Start the Fire: A Look

¶ … Start the Fire: A Look at the Most Significant Events in U.S. History since World War II

Looking at U.S. history since World War II, it is difficult to believe that so many major cultural and societal changing events have occurred in such a brief period of time. Before World War II, the majority of the American workforce was male, segregation was an accepted cultural and legal norm, Americans were patriotic with greater trust in their government, and there was no such things as cell phones, TV, or computer usage for the average American. Obviously, these things that shape the daily existence of American life have changed, and the pace of that change has been rapid. Therefore, it is difficult to name the most influential events of the post World War II period, since the impact of many of those events has yet to be fully realized. Moreover, there were so many changes in each decade that picking a single defining event becomes difficult, if not impossible. However, after carefully examining the historical record, one event stands out as the most significant one of each decade.

Interestingly enough, these are not the events that necessarily defined the decade at the time. In fact, the full impact of many of these events was not known until a later time. The most critical event of the 1950s was one whose impact is still being realized: the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), because it was the means of ending legalized segregation in the United States. The 1960s was a time of critical change in the United States, but the most influential event of the 1960s came with little fanfare: the introduction of the Pill, which led to the sexual revolution, a change that not only impacted how the genders relate in sexual relationships, but also how women can succeed outside of the bedroom. If one's understanding of the 1970s was limited to pop culture references, the 70s would appear to be a time of disco and drugs. While those were important cultural components, the Vietnam War also officially ended in the 1970s, bringing to an end the most socially divisive war in U.S. history since the Civil War. The 1980s was a critical decade in American history, and there is no denying the role that the Cold War played in American cultural and political history during that decade. Therefore, it is easy to identify the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of 1989 as the most critical event in the 1980s. Unfortunately, while the Cold War may have officially ended at that time, the United States and Russia continued to engage in territorial power struggles. The most notable of these struggles was played out in Afghanistan, and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in the early 1990s, while unknown to most Americans at that time, has played a major role in shaping modern American history.

Separate is Inherently Unequal

To most modern Americans, the idea of legalized segregation is something that seems like an archaic vestige of slavery. However, the reality is that the parents and grandparents of today's generation were directly impacted by legalized segregation. The reality is also that there are some locations, many of them in the Deep South, where segregation may be illegal, but continues to be a de facto reality for African-Americans. Any person with substantial knowledge of the tremendous disparity that still exists between the average African-American and the average white realizes that there is still a tremendous need for change. However, the fact that there is still a need for change does not lessen the fact that the Supreme Court helped change the fabric of America when it authored the decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

The Supreme Court had been called upon to address the issues of segregation and racial equality in prior decisions. Most saliently, in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), the Supreme Court had considered the question of segregated train transportation, and determined that segregation did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Instead, it determined that segregated facilities could be separate but equal, and thus comply with constitutional mandates. That Court was more than willing to ignore the reality that the facilities designated for use by "colored" people were not equal to the facilities designated for use by whites, and gave legal support to Jim Crow laws that marked life throughout the American South for the first half of the 20th century. However, the Supreme Court overruled the Plessy decision in Brown v. Board of Education, holding that school segregation did violate the principle of equal protection. The Court held that "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group" (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954).

Anyone with a working history of the 1960's Civil Rights Movement is aware that segregation did not magically end with the Court's decision in Brown. However, there is no question that the decision had a lasting impact. The NAACP had been working to end discrimination for years, and found a successful mode of attack; if it could prove the discrimination was harmful, it could end the practice. Moreover, with the force of law behind them, those working towards integration could begin their struggle in earnest. When a state governor refused to integrate schools, the President called out the National Guard. The decision led to busing, to make sure schools were integrated, quotas, affirmative action, and even claims of reverse discrimination. While discrimination still exists, one need only contemplate the current President's ethnicity to see that Brown v. Board led to social change.

The Pill that Changed the World

While the decision in Brown v. Board helped usher in a new type of equality with a lot of fanfare and resistance, the introduction of the birth control pill introduced equality for women with barely a whimper. In 1960, oral contraceptives received FDA approval for routine use in the United States. When they came out, they were not widely used by unmarried people; in fact, many doctors would not prescribe them to unmarried patients. Their role in the sexual revolution was delayed by a few years. However, what they did, immediately, was permit women to exercise control over their own fertility. Contraceptives were available prior to the Pill. Many of these contraceptives, such as condoms, were effective. However, contraceptives were either controlled by a male, or did not allow a woman to engage in protected, spontaneous sexual activity. The Pill changed the playing field.

People argue over how great of a role the Pill played in the social changes in the United States that have occurred since 1960. At the time of its introduction, most women were homemakers; now most women are employed (Gibbs, 2010). That, in and of itself, if a tremendous social change, one with positive and negative consequences. With the advent of an effective means of birth control, women were able to engage in sexual activity, while delaying reproduction. This has given women freedom to pursue education and careers. In fact, women outnumber men in many professions and at most universities, in most fields. However, it has also led to the myth of the superwoman, who can have and do it all. The reality, however, is that even women who have delayed child rearing end up doing the majority of the domestic work in their households; the Pill may have helped level the playing field, but it is still tremendously imbalanced.

In fact, when one stops to look at the numbers, the Pill does not seem all that miraculous. While the difference is statistically significant, the proper use of condoms prevents conception at roughly the same rate as the birth control pill. However, the Pill came to signify more than a medical breakthrough. "Arriving at a moment of social and political upheaval, the Pill became a handy proxy for wider trends: the rejection of tradition, the challenge to institutions, and the redefinition of women's roles" (Stengel, 2010). Could these changes have occurred without the birth control pill? That is a question that cannot be answered, but if one looks at the role of women in countries where oral contraceptives are not widely available, it seems impossible to ignore the role that the pill has played in the American woman's struggle for equality.

The End of a War

While women were waging a war at home, seeking equality and trying to figure out how to redefine gender in a world where sexual norms had been suddenly reversed, many American man were unwillingly waging a war abroad. During the 1960s and early 1970s, thousands of American boys died fighting a war in Vietnam. Much of the 1960s was taken up with protesting the war. Returning soldiers had wounds, physical and mental, which were not treated properly and were exacerbated by the fact that so many Americans treated them poorly on their return. Even in modern times, a disproportionate number of homeless people are Vietnam vets. Obviously, the Vietnam War had an impact on American history. However, the end of the Vietnam War had an ever greater impact on the American psychology.

The Vietnam War was the last open conflict against communism that the United States waged. While the war was theoretically between North Korea and South Korea, it was actually about communist-controlled China, with support from Russia, fighting against the United States and France, over possession of the southern portion of Vietnam. Ideology was strong on both sides. While the Vietnamese may not have strongly embraced the ideals of communism, had they been presented in a vacuum, but many of them were eager to shed the vestiges of colonialism. The French, on the other hand, were not so eager to abandon their interests in Vietnam, making the area a perfect staging area for the coming struggle. The first American soldier died in Vietnam in 1945, though it is believed he was killed because the Vietnamese thought he was a Frenchman (PBS, 2009). In 1975, America evacuated its troops, as Saigon fell to the communists (PBS, 2009). In other words, American troops were dying in Vietnam for a 30-year period.

The end of the war demonstrated that Americans were tired of engaging in actual fighting against communist forces. Though communism would remain a specter for many Americans, the end of the war allowed Americans to concentrate on healing the divisions created by the war. Veterans, many of whom had been drafted, were treated horribly when they returned from the war. It was not until 25 years later that the tide really began to change for veterans. At a Veteran's Day parade in Chicago in 1986, Vietnam vets began receiving some respect. "What was supposed to be a small parade ended up with about 200,000 participating veterans and family members proudly marching down the streets of Chicago, to the adulation, not the protests, of an estimated 500,000 spectators" (Anderson, 2010).

Because it took 25 years for Americans, as a group, to begin treating Vietnam veterans with dignity, it should come as no surprise that the end of Vietnam also brought about the end of open warfare with communist forces. The United States would continue to engage in military altercations with communists, but these altercations would be through puppet forces. For example, in the 1980s, the Americans would provide funding to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, where Russia was trying to expand communism. This would lead, at least indirectly, to the rise of extremist Muslim terrorism, a topic that will be revisited in the discussion of the 1990s. However, on the surface, Americans were through engaging in outright battles with the communists.

And the Wall Came Tumbling Down

The end of open hostilities with communists did not end the perceived threat of communism. Instead, a communist victory in Saigon strengthened communism as a worldwide ideology and exacerbated the threat of communism in America. Whether Russia ever had any intention of actually trying to invade the Unites States was beside the point; millions of Americans grew up with the belief that the U.S. was under the threat of constant attack. Moreover, in the 1980s, when both Russia and the United States were increasing their nuclear capabilities and, at times, seemed on the verge of world annihilation, it seemed that the ideological battle between communism and the free market economy was going to, quite literally, result in the end of the world.

Then, in 1989, something miraculous happened. As communism had spread into Germany, the Russians had literally erected a wall between East Germany and West Germany. This wall was both a symbolic and literal barrier, separating the democracies of the West from the large communist empire of the East. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, two strong statesman, had been working together to end the Cold War throughout much of the 1980s, and, Reagan challenged Gorbachev to tear down the wall. On November 9, 1989, Gorbachev did just that; he opened up the gate between East and West Germany. To describe the importance to America, to the world, is impossible if one did not witness the historic event:

At the stroke of midnight on Nov. 9, a date that not only Germans would remember, thousands who had gathered on both sides of the Wall let out a roar and started going through it, as well as up and over. West Berliners pulled East Berliners to the top of the barrier along which in years past many an East German had been shot while trying to escape; at times the Wall almost disappeared beneath waves of humanity. They tooted trumpets and danced on the top. They brought out hammers and chisels and whacked away at the hated symbol of imprisonment, knocking loose chunks of concrete and waving them triumphantly before television cameras. They spilled out into the streets of West Berlin for a champagne-spraying, horn-honking bash that continued well past dawn, into the following day and then another dawn (Church, 1989).

Why was the tumbling of a wall in Germany of such critical importance to Americans? During the Cold War there were two superpowers: the United States and Russia. While other countries were major players on the international scene, the reality is that no other country had the might of either of these superpowers. When the Berlin wall fell, it symbolized the fall of the Soviet Union. Therefore, the U.S., which became the only country with "the capacity to project dominating power and influence anywhere in the world, and sometimes, in more than one region of the globe at a time" became the world's only superpower (Miller, 2006).

Sleeping with the Enemy

Becoming the world's only superpower was not necessarily the most advantageous thing for America, especially in regard to foreign relations. Being the sole big dog has made America a prime target for hatred and dislike by other countries and groups of people within countries. The September 11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon revealed to many Americans the level of hatred and distrust that much of the world had for American ideology. However, while the terrorist attacks may have revealed the underlying anti-American sentiment, they did not cause it. Instead, the root of Osama Bin Laden's anger with the United States can be traced back to the 1990s, the end of the Cold War, and the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan.