Reading

Alan Brinkley, End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Knopf, 1995).

Response Statement Prompt

In November 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented reelection victory, taking 60.8 percent of the popular vote and 523 of 531 electoral votes. Democratic majorities controlled both houses of Congress, and it seemed that the President's New Deal reform agenda had triumphed completely. Less than a year later, however, the New Deal was in rapid decline, and liberals within the Roosevelt Administration were scrambling to find a new way to address the nation's economic and social problems. How did the recession of 1937 and the World War II experience reshape American liberalism? Please refer to specific individuals, organizations, and arguments presented in Alan Brinkley's book, The End of Reform, as you answer this question.

Due Date

Submit a 500 to 1000-word response statement to the dropbox in SHSUonline by midnight on September 16.

VoiceThread Discussion

As you prepare your response statement on the End of Reform, I'd like to engage each of you in a discussion of the book at VoiceThread.com. Please visit the presentation I've posted at http://voicethread.com/share/3359567/ and comment on at least two of the slides there. Further instructions are in the presentation itself.

Reading

Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).

Response Statement Prompt and Due Date

In his work on American labor history, Nelson Lichtenstein has argued that Walter Reuther, the President of the United Auto Workers (UAW), "opened the way for the general alignment of his union and the industrial union wing of the labor movement with the ... conservative, corporate-directed political and economic consensus emerging in the early Cold War years." In other words, Lichtenstein blames Reuther and his allies for abandoning the broad social democratic (liberal) agenda that the labor movement had fought for during the 1930s and adopting in its place a top-down, bureaucratized, anti-communist vision that placed the UAW within the confines of the Democratic party agenda. As Reuther and other labor leaders acquiesced to the developing economic realities of the post-war world, Lichtenstein argues, they allowed politicians from both the Republican and Democratic parties to ignore the need for fundamental reorganization of the economy, social welfare programming, and a more just foreign policy.

Although historian Kevin Boyle agrees with Lichtenstein that the story of Reuther's UAW is a cautionary tale “about labor's failure,” Boyle challenges the way Lichtenstein and other labor historians have presented the narrative. According to Boyle, what did Reuther and his allies at the UAW try to build during the postwar period between 1945 and 1968, and what political and institutional structures limited their effectiveness?

Due Date

Submit a 500 to 1000-word response statement to the dropbox in SHSUonline by midnight on September 26.

Reading

Neil Jumonville, Henry Steele Commager: Midcentury Liberalism and the History of the Present (Chapel Hill: UNC, 1999).

Response Statement Prompt

Although Henry Steele Commager was one of the most well-known historians of the mid-twentieth century -- appearing on television talk shows and across the spectrum of print media -- he is largely forgotten today. In fact, many current historians view Commager's work with open contempt. They complain that he and the other members of the post-war "Consensus school" of American history celebrated American exceptionalism and downplayed or ignored important social, racial, and cultural tensions at the heart of our nation's history.

In his recent biography of Commager, Neil Jumonville opts not to reject these criticisms in their entirety, but instead to show that Commager and his colleagues fought for a mid-century brand of liberalism that emphasized participatory democracy at home and a reasoned foreign policy abroad.

How does Jumonville portray the tension at the heart of Commager's career -- that between activism and scholarship? In answering this question, please provide the basic outlines of Commager's life and work, as well as brief vignettes on the other key historians discussed in the book.

Due Date

Submit a 500 to 1000-word response statement to the dropbox in SHSUonline by midnight on October 8.

Reading

David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2004).

Response Statement Prompt

When Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama in April 1963, a prominent group of white clergymen published a letter calling his activities in the city "unwise and untimely." Frustrated by this criticism, King drafted a short, but beautiful response, known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In his missive, Dr. King confessed that he was "gravely disappointed with ... white moderate[s]." Indeed, King complained that he had "almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate."

In his recent book, A Stone of Hope, David L. Chappell presents a similar criticism of white moderates (liberals). According to Chappell, why did liberals fail to overturn Jim Crow during the mid-twentieth century? What tradition did black Southerners rely on in their fight to win equality and justice? And, what role did Southern churches -- black and white -- play in the civil rights movement? You may answer these questions by presenting a formal review of A Stone of Hope by the due date listed below.

Due Date

Submit a 500 to 1000-word response statement to the dropbox in SHSUonline by midnight on October 18.

Reading

Allen Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

Response Statement Prompt and Due Date

Originally published in 1984, Allen Matusow's book, The Unraveling of America, provides a vivid description of the rise and fall of 1960's liberalism. Although Matusow eschews any serious coverage of foreign policy or the Vietnam War, his work offers a critical evaluation of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, as well as the war on poverty, the civil rights movement, and the counter-culture of the period. In the end, The Unraveling of America suggests that liberals lost their battle with conservatives "because large portions of the public believed that their idealism, which had shaped public policy for ... years, was somehow flawed, [and] that it had delivered far less than promised in the way of social progress and social harmony." On what basis does Matusow make this claim? Please present his primary arguments to answer this question.

Due Date

Submit a 500 to 1000-word response statement to the dropbox in SHSUonline by midnight on November 4.

Reading

David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972). Buy any edition.

Phillip E. Catton, "Refighting Vietnam in the History Books: The Historiography of the War," OAH Magazine | pdf

Jeffrey L. Littlejohn: Vietnam War Powerpoint | Handout on America in Vietnam

Response Statement Prompt

According to David Halberstam, who were the "best and the brightest"? What did they think about America and its place in the world? And, what were the repercussions of their vision in Vietnam?

Due Date

Submit a 500 to 1000-word response statement to the dropbox in SHSUonline by midnight on November 14.

Reading

Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton, 2006).

Response Statement Prompt

In his book, The Silent Majority, Matthew Lassiter examines the political and cultural debates that occurred as metropolitan areas in the Sunbelt South confronted suburbanization, racial integration, and court-ordered busing. As these debates occurred, how did the South move from the era of Jim Crow into the mainstream of national political affairs? Or, put another way, how did suburban white homeowners and school parents reshape the political culture of South and the nation at the dawn of the 1970s?

Due Date

Submit a 500 to 1000-word response statement to the dropbox in SHSUonline by midnight on November 28.

Reading

Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Metropolitan, 2004).

Response Statement Prompt

Thomas Frank's book, What's the Matter with Kansas, has been much discussed in the last decade. What is the thesis of the book, and what evidence does Frank draw on to support his argument?

Due Date

Submit a 500 to 1000-word response statement to the dropbox in SHSUonline by midnight on December 7.