ABSTRACT
A bit over half a century ago, conditions obtained in the United States that may seem rather strange today. Americans enjoyed a high degree of national unity and morale, proud of the successes of American society, which they expected to continue, and confident in the justice of their cause in the deadly struggle against Communist totalitarianism. The American population, just under 175 million in 1958 was growing rapidly. The domestic politics of the late 1950s would not have startled anyone twenty years earlier. They represented the continuation of the approximate deadlock that had developed in 1938 between conservatives and liberals. On economic matters, Dwight D. Eisenhower was unmistakably conservative, more so than any successor. One particular feature of Eisenhower's policies has often been misunderstood, even deliberately misrepresented. The reality, as Oscar Barck, an early chronicler of the postwar era put it, was that the "record of the Eisenhower Administration in the civil rights field far surpassed that of previous ones".
