. The FBI found that overall violent crimes reported to the police decreased as much as 17.7 percent from 1998 to 2007. Some have attributed this decline to community policing and a relatively good economic climate for a number of these years, but the phenomenon has not been fully explained. It remains to be seen if levels of crime will be on the rise again as the country reels from the financial crises and rising unemployment that began in 2008. White-collar crime rose to new record-breaking levels in the late 2000s with the case of Bernard Madoff, who allegedly ran the largest financial investment scam in history, losing $50 billion of investors’ money. Carlos Nino Fernandez III

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Further Readings

Aftab, Parry. Wired Safety. Available online: http://www.wiredsafety.org/ index.html. Accessed May 2008. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. Available online: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/welcome.html. Accessed April 2008. Dwyer, Kevin and Jure Florillo. True Stories of Law & Order. New York: Berkley, 2006. Hofer, Eric C. “Inequality and Crime Rates in American Cities,” Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota. Available online: http:// www.apec.umn.edu/faculty/gpederso/8901/E%20Hofer~Proposal. doc. Accessed April 2008. Levin, Aaro. “People With Mental Illness More Often Crime Victims,” Psychiatric News. Available online: http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/ content/full/40/17/16. Accessed May 2008. McCann, Joseph T. Terrorism on American Soil: A Concise History of Plots and Perpetrators from the Famous to the Forgotten. Boulder, CO: Sentient, 2006. O’Connor, Pat, ed. Crime Magazine. Available online: http://crimemagazine.com/index.html. Accessed March 2008. Schmalleger, F. Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2007. Sutherland, Jon and Diane Canwell. True Crime. London: The Foundry, 2003.

Chapter 12

Labor and Employment

“There is no labor a person does that is undignified; if they do it right.” —Bill Cosby

By the last quarter of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, the

American workplace and its issues scarcely resembled the industrial world of the 1900s. Labor unions had gone from radical protesters fighting oppressive businesses and their hired private and public armies to entrenched baronies struggling to protect themselves against public outcry and investigation and their members against downsizing and layoffs brought on by automation and foreign competition. The world of sweatshops, child labor, and brutal employment conditions had been eliminated, or rendered criminal. While illegal sweatshops continued to spew out goods (often counterfeit items) in American cities, their existence was no longer a tolerated norm. On the other hand, the average American industrialized worker no longer suffered from the abuses of the previous decades— unionized jobs were the standard for many blue-collar and white-collar employees, which came with grievance procedures, safety regulations, health and pension plans, seniority rights, training programs, and even bowling leagues. At the same time, federal, state, and municipal programs eased burdens for employees. By 1970, welfare, Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment insurance programs were in full swing, providing safety and retirement nets for workers. President Lyndon Johnson’s antipoverty programs of the 1960s created new avenues for American workers to gain apprenticeship opportu173

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nities, job training, and education. The G.I. Bill, in place since 1944, continued to enable returning veterans to gain degrees and certificates that opened doors to better jobs and higher standards of living. Automation and modern technology had made many jobs safer, and hightechnology industry had invaded Southern states that had suffered since the Civil War, changing Alabama and Mississippi from backward agricultural states in thrall to cotton prices into industrial giants. President John F. Kennedy’s drive to put a man on the moon by 1970 had brought high-tech rocket and aerospace factories to Alabama. Mississippi’s Pascagoula Shipyards churned out gleaming steel warships to supply the war in Vietnam. Across the nation, other new factories poured out increasingly sophisticated items such as supersonic fighter jets, transistor radios, color televisions, jet airliners, and homes built through modular construction. These inventions and products became symbols of American economic and political dominance, although competitors such as Japan were already beginning their rise. CHANGES IN THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE Two significant changes in the American workplace in this period were the rise of women and the decline of heavy industry. Women’s struggles came first. For decades, despite being portrayed in fiction and Hollywood as deliberately seeking to live as homemakers, women had toiled for low pay, often in appalling sweatshops and factories. The rise of organized labor and the introduction of the typewriter had moved many from textile looms and assembly lines to offices and cubicles, but they were still usually barred by sexism from executive positions and from many laboring professions that were traditionally male-dominated, including construction and firefighting. On the job, many women endured sexual harassment and had no recourse. The rise of the women’s liberation movement of the early 1970s began to change this situation. Powered by books like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and the social upheaval of the 1960s, women began to demand equal rights and treatment in the workplace. By 1970, 23 million American women held full-time jobs; another eight million had part-time jobs. Four of every 10 married women were employed, 12 million of them with children at home under age 18. Yet only 7.6 percent of America’s 300,000 doctors and 1 percent of the nation’s surgeons were women, while 90 percent of the phone operators and stenographers were female. The average woman made $3 for every $5 earned by a man on the same job. Women needed a bachelor’s degree to hold jobs offered to men who had an eighth grade education. A salesman earned an an average of $8,549, while his female counterparts earned $3,461. In 1969, the National Organization for Women (NOW) sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, claiming that Lorena Weeks was being discriminated against at work, because her pay rate was not equal to men who were required to carry 30-lb. equipment around their Southern Bell workspace. Weeks was



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A U.S. News & World Report magazine photo of the Women’s Strike for Equality march in Washington, D.C., on August 26, 1970.

required to carry her typewriter around her job, and it weighed more than 30 lbs. She demonstrated that fact for the court, and won the case. On August 26, 1970, the Women’s Strike for Equality saw women march through 90 metropolitan downtowns to honor the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. Fifty thousand women marched down New York’s Fifth Avenue, drawing wolf whistles from construction workers, and ridicule from the male-dominated media: Time magazine commented that New York’s protest offered “the best girl-watching in years.” Led by NOW, women proved they were increasingly becoming a force. Two years later the U.S. Congress would send the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. The amendment failed, but NOW’s other workplace crusades would succeed, forcing the Federal Communications Commission to include women in affirmative action programs for employment and management in the radio and TV industry. Legal action against AT&T ended discriminatory practices against women, and brought them back pay. A 1973 Supreme Court decision ended sex-segregated employment advertisements. By 1975, Time magazine had got the point. They listed several women as “Women of the Year,” honoring their achievements in a number of fields. Still the court battles rolled on. Women demanded and got time off due to pregnancy under Title VII, arguing that it was a temporary disability.

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Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

In 1975, the term sexual harassment was first coined, but the first such legal case on the subject took place a year earlier. In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission established guidelines on the subject, which were upheld by the Supreme Court in 1986 in the case of Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, in which bank worker Mechelle Vinson sued her employer, the Meritor Savings Bank, after the bank fired her. Vinson claimed that her supervisor at the bank had exposed himself to her, and coerced her into sexual acts and giving sexual favors while at work. The high court held that Title VII was to “strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women at work.” Further court and legal action empowered victimized employees to sue for punitive and compensatory damages. In the 1991 case of Ellison v. Brady, the Supreme Court noted that the “reasonable woman” standard had to apply in sexual harassment cases, saying that what an employer might see as an “isolated and trivial” case of sexual harassment might be a serious threat to the victim. In following years, same-sex sexual harassment cases and nonsexual harassment cases went before the courts, and employees won major victories. At the same time, increasing awareness came of backlash, in which employees who failed to gain promotions or coveted job opportunities would blame that failure on perceived sexual harassment and file frivolous claims. By the beginning of the 21st century, documented sexual harassment training, usually including descriptions of the various types of harassment, means of resolving disputes, and penalties for frivolous filings had become the standard for major American workplaces, particularly corporations whose deep pockets could make them targets for both legitimate and frivolous complaints, as well as subjects of media attention.

By the time the 1980s opened, women were reaching higher positions in the workforce. Sandra Day O’Connor was appointed to the Supreme Court. Geraldine Ferraro was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1984. Sally Ride became the first American female astronaut, while Judith Resnick became the second and the first Jew. Resnick would also become one of two female astronauts to die in space, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch in 1986, killing her and the first civilian astronaut, teacher Christa McCauliffe. The gains continued. Condoleezza Rice became President George W. Bush’s national security adviser and later secretary of state, a post that had already been held once before by another woman, Madeleine Albright. Suzyn Waldman broadcasted New York Yankees games on TV and radio. Women rose to



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become CEOs of major companies such as eBay, PepsiCo, and Xerox. Military units and U.S. Navy warships became co-ed, and women were put in frontline battles in the two Persian Gulf wars. CHANGES IN THE ECONOMY In 1971 the American trade balance fell, and the United States faced its first trade deficit since 1893. With that came a 100-point drop on the Dow Jones index. Faced with galloping inflation, President Richard M. Nixon slapped a 90-day freeze on American wages, prices, rents, and dividends, and floated the dollar, taking it off the gold standard. The Dow Jones rallied, but when the 90-day freeze expired in November, Nixon had to prevent further hikes in prices. He created a seven-person Price Commission and 15-member pay board to oversee continued controls, to keep inflation at three percent. It did not work. The pay board’s first decision was to grant coal miners a 15 percent pay increase. After that, the board granted massive price hikes, and union leadership, including George Meany and the United Auto Workers’ Leonard Woodcock, pulled out of the board, leaving only Frank E. Fitzsimmons, boss of the Teamsters’ Union, on the pay board. And inflation continued. The American industrialized economy was beginning to slip away. American industry was now facing increasingly powerful foreign competition. The dependence of America on foreign imports was demonstrated most effectively in

Drivers fill up after waiting in a long gas line on June 15, 1979—such lines sometimes extended for several miles.

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1973, when the Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbors came home to American gas pumps. Stung by the dollar’s devaluation and American support of Israel, Arab oil-producing nations imposed an embargo on oil shipments to the United States, sending the price of oil shooting to unprecedented levels. Cheap oil, the liquid that floated the American economy, no longer existed. Drivers sat in four-mile-long lines in New Jersey for gas. By the time the embargo was lifted, unemployment had hit a postwar high of 8.5 percent, and the Gross National Product fell by 3 percent. Americans found themselves puzzled by double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment by the end of the decade. The economic malaise would continue into the 1980s. The automobile industry was hit the hardest: production dropped by 11 million in 1973, falling behind competitors in Japan and Germany, and later, Korea. Japanese steel works offered their customers cheaper products created in a more modern environment. Industry found that it could save money and skirt safety standards by moving their factories from the United States to newly-independent nations in Asia and Africa, where labor costs were lower, and government regulation nonexistent. Over the last three decades of the 20th century, much U.S. manufacturing moved to India, China, Malaysia, Angola, Brazil, and other countries. By the early 2000s, the People’s Republic of China, a nation ostensibly founded as a “worker’s state,” was closer to a capitalist society, filled with unsafe factories where children and women labored in substandard conditions for low wages to produce the oceans of industrial products and consumer goods that millions of Americans demanded and bought, including sneakers, toys, electronics, and clothes. This trend brought jobs and high technology to the third world, but it also brought with it disaster. On December 3, 1984, a chemical leak from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, spread across an area inhabited by 200,000 people in a matter of 40 minutes, killing at least 2,100 people, injuring thousands more, and forcing even more to flee their homes. It was not the first time the American chemical conglomerate had suffered a major leak, but this was the most disastrous. Union Carbide ultimately was ordered by an Indian court to pay out $470 million in compensation in 1989. OFFSHORING Low-tech laboring jobs were not the only ones affected by the trend. A new word came into the American vocabulary during the last decade of the 20th century: outsourcing. Created by the communications revolution of the same time frame—development of the Internet, cell phones, satellite communications, modular construction, the collapse of Communism, and even standardized teaching of English—it enabled major companies to transfer high-technology jobs out of the United States to cheaper climates. Banks and insurance companies jobbed out their computer backroom operations to Latvia and



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Many people in underdeveloped countries see the United States as the land of golden opportunity, and they continue to flock to America even when they must do so illegally. Of the 9 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, 80 percent come from Latin America. For the last several decades, there has been a backlash against immigrants because many native-born Americans blame immigrants for limiting employment opportunities. The backlash is particularly strong against Mexican Americans, who are often perceived as illegal even when they are not. This resentment has led to an increasing number of hate crimes. On the night of July 12, 2008, three teenagers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, beat Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez, the 25-year-old father of two, to death, ignoring a girl’s cry to “Stop kicking him! Stop beating him!” Ramirez had been working two jobs to earn enough money to get married and to pay the legal fees needed to become a citizen. His friends had nicknamed him El Caballo, because his former job in a greenhouse required him to perform as a “workhorse.” The murder heightened racial tensions in the once quiet coal mining town. Immigrants who come to the United States without legal documentation are often willing to work for less money, and are less likely to protest when working conditions are unsafe or unpleasant. In the 1990s, the average pay of an immigrant dishwasher employed by Long Island restaurants was $2.50 an hour, and the workweek was 75 hours or longer. Jorge Bonilla was hospitalized with pneumonia after spending the winter sleeping on mounds of tablecloths at the restaurant where he worked because he had been evicted. His salary of 30 cents an hour was not enough to support him, even when he worked 80 hours a week. There is a high rate of injuries among illegal immigrant workers, and they sometimes go unreported. One illegal immigrant was injured while attempting to remove clogged grass from a lawn mower because his employer would not shut down the mower. The employer left him at a hospital and drove away. In New York City in 2000, 74 of 111 workers who died in work-related accidents were immigrants. Immigrants take jobs mowing lawns, cleaning houses, offices, and restaurants, washing windows, and building homes. Scores of them take jobs picking fruit and vegetables. Because of language problems and ignorance of the American economic system, some immigrants are taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers. Yanira Juaraz, for instance, kept house and cared for two children for six months without pay because her employer had assured her the money was being paid into a special savings account. She was fired without ever being paid.

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Lithuania. Companies that relied on telephone customer service centers moved those operations to India, training young Indian workers to staff telephone banks in Delhi, speak in Kansas accents, and answer questions from customers in New York, cutting out jobs for American workers. As the postwar Baby Boomers entered the workforce in the early 1970s, they cut off their long hair, discarded their hippie clothes, and discovered that the high-paying, quick-advancement junior executive jobs of the 1950s and early 1960s were beginning to disappear. They were replaced to some degree by finance and investment banking jobs, but their high pay came with demands for extremely long hours and high levels of productivity. Jobs like these left little time to enjoy the fruits of such labor. Overall the country was transitioning from a manufacturing-based economy to a service economy, and this transformation hit those with less education hard. Workers with high school diplomas who once could have made good wages as skilled laborers in American factories now had to compete with lower-cost labor in developing countries. As industry and its union-fortified jobs moved to places like China, India, South Korea, and Taiwan, they were replaced by unskilled jobs in fast-food chains, discount retail outlets, hospitals, and nursing homes, or positions as clerical and maintenance workers, often for low pay and with limited benefits. Such positions were called McJobs, and many of the jobs that could still provide a middle-class lifestyle became limited to those with a college education. Labor Conflicts The 1970s had begun with continued labor strife, opening with strikes by New York gravediggers, air traffic controllers, and postal workers. The Teamster and UMW investigations, the mob activities, and the arrogance shown by union leaders also set off a growing backlash against unions during the 1970s and 1980s, which led to harsh measures against unions, particularly those in the public sector. The 1970 strike by postal workers saw 200,000 of the nation’s 750,000 postal workers walk off their jobs. The 6,700 members of the Manhattan-Bronx local voted to walk out, and their colleagues in the other five boroughs supported the action. So did postal workers in Akron, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, St. Paul, and San Francisco. It was the first walkout in U.S. Post Office history. On the eighth day, the postal workers went back to work without punishment. Congress instead voted to give the workers an eight percent raise, retroactive to the month before the strike, and replaced the Cabinet-level Post Office Department with the federal U.S. Postal Service, required by law to show a profit. This step removed the postmaster-general from the Presidential Cabinet, depoliticizing the position. Instead of being headed by the chairman of the political party in power, the Postal Service would be headed by a career postal official, which would make the operation more professional. The



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measure succeeded, but the result was a rapid succession of postal rate hikes and increased pressure on postal workers. On August 3, 1981, the 13,000-strong Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization went off their jobs again, demanding better conditions, more pay, and a 32-hour workweek. President Ronald Reagan ordered the controllers back to work, and when all but 1,500 refused, he fired the 11,345 strikers, barring them from federal service, using strikebreakers, nonrated staffers, and even military controllers until replacements could be hired. In October, the union was decertified, and ultimately replaced by the National Air Traffic Controllers’ Association in 1987. The private sector also continued to see crippling strikes. Hormel Foods workers in Minnesota went out in 1985, beginning a 10-month-long walkout that would generate national attention and boycotts of the product. The local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers did not get support from the national headquarters, but struck anyway. After 10 months, the union gave up, with many of its workers going back on the job. FORCES AFFECTING THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE The failure of the Hormel strike was part of the sea change of the 1980s, but greater forces were affecting the American workplace than the old labor-management battle. Health and environmental issues were taking the forefront in

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Strikers on a picket line at 207th Street in Manhattan during the December 2005 New York City Transit Strike.

New York Transit Workers Strikes

In 1980, New York’s 34,000 transit workers walked off their jobs, stalling the subways and buses at Easter. The union demanded a 30 percent wage hike, while the Metropolitan Transportation Authority only offered a 3 percent increase. The strike lasted 11 days, costing the city $2 million a day in revenue and $1 million a day in overtime expenses for supervisors and guards who kept the bus garages, train yards, and subway stations and lines secure from vandalism or mishap. Private sector economic losses amounted to about $100 million per day. Streets were jammed with cars as car-pooling was mandatory in rush hour. Some 500,000 Manhattan corporate workers were put up in hotels, while 200,000 more mounted bicycles to get to their jobs. Mayor Ed Koch showed the city’s resilience by standing on the Brooklyn Bridge to cheer on commuters as they hiked over the 100-year-old structure. After 11 days, the union and management settled on a three-year contract that gave the transit workers a 9 percent wage increase in the first year and an 8 percent hike in the second. The union was also fined for the strike, and straphangers faced a fare hike: from 50 to 60 cents. They would strike again in December 2005, and this time, the two-day walkout ended with a contract offer that the union leadership accepted, but the members rejected, forcing binding arbitration. The 2005 strike, coming at the height of the Christmas season, drew heavy public criticism of the union.



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the workplace, as the United Mine Workers of America became increasingly concerned with black lung disease. Shipyard and industrial unions worried about the impact of asbestos, and New York’s police and firefighter unions after 9/11 were concerned with the hazardous materials flung into the air around the World Trade Center site that led to sickness among rescue workers years later. Business leaders also had to contend with energy and environmental issues, seeking ways to end the increasingly expensive dependence on petroleum products for fuel, while ending processes that damaged the environment. Incidents of workplace violence also frightened employees and customers alike, most visibly in a series of shootings at post offices beginning in 1986, though postal workers were later found to be no more likely to inflict violence at the workplace than members of other professions. Many other changes were going on in American workplaces. The stock market booms of the 1980s and 1990s resulted in high-paying jobs for highlytrained financial and computer experts, while blue-collar industrial positions declined. “Silicon Valley” in California became a major employer in this new post-industrial economy, as did “dot-com” companies in cities. The busts of the same periods displaced the same financial and computer experts from these jobs, which wrecked the dot-com bubble, and sent computer assembly jobs to Asia. Other workers’ lives were battered by corporate scandals, like

An entire office near the World Trade Center site coated in the dust from 9/11 in a photo taken September 20, 2001.

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those of Lockheed, Enron, and WorldCom. “Merger mania” saw large corporations swallow each other up, with General Electric’s acquisition of RCA being one of the largest, sending more workers in search of new jobs. Familiar American business names like RCA, Pan Am, TWA, and Woolworth’s vanished. So did small American mom-and-pop businesses, beaten out by “bigbox” store chains like Old Navy, Costco, and Wal-Mart. Fast-food chains like McDonald’s, Denny’s, Burger King, and Starbucks replaced the corner coffee shop and the small diner. Department stores and downtown shopping areas were replaced by Wal-Marts and suburban shopping malls. At the same time, the higher costs of living, and increasingly competitive nature of the American economy, put more strain on workers, regardless of income or class level. Lengthy hours, weekend work, and long commutes became the norm. Job security and pension plans gave way to lay-offs and do-it-yourself retirement plans. Conclusion As the financial crisis continued in 2008-09, American workers began to fear recession, or worse. They worried about declining pension and health benefits, and grew increasingly concerned as banks and other companies began to fail, or survived only through government bailouts. With state governments cutting staff and the future of giant American automakers like GM in doubt, union employees were asked to take pay cuts and make compromises they would not have considered in better times, potentially erasing years of progress. David H. Lippman

Further Readings

Bender, Thomas. ed. Rethinking American History in a Global Age. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2002. Brooks, Thomas W. Toil and Trouble: A History of American Labor. New York: Dell, 1965. Chafe, William H. The Road to Equality. American Women Since 1962. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Gordon, Jennifer. Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2005. Hahn, Peter L. Crisis and Crossfire: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945. Washington, DC: Potomac Press, 2005. Hickman, Paul W. and Thomas P. Curtis, eds. Immigration Crisis: Issues, Policies, and Consequences. New York: Nova Science, 2008.



Labor and Employment

Karas, Jennifer. Bridges and Barriers: Earnings and Occupational Attainment Among Immigrants. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC, 2002. Kelley, Robin D.G. Into the Fire: African-Americans Since 1970. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. LaFeber, Walter, Richard Polensbury, and Nancy Woloch. The American Century: A History of the United States Since 1941. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2008. Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Manchester, William. The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1974. Montgomery, David. “Melting Pot: A Small Immigrant Town Simmers in the Wake of a Brutal Murder.” Washington Post (September 2, 2008). Morty, Myron A. Daily Life in the United States, 1960–1990: Decades of Discord. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997. West, Elliott. Growing Up in Twentieth Century America: A History Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996.

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Chapter 13

Military and Wars

“We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.” —President Barack Obama

The United States entered the 1970s embroiled in the Vietnam War, fight-

ing to keep Communist North Vietnam from overrunning South Vietnam. The war ultimately cost more than 58,100 American lives and made Americans doubt their country’s foreign policy and domestic leadership. Scandal and perceived weaknesses under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter did little to reassure the country. Not until the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in the 1980s did Americans feel a sense of renewed patriotism, especially with the fall of Soviet Communism in 1991. The following decade of relative peace ended September 11, 2001, when Islamic terrorists attacked American home soil. American military response to the attacks, at first welldefined and almost universally supported, had by later in the decade left U.S. forces in an unresolved conflict in Afghanistan that once again caused Americans to question their military and domestic leadership. Nixon Doctrine When President Richard Nixon stated a policy that hinted at a means of withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, his concept came to be called the Nixon Doctrine. The Nixon Doctrine, announced July 25, 1969, consisted of several parts. The United States, Nixon promised, would continue to meet all its formal treaty obligations. Second, if a country were threatened by a nuclear 187

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power (implicitly the Soviet Union or China), the United States would commit its power to deter such an attack. More explicitly, in reference to situations like that of the Vietnam War, Nixon stated that if a nation were threatened by nonnuclear armed aggression, the United States would come to its assistance, on the assumption that the threatened nation would bear the primary burden of its own defense. Thus, the policy that came to be known as “Vietnamization,” or the building up of local South Vietnamese forces to oppose the Viet Cong insurgency and its support by armed forces from North Vietnam, could be seen as a direct example of the application of the Nixon Doctrine. The forces resisting the Communist-led insurgency would be “Vietnamized.” Vietnamization, however, proved problematic. The same South Vietnamese military ineffectiveness that had prompted Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to dispatch American military “advisors” to conduct the fighting in 1963 and 1964 was still present in 1969 and 1970. An American troop pullout was slow, and Nixon used strategic bombing to keep America negotiating from a position of power. Nixon’s announcement of Vietnamization signaled a slide in the morale of American troops in Vietnam. U.S. soldiers had fought well since their commitment to combat in 1964, winning every major engagement, including turning back North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive in early 1968. But the Pentagon failed to provide soldiers with a strategy that matched the soldiers’ fighting ability. Instead of fighting the war in a way that played to the United States’ strong points—

The 211th Helicopter Squadron of the U.S. Air Force flying low over the Mekong Delta in Vietnam on a combat assault mission on July 18, 1970.



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technology, firepower, and communication—the military high command allowed the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) to dictate the fight. After learning in the November 1965 Battle of the Ia Drang Valley that they could not fight a toe-to-toe battle against the Americans, the NVA chose a guerrilla style of fighting. NVA soldiers made the war not about territory taken and kept, or armies destroyed, but about protracting the war, bleeding Americans littleby-little, and wearing away American resolve. The United States acquiesced to that style of fighting, choosing to send troops on “search-and-destroy” missions in lieu of a strategic policy that could have denied the NVA the ability to make war. Soldiers “in country” knew that they were not losing the war, but they were not winning it, either. Word of Nixon’s Vietnamization clearly meant that America was done with the war, and no American soldier wanted to be the last to die in a war their countrymen no longer cared about. While American armies have always been plagued with alcoholism and drug abuse, those problems became magnified in Vietnam. The army’s “war of post” strategy meant that its soldiers spent as much time at a base as they did in the field, and they had easy access to alcohol. They also had easy access to a black market that dealt heavily in drugs. And because the 1960s United States had become more tolerant of a wide variety of drug use, many men brought a drug habit into the army with them. Estimates suggest as many as 65,000 service personnel were using drugs during the Vietnam era. Insubordination also became magnified. Rather than obey orders to search out and destroy NVA and Viet Cong troops, Americans might rather take to the field for a couple of weeks, intentionally avoid conflict, and return to base. If they found themselves under the command of a green lieutenant just in from ROTC, they might kill or injure him with a fragmentation grenade (an expediency known as “fragging”), rather than follow him into a firefight that could cost their lives. They could always blame his death on a fictional engagement with Communists they never saw. Between 1968 and 1973, there were 830 actual or suspected incidents of fragging; 333 of those were in 1971 alone. ESCALATION and Atrocities On April 30, 1970, Nixon ordered American troops into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese bases located there. He also ordered simultaneous bombing of Cambodia. The campaign killed some 2,000 North Vietnamese troops and destroyed more than 8,000 bunkers, but its real impact came at home. The invasion caused renewed antiwar protests at home. At Kent State University in Ohio, in May 1970, student protests damaged a campus building and scared the governor into calling out Ohio National Guardsmen to protect the campus. On May 4, when a group of students failed to halt for guardsmen, the soldiers opened fire, injuring nine students and killing four others.

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Public disgruntlement over the war continued, as evidenced by the much-publicized court martial of Army Lieutenant William Calley, Jr., in March 1971. Calley stood accused of leading a company of men in a March 1968 attack on the hamlet of My Lai in the Son My district of South Vietnam. The hamlet was reportedly under the control of Viet Cong fighters. When the attack was over, more than 200 civilians, including women and children, were dead, apparently victims of premeditated American murder. Vietnamese civilians also reported incidents of rape during the attack. Throughout his trial, Calley insisted that he had simply been Terrified women and children in My Lai, Vietnam, following orders at My Lai. Calon March 16, 1968, just before the massacre. ley supporters said the army The case was drawing intense public scrutiny in the United States as the 1970s began. should instead shift blame for the incident onto the American high command in Vietnam, including General William Westmoreland, overall commander of the American effort there. Others, including some U.S. congressmen, considered legislation protecting American soldiers from accusations of murder during chaotic combat situations. The military court found Calley guilty of the murder of more than 22 Vietnamese civilians, and sentenced him to life in prison with hard labor. A public uproar followed, and Nixon himself reviewed the case. After several reductions of his sentence, Calley received a parole in 1974. The case reflected the disaffection and confusion that the Vietnam War was causing, both in the American military and at home. In addition to war protests, Vietnam also brought about another public outcry. Since the writing of the Constitution, the legal voting age had been 21. However, most combat soldiers in Vietnam were between 19 and 21 years old, and war protestors had asked for years why young men who could die for their country could not vote in its elections. The protests led to passage of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in 1971. It lowered the legal voting age for all American citizens to 18 years old.



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ESCALATION OF 1972 Throughout 1971, Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had tried to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War with Hanoi. Nixon also hoped to isolate North Vietnam by regularizing American relations with both the Soviet Union and China, both of whom were North Vietnamese supporters. In late 1971 Nixon announced that he would visit Peking (Beijing), China, in February 1972, and Moscow, Russia, in May 1972. The summits would include talks about limiting nuclear weapons. Throughout the year, Nixon also drew down American troops in South Vietnam to less than 100,000, with only 6,000 of those combat troops. In March 1972, hoping to deflect attention from Nixon’s popularly received China visit and capitalize on antiwar sentiment that the new American presidential campaign season would bring, North Vietnam launched a massive

The Pentagon Papers

On June 13, 1971, the New York Times began publication of a set of internal Pentagon documents dealing with Vietnam. The Times had received the documents from former defense department analyst Daniel Ellsberg. President Richard Nixon, charging that the documents constituted a national security risk, secured an injunction against their publication. The Supreme Court overturned the injunction, clearing the way for publication of the Pentagon Papers, as the public had come to know them. Nixon, however, took another step. He authorized the creation of a special White House unit with the special mandate of plugging information leaks that were harmful to the administration. The group earned the nickname “The Plumbers.” The Plumbers’ first job was an attempt to discredit Daniel Ellsberg. They broke into the Los Angeles office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding. Fielding reported the break-in, noting that he discovered Ellsberg’s file on the floor, obviously tampered with, after the burglary. It was obvious that someone was trying to discredit Ellsberg with revelations from his psychiatric file, and by connection, discredit the Pentagon Papers as well. The public learned of the Plumbers’ existence two years later during investigations into the Watergate scandal. In June 1972, the Plumbers broke into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., to spy on the Democratic Party. When they were caught, Nixon ordered a coverup of the scheme. The scandal toppled his presidency. The Plumbers’ origin in the chaotic days of Vietnam shows how the war, in actuality, cut short the presidencies of two men, Lyndon Johnson and Nixon.

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conventional attack across South Vietnam. The attack targeted ARVN forces, hoping to point out the futility of Vietnamization. Nixon responded with another escalation of the war, ordering a blockade of North Vietnam, the mining of Haiphong Harbor, and massive air raids, code named LINEBACKER. Nixon’s hard line enabled him and Kissinger to bring North Vietnam back to the peace table, and talks renewed even as Nixon made his bid for reelection at home. During the campaign season, Democrats nominated peace ad-



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vocate George McGovern, but even as public disapproval of the war remained at 70 percent or more, voters agreed with Nixon’s negotiating from a position of power. When Kissinger announced just days before the election that peace was imminent, voters reelected Nixon in a landslide. Negotiations between the United States and North Vietnam faltered again. In December 1972, Nixon ordered another round of bombings, code named LINEBACKER II. The North Vietnamese suffered heavy ground losses, but also shot down 26 American planes, including 15 B-52s. LINEBACKER II was like a final frantic brawl between combatants. In January 1973 the two sides returned to the table and finalized a peace agreement. CEASE-FIRE and the fall of Vietnam Americans rejoiced at television coverage of former prisoners of war touching down on airstrips in Hawaii, but the end of the American phase of the Vietnam War left the population exhausted and questioning America’s role in the world. Congress moved to prevent any president from grabbing the same discretionary war powers that Lyndon Johnson had with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. It passed the War Powers Act in 1973, insisting that the president consult with Congress before committing troops to any conflict, and make periodic updates to Congress. If at any point Congress disapproves with the action, the president must start to bring troops home. Nixon vetoed the bill, but Congress mustered the votes for an override. The year 1973 also saw the end of the draft. Conscription had been in place, essentially uninterrupted, since 1940. But the unpopularity of the Vietnam War made draft dodging an active form of protest. Between 1964 and 1973, from 30,000 to 50,000 service-age men fled to Canada or Sweden to avoid the draft. Some 210,000 others faced draft violation charges. The demise of the draft put the U.S. military services on an all-volunteer footing, where they have remained. In August 1974, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal. His successor, Gerald R. Ford, had to contend with both the aftermath of that scandal and the final collapse of South Vietnam. In April 1975, North Vietnamese forces swept across South Vietnam, creating a unified, Communist Vietnam. The Communist takeover further destabilized Southeast Asia, and the Communist Khmer Rouge seized power in neighboring Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge brutally massacred its opposition, and soon came into conflict with the United States. In May, Khmer Rouge gunboats off the coast of Cambodia stopped and boarded an American merchant ship, the Mayaguez, claiming it had been spying. Cambodians captured the ship and reportedly took the crew to nearby Koh Tang island. Ford knew that the United States appeared weak and indecisive in the wake of its apparent loss in Vietnam, and he wanted to send a message that the

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A Marine Corps Vietnam Veteran wears his collection of pins to a motorcycle rally in 2006. Unlike during the Vietnam War, protestors of the war in Iraq made an effort to stress that they were protesting the war, not the soldiers.

United States was still resolute. Ford committed U.S. Marines to retake the ship, attack Koh Tang, and rescue the hostages. On May 14, 179 marines helicoptered onto the island, while others retook the ship. The Khmer Rouge released the hostages, who were on the mainland, but fighting still broke out on the island. In a fight that illustrated chaotic conditions in the post-Vietnam U.S. military, 15 marines were killed, three went missing, 50 were wounded in combat, and another 23 died in a helicopter crash. Carter Doctrine Ford lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter in 1976. On January 23, 1980, in his State of the Union address, President Jimmy Carter made a foreign policy statement that came to be known as the Carter Doctrine. Carter extended the principle of containment of the Soviet Union to the Persian Gulf region, in response to Soviet armed forces in Afghanistan. Under the Carter Doctrine, the United States extended formal aid to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, and Pakistan. Carter stressed negotiation in the first half of his administration, and sought to broker a peace accord between Israel and Egypt. The Carter years, however, saw a resurgence in Soviet belligerence. The threat of a Communist takeover in Angola in 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 prompted Carter to reinstate a registration for a possible military draft, but not a draft



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itself. Under this plan, all American males over the age of 18 had to register with the federal government in case it rapidly needed to create a list of names upon which to base a draft. The draft registration remains in effect; American men cannot even get federal education loans without proof of registration. The American military, however, still appeared weak, especially in the wake of the Iranian hostage crisis, which began in November 1979. Radical Islamic fundamentalists under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (who had taken control after the ouster of the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran) captured 52 Americans at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran. Carter seemed powerless to secure their release. In April 1980 Carter authorized a military expedition to enter Tehran and rescue the hostages. On April 24 eight helicopters from the aircraft carrier Nimitz were to rendezvous with C-130s at a point in the desert named Desert One. The operations, code named Eagle Claw, failed when two of the aircraft collided, killing eight soldiers. The survivors abandoned the rescue and Carter had to announce the failure. The hostages were finally freed at the start of the Reagan administration. Reagan Doctrine Ronald Reagan won the presidency from Jimmy Carter in 1980, in part because he promised to restore American pride and military effectiveness. Part of his plan was to restore American morale and prestige around the globe; part of it was to bring about the fall of the Communist Soviet Union. In his February 6, 1985, State of the Union address, Reagan offered a refinement to the policies committing American forces abroad. Reagan made explicit an implicit aspect of the Carter Doctrine, in his own “Reagan Doctrine.” Reagan committed the United States to come to the aid of anti-Communist rebels in countries dominated by Communist or pro-Communist regimes. In particular, this doctrine led to the commitment of U.S. aid to rebel groups in Nicaragua. Covert aid to Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet-supported regime in Afghanistan represented another phase of the Reagan Doctrine. In this regard, Ronald Reagan echoed assertions by Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, that the United States should be prepared to “roll back” Communist control where it had extended. Although associated with Ronald Reagan, the principle of explicit or covert aid to anti-Communist insurgent groups had been supported by Democratic President John Kennedy in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, and by Democratic President Jimmy Carter in his support for the Mujaheddin anti-Communist rebels in Afghanistan as early as July 1979. Reagan increased military funding significantly. In the largest American peacetime military buildup in history, he committed $2.4 trillion to all branches of the military, included ship production, technological advances, and research into a space-based missile defense shield nicknamed “Star

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Wars.” While strengthening the military, the spending would also force the Soviet Union to spend on defense, and, ultimately, spend itself to near bankruptcy. Reagan-era Conflicts In 1983, after Israel had invaded Lebanon in 1982, the United States agreed to be part of a peacekeeping force in Lebanon. American marines, garrisoned in Beirut, would be part of that force. On October 23, terrorists bombed the marine barracks, killing 241. Reagan presided over a solemn service honoring the marines, as well as a renewed perception of American weakness. The United States abandoned the security effort in 1984. Two days later, on October 25, the United States invaded the tiny island country of Grenada, northwest of Venezuela. The country had undergone a Communist takeover in 1979, and a more brutal consolidation of Communist power in 1983 at the hands of pro-Castro military men. In Operation Urgent Fury, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines combined to land troops on the island and secure it after a three-day fight. The United States lost 18 men killed and 116 wounded, but it also went in with clear goals and a doctrine of overwhelming force. However, poor communication between military branches and poor intelligence usage indicated that the U.S. military still had a long way to recover from the nadir of 1975. In 1986, investigators connected the bombing of a West German night club, in which an American serviceman was killed, with Islamic radicals under General Muammar al-Gaddafi, leader of Libya. Reagan authorized a strike on Gaddafi’s Libyan stronghold. On April 14, flying from bases in England, bombers hit Gaddafi’s base; the attacks killed more than 100 Libyans, but Gaddafi escaped. However, his regional power and threat to the United States greatly diminished. In announcing the air strike, Reagan uttered the now-famous phrase, “You can run, but you can’t hide.” In 1986 and 1987, Islamic radicals held more Americans hostage in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon, creating a new dilemma. Reagan had vowed that he would not negotiate with terrorists, for fear of legitimizing their causes, but he had to display some kind of action. His administration found a way to link the problem with another undertaking thousands of miles away. In 1979, leftist Sandinista forces had overthrown the U.S.-backed government of Nicaragua. One of Reagan’s goals was to topple the Communist Sandinistas, and he committed more that $19 million to train contra rebels to fight them. Fearing another Vietnam, Congress prohibited Reagan from helping the contras. The Reagan administration decided to then authorize the secret sale of weapons to contra rebels in Nicaragua, and the money made from the sales would go to the Middle East as incentive to release American hostages. When the deal came to light, the news media deemed it the Iran-Contra af-



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fair and likened it to a new Watergate scandal. Televised congressional hearings implicated many of Reagan’s advisors in wrongdoing connected with the scandal, but Reagan himself avoided any permanent political damage. The George H. W. Bush Administration On Christmas Eve, 1989, Reagan’s successor, President George H. W. Bush, sent troops into Panama to depose and arrest dictator Manuel Noriega. In 1977, the United States had agreed to turn administration of the Panama Canal over to Panama by the end of the century. However, Noriega was a sticking point. Drug trafficker, leader of the country, and head of the Panamanian Defense Force, by 1989 Noriega had begun harassing American civilians and service personnel in the country. He crushed a coup that attempted to topple his regime, and he unwisely announced a Declaration of War against the United States. The invasion, called Operation Just Cause, showed the American armed forces finally recovering from the Vietnam era. It involved a variety of elements, including armored columns and paratroops. The speed and precision with which the 24,000 American troops operated showed the American military was still an effective fighting force. DESERT SHIELD AND DESERT STORM In August 1990, the army of Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the oilrich neighboring state of Kuwait. Saddam proclaimed its annexation as a province of Iraq. Saudi Arabia feared subsequent invasion of their own territory. Immediately, President Bush proclaimed that the Iraqi incursion “cannot stand,” and he dispatched an American carrier task force to the Persian Gulf, as well as troops from the American Central Command (based in Florida, but with jurisdiction over the Middle East) to begin Operation Desert Shield. Desert Shield would be a defensive line spread just south of the Iraqi-Saudi border and composed of U.S., British, and Saudi troops. Central Command head General Norman Schwarzkopf, a veteran of Vietnam and the Grenada operation, moved his headquarters to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to oversee the operation. Throughout the fall of 1990, Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, and others worked to achieve to a negotiated end to the occupation of Kuwait. Hussein remained intransigent, and Bush began assembling a coalition force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. By January 1991, Bush had the support of a coalition of 34 countries opposed to Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait, along with the United Nations backing he needed to wage offensive war again Iraq. His goals were limited and well defined—force Iraq to give up Kuwait. To go beyond that would have caused the Islamic nations in the coalition to bolt. Bush’s war aims never included capturing Baghdad or toppling Saddam Hussein.

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Bush’s mid-January deadline for voluntary Iraqi departure from Kuwait passed, and on January 16, Desert Shield became Desert Storm. Schwarzkopf and Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell worked closely to devise an offensive strategy in the desert. Powell, a veteran of Vietnam, wanted to make sure that Schwarzkopf had enough men and equipment to do the job, and he spent the fall of 1990 making sure everything was in place. Schwarzkopf allowed news media in the area to believe that American marines, who had been seen practicing amphibious invasions with huge hovercraft, would spearhead the attack with a landing from the Persian Gulf near Kuwait City. In reality, Schwarzkopf planned an armored drive from the Saudi desert toward Baghdad. The armored line would essentially pivot on a point near the Kuwait border, and as it swung shut across the countryside, the Iraqi forces in Kuwait would have two choices—pull out of Kuwait to avoid the trap, or die. Schwarzkopf based much of the open-field desert phase of Desert Storm on the World War II work of German tank general Heinz Guderian and Erwin Rommel. The ground phase of combat, however, would not begin until Schwarzkopf was certain the American-led campaign had air superiority over Iraq. For six weeks, air force fighters and bombers flew thousands of sorties over Iraq, including Baghdad, to hit known troop installations and command and control centers. American F-15 Eagles, F-16 Falcons, and British Tornadoes dominated the skies. B-52 bombers, in American service since the 1950s, dropped “bunker buster” bombs on Iraqi fortifications; F-4 Phantom jets, a workhorse of Vietnam, were pressed into service as electronics-scrambling “wild weasel”

M-1A1 Abrams tanks advance across the desert during Operation Desert Storm on February 15, 1991, in a ground campaign that took only 100 hours.



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U.S. Air Force F-16A, F-15C, and F-15E aircraft flying a mission over a burning oil field in Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm.

aircraft; and A-10 Warthogs flew regular missions to knock Iraqi Republican Guard tanks. The battleship U.S.S. Missouri, whose decks were the site of the Japanese surrender in World War II, also took part in the war. In an attempt to draw the Jewish state of Israel into the war and thus collapse the Anglo-American-Arab coalition, Saddam Hussein ordered Scud missiles fired at Israel. The Scuds, with minor updates, were essentially German V-2 rockets of the type Hitler fired at England in World War II. Bush’s administration convinced Israel to stay out of the war, in part because the U.S. Air Forces Patriot Missile batteries successfully intercepted some Scuds and blew them from the sky. Bush immediately sent more Patriot batteries to Israel. After six weeks of bombing, Schwarzkopf unleashed his ground offensive. It worked well, easily crushing any organized resistance, and pulling Iraqis out of Kuwait. Those who didn’t immediately surrender were killed or captured. The ground campaign took 100 hours. The effectiveness of Desert Storm showed how far the American military services had come in the 16 years since the fall of Saigon. President Bush noted that “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome ... once and for all.” The Clinton Administration When Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, he ushered in a renewed period of military uncertainty. Many American veterans opposed Clinton

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“Air Attacks Are Underway”

In an attempt to conquer and incorporate Kuwait as a province of Iraq, Iraqi forces invaded the country in August 1990. President George H. W. Bush, in an operation dubbed Operation Desert Shield, directed a massive military build-up in Saudi Arabia to prevent further Iraqi incursion. The United Nations Security Council established January 15, 1991, as the deadline for Iraqi withdrawal. Once the deadline passed, American and Allied forces launched an aerial campaign dubbed Operation Desert Storm. President Bush’s speech given at the start of the air campaign on January 16, 1991, is excerpted below. Just 2 hours ago, allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait. These attacks continue as I speak. Ground forces are not engaged. This conflict started August 2 when the dictator of Iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor: Kuwait—a member of the Arab League and a member of the United Nations—was crushed; its people brutalized. Five months ago, Saddam Hussein started this cruel war against Kuwait. Tonight, the battle has been joined . . . As I report to you, air attacks are underway against military targets in Iraq. We are determined to knock out Saddam Hussein’s nuclear bomb potential. We will also destroy his chemical weapons facilities. Much of Saddam’s artillery and tanks will be destroyed. Our operations are designed to best protect the lives of all the coalition forces by targeting Saddam’s vast military arsenal. Initial reports from General Schwarzkopf are that our operations are proceeding according to plan. ...when peace is restored, it is our hope that Iraq will live as a peaceful and cooperative member of the family of nations, thus enhancing the security and stability of the Gulf. Some may ask: Why act now? Why not wait? The answer is clear: The world could wait no longer. Sanctions, though having some effect, showed no signs of accomplishing their objective. Sanctions were tried for well over 5 months, and we and our allies concluded that sanctions alone would not force Saddam from Kuwait... While the world waited, Saddam sought to add to the chemical weapons arsenal he now possesses, an infinitely more dangerous weapon of mass destruction—a nuclear weapon... While the world waited, while Saddam stalled, more damage was being done to the fragile economies of the Third World, emerging democracies of Eastern Europe, to the entire world, including our own economy.



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as they perceived him as having avoided the draft during Vietnam. Clinton also opened dialogue designed to make the atmosphere in America’s military services accepting of gay members. In 1981, the Department of Defense made the dismissal of gays and lesbians from the armed services mandatory. Clinton wanted them to be able to serve openly, with no threat of repercussions. Opponents of Clinton’s plan said that since studies show that soldiers in combat tend to fight more for the buddy next to them than for political ideals, the open service of gays and lesbians would destroy unit cohesion. The best that Clinton could achieve was the stalemated, de facto policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Like his Republican predecessors, Clinton continued to commit U.S. troops to world hot spots. The most dangerous turned out to be Somalia. Somalia, with no legally constituted government and wracked by infighting among Muslim warlords, drew world attention in late 1992 for a famine that caused starvation throughout the country. President Bush, who had already lost reelection to Clinton, agreed to commit the United States to the United Nations Task Force (UNITAF) for Somalia. The 25,000 American troops in the country were there only for relief efforts. In 1993, Clinton committed U.S. troops to United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM) II, designed to take power away from warlords, especially Muhammad Farah Aideed, and establish a stable government. On October 3, a force of American Delta Force troops and Army Rangers moved into Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, to capture Aideed. Somalis, however, ambushed them and brought down one of their helicopters with a shoulderfired missile. The resulting gunfight was the largest engagement involving American troops since Vietnam, including Desert Storm. Americans even saw televised footage of one dead marine being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. A total of 18 Americans died in the fight. The United States left Somalia in early 1994. Kosovo Clinton also committed American forces to peacekeeping missions in the Balkans after Communist Yugoslavia fell apart and erupted into nationalistic civil war. In spring 1999, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under the leadership of Slobodan Milošević began a campaign to oust Albanians in the province of Kosovo. Fearing a new episode of ethnic cleansing, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, of which the United States is a senior member) authorized force against the Yugoslavian Serb army. The United States began bombing missions with other NATO members on March 23, 1999. NATO flew some 35,000 sorties over 10 weeks, killing some 5,000 Yugoslav soldiers, and probably 1,200 civilians. NATO lost two aircraft, but recovered both crewmen. The NATO air campaign forced an end to the Yugoslav ground war. The United States then sent in 7,000 ground troops

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Cyber Warfare

Government, finance, energy, and transportation sectors have become dependent on computer systems, and this makes them vulnerable to attack by terrorists and hackers. The term cyberspace has come to refer to the virtual network that stores and transmits digital information via other networks or the World Wide Web. Cyber crimes have continued to increase over the past several decades, and at least 3,000 Web sites are known to provide cyber criminals with the information needed to carry out crimes. Attacks on computers at the Department of Defense and other federal agencies have been documented. Many are known to have originated outside the United States, including the Middle East, Russia, and China. Although no classified information has been taken, cyber criminals have stolen sensitive information and it is feared that they could interrupt the flow of crucial data in wartime, disable military computer systems, and shut down national infrastructure and utilities. The most notorious group of hackers was led by “Hunter,” a West German who set up “cuckoo’s egg” programs on American computers to steal information, which he sold to the Russian KGB between 1986 and 1989. Even before 9/11, intelligence officials warned Congress of American vulnerabilities. Department of Defense official Mario Balakgie warned a congressional subcommittee on February 23, 2000, that because “defense intelligence relies on global networks” to carry out both “pre- and post-operations,” “the information network has become a combat power.” The potential for engaging in “information warfare” is a constant threat. In fact, a number of nations that could not win in a showdown with the American military have developed programs and capabilities aimed at crippling the United States electronically. In China, for instance, two writers have suggested using computer viruses to attack military computers.

Members of several of the U.S. Air Force’s electronic warfare units overseeing tests in the Central Control Facility at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.



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U.S. Air Force personnel drop American propaganda pamphlets intended to win the support of the local population over the mountains of Afghanistan. Below left, a sample leaflet from 2001– 02 shows Afghans unloading donated food marked “USA.” The caption on the reverse, at right, reads, “This is what the Taliban has done?” beside images of Taliban destruction and violence.

as part of a peacekeeping force. While peacekeeping troop levels have been gradually reduced over the years, violence flared up again in 2004, and in 2008 NATO and the United Nations confirmed that they would retain peacekeepers in the region. 9/11 President George W. Bush assumed the presidency in January 2001. The defining moment of Bush’s presidency came on the morning of September 11, 2001, when radical Muslim terrorists hijacked passenger aircraft and flew them into the World Trade Center towers in New York, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Passengers thwarted a fourth plane attack, believed headed for either the White House or the Capitol building, and instead forced it down in a Pennsylvania field.

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“I’ve Never Felt Fear Like This”

Many U.S. soldiers in Iraq have military blogs on the Internet in which they share first-hand experiences of the conflict. Colby Buzzell was a 26-year-old living in San Francisco, California, when he joined the U.S. Army in 2002. He served one year in Iraq as a infantry machine gunner with the new Stryker Brigade Combat Team involved in urban, guerrilla-style warfare. He arrived in Iraq in November 2003 and was stationed at a military base in Mosul. After reading a Time magazine article on blogging, he started his own Iraq war blog under the name cbftw. His posts began to attract attention due to their visceral, honest, profanity-laced nature. After insurgents ambushed his unit in an intense firefight, Buzzell felt the few brief reports of the struggle he found on the Internet did not capture his experience. He created a blog post entitled “Men in Black” describing his experience; it immediately captured worldwide media attention and he was outed as the blog’s author. Although Buzzell stopped blogging shortly thereafter, he later published his posts and journal entries in the memoir My War: Killing Time in Iraq (Putnam, 2005). The documentary Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience also featured his work. After returning from Iraq, Buzzell was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and was divorced. He began a new career as a freelance writer. The following are excerpts from his blog and subsequent book: I can hear small arms fire right now coming from outside the wire as I write this entry. On my way to the Internet cafe that they have set up for us on this FOB (Forward Operating Base) I heard three loud explosions, about 5 minutes apart, followed by some brief small arms fire. We have cement mortar bunkers set up for us all over this FOB for us to seek cover in during an attack. From a cement shelter I observed three very large dust mushroom clouds from right outside the wire from where the explosions took place. You could feel the concussion of the explosions from where I was standing. No word yet what just happened. The craziness begins . . . I observed a man, dressed all in black with a terrorist beard, jump out all of sudden from the side of a building, he pointed his AK-47 barrel right at my f------ pupils, I froze and then a split second later, I saw the fire from his muzzle flash leaving the end of his barrel and brass shell casings exiting the side of his AK as he was shooting directly at me. I heard and felt the bullets whiz literally inches from my head. Bullets were pinging off our armor, all over our vehicle, and you could hear multiple RPGs being fired, soaring through the air every which way and impacting all around us. All sorts of crazy insane Hollywood explosions were going off. I’ve never felt fear like this. I was like, this is it, I’m going to die.



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American intelligence quickly linked the attacker to al Qaeda, a terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden opposed American support of Israel and Western influences that had entered Saudi Arabia after Desert Storm. Ironically, bin Laden had come to prominence as part of the U.S.backed mujahideen, Afghan freedom fighters who opposed the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. By 2001, Afghanistan’s ruling government, the Taliban, was supporting al Qaeda. War in Iraq and Afghanistan Within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, Bush had authorized an invasion of Afghanistan. American and British troops went into the country, both in conventional vehicles and by parachute and horseback. They drove the Taliban from power, installed a “democratic” government, and began a hunt for bin Laden. Troops nearly had him in the mountainous Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, but he escaped. Bin Laden was seen only in videotaped tirades after that. Bush’s War on Terror took a detour with the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Bush told the American public that intelligence agencies had information linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda, and that he had the technology to produce “weapons of mass destruction,” or WMD. The type of WMD was always unclear, whether nuclear, chemical, or biological. Regardless, the claim later proved erroneous. Bush mustered some international and United Nations support for renewed hostilities against Iraq. The campaign was part of the “Bush Doctrine,” a policy of preventive warfare 180-degrees removed from previous military response policies. The American takeover of Iraq went quickly, with armored divisions under General Tommy Franks occupying the country and Baghdad within weeks. Television viewers around the globe watched the progress of troops over the countryside, as well as the toppling of a statue of Hussein. Troops captured Hussein in late 2003; a government tribunal found him guilty of war crimes and hanged him in December 2006. The initial Iraqi war campaign went well, proving again that the United States could effectively execute its military plans. But the occupation of the country did not go as planned. More than 4,000 American soldiers had died in Iraq by 2008 as the United States struggled to underpin the formation of a democratic government. While Hussein’s “Baath” Party had kept rival Shiite and Sunni Muslim factions in check (albeit brutally), American removal of Baathists in 2003 proved problematic. The revelation that Bush’s WMD assertions were false, his lack of an exit strategy from Iraq, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and bin Laden’s continued elusion caused Bush’s popularity to plummet. Minor antiwar protests erupted, although protestors, learning a lesson from Vietnam, made it clear they were protesting the war, not the soldiers. Apparent Republican inability to resolve the Iraqi war swept away the Republican majority in Congress, in place since 1994, in the elections of 2006, and Secretary of Defense

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Donald Rumsfeld resigned. In February 2009, President Barack Obama’s new Democratic administration announced plans to withdraw all combat troops from the country by August 2010 and to remain committed to a previous agreement to pull out all troops in late 2011. Conclusion By 2009, 20 years after the celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the optimism from the end of the Cold War sometimes seemed like a distant memory for Americans. An unprecedented terrorist attack on American soil during peacetime had introduced a new, though not entirely unanticipated, enemy. Al Qaeda was essentially a stateless foe, and fighting it in traditional ways was a challenge. Despite a far lower death toll, Americans could not help but hear echoes of the Vietnam War era in the long war in Iraq, which provoked new questioning of leadership, and has left in its wake another generation of combat veterans, many with severe wounds that will have consequences for the rest of their lives. R. Steven Jones

Further Readings

Balakgie, Mario. “Computer Security: Cyber Attack—War without Borders.” Available online: http://www.iwar.org.uk/cip/resources/congress/ 000726mb.htm. Accessed October 2008. Berkowitz, Edward D. Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Chambers, John Whiteclay, II, ed. The Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Colarik, Andrew Michael. Cyber Terrorism: Political and Economic Implications. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing, 2006. Cordesman, Anthony H. and Justin G. Cordesman. Cyber Threats, Information Warfare, and Critical Infrastructure Protection: Defending the United States Homeland. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002. Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986. Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History—The First Complete Account of Vietnam at War. New York: Viking Press, 1983. Leckie, Robert. The Wars of America, Vol. II From 1900 to 1992. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Lewy, Guenter. America in Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Luttwak, Edward and Stuart L. Koehl. The Dictionary of Modern War. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

Chapter 14

Population Trends and Migration

“The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.” —Walter Lippmann

Two major events shaped the population trends of the United States after 1970. The first was the energy crisis, and the second was the digital revolution. These two events also interacted in complex ways, reshaping people’s lives. However, neither of them lined up tidily with the years on the calendar. The first several years of the 1970s continued to feature cheap oil not different from that of the 1960s, and although computer technology burst into the public awareness in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it had been developing for decades in corporate data centers and university electrical engineering departments.

Vietnam War REFUGEES The first major migration event of the 1970s was actually an outgrowth of the 1960s and the growing opposition to the Vietnam War. Particularly after antiwar demonstrations at Kent State University and Jackson State University turned deadly, President Richard M. Nixon began to realize that the lack of support for the war on the home front was a detriment to America’s ability to continue prosecuting it. As a result, he decided to shift the responsibility for fighting the war onto the South Vietnamese government in a process known 207

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as “Vietnamization.” By 1973 American forces were withdrawn, but promised support for the South Vietnamese military failed to materialize. As a result, South Vietnam collapsed. One of the most vivid images of that period was the last helicopter to fly off the roof of the American embassy in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), evacuating American personnel. However, under that striking image was a far more pervasive reality of Vietnamese nationals who faced imprisonment or death for having collaborated with the Americans, or even just for being “class enemies” of the North Vietnamese government. Many decided not to wait for the inevitable knock on the door and fled, often abandoning significant material wealth for an uncertain future abroad. An impoverished but free life was better than imprisonment, torture, and quite possibly death. Many of these refugees piled into rickety boats to cross the treacherous currents of the South China Sea for Taiwan and freedom. Impressed with their determination, and feeling more than a little guilty about having abandoned them to their fate, the U.S. government granted refugee status to many Vietnamese, permitting them to settle in the United States. They soon created sizeable Asian-American communities. THE DOWNSIZING OF THE AMERICAN DREAM One of the long-touted marks of American culture has been its relatively flat social structure. While social and economic distance between the country’s rich and poor has always existed, there has also been high social mobility, such that a person with ability and ambition could rise from a modest background to become the head of an important company. The energy crisis of the 1970s marked the beginning of a trend by which the earning power of the bottom decile of the American populace steadily eroded, while that of the very top tier of society grew just as significantly. One of the most important forces driving this shift was the loss of manufacturing jobs. For the first three decades after World War II it had been possible for young men to go straight from high school to factory work that paid enough to start a family. Strong labor unions ensured high wages, ample vacation time, and good working conditions. But rising energy costs, combined with an influx of cheap manufactured goods from developing countries, made it difficult for American industry to remain competitive. As one factory after another laid off its workers and shut its doors, the people who had depended upon them for work found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. The mere rumor of a business that might be hiring would bring hopeful job-seekers until the lines stretched for blocks. A single open position might easily get 100 or more applications, almost all from people who had solid records of employment, until their jobs melted out from under them. By the 1980s much of America’s industrial heartland, a region stretching from Pittsburgh through Detroit and Chicago to Minneapolis and Duluth,



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A deteriorating American factory and smokestacks. In the 1970s, white-collar workers outnumbered blue-collar workers for the first time, and by the first quarter of 1980 unemployment had reached 8.3 percent.

was visibly in trouble. Entire industrial districts stood idle, the smokestacks crumbling and the windows broken. In the suburbs that once provided workers for the shuttered factories, For Sale signs stood in front of one house after another in which people sought to beat the ticking clock of foreclosure. But nobody was buying, and many people ended up losing not only all the equity they had accumulated over years of faithfully making their mortgage payments, but also most of their possessions when they could not afford storage or even a moving van. New terms such as Rust Belt and Misery Index entered Americans’ vocabulary. THE FLOWER CHILDREN COME OF AGE The 1960s had been known as the age of peace, love, and rock and roll, in which America’s youth rejected materialism in favor of spiritual goods, often of a most nontraditional sort. By contrast, the 1970s were known as the Me

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On the Street in America

During the 1980s Americans became increasingly aware of a previously invisible population living in their midst, struggling to survive without any stable living arrangements. Homelessness was not new, but in previous generations the homeless had either been romanticized, as was the case with the hoboes of the Great Depression, or scorned as lazy ne’er-do-wells who declined to earn an honest living. However, many people living on the street in the 1980s were neither. A disturbing number of them were Vietnam veterans. Despised by a populace who condemned them along with the war in which they fought, and often battling their own inner demons as a result of the things they had seen and done in Vietnam, they failed to re-integrate into civilian life. Unable to maintain a steady job, they took to living on the streets and begging for change. Many were addicted to alcohol or street drugs, often as an attempt to self-medicate depression or other mental illness. The images of these men huddling in appliance boxes or under sheets of plastic, sometimes within sight of the White House or other famous symbols of America, was a painful blow to America’s collective conscience. More than a few of them still retained citations for valor, or even medals. Vietnam veterans were by no means the only troubled population living on the streets. In the 1960s and 1970s advances in psychopharmacology had produced effective treatments for previously intractable mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Combined with changes in attitudes that led to residential mental institutions being regarded as abusive and contrary to human dignity, the new psychiatry led to the release of many mentally ill people back into society. In theory those who did not have families to serve as a support system were supposed to be moved into halfway houses that would help ease the transition to independent living. In fact, cuts in government funding meant most of these intermediate facilities were never built, and patients were turned loose. When they ceased to take their medications and symptoms reappeared, changes in the law had made it impossible to commit them involuntarily unless they posed an immediate danger to themselves or others. The result was a population of vulnerable mentally ill people living in the streets, often filthy and exhibiting behaviors normal people found disturbing. Many were robbed of the meager funds they accumulated by begging, and homeless women were often sexually assaulted. But not all the people living on America’s streets were mentally troubled. Economic shifts that gutted entire sectors of the job market, combined with efforts by conservatives to cut government assistance programs, left many formerly productive citizens destitute. Many of them hit the road in search of jobs. But in a time when many people were competing for scarce jobs, individuals whose skills were no longer in demand often found their searches stretched into months or even years of wandering, living in cars kept running by makeshift repairs, or even in tents.



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Decade. Self-absorption rather than spiritual outreach became the order of the day. Self-help books took an increasing share of shelf space as former flower children sought to sort out the reasons why they still felt dissatisfied with their lives. But it was in the 1980s that commentators began reporting the most astonishing transformations. The very generation that had most adamantly rejected capitalism was embracing it. Former hippies became stockbrokers, and seemed to see no contradiction or betrayal of their ideals. In fact, some of them saw that transformation as a practical realization of their ideals. For instance, a young and idealistic Steve Jobs went to India in search of enlightenment. While living as a pilgrim and visiting various holy men, he saw poverty so profound it made even the poorest of America’s poor seem wealthy. While he struggled with a bad case of dysentery, he came to the realization that Thomas Alva Edison had done as much to help humanity as all the holy men in India put together. People would never be truly free to pursue their higher spiritual needs until their basic physical needs were met. But even as many Baby Boomers embraced the ethos that the best way to help the poor was to not be one of them, they also considered it their right to enjoy themselves in the process. This new class of young, upwardlymobile professionals or “yuppies” began to exercise a taste for high-quality consumer goods, particularly electronics such as stereos, televisions, and computers. As America’s economy improved in comparison to the early 1980s, these professionals and other members of the middle class began demanding bigger homes with more property, changing where and how families would live for years to come. THE RISE OF THE EXURBS The desire for ever larger-homes and lots drove a movement in the 1990s beyond the traditional suburban fringe of America’s cities to even more remote communities. Besides a lower cost of living, another impetus behind the movement was that many parents had come to believe that suburban schools were just as troubled with drugs and gang violence as their urban counterparts, particularly after a rash of school shootings in middle-class communities. While the three-bedroom homes of Levittown seemed palatial to 1950s families accustomed to tiny apartments and makeshift base housing during World War II, such quarters seemed positively cramped to their children and grandchildren. Boomer parents wanted to give their children separate living and family rooms, dining rooms and breakfast nooks, and individual bedrooms. Yards grew bigger as well, to an acre or more, with room for spacious decks, patios, gazebos, and swimming pools. In many areas, wooded lots commanded a premium, resulting in changes in the way in which developers operated. Instead of starting by removing all vegetation from the land on

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A subdivision of large, new houses encroaching on open grasslands on the Colorado Front Range in Larimer County, Colorado.

which the subdivision was to be built, they would only clear the actual home sites and the necessary access roads, leaving the rest of the trees to give residents additional privacy. In Western states, the practice of developing 20- and 30-acre spreads called ranchettes became increasingly controversial. Actual ranchers considered them a loss of productive land, and environmentalists considered them a very inefficient housing option compared to more modest lots. People who wanted to fancy themselves as ranchers, perhaps owning a horse or two for pleasure riding, flocked to them. Even more important was the fact that these new developments did not necessarily function as bedroom communities to major cities. Instead, many of them were associated with smaller cities that were experiencing strong economic growth. Corporations were looking toward these cities as a way of getting better tax rates, less crime, and nonunion labor. Particularly in rightto-work states, second-tier cities experienced strong growth as Internet companies such as Amazon.com located fulfillment centers there. In addition, the Internet created a category of workers whose jobs were no longer bound by space. Telecommuting meant that teachers at online universities could work anywhere they had an Internet connection, as could a large number of other information professionals.



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Generation X and Generation Y

Americans classified as Generation X were born between 1965 and 1981. Stereotypical Generation Xers are white, middle-class, live in the suburbs, and are college educated. Members of Generation X have been saddled with the label “slacker” since the release of Richard Linklater’s movie of that name in 1991. A slacker is generally identified as a Generation Xer who is content to loaf all day. While he or she may plan on having a career, little is done to turn the plan into reality. Many members of Generation X grew up in homes where television served as an electronic babysitter, and television reflected their lives. The classic example of this phenomenon is the television show Friends (1994– 2004) about six young New Yorkers. According to the Friends theme song, love and success are both elusive: So no one told you life was gonna be this way Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s D.O.A. It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear When it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year. Despite the stereotypes connected to Generation X, more than a third of the generation is Hispanic, and Xers generally accept racial, ethnic, and social diversity in American culture. Chris Casdin, 25, explains that Generation X is “a sarcastic, satirical in-your-face generation that craves bigger, faster, more powerful technology and entertainment.” Generation Xers have sometimes been called the “MTV generation.” Jennifer Half, 25, recalls, “I thought MTV was just about the coolest thing I’d ever seen in my life.” Members of Generation Y, sometimes called the “millennial generation,” were born between 1982 and 2000. With 72 million members, Generation Y is even larger than the Baby Boom generation born after World War II. While Generation Xers were focused on individual rights, Generation Ys are family oriented and have become strong advocates for children’s rights. Polls indicate that 75 percent of Generation Y has a good relationship with their parents. More than one-third of Generation Y is either Hispanic or African American. They are the most technically sophisticated generation in American history, and are comfortable with computers, DVRs, iPods, and text messaging. They are also very success-oriented. As an 11-year-old girl said, “I have a lot of homework, but it’s worth it because I want to go to a really good college.”

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Creative professionals at work on laptops in cafés and other unorthodox work sites became a common sight with the increase in telecommuting and Internet-based jobs.

Silicon VALLEY One striking example of a late 20th-century demographic shift connected to new patterns of work and industry was the transformation of a largely agricultural region in California into the conurbation now known as Silicon Valley. There is some debate as to the exact geographic boundaries of Silicon Valley. All agree that its primary north-south axis runs along El Camino Real from San Francisco to San José, including such communities as Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino. However, some include locations as far away as Los Gatos. The connection between California’s Santa Clara Valley and the electronics industry can be traced to the beginning of the 20th century, but the electronics industry did not begin to affect the demographics of the area until the development of the transistor. Change intensified further in the 1970s with the development of the microprocessor. Unlike earlier integrated circuits, which had to be specifically designed for the purposes they would serve, the microprocessor was a general-purpose computer on a chip, able to be programmed to perform a limitless range of functions. The potential of the microprocessor was a godsend to a wide variety of industries, ranging from the traditional military contractors to office machine manufacturers and even entertainment companies such as Atari, one of the earliest manufacturers of video games. Apple Computer, founded by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, almost singlehandedly created the personal computer industry. It spawned a wealth of imitators, and all these computer companies began hiring large numbers of



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The Crime Wave that Never Happened

In the 1980s commentators began to warn of a new generation of “superpredators” who would soon make the streets run red with blood and fill the nation’s prisons to capacity. These alarming predictions were based on the fact that the Boomers’ children would be entering their teens and twenties, the peak age for violent crime. The sheer size of the Boomer generation would create an “echo boom” in their children’s generation, a generation whose regular exposure to violent television programming and video games was suspected to result in desensitization to actual violence. In fact, the anticipated crime wave proved to be a thorough bust. Although there was a slight increase in some crimes, the incidence of the worst violent crimes actually went down during the second half of the 1990s. Pundits were bewildered. As statisticians tried to account for the discrepancy, they suggested that perhaps the impressive performance of the economy during the 1990s might be responsible, since people are less likely to resort to crime during good times than desperate ones. However, the crime rate remained low even after the dot-com bubble burst at the turn of the millennium, and the War on Terror sent the economy into a tailspin. Other social scientists suggested that innovative policing techniques and more aggressive law enforcement might be removing lawbreakers from society before they could commit as many crimes. However, studies showed no statistically significant difference between communities using different policing techniques. Finally, University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner pointed out in a book entitled Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (2005) that the drop in crime rates occurred right as the cohort of young people who had been born in 1973 reached the age that was statistically most prone to violent crime. In that year the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. As a result, a whole generation of women who found themselves unwillingly pregnant could terminate those pregnancies. Since many unplanned pregnancies are the result of impulsive sexual activity, the availability of abortion may have served as a strong selection pressure against genes for brains wired in favor of impulsive behavior. In addition, the theory is that children who would otherwise have been raised in homes that did not welcome them, and provided little hope or guidance, may have simply never been born. Later close analysis of the statistics used by Levitt and Dubner have largely discredited their conclusions.

highly talented people at very competitive salaries. With this concentration of workers, it was often said that Silicon Valley was as much a state of mind as a place. That mindset included intense application of technology to everyday

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life, high salaries and job mobility, and commensurate high costs of living. There was little stigma attached to frequent job changes, and the risk associated with starting one’s own company is relatively low. However, Silicon Valley was not without its dark side. The high salaries paid in the tech industry drove the cost of living so high that it became unmanageable for many of the people who did the various kinds of support jobs. People who worked in the restaurants and supermarkets and who cleaned the huge office complexes of the high-tech firms often had to live in less expensive communities, and as a result faced lengthy commutes, sometimes as long as two hours each way. Silicon Valley was one of the few places where a person could work full time and still be homeless because housing was too expensive. DEMOGRAPHICS IN AN AGE OF FEAR The first decade of the 21st century was overshadowed by the War on Terror, which colored almost every aspect of American life. The events of September 11, 2001, brought the porosity of American borders and the laxity of immigration enforcement into stark relief. As one after another of the hijackers were identified, several proved to have overstayed tourist visas, or were otherwise in the country illegally. The immediate result was an outcry for the tightening of immigration procedures so that foreigners could no longer flout the terms of their visas with impunity. The Immigration and Naturalization Service was reorganized and incorporated into the new Department of Homeland Security. New, more exacting procedures were implemented for visa applications in hopes of denying entry altogether to individuals who wished the country ill. However, because it was considered discriminatory to use profiling techniques to single out members of any one group, such as young Muslim males from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the net result was an enormous and ever-growing backlog of unprocessed cases and long waits for people who posed little threat. Even more important was the pervasive atmosphere of fear that descended upon the country. Encouraged by government notices, people became more watchful, casting suspicious eyes upon foreign neighbors. There was also increasing awareness of the problem of illegal immigration, with attendant public debate as to the best way to deal with it. Some argued for amnesty for those who were already in the country but not breaking other laws, simply because tracking down and deporting all of them would consume valuable resources needed for more pressing work against those who posed an active danger to national security. Others considered such plans to be nothing but a way of rewarding people for flouting immigration laws, and argued for a get-tough stance as a way of discouraging further border-crossers. Many of the hardliners also took offense at suggestions for adopting a guest-worker program, saying it was an insult to say there were some jobs Americans would not do.



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Illegal Aliens in the 1970s

The problem of illegal aliens became increasingly apparent through the 1970s. President Carter sent a message to Congress on August 4, 1977, concerning illegal aliens and outlining an amnesty program for illegal aliens. A portion of his congressional message is excerpted below.

The fact that there are millions of undocumented aliens already residing in this country presents one of the most difficult questions surrounding the aliens phenomenon. These aliens entered the U.S. illegally and have willfully remained here in violation of the immigration laws. On the other President Carter speaking to hand, many of them have been law-abiding the press in April 1980. residents who are looking for a new life and productive members of their communities. I have concluded that an adjustment of status is necessary to avoid having a permanent “underclass” of millions of persons who have not been and cannot practically be deported, and who would continue living here in perpetual fear of immigration authorities, the local police, employers and neighbors. First, I propose that permanent resident alien status be granted to all undocumented aliens who have resided continuously in the U.S. from before January 1, 1970, to the present. These aliens would have to apply for this status and provide normal documentary proof of continuous residency. If residency is maintained, U.S. citizenship could be sought five years after the granting of permanent status, as provided in existing immigration laws. Second, all undocumented aliens, including those (other than exchange and student visitors) with expired visas, who were residing in the United States on or before January 1, 1977, will be eligible for a temporary resident alien status for five years. Those eligible would be granted the temporary status only after registering with INS; registration would be permitted solely during a one-year period. Aliens granted temporary status would be entitled to reside legally in the United States for a five-year period . . . Third, for those undocumented aliens who entered the United States after January 1, 1977, there would be no adjustment of status. The immigration laws would still be enforced against those undocumented aliens. Similarly, those undocumented aliens, who are eligible for adjustment of status, but do not apply, would continue to have the immigration laws enforced against them.

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A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer watches illegal Mexican immigrants from a distance inside a large detention center at an unspecified location.

Over the period between 1990 and 2007, perhaps the most serious immigration issue facing the United States was the flood of Latin American migrants across the long, unprotected border with Mexico. Many of those migrants were not Mexican nationals at all, but transited Mexico from Central America, including the nations of Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras. The Central American and Mexican migrants were clearly “economic refugees,” fleeing their homeland either temporarily or in hopes of permanent resettlement, in order to find work. Because of their illegal and undocumented status, such migrants could rarely complain of unfair work conditions or the failure to pay standard American labor benefits, such as overtime pay, minimum wage, or social security payments. Hundreds of thousands of them found employment in the United States as domestic servants, culinary workers, housekeeping staff in hotels and nursing homes, or in landscaping and gardening. The numbers of such migrants were difficult to assess, but estimates held that illegal immigration across the Mexican border had reached astronomical proportions through the 1990s and into the early 21st century. Some experts calculated that the number reached about three million illegal immigrants living in the United States in the 1980s, rising to five million in 1998, 8.4 million in 2000, and over 11 million by 2005. Although children often came in with parents and did not work, a large proportion of the migrants became undocumented workers.



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Conclusion While the 1970s featured a flood of war refugees from Southeast Asia, much of the other population movement both into and within the United States since this time has been caused by economic conditions. Native-born Americans have reacted to their economy’s move away from manufacturing and other older industries to the information age. While some immigrants do come to the United States to pursue higher education or as highly skilled workers, large numbers of immigrants have continued to enter the country for lowwage jobs that nevertheless offer a better life than at home. One of the symbols of the struggle over the illegal entry of many of these workers was the controversial proposal for the construction of a fence across the entire border with Mexico. Opponents of the fence condemned it as contrary to human dignity and compared it to the Berlin Wall. However, supporters countered by noting that the Berlin Wall was built to keep a nation’s unwilling citizens in, while the proposed fence would be built to keep illegal immigrants out. Leigh Kimmel

Further Readings

Bontemps, Arna and Jack Conroy. Anyplace But Here. New York: Hill and Wang, 1968. Congressional Digest. October 1977. Farley, Reynolds and Walter R. Allen. The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1987. Herbers, John. The New Heartland: America’s Flight Beyond the Suburbs and How it is Changing our Future. New York: Times Books, 1986. Jasper, James M. Restless Nation: Starting over in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Katz, Bruce and Robert E. Lang, eds. Redefining Urban & Suburban America: Evidence from Census 2000. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. Lieberson, Stanley and Mary C. Waters. From Many Strands: Ethnic and Racial Groups in Contemporary America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990. Owen, Rob. Gen X TV: The Brady Bunch to Melrose Place. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. Roberts, Sam. Who We Are: A Portrait of America. New York: Times Books, 1993. Rogers, Everett M. and Judith K. Larsen, Silicon Valley Fever: Growth of High-Technology Culture. New York: Basic Books, 1984.

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Simon, Julian L. Population Matters: People, Resources, Environment & Immigration. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990. Verhaagen, Dave. Parenting the Millennial Generation: Guiding Our Children Born Between 1982 and 2000. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. Yancey, George. Who Is White?: Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003.

Chapter 15

Transportation

“Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil.” —President George W. Bush

The dominant idea that informed American transportation systems from

the 1970s onward was the growing awareness of the scarcity of energy. Access to cheap oil could no longer be taken for granted. However, like so many historical eras, it did not start immediately at the beginning of the decade. For the first several years of the 1970s, it was business as usual for Detroit’s automakers. The predominant themes of automobiles continued to be size and horsepower, just as they had been for the previous 25 years, ever since America had emerged triumphant from World War II. But it would be another foreign war that would change all that: a war in which the United States had not even participated as a direct combatant. But the United States had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and that was sufficient for the Arab leaders who controlled access to Middle Eastern oil.

THE ARAB OIL EMBARGO The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was not a new organization; it had originally been founded on September 14, 1960, as an informal bargaining unit in world petroleum trading. Many of the countries involved felt that the United States and other Western countries were taking advantage of them, buying petroleum for far less than it was really worth. 221

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Gas Shortages and Banking Panics

Although lines stretching for blocks around a gas station would seem to have little in common with a run on a bank in the days before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), in fact they shared a similar psychology. Both were heavily dependent upon the response of people in crowds to uncertainty, and the possibility that if one hesitated, one might be left with nothing. In both cases, visible lines around the point of service functioned as an obvious marker of uncertainty that inflamed lack of confidence into action. When people saw a line forming, the resultant uncertainty led them to join the line just to make sure they’d be able to get something before it ran out, making the likelihood of the gas station or bank actually running out of liquid assets that much higher. In fact, in the case of gas lines, the habit of motorists to keep their cars idling while they waited actually consumed more gas than they would have had they been able to fill up normally. Although motorists were encouraged to turn off their engines while waiting, few did, often for fear that another motorist would cut them off while they restarted.

However, there were also political overtones to OPEC, as well as the purely economic ones of desiring the best deal for one’s exports. The issue of Israel had been a sore spot for the Arab leadership since the 1948 founding of the Jewish state, and the Arab nations had striven repeatedly to expunge it from the Levant. However, Arab armies had been notably unsuccessful in that aim as a result of a combination of their own organizational weaknesses and Israel’s Western backing. Infuriated, the Arab leaders realized that those Western allies of Israel’s had a critical weakness in their growing dependency on Middle Eastern petroleum for the energy needs of their expanding economies. In particular, nations in which individual automobiles were the primary form of personal transportation were exquisitely vulnerable to anyone who could shut off, or even just restrict the source of the gasoline that powered them. Thus, on October 17, 1973, OPEC announced that it would no longer ship oil to those nations that had provided Israel with military or economic support during the Yom Kippur War. Because demand for petroleum is inelastic in the short term—that is, it does not fall as prices rise—one would have expected the prices of oil and its refined products to skyrocket as the supply tightened. However, in the United States the ability of the market to respond



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to shifts in supply had been severely hampered by the wage and price controls President Richard M. Nixon had imposed in an effort to control inflation during the Vietnam War. Since gas stations could not raise prices when stocks were in limited supply, they had to keep selling at the artificially low price until they ran out. Stations that did have gas instituted various informal rationing schemes, including allowing people to buy gas only on odd or even days according to whether the last digit on their license plates was odd or even. Stations often communicated their status to passing motorists with a three-color flag system—green for unrationed gas sales, yellow for rationed gas, and red for out of gas but open for other services. There was even talk about formal rationing, similar to the rationing during World War II. Ration coupons were printed, but when it was discovered that the portrait of George Washington on them was sufficiently similar to that on a $1 bill to fool many change machines, the plan was shelved. To conserve fuel, President Nixon imposed a nationwide 55 miles per hour speed limit. Even on the interstates, where motorists had been accustomed to cruise at 70 or even 80 miles per hour, everyone had to conform to this energy-saving measure. Large, high-powered cars went out of style in favor of smaller and more fuel-efficient models. The 1974 models of every line produced by the Big Three U.S. automakers were notably

A close-up of the portrait of George Washington on the government ration coupons printed, but never used, during the oil embargo of the 1970s.

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A 1971 Dodge produced before the oil crisis, when sales focused on size and horsepower, not mileage and efficiency.

smaller than their 1973 predecessors, with correspondingly smaller engines. The small and fuel-­efficient offerings of Japanese automakers began making significant headway in the American market, as did German automaker Volkswagen, although the Beetle had previously possessed cachet as a hippie car in the 1960s. By March 1974, political negotiations by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and others brought an end to the embargo, and oil flowed from the Middle East once more. However, an age of innocence had ended. Never again would Americans be able to simply assume that cheap energy was their birthright. “Energy crisis” and “energy conservation” had become permanent parts of the American social landscape. CHANGES IN THE RAILROAD INDUSTRY Through most of the history of the railroad industry, trains tended to be made up of whatever cars happened to be going to or through the next rail yard, irrespective of their contents. As a result, trains tended to be a random jumble of different car types—boxcars, refrigerated cars, flatcars, hopper cars, or tankers—leading to the popular grade-crossing game of counting the cars as they passed and tallying the companies they represented. However, in the 1970s a new form of train began to develop: the unit train, a concept in which all the cars contained the same product and were going to the same destination. Unit trains arose for several reasons, particularly economies of scale and the desire by high-volume customers such as large grain corporations to better control the flow of goods. As energy became a more valuable commodity, having the certainty that one’s locomotives would be pulling at capacity was a welcome assurance for railroad companies that were on increasingly shaky footing.



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The energy crisis, and the resultant shift from oil to coal for power generation in areas where hydroelectric dams were not feasible and nuclear power had not yet been developed, was a great boon for the unit train. Enormous trains of 60 to 100 hopper cars filled with coal could be taken from the coal fields of Indiana or Wyoming to a power plant on a regular, predictable schedule, resulting in reliable business for the electric utilities and the railroads. The energy crisis also helped complete the development of intermodal transportation. Although the transportation of semi-trailers on railroad flatcars went back to the development of the tractor-trailer, most packaged freight still traveled on boxcars. However, the combination of rising fuel costs and labor problems helped drive railroads and trucking companies together to an increasing degree. Piggybacking, as the practice of hauling semi-trailers aboard railroad cars began to be called, had several advantages. Not having to unload and reload the freight between road and rail meant not only direct savings in reduced handling, but also indirect savings in reduced opportunity for damage and

New strategies during the oil crisis kept railroad companies viable. Companies took advantage of the fact that it took less diesel fuel to power locomotives pulling trailers on railroad cars than it would for individual tractor units to pull those trailers over the road.

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This modern light rail line called the River Line carries commuters between Camden, New Jersey, and Trenton, New Jersey.

theft. Not only did both railroad and trucking firms save money, but they also saved the goodwill of their respective customers because fewer packages were arriving broken or not at all. In addition, it took less diesel fuel to power locomotives pulling 100 trailers riding on railroad cars than it would for individual tractor units to pull those trailers the same distance over the road, a welcome change in a time when fuel scarcity was becoming a major factor in both business and public policy. The development of steel containers that could be attached to a trailer chassis made for an even more flexible intermodal freight transportation system. Not only could they be loaded two-high on a railcar, using less rolling stock to transport the same amount of goods, but they could also be stacked within a ship’s hold, allowing them to be shipped on water without need for repacking. Soon ships were designed such that cargo could literally be rolled right on and off them, further decreasing the amount of handling a given piece of freight required. Passenger Rail and Amtrak Although by the latter half of the 20th century most trains in the United States carried freight, the passenger train had not lost its hold on the American imagination. However, even government subsidies and the creation of Amtrak could not make passenger rail travel competitive. By and large, most economically successful passenger trains in the 1960s and 1970s were “land cruise” trains such as the American Orient Express. These trains carried their



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passengers to a resort, and were taken as much for the experience of having ridden them, as to get to a destination. There was a simple economic reason for the inability of passenger rail travel to pay for itself—the passenger train was not competing with the automobile and the inter-city bus, but with the airplane. As a result, on trips of any distance, only people who had severe phobias about flying or untreatable airsickness took a train in preference to an airplane. Looking at these statistics, some Amtrak executives wondered if there might be a way to make the passenger train competitive once again. In Western Europe and Japan trains had continued to hold their own, and in both places trains had been built that could travel at high speeds, fast enough to actually be competitive with air travel in medium distances. If similar trains could be introduced into the Amtrak system, could they be competitive? Although the idea looked good on paper, in practice it proved somewhat more difficult than anticipated. Neither European nor Japanese designs could be transferred to American tracks without significant modifications. In addition, much of the track that the new high-speed trains, known as Acela trains, were to use had to be upgraded in order to safely carry a train traveling in excess of 200 miles per hour. Because of safety concerns, high-speed passenger trains could only travel on lines that had no grade crossings, which further restricted their usability. As a result, high-speed rail proved disappointing. AIRLINE DEREGULATION One of the most notable developments of the 1970s was the decision to deregulate the airline industry. Previously, airlines had been heavily regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), under the theory that domestic air transport was in effect a public utility and should serve the common good, rather than the interests of stockholders. The CAB regulated fares, routes, and schedules, but by the 1970s had developed a reputation for bureaucratic bumbling and mismanagement. Applications for new routes might languish for years in review committee, only to be turned down on the grounds that the applications contained “stale” data. President Richard M. Nixon first suggested the possibility that airline regulations and the CAB had outlived their usefulness. The development of the jumbo jet with its high passenger capacity had resulted in major changes in the economics of air travel and the CAB’s notoriously slow bureaucracy had failed to respond to it in a timely fashion. As a result, many airlines were forced to continue running their flights according to patterns that had worked with propeller-driven airliners and smaller jetliners, but were uneconomical for the larger aircraft. This situation was only exacerbated by the 1973 Arab oil embargo, which increased the costs of aviation fuels. After the Watergate scandal led to Nixon’s resignation, his successor, Gerald R. Ford, encouraged key Senate leaders to hold hearings on the possibility

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The Computer Under the Hood

The 1980s marked the first effects of the digital revolution upon the automotive industry. The emergence of small but powerful integrated circuits, combined with increasing interest in maximized fuel efficiency and reduced emissions of pollutants, led to the development of computerized controls for automobile engines. The earliest chips installed in cars were relatively simple, capable of only the most basic control of spark timing and a few other processes. However, the yellow “check engine” light on the control panel became a familiar sight during the startup of automobiles, and if it were to come on and stay on while the engine was running, it often meant an expensive trip to the automotive shop. Throughout the next two decades, the computerization of automotive engines and transmissions would increase as microprocessor technology improved. In many cases, chips that had formerly been the brains of top-end microcomputers became more important as runtime controllers, as was the case with several models of the PowerPC chip, which once held pride of place in Apple’s Power Macintosh computers. However, the computerization revolution in automobiles was not without its problems. Because all the various processes of an engine and transmission were increasingly being computerized, repairing them required costly, specialized equipment. No longer could a person of modest means fix his or her own ride with only a basic set of tools. As a result, car repairs became an increasing source of economic drain for people in the lower Car engines have grown increasingly complex income brackets. with the addition of computer chips in the 1980s.



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Starting in 1978, airline deregulation began to change the experience of air travel for Americans. Airline fares dropped significantly by the 1990s, and new airlines appeared, but many customers complained of a lower quality of service.

of abolishing the CAB and its system of regulation. Hearings concentrated on various aspects of antitrust law, particularly the question of preventing collusion among the airlines on prices that might make it impossible for new companies to compete. The discussion of airline regulation continued into the administration of his successor, and on October 24, 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act into law. However, the dismantling of the CAB had to be done in a systematic way so as to ensure that necessary safety regulation remained in place, while problematic economic regulation was eliminated. As a result, the CAB did not close its doors for good until January 1, 1985, and thus airline deregulation is often associated as much with the policies of President Ronald W. Reagan, who championed the reduction of government intervention in business. Subsequent studies showed a real drop in the price of airline fares by the 1990s. In addition, deregulation made it easy for new airlines to enter the industry, and airlines such as JetBlue made a place for themselves by offering all business-class flights, while Southwest Airlines offered no-frills flights at lower costs. However, critics claimed that the reduction in costs came with a real reduction in the quality of service. ENERGY CRISIS REDUX By 1979 the pinch of energy conservation was beginning to relax, although American usage had not gone back to the casual days of the 1950s and 1960s. However, Americans once again felt free to “go take a drive,” spending an

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hour or two driving around an area with no particular destination in mind, sightseeing. All that came to a sudden end when the troubled regime of Iran’s Shah (King) Mohammed Reza Pahlavi came crashing down in January 1979, to be replaced by a theocratic Islamic Republic under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The resultant social chaos disrupted the production of oil, and although the United States purchased relatively little Iranian oil, fear of the consequences of the disruptions led to panic buying and the sudden increase of the price of oil on the world market. After the United States admitted the deposed Shah for medical treatment, and the Islamic revolutionaries seized the American embassy in Teheran, all possibility of purchases of further oil from Iran ceased. In response, President Jimmy Carter fixed the prices of oil and of petroleum derivatives, hoping to stabilize the situation. Instead he succeeded only in preventing the market from responding to fluctuations in supply. As a result, gas stations ran out of gas, and lines stretched for blocks around those that still had gas. Rationing schemes based upon the last digit of vehicles’ license plates were reinstituted, and there was a serious investigation of formal rationing with the ration coupons that had been printed by the Nixon Administration in response to the 1973 energy crisis. However, it was soon discovered that the coupons themselves had deteriorated in the seven years they had been in storage, and the plates for printing them had been destroyed. By 1980 Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq had increased production to make up for the deficit left by Iran’s refusal to sell oil to the United States. Oil supplies evened out, and people were once again able to buy gas at will, although prices stabilized in the area of $1 a gallon. FROM ENERGY CRISIS TO OIL GLUT While the 1970s had been a time of scarcity, the 1980s raised serious questions in the oil industry about an overabundance of oil that could drive prices down to the point that it would be uneconomical to extract it from some of the more difficult deposits. In many places, particularly in Southern Illinois and other smaller U.S. oil fields, pumps stood idle because it cost more to run them than the price their oil would bring. Americans also began buying bigger, more powerful vehicles again. Although the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) guidelines mandated that a certain percentage of each automaker’s model lines meet fuel efficiency standards, these standards applied only to automobiles, not light trucks and vans. As a result, consumers increasingly began to move to pickup trucks, minivans, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs), even when they had little or no need for hauling cargo. People liked the larger, more powerful engines and the longer wheelbase.



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Even after the oil crisis, government continued to focus on highway development. The EZ-Pass toll system represented a significant innovation that made traveling by car even more convenient.

However, safety concerns about light trucks and particularly SUVs began to arise. Because of their higher center of gravity and shorter axles, SUVs were more prone to rollover accidents. In addition, in many states seatbelt use was not mandatory in SUVs that were licensed as trucks, which meant that passengers had less protection against being ejected in an accident. Further complicating the problem was the fact that many people accustomed to cars tried to drive light trucks the same way, not realizing that they handled differently. Being heavier, light trucks such as pickups, minivans, and SUVs require longer distances to stop and cannot maneuver as quickly as a car. In addition, their taller, more boxy profile means that they are more vulnerable to winds. However, most states did not have different licensing requirements for light trucks than for passenger cars. Even the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent first Persian Gulf War created only a blip in the oil glut. In spite of the disruption of oil imports into the United States, there were none of the gas lines stretching for blocks that had been a feature of the two previous disruptions of imports. Although more fuel-efficient vehicles and habits of energy conservation helped, the biggest difference lay in the political response at the highest level. Instead of imposing price controls in an effort to “stabilize” the price, the George H. W. Bush Administration released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to bolster public confidence in the availability of fuel. Otherwise, prices were left to market processes, and while prices did rise, on the whole there was little panic buying and no major gas shortage.

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TRAVEL IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM The September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon came as a shock to a nation that had become accustomed to thinking that the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War meant the final triumph of liberal democracy. Suddenly the United States was locked in battle with a new tyranny, only this one based upon a radical fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. In the hours immediately after the attack there were some instances of panic buying that resulted in long lines around gas stations, as well as some stations that raised their prices as high as $5 a gallon. However, when the following days brought no further attacks, prices and consumer behavior both stabilized into an uneasy wait-and-see pattern. State and local governments dealt with the most egregious examples of price gouging, although there was active discussion of the point at which raising prices went beyond discouraging panic buying to pure greed taking advantage of others’ misfortunes. Even the first U.S. strikes against the Taliban, accused of harboring 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, caused only minor bobbles in gas prices, which generally settled around $1.50 per gallon. As the War on Terror wore on, the situation changed. Although many opponents of the war accused President George W. Bush of extending the war into Iraq in order to secure cheap oil sources, rather than to fight radical Is-

A U.S. Customs officer watches over an airport security checkpoint on September 28, 2001, at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., in the tense weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11.



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lamic fundamentalist terrorism, oil and gas prices actually rose after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. By early 2005 gas prices were floating in the $2.50 range, nearly $1 a gallon higher than they had been immediately after the September 11 attack. The disruptive effects of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita to vital oil facilities in the Gulf of Mexico during August and September 2005 sent gas prices over $3 a gallon, and in some areas gas peaked at $5 a gallon. Yet again there were questions of whether these high prices represented real shortages in supply, or attempts by sellers to take advantage of the misfortunes of people fleeing the hurricanes. More immediate and far-reaching were the changes in the airline industry that came as a result of the September 11 attacks. Because the hijackings of the airliners that were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were accomplished with the use of box cutters, rather than conventional knives or firearms, the Federal Aviation Administration enacted extensive regulations intended to exclude from passengers’ luggage any item that could possibly be used as a weapon. Because of questions of the competency of the private company that had provided security at the airports from which the doomed airliners had flown, the government decided to federalize airline security, creating the Transportation Security Agency to oversee it. Originally a part of the Department of Transportation, the TSA was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. The TSA came under heavy criticism as well. Federal screeners were often no better qualified than the private screeners they replaced, and in many cases were the exact same personnel, rehired by the TSA. In August 2006, British intelligence and police foiled a terrorist plot to use liquid explosives hidden in ordinary toiletries to blow up planes crossing the Atlantic. Suddenly new stringent regulations went into effect, and people had to discard all liquids and gels from their carry-on luggage. Many people were dismayed to discover they would have to throw away hundreds of dollars worth of toiletries and cosmetics in order to board their flights. Because the exact nature of the threat was so uncertain, some flights from Britain even required passengers to check all their possessions save their identity documents, and fly without so much as a novel to pass the time. PEAK OIL AND THE FUTURE In the late 2000s, some pundits suggested that the sudden sharp rise in the price of oil and of gasoline at the pump was not just the result of the disruptions of the war in Iraq or the hurricanes in the Gulf. Rather, it might well be the result of a genuine scarcity of oil that would not be alleviated by further discoveries of major deposits. In fact, it was quite possible that oil production was about to peak, or might already have peaked, and would henceforth decline until it became impossible to sustain a technological society, and the future of humanity would be a nightmare of famines and poverty until

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It was not only consumers who moved to purchasing SUVs and other large vehicles in the 1990s. This SUV belonged to the New York Police Department.

populations declined back to what could be supported with animal-powered agriculture. Although many people discounted the grim predictions of the peak oil theory, uncertainty about the future of energy had become a permanent fixture of Americans’ mental landscape. When the price of oil declined drastically due to falling demand with the start of the 2008 financial crisis, the discourse altered somewhat. Attention turned to the uncertain future of American automobile manufacturers as the sale of cars both large and small fell, but the overall move toward alternative energy also strengthened. Concern over greenhouse gas emissions and the nation’s dependence on oil had returned to the forefront during the 2008 presidential election. By early 2009, President Obama had established far-reaching goals for clean energy and hybrid cars, especially plug-in models, as part of his economic stimulus plans, and this signaled significant changes to come for American transportation. Leigh Kimmel



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Berkowitz, Edward D. Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Brady, Tim, ed. The American Aviation Experience: A History. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Goddard, Stephen B. Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Grant, H. Roger. The Railroad: The Life Story of a Technology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. Heppenheimer, T. A. Turbulent Skies: The History of Commercial Aviation. New York: John Wiley, 1995. Jackson, Carlton. Hounds of the Road: A History of the Greyhound Bus Company. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1984. Kinney, Jeremy R. Airplanes: The Life Story of a Technology. Greenwood Technographies Series. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. Lewis, Tom. Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life. New York: Viking, 1997. Margolies, John. Pump and Circumstance: Glory Days of the Gas Station. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1993. McPhee, John. Uncommon Carriers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Nice, David C. Amtrak: The History and Politics of a National Railroad. Boulder, CO: Lynne Riennier, 1998. Peterson, Barbara S. Blue Streak: Inside jetBlue, the Upstart that Rocked an Industry. New York: Portfolio, 2004. Petzinger, Thomas, Jr. Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits that Plunged the Airlines into Chaos. New York: Random House, 1995. Reed, Dan. The American Eagle: The Ascent of Bob Crandall and American Airlines. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Roberts, Paul. The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Schwantes, Carlos Arnaldo. Going Places; Transportation Redefines the Twentieth-Century West. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003. Volti, Rudi. Cars and Culture: The Life Story of a Technology. Greenwood Technographies. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Vranich, Joseph. Derailed: What Went Wrong and What to Do about America’s Passenger Trains. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Chapter 16

Public Health, Medicine, and Nutrition

“You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces —just good food from fresh ingredients.” —Julia Child

At the close of the 20th century, the majority of Americans enjoyed a state of health that was remarkable both in comparison to what was common just 100 years previous, and in comparison to contemporary conditions in many other countries in the world. The outstanding success of public health and medicine earlier in the century in bringing communicable diseases under control shifted the focus of both disciplines primarily to chronic disease and to individual health behaviors such as diet, exercise, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Agricultural production and imports also provided more than enough food for everyone to enjoy a healthy diet, although poverty and other factors conspired to make malnutrition a continuing presence in America, existing alongside health problems caused by the overconsumption of food. With increased success came increased expectations, and when compared to other industrialized countries, the quality of life and healthcare provided to American citizens did not seem as wonderful. For instance, a much-publicized 2000 report by the World Health Organization ranked the U.S. healthcare system 37th in the world, behind many European countries as well as (among other countries) Japan, Singapore, Columbia, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco. The United States also ranked fairly low among industrialized

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countries on basic health measures such as life expectancy and infant mortality rate. In large part these poor results were due to persistent health care inequalities that have become a particular focus of interest in the United States, and mirror the social inequalities (in dimensions such as income and education) that persist in the United States to a greater degree than in many other industrialized countries. PUBLIC HEALTH IN THE LATE 20th century In order to address the complex causality of many chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease, public health has had to undergo a shift in focus. It had originally been concerned with large government programs such as provision of municipal water and sewage systems, whose benefits were received passively. Combating chronic diseases meant turning to education and other methods that could influence individual behaviors such as dietary selection or the decision to smoke cigarettes. In modern public health, individual health behaviors are not conceived as purely individual choices, but also as products of social forces. For instance, an individual’s smoking behavior is influenced by many factors, including the addictive properties of nicotine, the smoking behavior of peers and authority figures, advertising, and the cost and availability of cigarettes. Similarly, a person’s choice of diet is influenced by the amount of money

Children at a housing project awaiting vaccination during the visit of a mobile clinic staffed by a doctor and nurse in 1972.



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they have to spend, the availability of different types of food, and their knowledge of nutrition and health beliefs, as well as individual preferences. Many studies have demonstrated that foods recommended for a healthy diet, such as fruits and vegetables and lean cuts of meat, are not available in some areas (for instance, many impoverished urban neighborhoods) or may be prohibitively expensive, while highfat, high-sodium foods are both cheap and readily available. The scope of public health has also been broadened in recent years to include diseases and inThis 1994 U.S. government poster contrasts juries caused by violence. Exammore benign 1990s trends with smoking in an attempt to influence teenage girls. ples include studies of conditions under which injuries and death caused by firearms are most likely to occur, and institution of regulations to diminish such incidents; study of factors that are associated with child abuse and intimate partner violence (domestic violence) and institution of screening and prevention programs to limit their harm; and studies of the human cost in morbidity and mortality of terrorism, war, and genocide and social conditions fostered by them (such as the creation of large refugee populations), to citizens as well as combatants. A third broadening of scope has been the consideration of the influence of apparently nonmedical factors such as social status, poverty, education, and geographic residence on health. For instance, health may be influenced by the availability of health care, which may differ radically in different neighborhoods within the same city. An individual’s physical activity level may depend largely on the opportunity to exercise in their own neighborhood, which may vary widely depending on factors such as the crime rate and the presence of sidewalks. Research also suggests that social status, independent of access to health care, plays a role in health, because even in countries with a national health system, mortality is closely aligned to social class. In general, people with higher social status live longer. The intersection of public health and medicine became explicit with two largely unanticipated health threats that emerged in the late 20th century.

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Roe v. Wade and Abortion in America

One of the most controversial legal decisions in U.S. history was rendered on January 22, 1973. On that day, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the case known as Roe v. Wade established a woman’s access to early-term abortion as part of her right to privacy. Up to that point, state laws regarding abortion varied widely. Some states such as New York had essentially legalized the procedure, while others such as Texas banned it under all but a few circumstances. The court’s decision in Roe overturned most state laws and instead defined states’ abilities to regulate abortions in terms of the three trimesters (three-month periods) of pregnancy. States were prohibited from denying abortions during the first trimester, restricted in their ability to deny abortions during the second trimester, and had almost complete freedom to ban abortion during the third trimester. Roe v. Wade was first filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in 1970, by attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. “Jane Roe” was a pseudonym for Norma Jean McCorvey, a pregnant woman who requested permission for an abortion on the grounds her pregnancy was caused by rape. The Texas court refused Roe’s request, and she and her attorneys appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in May 1971. The Supreme Court’s historic decision in 1973 made headlines around the world, and at the time it seemed that the long-standing conflict between pro- and anti­-­abortion advocates was over, although this would not prove true. Challenges to Roe have ranged from proposed constitutional amendments that would define a fetus as a person protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, to state and local laws that have made abortions more difficult to obtain, such as imposition of informed-consent processes and mandatory waiting periods. The Hyde Amendment prohibits use of federal funds (including Medicaid) for abortions except in circumstances such as of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life. As of 2006, only 17 states included abortions on an equal basis with other medical services provided Protesting a female antichoice politician at to low-income women. the 1976 Democratic National Convention.



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One was the emergence of AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), an incurable disease caused by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). The other was the growing threat of emerging infections and bioterrorism. Neither medicine nor public health was sufficient to deal with either threat, so effective prevention and control depended on both fields contributing their expertise toward common goals. Americans in 1970 could properly feel proud that many of the greatest historic threats to human life were no longer a significant factor in their country. One of the most dreaded of all infectious diseases, smallpox, had been eradicated in the United States and was close to worldwide eradication. Other diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis, which were dreaded killers less than a century earlier, could be readily detected and cured. Even relatively minor diseases that had been a right of passage in childhood a generation or two earlier, such as measles and chickenpox, became much less common due to widespread childhood immunization. However, AIDS, emerging infections, and antibiotic-resistant strains of diseases like tuberculosis demonstrated that disease is never truly conquered and that vigilance against new threats is always required. AIDS AIDS was the top medical story of the last two decades of the 20th century. The severity of the AIDS epidemic reshaped public thinking about health care and prevention. AIDS also provided the first experience in several generations of a ravaging disease that struck apparently healthy young people, and rapidly

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led to severe illness and a horrifying death. The perceived lack of government response to AIDS also shaped the way many people viewed the medical establishment and pharmaceutical manufacturers, as activists refused to defer to those in power and demanded, sometimes accompanied by civil disobedience, that their needs be served. Finally, the need to focus on prevention through shaping individual behaviors strengthened public health practice, and the need to focus on harm reduction, or preventing infection, rather than moral condemnation created a new atmosphere in both medicine and public health. This poster by the Centers for Disease Control AIDS first became known to and Prevention was part of a 1989 HIV/AIDS education campaign. the U.S. medical community in 1981, when a series of reports in MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication of the CDC) described clusters of rare diseases, including Pneumocystic carinii pneumonia (PCP) and Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), occurring in previously healthy young men. By the following year similar clusters of disease had been identified among hemophiliacs, intravenous drug users, and Haitians. In July 1984, HIV was isolated in France and in the United States and declared the probable cause of AIDS. A test was developed to identify the presence of HIV in the bloodstream, but as there were no effective treatments for AIDS at the time, the usefulness of testing was limited. In addition, because of the social stigma of homosexuality as well as that of AIDS, testing never became mandatory in the United States, and the entire testing process was treated with much greater regard for confidentiality than is typical of tests for other diseases. Although life-extending treatments for AIDS have since been discovered, most notably HAART (highly active antiretroviral therapy), they are expensive and debilitating, and there is still no cure for AIDS, nor a vaccine to prevent it. EMERGING INFECTIONS AND BIOTERRORISM Emerging infections and bioterrorism are two relatively recent threats to American life and health that have received a great deal of publicity and



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governmental response, perhaps in excess of the actual threat either poses to the life and health of Americans. However, the success of medicine and public health in conquering most infectious diseases makes the threat of new infections, against which current medicine is useless, all the more frightening. Emerging infections are those that have recently appeared in a population or are rapidly increasing their range and prevalence. AIDS is an example of an emerging infection, since it seems to have first appeared in human populations as recently as the mid-20th century, and became a global epidemic only in the 1980s. Tuberculosis (TB) is also an emerging infection. TB was largely brought under control in the developed world after the discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin in 1946, but since 1980 drug-resistant strains of TB have appeared and made the disease a threat once more. Emerging infections sometimes result from mutation of a pathogen that previously infected only animals. West Nile Virus and H5N1 influenza (Avian Flu), both of which formerly infected only birds, are examples of this pattern. Bioterrorism is the deliberate release of biological agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi in order to infect citizens for hostile purposes. It is unknown how great a threat bioterrorism actually poses to Americans, since by definition

Air Force Staff Sergeant Raul Gutierrez at work in a biological lab at Balad Air Base in Iraq, where tests are conducted to protect forces from potential bioterrorist threats.

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Love Canal

Love Canal is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, an industrial city near the Canadian border. In the late 1970s the phrase “Love Canal” acquired a second meaning, as it became synonymous with the human costs of toxic pollution and corporate irresponsibility in disposing of hazardous materials. Niagara Falls was a heavily industrialized city by the late 19th century, and in the 1890s William Love began construction on a canal to connect the Niagara River to Lake Ontario. However, Love went bankrupt shortly after beginning construction, and the canal was abandoned, leaving a waterway the town used for fishing and swimming. In 1942 Hooker Chemical Company began using the canal as a dump site for chemical waste, and deposited over 21,000 tons of waste in the canal, filling it up by 1953. A layer of dirt was applied to the canal, and Hooker sold it to the Niagara Falls School Board. An elementary school and playground were constructed on the site in 1955, and homes were built there beginning in 1957. Residents were generally unaware of the site’s past history, and apart from occasional complaints of odd odors or surfacing chemicals that were not definitive causes for alarm, the seriousness of the underlying pollution was not realized for about 20 years. In 1976 and 1977 heavy rains caused groundwater levels to rise. Corroding waste-disposal drums surfaced, pools of chemicals formed in residential yards and basements, and surface vegetation died. Local health authorities confirmed the presence of chemical contamination, and in 1978 the school was closed and pregnant women and children under two years of age were evacuated. In 1980, largely in response to Love Canal, the U.S. Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, known as Superfund. Because Love Canal was a landmark case of industrial pollution, it has attracted study from many researchers. Proof of health consequences of chemical exposure due to Love Canal has been difficult to establish. However, studies suggest that Love Canal residents have experienced elevated rates of birth This photograph from the Centers for Disease defects, miscarriage, and Control and Prevention shows cleanup operations at Love Canal around 1978. chromosomal anomalies.



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those planning to use it as a weapon depend on surprise and lack of preparation by intended victims. Several countries, including the United States, Russia, and Iraq, conducted biological weapons programs in the 20th century, and although these programs have been disbanded, samples of biological agents may have been removed from the labs by former employees. Over 60 biological agents currently exist that could be used as agents of bioterrorism. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institution of Infectious Diseases has identified six agents as posing the greatest threat: anthrax, smallpox, plague, tularemia, botulinum toxin, and agents of viral hemorrhagic fever. In response to perceived bioterrorism threats, the United States has developed a surveillance network to detect the release of biological agents in high-risk areas, created emergency response plans stating protocols for mass prophylaxis (agents to prevent infection) distribution, and has begun stockpiling medications, vaccines, and equipment for use during an attack. Stem Cell Research Stem cell research is one of the newest, most promising, and most controversial areas in contemporary medical research. Stem cells are unspecialized cells that are able to divide and renew themselves for long periods of time, and can be cultivated so that they develop into different types of specialized cells required by the human body. These properties may allow research with stem cells to develop revolutionary treatments or cures for diseases and conditions such as stroke, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and spinal cord injury. However, the therapeutic promise of stem cells is tempered by the moral objections many people have to one of the most promising areas of stem cell research, that involving human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). hESCs were first successfully cultivated in 1998, when James Thomson successfully generated hESCs from blastocysts (an early stage in the development of an embryo). hESC research is controversial primarily because the cells used are created from human embryos, and the process of creating hESCs destroys the embryo. Destroying an embryo is not against the law, and in fact fertility clinics regularly discard excess embryos which were created to aid infertile couples in becoming pregnant. However, to some people destroying an embryo is as repugnant as killing an adult human being, and individuals holding that opinion have been effective in the United States in restricting, although not prohibiting, stem cell research. Until President Obama lifted the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in March 2009, U.S. researchers were effectively limited to only using stem cell lines (populations of cells grown from a single embryo) already in existence as of August 2001. Since there were a limited number of these lines, and some proved unusable for research, researchers sought other sources of funding. California was the first state to provide state funding for stem cell research, in November 2004. Proposition 71 (the California Stem

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Cell Research and Cures Initiative) provided $3 billion in funding for stem cell research. New York State also provided state funding, allocating $600 million over 10 years to support stem cell research. Private foundations also established funds for stem cell research. A promising discovery in November 2007 by Junying Yu and Shinya Yamanaka may make the moral objections to hESC research moot. These scientists (one working in the United States, the other in Japan) independently developed a technique called “direct reprogramming,” which processes human skin cells so that they take on many of the qualities of stem cells, including the ability to differentiate into any type of cell required by the body. This means that potentially adult cells could be taken from an individual, reprogrammed into stem cells, and then used to create whatever type of cells were needed by that individual. However, much more research will be required before it is known if the direct reprogramming technique will result in the development of useful therapies. MENTAL HEALTH Improvements in accurate diagnosis of mental disorders continued through the 1970s, in the continuing effort to place psychology and psychiatry on an equal basis with physical medicine. Pharmaceutical research after 1970 developed entire new classes of drugs to treat mental illnesses, including SSRIs (selective serotonin uptake reinhibitors) that are used to treat clinical depression, anxiety disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. SSRIs such as fluoxetine hydrochloride (Prozac) and sertraline (Zoloft) were the first drugs developed through a “rational drug design process” in which particular molecules in the body (often those involved in a chemical pathway specific to a disease) are targeted. These new drugs allowed effective treatment to many individuals without the side effects of older drugs such as weight gain or loss of sexual function, although they had their own side effects, most notably an increase in suicidal tendency for some patients. HEALTH INSURANCE The overriding problem with health care in the United States in the late 20th century was not the lack of technologically advanced care, but finding a means to pay for it. The United States remains unique among industrialized nations in not providing some type of national health program. The closest analog to national health care is Medicaid, a medical care entitlement program for persons over age 65, or who have qualifying disabilities or ESRD (end stage renal disease). Most insured Americans under age 65 hold health insurance from a private company, often as a benefit of employment, but the number of uninsured Americans increases annually. In 2005, according to the Census Bureau, 46.6 million Americans (15.9 percent of the population) lacked health insurance. This burden is not equally distributed. The lack of



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Medical Imaging

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One of the greatest differences between the practice of medicine in 2008, as opposed to 1908, is the advancement in noninvasive medical imaging, which has greatly improved physicians’ ability to “see” into the human body. In 1908 the most advanced imaging technique available was the X-ray, discovered in 1895 by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845–1923). X-rays use a form of ionizing radiation that penetrates some body structures (such as skin) and is stopped by others (such as bone), creating an image of the structures it cannot penetrate. X-rays are very useful in diagnosing skeletal injuries and abnormalities, and in detecting conditions such as tuberculosis and lung cancer, but have limited or no usefulness in diagnosis of many common diseases and conditions. This has spurred the development of more advanced types of imaging, including three commonly used techniques: ultrasound, CAT (computerized axial tomography, also called CT) scans, and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans. Ultrasound scanning (sonography) uses high-frequency sound to obtain images of soft tissues within the body. The principle is the same as that of the sonar used by ships at sea, and by bats navigating in dark caves. Sound waves are passed through the body, producing echoes that can be used to identify the location, size, and shape of objects. The echoes are recorded and displayed as a visual image. Because this is done in real time, ultrasound images can be used to examine movement within the body. Ultrasound has many uses in medicine today, the most common being in obstetric care where it is used to confirm pregnancy, monitor fetal growth, determine gestational age, and diagnose multiple pregnancies and fetal abnormalities in utero (while the fetus is still in the mother’s body). CAT scanning uses computer technology to combine multiple two-dimensional X-ray images of “slices” of the body into a single, three-dimensional image. The word “tomography” comes from roots that mean “slice” and “write.” The great strength of CAT scans is the ability to obtain a clear image of a single isolated structure in the body, including soft tissues such as the brain. In fact, a common use of CAT scans is to diagnose and evaluate cerebrovascular accidents (strokes), a leading cause of disability and death in the United States. Other common uses of CAT scans are the diagnosis of cardiac abnormalities, abdominal cancer, and other abdominal conditions such as pancreatitis, appendicitis, bowel obstruction, and kidney stones. Unlike X-rays and CAT scans, MRI technology does not use ionizing radiation. Instead, it uses a powerful magnetic field to align hydrogen atoms in the body, manipulates them with radio waves, captures and amplifies the signal emitted by the atoms, and uses them to create images of body structures. MRI images are more detailed than those produced by a CAT scan. Common uses include diagnosis of connective tissue injury (for instance, torn tendons or ligaments), brain injury, heart disease, and diseases of the abdominal organs.

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health insurance is more common among the poor, African Americans, and Hispanics. Increasingly Americans receive their healthcare through Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), a form of insurance that became popular in the United States after passage of the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. There are many different types of HMOs, but all share common characteristics. The basic HMO is a type of managed care in which an organization contracts with hospitals, doctors, and other healthcare service providers such as laboratories to provide services to its members, who pay a monthly fee and receive medical services free, or upon payment of a small fee. HMO members are generally restricted to using service providers within their HMO network, or pay a much higher fee to use providers outside the network. Although HMOs were originally touted as a way to save money while improving care, they have also become the target of many complaints. HMOs are often accused of “cherry picking” members: discouraging or refusing coverage of those with costly diseases, while encouraging enrollment among the young and healthy. HMOs often have a series of bureaucratic procedures that can restrict access to care, such as requiring a member to see a primary care physician in order to receive a referral to a specialist. In addition, many people resent restrictions on choice of their care providers; hospitals resent the proliferation of administrative paperwork; and physicians resent what they see as excessive intrusion of bureaucratic regulations into their practice of medicine. NUTRITION American food consumption has followed two divergent paths since 1970. One places an emphasis on convenience, and tends toward ever-greater use of processed food, including convenience foods and prepackaged meals for home use. The other sees food as a means for health promotion, and possibly a political choice as well. It also rejects what it sees as modern trends of heavily processed and genetically engineered food in favor of what is perceived as organic and locally grown. This latter direction is characterized by the growth of food co-ops, vegetarian and vegan foods, organic gardening, communitysupported agriculture, and the slow food movement. Interestingly, the two paths often cross as a market has developed for highly processed convenience foods that are marketed as healthy. Interest in foreign and gourmet cooking remained fashionable during the 1970s, although dishes were often “translated” for American tastes. Even convenience foods reflected this interest, as instant mixes or kits were developed that allowed a home cook to prepare food with foreign aspects without having to buy exotic ingredients or learn new techniques of cooking. A good example is Hamburger Helper, a boxed meal consisting of starch (pasta, rice, or dehydrated potatoes) and sauce packets to which the consumer adds browned



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In the latter half of the 1990s, epidemiologists became alarmed to notice a wave of cases of autism in the Santa Clara Valley. Even after correcting for such factors as more educated parents being more likely to take a child in for a diagnosis, the statistical anomaly remained. Silicon Valley, one of the greatest concentrations of genius in the world, was rapidly becoming one of the greatest concentrations of children with autism. Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by pervasive delays in social interaction and interpersonal communication, often accompanied by difficulties in processing sensory input. Children with classic autism may seem normal enough at first, only to suddenly regress, not only failing to hit developmental milestones, but also losing skills they had already attained. Many require intensive therapy just to learn speech or simple life skills. Children with Asperger’s Syndrome generally learn language with little difficulty, but their speech is often stilted and overly precise, giving the impression that they are reading from a dictionary. Many children with Asperger’s Syndrome will study one or two subjects obsessively, developing a knowledge beyond their years, but be unable to navigate a simple playground interaction such as taking turns on a swing without supervision. Early psychologists had theorized that autism was the result of a “refrigerator mother” who rejected her child, leading the child to withdraw into a dreamworld. However, by the time the Silicon Valley cluster of cases was identified, that hypothesis had been discredited. Autism appeared in families with devoted parents who fought to get diagnoses and treatments, clearly demonstrating that its incidence was independent of parenting skills. Family studies began to suggest a genetic connection. A close examination of the family tree would uncover various indicators in the collateral lines, such as the “eccentric” uncle who spent all his time and pocket money obsessively researching and collecting antique telephones. They had been able to function in society well enough that the oddities of their behavior could be written off as mere eccentricity, and only when full-blown autism appeared in the family was it suggested that they might be on the spectrum. As the genetic connection became appreciated, scientists began to see how the unusual concentration of genius in Silicon Valley could be contributing to the incidence of autism. Americans have tended to follow patterns of assortive mating, marrying and having children with people similar to themselves, often from the same area. But with the rise of tech havens like Silicon Valley, the determining factor shifted in favor of commonalities of interest. The computer scientists who previously might have remained life-long celibates now not only could earn a handsome salary, but also find the love of their life debugging code down the hall. However, genes that give high intelligence combined with single-minded focus when occurring singly may well combine to create symptoms so severe they interfere with even basic human functioning.

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As the postwar trend toward convenience food continued, fast food restaurant chains marketing unhealthy fare and fried food spread across the country. By 1974 the number of fast food restaurants in the United States was more than double that in 1967.

hamburger meat. Hamburger Helper was introduced by General Mills during the meat shortage of the early 1970s as a way to “stretch” meat that had become expensive. This product is available in a number of foreign-sounding flavors including Jambalaya, Nacho, Enchilada, Romanoff, and Oriental. The trend to greater consumption of restaurant and convenience food that began after World War II also continued, fueled in large part by the increased workplace participation of women. At the same time, a greater percentage of restaurant meals were purchased from limited-menu restaurants (such as fast food outlets) as opposed to traditional full-service restaurants. This trend has become a focus of public health concern, because fast food is generally higher in fat and sodium, as well as calories, than most ordinary meals. While occasional consumption of fast food is not a health concern for most people, when it becomes part of one’s daily diet it can become a problem, a fact that Morgan Spurlock humorously illustrated in his 2004 documentary Super Size Me. However, many Americans remain malnourished in the midst of plenty. Ironically, by the 1970s poverty was often associated with obesity, and obesity and malnutrition often existed within the same individual. Government programs intended to reduce hunger and malnutrition during this period included the Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC),



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the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), and the Community Food and Nutrition Program (CFNP). Despite these efforts, a survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2001 found that almost 11 percent of American households had suffered from lack of food in the past year. Conclusion In the late 20th century public health re-established itself as a vital discipline and found effective roles to play in the fight against chronic diseases that had become the leading causes of death in the United States. Public health and medicine also had to deal with the previously unknown disease of AIDS, and the emergence of new infectious diseases and antibiotic-resistant strains of diseases previously brought under control. The rising cost of healthcare in the United States also challenged the nation both economically and socially, as families and businesses struggled under the burden of costly health insurance and sometimes crippling medical bills. Improving the healthcare system and the health and nutritional status of the American population has now become an even more urgent governmental priority. Sarah Boslaugh

Further Readings

Abraham, Laurie K. Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Health Care in Urban America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Angell, Marcia, The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. New York: Random House, 2004. Critser, Greg. Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Dieckelmann, Nancy L, ed. First Do No Harm: Power, Oppression, and Violence in Healthcare. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. Gehlbach, Stephen H. American Plagues: Lessons from Our Battles with Disease. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Glanz, Karen, Barbara K. Rimer, and Frances Marcus Lewis. Health Behavior and Health Education: Theory, Research and Practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2002. Herold, Eve. Stem Cell Wars: Inside Stories from the Frontlines. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006. Hull, N.E.H. and Peter Charles Hoffer. Roe v. Wade: The Abortion Rights Controversy in American History. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2001. Kawachi, Ichiri and Lisa F. Berkman. Neighborhoods and Health. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

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Kolata, Gina. Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss—and the Myths and Realities of Dieting. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Koplow, David A. Smallpox: The Fight to Eradicate a Global Scourge. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. Micozzi, Marc A. Fundamentals of Complementary and Integrative Medicine. St. Louis, MO: Saunders Elsevier, 2006. Nadakavukaren, Anne. Our Global Environment: A Health Perspective. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000. Parson, Ann B. The Proteus Effect: Stem Cells and their Promise for Medicine. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2004. Satcher, David and Rubens J. Pamies, eds. Multicultural Medicine and Health Disparities. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Smith, Andrew F., ed. The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Stacey, Michelle. Consumed: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear Food. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Warner, John Harley and Janet A. Tighe, eds. Major Problems in the History of American Medicine and Public Health: Documents and Essays. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. World Health Organization. Preventing Chronic Diseases: A Vital Investment. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2005.

Index

Index note: page references in italics indicate figures or graphs; page references in bold indicate main discussion. A Aaron, Hank 152 Abbott, Carl 68 Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem 152 abortion 18, 31–32, 100, 215, 240, 240 Abrams, Robert 69 adjustable rates mortgages (ARMs) 15 Afghanistan Mujaheddin rebels 205 Soviet invasion 7, 194, 205 Taliban regime x, 13 U.S. war in x, 14, 75, 205, 206 African-American populations affirmative action programs 54 first black president x, 18, 24, 61 income and economic opportunity 63 inner city neighborhoods 63–64, 64, 65 music genres 29, 139, 147 political power in city governments 63

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254

Index portrayal in books and screen 30, 31, 144 rock musicians 146, 147 school busing and quotas 53, 65 single-parent families 18, 23–24, 25, 64 stereotypes 60 teenage pregnancy 18, 23 voting rights 63 Agnew, Spiro 1, 3, 4 agriculture crops for ethanol production 83 genetically modified crops 84 organic farming 82–83 Southern Corn Leaf Blight 90 See also rural life Aideed, Muhammad Farah 201 AIG 15 air pollution 75 air traffic controllers 181 air travel xi, 227, 229, 229, 232, 232, 233 Alabama 147 Albright, Madeleine 176 Allen, Tim 149 Allman, Duane 142 al Qaeda September 11, 2001 attacks x, 13, 28, 28, 150, 205 terrorist activities x, 13, 75, 205, 206 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 126 Amos, Tori 148 Anderson, W. French 129 Andreeson, Marc 134 animal welfare 19 Annie Hall (1977) 26 anthrax 245 Apple Computers 132–134, 133, 134, 214, 228 Arafat, Yasser 12 Ashley, Laura 42 Asperger’s Syndrome 249 Australopithecus afarensis 135, 136 autism spectrum disorders 249



Index Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman, The (Gaines) 30 automobiles/cars computerization of engines 228, 228 fuel efficiency 5, 41, 223–224, 224 minivans, pickups and SUVs 230–231, 234 oil and gasoline crisis 4–5, 41, 178, 222–224, 224 safety 230–231 status and options 40–41 Avian Flu 243 B Baker, James 197 Bakker, Jim 101 Balakgie, Mario 202 Baltimore 71 Barker, Bernard 158 Barr, Roseanne 149 Beame, Abraham 69, 70 Beatles 27, 29, 139, 141 Becker, Charles 168 Bee Gees 142 Begin, Menachem 6 Belgium xi Bellow, Saul 18 Benatar, Pat 147 Bentsen, Lloyd 10 Bergen, Candice 148 Berkowitz, David 69 Berlin Wall 10, 148, 219 Berne, Eric 51 Berners-Lee, Tim 134 Bernstein, Carl 144 Biden, Joseph 16 bin Laden, Osama 13, 205, 232 bioterrorism 242–243, 243, 245 birth control 47 Black Sabbath 27 Blass, Bill 42 Blondie 147 Bonds, Barry 153

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Index Bonilla, Jorge 179 Boston 71, 71 botulinum toxin 245 Bowers v. Hardwick 32 Bowie, David 44 Boyer, Herbert 127 Brando, Marlon 143 Braxton, Toni 148 breast cancer 45 Broder, David 54 Brown, Denise Scott 36 Brown, Michael 76 Bruce, Steve 48 Buchanan, Pat 54 Bulger, James “Whitey” 168 Burgee, John 37 Burger, Warren 98 Bush, George H. W. appointment of Clarence Thomas 57 arms reduction START I treaty 10 Desert Shield/Desert Storm 197–198, 198, 199, 199, 200 foreign policy 10–11, 197–199 national deficit and unemployment 11 National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) 119 oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve 231 Operation Just Cause/troops in Panama 197 as vice president 7 Bush, George W. budget deficits 14 Christian beliefs 107 controversial election 12–13 diplomatic measures 16 economic policies 13 foreign policy 14, 203, 205–206 Hurricane Katrina 14 military response to 9/11 terrorist attacks 13, 74–75, 203, 205, 206 war in Iraq 13–14, 74–75, 205 War on Terrorism 13, 74–75, 203, 205–206, 232–233 Buzzell, Colby 204



Index C California 24, 25, 245–246 Calley, William, Jr. 190 Cambodia Khmer Rouge regime ix, 193–194 U.S. troops 1, 2, 3, 3 Camp David Accords 6 Canada 11 Captain and Tennille 142 Carey, Mariah 147, 148 Carpenters 27, 142 Carson, Rachel 39 Carter, Jimmy Airline Deregulation Act 229 boycott Moscow Olympics 7, 140 Camp David Accords 6 energy policies 6 foreign policy 6, 194–195 human rights agenda 7 on illegal aliens in U.S. 217, 217 inflation and unemployment 139–140 Iran hostage crisis 7, 140, 195, 230 Operation Eagle Claw 195 transferred authority of Panama Canal 6 casinos 80, 86, 86 Catholic Church 99, 100, 103, 106 cell phones ix, 30, 139 Cerf, Vinton 134 Chamberlain, Wilt 152 Chapman, Tracy 148 Cheney, Dick 12 Chicago 36, 142 chicken pox 241 China 4 Chinese Triad 162 Chu, Steven 39 Chudacoff, Howard 74 cities and urban life 63–78 Community Development Act 70–71, 71, 72 edge cities 74

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Index education programs 18 Frostbelt cities 67 gang activities 65, 72 gentrification of poor urban areas 72 Homeland Security measures 75 homeless populations 68, 72, 210 immigrant neighborhoods 72, 74 inner–city problems 72 natural disasters 75–76, 76, 77, 77 poverty 64, 65 revenue sharing 70 Sunbelt urban growth 66–67, 67, 68, 70 terrorist attacks 74–75, 75 urban despair 65–66 Civil Rights movement landmark desegregation cases 57 political candidates x school busing and quotas 53, 65 veterans 16 Claiborne, Liz 42 Clemens, Roger 153 Clemente, Roberto 152 Clinton, Hillary 11, 16, 24, 145 Clinton, William J. Camp David negotiations 12 controversy and scandal 11–12 foreign policy 199, 201, 203 Goals 2000: Educate America Act 119 as governor of Arkansas 11 health care reform 11 impeachment proceedings 12, 56 New Democrat president 11 Cobain, Kurt 148 Coffee, Linda 240 Cohen, Stanley 127 Cold War end of x, 187 Helsinki Accords 5 “Velvet Revolutions” x Collins, Phil 147



Index Colonial Williamsburg 52, 52 Columbine High School massacre 163 computers in car engines 228, 228 games 161 home and laptop 130, 133, 214, 215–216, 217 memory 132 microprocessors 214 personal computers 132–134, 134 software applications 132, 133 storage capacity 15, 130–134 viruses/malware 164 See also Internet Connolly, John 168 Cooper, Alice 27 Coppola, Francis Ford 53 Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) 230 Cosby, Bill 31, 149 Cossell, Howard 152 counterculture movement 159 country music 17 creationism 108 crime and violence 157–172 cybercrime 163–164, 202 domestic violence 239 evidence collection/analysis 166, 166, 167, 169 foreign crime groups in U.S. 162 gang warfare 160, 160 hate crimes 179 information crimes 157 juvenile crime 163 law enforcement 158, 160, 162, 163, 168, 169 looting 66, 69 Manson murders 97 mental illness as factor 168–169 online predators 164, 166 organized crime 159, 160, 162 police brutality and bad cops 65–66, 168 in popular culture 161 pornography 32, 40, 100

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Index risk factors and causes 157, 167–169 school shootings 162–163 serial killers 166, 168 Son of Sam 69 technology advances 157, 161 war on drugs campaigns 158–159, 159, 160 Watergate scandal 158, 158 Zodiac Killer 161 See also terrorism Crips and Bloods 160 Cronkite, Walter 29, 29 Crow, Sheryl 148 Crystal Cathedral 105 Cuba 195 cults 98–99 Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (Hunter) 54 D Dallas 66, 67 Danes, Clare 150 Danza, Tony 148 Darwin, Charles 135, 136 Davis, Len 168 Dean, John 158 De Niro, Robert 55 Denny, Reginald 66 Denver, John 27, 142–143 Deschooling Society (Illich) 115 Diana, Princess 45 Dion, Celine 148 disabilities, persons with 37, 111–112, 112, 113 disco 17, 26, 142 Dole, Bob 6, 11–12, 150 drugs campaigns against drug abuse 73, 73, 158–159, 159, 160 cocaine 159, 159 crack 72 drug culture 73 drug dealers/illicit trade 72, 159–160 LSD 159



Index marijuana 48 music scene 142, 148 rehabilitation programs 50 in rural populations 91 Dubner, Stephen J. 215 Dukakis, George 10 Dulles, John Foster 195 E Eastern Europe x Eastwood, Clint 161 Eddie Bauer 45 education 111–124 access for children with special needs 111–112, 112, 113 adequate yearly progress (AYP) 120, 122 affirmative action programs 53–54 charter schools 111, 118 children of migrant workers 88 college campus antiwar protests 2–3, 117, 141, 189 computers and Internet 58, 120 cultural inclusion approach 119–120 curriculum of basic skills 114, 115–116, 119 desegregation of public schools 53, 65, 111 Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) 112 evolution and intelligent design 108 funding 18, 64 Green v. County School Board 53 homeschooling 111, 115, 115, 116 Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) 112 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 113 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 123 National Education Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC) 119–120, 123 national goals 119–121, 122, 122, 123 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) 75, 120, 122, 122, 122–123, 123 one–room schoolhouses 92, 92 Regents of the University of California v. Baake 54 in rural America 91–92, 92, 93 school busing and quotas 53, 65 school shootings 162–163

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Index Special Education provision 5 state standards for education 119, 120 student loans xi Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education 53 teacher training and pay 116, 121 Teach for America (TFA) 121 Title IX and sex discrimination 113, 113, 115 Wisconsin v. Yoder 98, 98 Edwards, John 14 Egypt, Camp David Accords 6 Eisenman, Peter 36 elderly/aging populations, access to health care 19 Ellerbee, Linda 148 Ellis, Perry 42 Ellison v. Brady 176 Ellsberg, Daniel 191 employment. See labor and employment English, Milton 128 Enron 184 entertainment and sports 139–155 baseball 152–153 football 152, 153 Harry Potter phenomenon 151, 151 movies/motion pictures 144, 148, 150 MTV/music videos 16, 139, 146 personal music players 17, 139 popular music 17, 139, 141–142, 144, 146, 148–149, 149 pornography 32, 48 television shows 142–144, 148, 149–150 video gaming 139, 145, 145, 161 environmental conservation 19, 37, 39 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) 23, 23 Erhard, Werner 50 Esalen Institute 48, 50 est/attack therapy 50 Estefan, Gloria 147 ethanol 83 Etheridge, Melissa 148 Evers, Charles 3 Evers, Medgar 3



Index F Falwell, Jerry 56, 101 family and daily life 21–33 access to consumer goods 26–27, 27, 29 cohabiting couples 23, 48 convenience and fast foods 26–27, 27, 248, 250, 250 divorce rate 22 family size 22 farm economic crisis 81–82 fashion and fads 26–27 female–headed families 22, 23, 25 home video systems 29 impact of 9/11 attacks 28 marriage and birthrate 22–23, 24, 25 military families 24, 26 mortgage crisis 15 parenting 49 patterns of families 22–23 popular music 26, 27, 29 poverty 8 sexual revolution/sexual patterns 31–32, 32 single–parent households 22–23, 25, 64 social interactions on Internet 58 teenage pregnancies 22–23 television 29, 29, 30–31 2008–2009 Economic Crisis 15 Fannie Mae 15 Fawcett, Farrah 42 Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan) 174 Ferraro, Geraldine 9, 24, 176 Fielding, Lewis 191 Fiorina, Morris P. 55 Fitzsimmons, Frank 177 Flack, Roberta 142 Fleetwood Mac 141 Florida 12 football 152, 153 Ford, Gerald assassination attempt 5 détente with Soviet Union 5

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Index domestic economic problems 5 education policies 5 Helsinki Accords 5 Khmer Rouge/Mayaguez incident 193–194 pardoning Nixon 4 as president 4, 5 refusing funds to New York City 69 as vice president 4 withdrawal from South Vietnam 5 Fowler, Mark 167 Frank, Antoinette 168 Franklin, Bonnie 144 Franks, Tommy 205 Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Levitt and Dubner) 215 Freddie Mac 15 free love movement 48 Friedan, Betty 174 Fuller, Buckminster 37, 37 G Gaddafi, Muammar al– 196 Gaines, Ernest 30 gangsta rap 149, 160 Garreau, Joel 74 Gates, Bill 133 gays employment discrimination 18 gay rights movements 32 in military 201 Stonewall riot 32 Gaza Strip 14 Gehry, Frank 37–38, 40 Gein, Ed 168 genocide 12, 239 geodesic domes 37, 37 Germany, unification x Gernreich, Rudi 41 GI Bill of Rights 174 Gifford, Frank 152



Index Gilchrist, Joyce 167 Giuliani, Rudolph 74 Glaser, Elizabeth 32 Glaser, Paul Michael 32 Glitter, Gary 44 global warming 39 Goldwater, Barry 67 golf 154 Gonzalez, Virgilio 158 Gorbachev, Mikhail 9 Gore, Al 11, 12, 39 Gore, Tipper 147 Gotti, John 162 Graham, Billy 101 Grammar, Kelsey 149 Graves, Michael 36 Gray, Tom 135, 136 Greenbaum, Norman 142 Green Movement 37, 39 Green Party 39 Greenpeace 39 Green Revolution 126, 127 Grenada 7, 196 Grint, Rupert 151 Guderian, Heinz 198 Gulf War(s) x, 10, 26, 231 Gutierrez, Raul 243 Gwathmey, Charles 36 H Hagman, Larry 146 Haley, Alex 30, 142 Halston 41 Halvorson, Peter 103, 104 Hamill, Dorothy 42 Harlins, Latasha 66 Harrington, John 142 Harris, Eric 163 Harris, Thomas Anthony 51 Harrison, George 146

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Index health care access 19, 237–238, 246, 251 legislation and reform 11 workplace health and safety 183, 183 Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) 248 heavy metal 17, 142 Hejduk, John 36 Helsinki Accords 5 Hendrix, Jimi 142 Henson, Jim 31 hepatitis 129 Hilfiger, Tommy 42 Hill, Anita 57 Hill, Napoleon 50 Hinckley, John, Jr. 7, 169 hip hop 29, 45, 147, 149 hippies 42 history daily life vii–viii historical recreation 52, 52 overlapping layers vii–viii HIV/AIDS 32, 46, 72, 241, 241, 242, 242, 243, 251 Hoff, Theodore 132 Hoffman, Albert 159 Holliday, George 65 Holt, John 115 Homeland Security 28, 75 Homo erectus 137 homosexuality 32, 32 Hooker Chemical Company 244 Houston, Whitney 147 Hubble, Edwin 131 Hubble Space Telescope 130, 131, 131 human embryonic stem cells (hESC) 245 human rights 19 Hunter, James Davison 54 Hurricane Katrina 14, 28, 75–76, 76, 77, 77, 150, 168, 233 Hurricane Rita 233 Hussein, Saddam invasion of Kuwait x, 10, 197, 198, 199, 200



Index sanctions against 12 weapons of mass destruction 13–14, 205 I Iceland xi Illich, Ivan 115 immigrant populations demographic and social trends ix, 18 urban neighborhoods 72, 74 I’m Okay, You’re Okay (Harris) 51 An Inconvenient Truth (2006) 39 Independent Party 11 India 178 Indigo Girls 148 International Business Machines (IBM) 133 Internet ARPANET 14, 133, 134 blogging 51, 204 browsers 134 connectivity 135 cybercrime 163–164 data theft 164 defacement of Web pages 164 education 58, 120, 135 hypertext mark–up language (HTML) 134 impact on global communication ix–x, 133 online predators 164, 166 rural educational opportunities 92 social interactions 58 telecommuting 134, 212, 214 universal resource locator (URL) 134 World Wide Web 134, 139, 202 See also computers Interpol (International Criminal Police Organization) 162 iPods 29, 139 Iran American hostages 6, 7, 9, 230 Islamic Revolution 7 nuclear arms 14 Iran-Contra affair 8, 9–10, 196–197

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268

Index Iraq Ba’athist regime 10 insurgent activities 13–14 invasion of Kuwait x, 9, 200, 201, 202 U.S. war in 75, 205–206 Islamicist movements x–xi Israel Camp David Accords 6 peace roadmap negotiations 14 Western allies 5, 199, 221, 222 Yom Kippur War 4, 178, 223, 224 J Jackson, Janet 148 Jackson, Michael 45, 146 Jackson State College student riots 3 Janov, Arthur 48 Jenkinson, Michael 145 Jennings, Waylon 27, 142 Jewish Defense League 165 Jobs, Steve 133, 211, 214 Johanson, Donald 135, 136, 137 John, Elton 142 John Paul II 100 Johnson, Ben 153 Johnson, Lyndon B. affirmative action programs 53 anti-poverty programs 173–174 escalation in Vietnam 188, 193 Great Society programs 2 Johnson, Philip 36, 36, 37 Jones, Jim 98 Joplin, Janis 142 Jordan, Michael 44, 152 Jorstad, Erling 99 Juaraz, Yanira 179 K Kaczynski, Ted 170 Kahane, Meir 165



Index Kahn, Robert E. 134 Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) 242 Karan, Donna 42 Keaton, Diane 26 Kemp, Jack 11 Kemper, Edmund 168 Kennedy, Jackie 47 Kennedy, John F. 1, 47, 174, 188, 195 Kennedy, Robert F. 47 Kenny G 140 Kent State University shootings 2, 69, 117, 141, 189 Kerry, John 14 Khmer Rouge 193–194 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah 195, 230 King, Carole 147 King, Rodney 65, 168 Kiss 27 Kissinger, Henry 4, 191, 193, 224 Klebold, Dylan 163 Klein, Anne 42 Klein, Calvin 42 Kleindienst, Richard 158 Koch, Ed 182 Kopp, Wendy 121 Korean War 144 Kosovo 12, 201 Kuwait, Iraqi invasion x, 10, 197, 198, 199, 200 L labor and employment 173–185 affirmative action 54, 175 air traffic controllers strike 181 automation and technology 174 baseball strike 152–153 big-box stores/fast food chains 184 corporate scandals and 183–184 decline in heavy industries 177–178 defense industries 66, 67 dot-com industries xi dual income families 18

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Index gay and lesbian issues 18 health and environmental issues 183, 183 Hormel walkout 181 impact of oil/gasoline crisis 178 Internet and telecommuting 134, 212, 214 mine workers strike 183 New York transit workers strike 182, 182 overseas industry/outsourcing x, 17, 178, 180 postal workers strike 180–181 sexual harassment in workplace 56–57, 174, 176 stock market booms and 183–184 sweatshops and child labor 173 Teamsters Union 180 2008–2009 Economic Crisis 15 unemployment insurance 173 union membership 181 women’s equal rights 174–175, 175, 176–177 workplace violence 183 writers strike 150 Lansbury, Angela 148 Laos ix, 1 Lasch, Christopher 51–52 Latin America, financial crisis xi Latin rock 142 Lauper, Cyndi 147 Lauren, Ralph 42 Leakey, Louis S. B. 135 Leakey, Richard 137 Lear, Norman 31, 144 Lebanon 7, 14 Lehman Brothers 15 Lemonick, Michael 136 Lenhart, Amanda 145 Lennon, John 29, 146 lesbians 18, 201 Levitt, Steven D. 215 Lewicka, Izabela 166 Lewinsky, Monica 12, 56 Libya 196 Liddy, G. Gordon 158



Index Lieberman, Joe 12 Light, Judith 148 Linklater, Richard 213 Linkletter, Art 73 Littlefeather, Sacheen 143 L.L. Bean 45 Lockheed 184 Long, Christina 164 Lorance v. A.T. and T. 54 Los Angeles riots 65, 66 Love, William 244 Love Canal 244, 244 Lucas, George 144 Luckingham, Bradford 64, 65 M Machen, Arthur 58 Madonna 45, 147, 148 Manilow, Barry 142 Manson, Charles 97 marijuana 48 Marley, Bob 142 Marsalis, Wynton 17 Marshall, Thurgood 57 Martínez, Eugenio 158 Martin v. Wilks 54 material culture 35–46 automobiles/cars 40, 41, 41 clothing and fashion 26, 41–42, 42, 43, 43, 44–45 commercial architecture 35–36, 36, 37, 37 designer and athletic sneakers 44 domestic architecture and furnishings 37–38, 38, 39–40, 40 fads 26, 42, 43, 44 income gaps 19 “Me Generation” 35, 48–50, 50, 51 natural fiber clothing 45 oil crisis 4–5 polyester leisure suit 43, 43 status consciousness 35 suburban communities 38, 38

271

272

Index world-wide financial crisis xi Yuppies 45, 72 Mayr, Ernst 125 McCain, John 16, 56 McCardell, Claire 44 McCartney, Paul 142, 147–148 McCauliffe, Christa 176 McCord, James, Jr. 158 McCorvey, Norma Jean 240 McCurdy, Jack 114 McDuffie, Arthur 65 McEntire, Reba 147 McFadden, Robert D. 69 McGovern, George 3, 193 McLachlan, Sarah 148 McVeigh, Timothy 165 Meany, George 177 measles 241 Medicaid 246 Medicare 8, 173 medicine 241–242, 245–248 autism spectrum disorders 249 bioengineering medications 129 cancer research 129 computerized axial tomography/CAT scanning 247 emerging infections and bioterrorism 242–243, 243, 245 gene therapy 129 health insurance 246, 251 HIV/AIDS 17, 32, 46, 241, 241, 242, 242, 243 managed care 248 mental illness and treatments 210, 246 MRI scanners 17, 247 stem cell research 19, 245–246 ultrasound scanning 247 vaccines 129, 238 See also health care; nutrition; public health “Me Generation” 35, 48–50, 50, 51 Meier, Richard 36 Mengelsdorf, Paul C. 90 Merchant, Natalie 148



Index Meredith, Don 152 Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson 56, 176 Mexican American populations immigrants in U.S. ix migrant farm workers 86–87, 87, 88, 88, 89 undocumented workers 179 Mexico 11 Miami Vice 45 Microsoft Corporation 133 Midler, Bette 142 migration. See population trends and migration military and wars 187–206 Abrams tanks 198 air campaign over Iraq 198–199, 199 American presence in Persian Gulf 5, 197–198, 198, 200 Beirut suicide bombing of Marine barracks 7, 196 Carter Doctrine 194–195 Clinton policies 199, 201, 203 cyber warfare 202 Desert Shield/Desert Storm 197–198, 198, 199, 199, 200 draft 193 helicopters 188 Iraq War casualties and injuries 205 military families after Vietnam 24, 26 National Guard 2, 3, 20, 26, 117, 189 NATO air campaigns in Serbia 201, 203 Nixon Doctrine 187–193, 207–208 Operation Desert Fox 12 Patriot Missiles 199 post-traumatic stress disorder 26, 204 Reagan Doctrine 195–197 return/rescue of POWs 55, 55, 193 surge of troops in Iraq 14 troops in Somalia 201 veterans 139, 194, 210 war blogs 204 War Powers Act 193 women on front lines 177 See also Gulf War(s); Korean War; Vietnam War Mills v. Board of Education of Washington, DC 112

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Index misery index 209 Mitchell, George 153 Mondale, Walter 5, 6, 9, 24 Moore, Dorothy 116 Moore, Raymond 116 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) 242 Morgan Stanley 15 Morissette, Alanis 148 Morrison, Jim 142 Morrison, Toni 18 Moses, Robert 69 movies/motion pictures protest at Academy Awards 143 stereotype cartoon caricatures 59–60 Vietnam genre 55, 144 MP3 players 17, 29, 139, 149 Ms. 23 Mullin, Herbert 168 Murphy Brown 25, 140 Murray, Anne 27, 142 Musgrave, F. Story 131 music country 27, 147 ethnic 142 explicit content 29, 147, 149–150 fashion influences 44 Grammy awards 17 Latin 17, 147 MTV/music videos 17, 139, 149 personal music players 17, 29, 149 popular forms 17–18 rock and roll 141 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum 71 targeting consumers 141 My War: Killing Time in Iraq (Buzzell) 204 N Nader, Ralph 12 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 129–130, 131, 132



Index National Air Traffic Controller’s Association 181 National Center for Education Statistics 116 National Charter School Research Project 118 National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia 55 National Organization for Women (NOW) 174–175 National Teaching Corps 121 National Welfare Rights Organization 64 Native Americans 53, 80, 86, 86, 119 Nearby History viii Nelson, Willie 27, 142 Netscape Communication Corporation 134 New Age movement 102, 102, 103 Newman, William 103, 104 New York City commercial architecture 36, 36, 37 financial crisis 69, 70 Hard Hat Riot 69 Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) 37 power blackout 69, 70 September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks 13, 13, 28, 28, 74–75, 75, 183, 204 transit workers strike 182, 182 urban decay 69 World Trade Center 13, 13, 26, 165, 203, 205, 232 Nicaragua 10, 196–197 Nicks, Stevie 141 Nixon, Richard M. bombing campaign in North Vietnam 1 Community Development Act 70–72 domestic policies 2 energy crisis 222 inflation and unemployment rates 177, 223 Paris peace negotiations 1 The Plumbers 191 reelection 3–4 resignation 4, 139, 158, 193 troops in Cambodia 2–3, 3, 117, 189–190 Vietnamization policy 187–193, 207–208 Watergate scandal 4, 139, 144, 158, 191

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Index Noriega, Manuel 10, 197 Norris, Chuck 55 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 11 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 12, 201, 203 Notorious B.I.G. 160 nutrition 248, 250–251 bioengineered foods 129, 132 Community Food and Nutrition Program (CFNP) 251 convenience foods 27, 248, 250 Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) 251 fast foods 248, 250, 250 foreign and gourmet cooking 248 genetically engineered foods 248 individual food/diet behaviors 239 poverty and malnutrition 239, 250 restaurant meals 250 Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) 250 See also health care; medicine; public health O Oak Ridge Boys 147 Obama, Barack on culture war concept 56 diplomacy 16 economic policy 15 energy policy 39, 234 environmental policy 39 as first African American president x, 18, 24, 61 foreign policy 16 funding embryonic stem cell research 245 troop withdrawals from Iraq 206 O’Connor, Sandra Day 176 oil OPEC embargoes xi, 223–224, 230–231 peak oil theory 233–234 prices xi, 237 shortages in U.S. xi, 4–5, 41, 223–224 Oil for Food Program 10 Onassis, Aristotle 47



Index OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) xi, 4, 41, 178, 223–224 Oppenheimer, Mark 98 Osborne, Joan 148 Osmonds 27, 142 P Pacino, Al 53 Pakistan 7, 14 Palestine 14, 15 Palin, Sarah 16, 24, 56 Panama 6, 10 Panama Canal 6 Panama Canal Zone 6 Parton, Dolly 142 Peale, Norman Vincent 50, 50 Pei, I. M. 36 Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children v. Pennsylvania 112 Pentagon, September 11, 2001 terrorist attack 13, 28, 203, 232 People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) 45 Pequot tribe 86, 86 Perot, Ross 11, 12 Persian Gulf 5, 197–198, 198, 200 Phoenix 64–65, 66, 67 Pinker, Steven 59 Pink Floyd 148 Pittman, Robert W. 146 plague 245 Playboy 48 Pneumocystic carinii pneumonia 242 political correctness 57, 59, 59, 60, 60, 61 pollution 39, 244 population trends and migration 207–219 Baby Boom generation 215 declining manufacturing jobs 208–209, 209 Generation X and Generation Y 213 homeless populations 210 illegal and undocumented migrants 216, 218, 218 immigrant populations in U.S. 18

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Index impact of energy crisis 208–209, 209 Latino and Reconquista phenomenon 18 marriage and birthrate 22–23, 24 move to exurbs and remote communities 211–212, 212 post 9/11 immigration 216, 218 rural life 79 Silicon Valley 214–216, 249 Sunbelt urban growth 66–67, 67, 68, 70 upwardly mobile professionals 211 Vietnam War refugees 207–208 pornography 32, 48, 100 postmodern architecture 35–36 postmodern art 17–18 poverty x, 18, 64, 169, 173–174 Powell, Colin 198 Power of Positive Thinking, The (Peale) 50, 50 Presley, Elvis 27, 139, 141 Pride, Charley 146 Primal Scream Therapy 48 Prince 147 progressive rock 142 PTL Club 101 public health 237–252 American life expectancy 17, 237–238 antibiotic–resistant organisms 243 chemical exposures and health consequences 244, 244 disease/injuries related to terrorism, war or genocide 239 emerging infections and bioterrorism 242–243, 243, 245 exercise and activity behaviors 238, 239 focus on chronic diseases 238–239, 239 food/diet choices 239 HIV/AIDS education 32, 46, 241, 241, 242, 242, 243 individual health behaviors 238–239, 239 non–medical factors affecting health 239 screening of refugee populations 239 smoking behaviors 238–239, 239 vaccinations and immunizations 238, 241 violence–caused diseases and injuries 239 See also health care; medicine; nutrition punk rock 142



Index punk style 42, 44 Purpose-Driven Life, The (Warren) 103 Puzo, Mario 161 Q Quayle, Dan 10, 25, 140 Queen 44 R Radcliffe, Daniel 151 radio ministries 101 talk radio 29 railroads 224–225, 225, 226, 226 Ramirez, Luis 179 Ramones 142 rap 29, 147, 160 Reagan, Nancy 45 Reagan, Ronald 8 acting career 140 agenda of individual freedom 7 air traffic controllers strike 181 anti-Communist policies 10 assassination attempt 7, 169 conservative Republicanism 10 defense policy and spending 195–196 ending Cold War 8 as governor of California 140 invasion of Grenada 7, 196 Iran-Contra affair 8, 9, 196–197 Iran release of hostages 7, 9 military buildup 7, 196–197 “Reaganomics”/economic policies 7 relationship with Soviet Union 9 Republican control of Senate 7 space program 130, 195–196 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) 9 war on drugs 9 Reddy, Helen 141 Redford, Robert 53

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Index reggae 142 religion 97–109 Amish communities 98, 98 Catholic sex abuse scandals 103 charismatic movement 104, 104, 105 communes and cults 97–99 counterculture activities 97–99 culture wars debate 54, 56 “end time” prophecies 106–107 experimentation and change 97–99 faith–based society 19 focus on spirituality/personal paths 102, 102, 103 impact of 9/11 106, 107 mass suicide 98 New Age movement and 102, 102, 103 non-denominational churches 104, 104, 105, 105 popular music 27 Protestant evangelicalism 19 radio ministries 101 report cards on political candidates 101 retrenchment and revival 99–101 rural America 92–93 “self–religions” 48 small groups and megachurches 101–104, 104, 105, 105 staying relevant 97, 99–101 televangelism 101 think tanks and political action committees 100–101 traditional religious groups 99, 103–104 Wisconsin v. Yoder 98, 98 Religious Right 54, 56, 100 Resnick, Judith 176 Rhodes, James 2 Rice, Condoleezza 176 Richie, Lionel 147 Richmond v. J.A. Croson 54 Ride, Sally 176 Rimes, Leann 148 Robertson, Pat 56, 101 Robinson, John 166 rock and roll music 17



Index Roeder, Donald M. 9 Roe v. Wade 8, 31–32, 215, 240 Rommel, Erwin 198 Ronstadt, Linda 142 Röntgen, Wilhelm Conrad 247 Roots (Haley) 30, 142 Rosengarten, Jerry 43 Rouse, James 71 Rowling, J. K. 56, 151 Rumsfeld, Donald 14, 206 rural life 79–95 access to health care 85 corporate agriculture vs. family farm 79, 93 crop disease and failures 90, 90 drug and alcohol use 91 education 91–92, 92, 93 energy extraction industries 79–80, 85–86 farm economic crisis 80–81, 81, 82 food production and exports 80 migrant farm workers 86–87, 87, 88, 88, 89 nonfarming jobs 84, 84, 85, 85 nontraditional agriculture and meat production 83–84 population decline 79 poverty 85–86 religion and church activities 92–93 social activities and community ties 89, 91, 92, 93, 94 See also agriculture Russia financial crisis xi organized crime 162 space station program 129, 132 Rust Belt 209 Ruth, Babe 152 Ryan, Leo 98 S Sadat, Anwar El 6 same-sex marriages 18 Sanchez, Alex 153 Sandinistas 196–197

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Index Satrom, Leroy 2 Saturday Night Fever (1977) 43, 142 Saudi Arabia x, 5 Schaefer, Thomas E. 9 Schwartz, Stephen 142 Schwarzkopf, Norman 197, 198, 199 science and technology 125–138 agricultural research 126, 126 basic and applied science 127 bioengineering 129 CD and DVD storage capacity ix cell phones ix, 15, 30, 133 disease resistant plants 126, 126 DNA studies 127–128, 128, 129 dot-com industries xi factory automation 174 genetic studies/genetic engineering 125, 126, 126 global positioning satellites x Human Genome Project 128–129 Internet 125, 133, 134 Lucy and human evolution 135–136, 136, 137 medical imaging/scanning 247 microchips 132 military research and projects 125 MRI scanners 17 personal music players 17, 29, 139, 149 space program 129–130, 130, 131, 131, 132, 132 subatomic particles 125 video taping ix See also computers; Internet Scorsese, Martin 54 Scowcroft, Brent 197 Scud missiles 199 Seinfeld, Jerry 149 Selig, Bud 153 Serbia 12 Sesame Street 31, 48, 49 Sex Pistols 142 Shah of Iran 7, 195, 230 Shakur, Tupac 160



Index Shanksville, Pennsylvania 28, 203 Shriver, Sargent 3 Sierra Club 39 Silent Spring, The (Carson) 39 smallpox 241, 245 Smith, Hamilton O. 127 Smith, Judith 74 social attitudes 47–62 abortion 8, 18, 31–32 affirmative action 53–54 changing sexual behaviors 31–32, 32, 47, 48 “culture wars” debate 54–56, 119 energy/sustainable energy 39 ethnic identities 53 Green Movement 39 “Me Generation” 35, 48–50, 50, 51 parenting 49 personal change and diminishing expectations 51–52, 52, 53 political correctness 57, 59, 59, 60, 60, 61 sexual harassment 56–57, 174, 176 youth rebellion 21 Somalia 201 Sony Corporation ix southern rock 142 South Vietnam collapse 5, 192, 193, 207–208 refugees ix, 5, 207–208 Soviet Union collapse x, 9, 10, 187, 232 invasion of Afghanistan 7, 194, 205 Moscow Olympics 7, 140 nuclear arms reduction agreements 4, 6, 9 space program Challenger 130, 131, 176 Columbia 130 Discovery 130, 132 Skylab 130, 130 space shuttle 130, 132, 132 Speich, Don 114 Spice Girls 148

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Index Spielberg, Steven 48 Spitzer, Lyman 131 sports 150, 152–154 baseball 152, 153 basketball 152 boycott of Moscow Olympics 7, 140 cycling 153–154 football 152, 153 horse races 152 Little League 153 performance–enhancing drugs 153–154 terrorists at Munich Olympics 152, 165 See also entertainment and sports Springsteen, Bruce 147 Spurlock, Morgan 250 “stagflation” xi, 5 Starr, Kenneth 11 Steinem, Gloria 23, 24, 24 stem cell research 245–246 Stewart, Martha 39 Stockdale, James 11 Stockman, David 8 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II (SALT II) 6 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I (START I) 10 Streisand, Barbra 142 Sturgis, Frank 158 Super Bowl 153 Suwa, Gen 136 Synanon 48, 50 syphilis 241 T Taiwanese 14K 162 Taliban x, 13, 14, 75, 205, 232 Taylor, James 147 Teach for America (TFA) 121 Teamsters Union 177 technology. See science and technology telephones, cell phones ix, 30, 139 television



Index advertising 30 cable and satellite 30 children’s shows 31, 48 color broadcasts ix “family–viewing time” 30–31 Hispanic audiences 31 nostalgia series 52–53 reality shows 144 September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks 150, 150 sex and violence ratings 30–31 social issues 30–31 televangelism 101 U.S. war in Iraq 206 writers strike 150 See also entertainment and sports terrorism attacks on U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Capitol 165 attacks on World Trade center 203, 205, 232, 232, 233 Beirut suicide bombing of Marine barracks 7, 196 Bush’s war on terror 12, 75, 204–207 at Munich Summer Olympics 152, 165 Oklahoma City bombing 165, 165 September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S 28, 28, 165, 203, 205 Unabomber 170 Think and Grow Rich (Hill) 50 Thomas, Clarence 57 Thomas, Tammy 153–154 Thomson, James 245 Tillmon, Johnnie 64 Tomlinson, Raymond 134 transactional analysis (TA) 51 transportation 221–235 airline deregulation 227, 229, 229 airport security 232, 232, 233 intermodal freight system 224, 225, 225, 226 light rail 226 national highway development 231 national maximum speed limit 4 oil and gasoline crisis 221–225 passenger trains 226–227

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Index railroads 224–225, 225, 226, 226 travel after 9/11 232, 232, 233 wheelchair access school buses 112 See also automobiles/cars Travolta, John 43, 142 Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed, The (Stockman) 8 Troutman, Suzette 166 tuberculosis 241, 243 Tucker, Tanya 142 tularemia 245 Turner, Tina 147 2 Live Crew 149 U Unabomber 170 Union Carbide, Bhopal disaster 178 Unitarian churches 99 United Auto Workers (UAW) 177 United Mine Workers (UMW) 180 United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM) 201 United Nations (UN) 16, 197, 201, 205 United States Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) 14, 133, 134 Airline Deregulation Act 229 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 37, 111–112 Anabolic Steroids Control Act 153 Census Bureau 25 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 242, 242 Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) 227, 229 Civil Rights Act(s) 54, 63, 174 Clean Air Act 39 Community Development Act 70–71, 71, 72 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (Superfund) 244 Customs and Border Protection 218, 232 Department of Agriculture 80, 81, 81 Department of Defense 125, 164, 201, 202 Department of Education 6, 57 Department of Energy 4, 6, 128



Index domestic oil production 6 Drug Enforcement Agency 159 Educational Amendments 113, 115 Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) 112 Endangered Species Act 39 energy/renewable energy 4 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 56, 57, 176 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) 23, 23, 175 Farmers Home Administration 82 Federal Aviation Administration 233 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 158, 160, 162 Federal Decentralization of War Industries Program 66 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) 222 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 28, 76 Federal Reserve Board 80 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 129 Goals 2000: Educate America Act 119 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution 193 Health Maintenance Organization Act 248 Homeland Security 28, 216, 233 Hyde Amendment 240 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) 113 Insanity Defense Reform Act 169 National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) 116, 119 National Education Goals Panel (NEGP) 119–120 National Education Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC) 119–120, 123 National Energy Act 4 National Environmental Policy Act 39 national holidays 60, 60 National Housing Acts 72 National Human Genome Research Institute 128 National Institutes of Health 127, 128 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) 75, 120, 122–123 reliance on foreign oil 5 Rogers Commission 130 security system changes xi September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks x, 74–75, 75, 150, 150, 165, 203, 205

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Index Social Security system 19 Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties (SALT) 4 Title VII 175, 176 Title IX 113, 113, 115 Transportation Security Agency (TSA) 233 Twenty–sixth Amendment 21, 190 2008–2009 Economic Crisis 15 USA PATRIOT Act 28, 165 Voting Rights Act 63 War Powers Act 193 Water Pollution Control Act 39 UN Security Council 16 U.S. Air Force 199, 202 U.S. Air Force Reserve 76 U.S. Army 196, 201 U.S. Army Medical Research Institution of Infectious Diseases 245 U.S. Marines 7, 194, 196 U.S. Navy 196 USS Missouri 199 USS Nimitz 195 V Vatican II 99 Veeck, Bill 59 Venter, Craig 129 Venturi, Robert 36 Vietnam War ambiguous victory 1, 55 American casualties and injuries 2, 24, 141, 187 ceasefire 4, 193 collapse of South Vietnam ix, 5, 192, 193, 207–208 defense industries 174 draft evaders 193 helicopter missions 188 Ia Drang Valley, Battle of 189 LINEBACKER/LINEBACKER II 192, 193 morale of American troops 188, 189 My Lai massacre 190, 190 Nixon Doctrine/Vietnamization policy 187–193, 207–208 opposition and protest movements 2–3, 3, 117, 141



Index peace talks 193 Tet Offensive 188 veterans and POWs 55, 55, 193, 194, 196, 210 withdrawal of U.S. troops ix Vinson, Mechelle 56, 176 violence. See crime and violence viral hemorrhagic fever 245 Virginia Tech shootings 163 voting age 21 W Waldman, Suzyn 176 Walker, Alan 137 Walt Disney World 37 Walters, Barbara 24 Ward’s Cove Packing Company v. Atonia 54 Warren, Rick 103 wars. See military and wars Washington 133 Watson, Emma 151 Weber, Andrew Lloyd 142 Weddington, Sarah 240 Weeks, Lorena 174–175 Westmoreland, William 190 West Nile Virus 243 White, Ryan 32 White, Tim 137 Whitman, Charles Joseph 162 Wings 142 Wisdom, John Minor 53 Wolfe, Tom 48, 49, 51 women abortion issue 31–32, 100, 240, 240 affirmative action 54, 175 criminal offenders 171 employment opportunities 23, 23, 24, 174–175, 175, 176–177 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) 23, 23, 24, 24 female priests 99 feminist movement 23, 24, 59, 141 gender–inclusive terms 59

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Index movie roles and perceptions 144 as presidential candidates x, 24 role models in television series 31 sexual harassment in workplace 56, 174, 176 Title IX mandate 113, 113, 115 as vice presidential candidates 9, 24, 56, 176 Woodcock, Leonard 177 Woods, Tiger 152 Woodward, Bob 144 World.Com 184 World Health Organization (WHO) 237 World Trade Center, terrorist attacks 28, 28, 165, 183, 203, 205 World War II 199 Wozniak, Steve 133, 214 Wright, Sewall 125 Wynonna 148 Y Yakuza 162 Yamanaka, Shinya 246 Yamasaki, Minoru 36 Yoder, Jonas 98 Yoga 102, 102, 103 Yom Kippur War 4, 178, 221, 222 Young, Neil 141 Yousef, Ramzi 165 Yu, Junying 246 PHOTO CREDITS Library of Congress: 2, 3, 5, 6, 21, 24, 28, 29, 32, 50, 64, 73, 100, 106, 107, 175, 177, 203 (inset), 217, 223 (two inset images), 240. Photos.com: 30 (inset), 31, 35, 40, 41, 42, 43, 49, 59, 60, 68, 82, 87, 92, 102, 104, 111, 113, 115, 120, 132, 139, 140, 145, 149, 151, 152, 154, 173, 209, 214, 221, 228, 250. Loretta Carlisle Photography: 27, 30, 38, 55, 63, 67, 79, 81, 85, 112, 159, 162, 163, 166, 167, 169, 171, 187, 224, 225, 226, 229, 231, 234. Wikipedia: 36 (photo by David Shankbone), 37 (photo: Carlos Cruz), 47, 52, 71 (photo by Ian Howard), 86, 98, 105, 134 (photo by Marcin Wichary), 136, 140 (photo by Jared C. Benedict), 146 (photo by Cian Gint), 153 (By D.F. Shapinsky for PINGNews.com/Shapinsky



291 MultiMedia), 182 (photo by Sander Koyfman), 237 (photo by D.B. King). U.S. Air Force: 1, 16 (photo by Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo, U.S. Air Force), 77 (photo by Master Sgt. Bill Huntington), 199, 202, 203, 243 (photo by Master Sgt. Bryan Ripple). CDC: 84, 88, 89, 122 (photo by Jim Gathany), 238, 242, 244. USDA: 90 (photo by Keith Weller), 126 (photo by Scott Bauer), 212 (photo by Jeff Vanuga). NASA: 130, 131. National Human Genome Research Institute: 125, 128 (photo by Maggie Bartlett, NHGRI). FEMA: 13 (photo by SFC Thomas R. Roberts/NGB-PASE), 75 and 76 (photos by Andrea Booher), 97 (photo by Michael Rieger), 150 (photo by Bri Rodriguez), 157, 183 (photo by Andrea Booher). Department of Defense: 9 (photo by SSGT Ernie Sealings), 165 (photo by Staff Sgt. Preston Chasteen), 188 (photo by Sgt. Robert W. Ingianni), 190 (photo by Ronald L. Haeberle), 198 (photo by PHC. D.W. Holmes). Reagan Library: 8. Nixon Presidential Materials Project: 158 (photo by Oliver F. Atkins). U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (photos courtesy of ICE): 160, 207. U.S. Marine Corp.: 194 (photo by Sgt. Clinton Firstbrook). U.S. Customs and Border Patrol: 218 (photo by Gerald L. Nino), 232 (photo by James Tourtellotte). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: 239. Produced by Golson Media President and Editor J. Geoffrey Golson Layout Editors Oona Patrick, Mary Jo Scibetta Managing Editor Susan Moskowitz Copyeditor Ben Johnson Proofreader Mary Le Rouge Indexer J S Editorial