Research Guides: Purdy/Kresge Library Globe: 1954 in Context

Our Place in Time: 1954

Let's take a moment to orient ourselves in the time this globe was manufactured. 1954 was an influential year for the world, and many major and notable events took place at this moment. The U.S. and the Soviet Union were engaged in a globe-spanning rivalry known as the Cold War, and yet the death of Joseph Stalin the previous year had caused significant changes in the Soviet Union. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's "domino theory" speech formed U.S. international policy for decades to come. The Brown v. Board of Education case saw the Supreme Court unanimously declare segregation on the basis of race in schools to be unconsitutional. This year saw the progression and end to the First Indochina War, and as a result of the war and The Berlin Conference and 1954 Geneva Conference, the states of North and South Vietnam were formed, setting the stage for the Vietnam War. There were notable innovations in science and technology such as the first mass vaccination of children against polio in the U.S. in Pittsburgh, and significant cultural moments such as the publishing of The Lord of the Rings in three volumes, among others.

Continue exploring below to learn more about this fascinating year in world history!

The making of history, or historical narratives, is a process that happens every time a piece of history is told. Just as any history book, article, video, or other piece of media is made by people with certain biases and values, this webpage has been put together by myself, a person with certain biases and values. No telling of history is "objective" and without input by the teller, who decides what stories are told, from what perspective, what those stories might mean, and more. Even before that, history is created and silenced at the moment it happens or is recorded, by it being written down or not, by what voices and materials are preserved, by what voices and materials are not preserved, and by who tells the initial story. In light of this, I recognize that this overview of 1954 encompasses only a small fraction of the events that happened that year, and reflects my own limited knowledge, biases, and selections.

Click on the next tab over to review some resources on the making and silencing of history.

This video examines the history of history-making. How people over time saw and studied history, what history was considered important, and how society shapes perceptions of history.

Silencing the Past (20th Anniversary Edition) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot Foreword by Hazel V. Carby A modern classic about power and the making of history, with a new foreword by a prominent scholar Placing the West's failure to acknowledge the most successful slave revolt in history alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debates over the Alamo and Christopher Columbus, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history. Presented here with a new foreword by renowned scholar Hazel V. Carby, Silencing the Past is an indispensable analysis of the silences in our historical narratives, of what is omitted and what is recorded, what is remembered and what is forgotten, and what these silences reveal about inequalities of power.
ISBN: 9780807080535
Publication Date: 2015-03-17

Detroit in 1954

Detroit in 1954 was a city in an economic upturn, a "postwar boom" resulting from automotive manufacturing following World War II. During the war, Detroit's factories had churned out war machines for the U.S. military. At this time, however, the factories turned back to automotive production. It was a time of economic revival but also uncertainty as steady jobs were hard to come by in the industry, and racist practices and ideas created disparities. At the same time, the Northland Center, the largest shopping mall in the world, deputed this year. A new Vernor's Ginger Ale plant was created in Detroit as well. Stevie Wonder moved to Detroit with his family, later to become a famous musician under the Motown record label which was founded five years later in 1959. Lastly, the Islamic Center of America in Detroit had its beginnings this year.

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Images of America, Remembering Hudson's: The Grand Dame of Detroit Retailing A journal featuring historical photographs of the Hudson's retail store, includes the Northland Shopping Center built in 1954, the largest suburban shopping center in the world.
Muslim West Detroit: Black Neighborhood Institutions and Their Legacies Abstract: African American Muslim leaders in West Detroit are working in concert with local mosques and Muslim-led institutions to address the socioeconomic problems faced by low-income Detroit residents in their areas. Their modes of philanthropy reflect national trends, as Black Muslim institutions historically have demonstrated high levels of neighborhood stewardship. This ethnographic study discusses how leaders affiliated with three West Detroit mosques and associated institutions propagate this tradition of localized care. These mosques and institutions are situated in contiguous neighborhoods, comprising an area that is lacking sufficient access to capital investment and state services. The philanthropy of these Detroit-based African American Muslims is taking on a growing urgency with the progress of Detroit’s neoliberal development plans, which further marginalize low-income neighborhoods. The community-building efforts of African American Muslims offer a counter-balance to forces that are further stratifying Detroit and represent a source of hope for racial justice in the city
The Young Musicians of Motown: A Success Story of Urban Music Education An overview of various Motown musicians and how their upbringing and public school educations led to their careers in music.

Communists and Community by Ryan S. Pettengill Communists and Community seeks to reframe the traditional chronology of the Communist Party in the United States as a means to better understand the change that occurred in community activism in the mid-twentieth century. Ryan Pettengill argues that Popular Front activism continued to flourish throughout the war years and into the postwar period. In Detroit, where there was a critical mass of heavy industry, Communist Party activists mobilized support for civil rights and affordable housing, brought attention to police brutality, sought protection for the foreign-born, and led a movement for world peace.  Communists and Community demonstrates that the Communist Party created a social space where activists became effective advocates for the socioeconomic betterment of a multiracial work force. Pettengill uses Detroit as a case study to examine how communist activists and their sympathizers maintained a community to enhance the quality of life for the city's working class. He investigates the long-term effects of organized labor's decision to force communists out of the unions and abandon community-based activism. Communists and Community recounts how leftists helped workers, people of color, and other under-represented groups became part of the mainstream citizenry in America.
ISBN: 9781439919064
Publication Date: 2020-05-29
Disruption in Detroit by Daniel J. Clark It is a bedrock American belief: the 1950s were a golden age of prosperity for autoworkers. Flush with high wages and enjoying the benefits of generous union contracts, these workers became the backbone of a thriving blue-collar middle class. It is also a myth. Daniel J. Clark began by interviewing dozens of former autoworkers in the Detroit area and found a different story--one of economic insecurity caused by frequent layoffs, unrealized contract provisions, and indispensable second jobs. Disruption in Detroit is a vivid portrait of workers and an industry that experienced anything but stable prosperity. As Clark reveals, the myths--whether of rising incomes or hard-nosed union bargaining success--came later. In the 1950s, ordinary autoworkers, union leaders, and auto company executives recognized that although jobs in their industry paid high wages, they were far from steady and often impossible to find.
ISBN: 9780252050756
Publication Date: 2018-09-14
Detroit by Scott Martelle At its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Detroit's status as epicenter of the American auto industry made it a vibrant, populous, commercial hub--and then the bottom fell out. Detroit : A Biography takes a long, unflinching look at the evolution of one of America's great cities and one of the nation's greatest urban failures. This authoritative yet accessible narrative seeks to explain how the city grew to become the heart of American industry and how its utter collapse--from nearly two million residents in 1950 to less than 715,000 some six decades later--resulted from a confluence of public policies, private industry decisions, and deeply ingrained racism. Drawing from U.S. Census data and including profiles of individuals who embody the recent struggles and hopes of the city, this book chronicles the evolution of what a modern city once was and what it has become. The Chapters "Postwar Boom" and "Race in the Fifties" are especially relevant to 1954 Detroit and generally Detroit in the 1950s.
ISBN: 9781613730676
Publication Date: 2014-03-01
Muslim American City by Alisa Perkins Explores how Muslim Americans test the boundaries of American pluralism In 2004, the al-Islah Islamic Center in Hamtramck, Michigan, set off a contentious controversy when it requested permission to use loudspeakers to broadcast the adhān, or Islamic call to prayer. The issue gained international notoriety when media outlets from around the world flocked to the city to report on what had become a civil battle between religious tolerance and Islamophobic sentiment. The Hamtramck council voted unanimously to allow mosques to broadcast the adhān, making it one of the few US cities to officially permit it through specific legislation. Muslim American City explores how debates over Muslim Americans' use of both public and political space have challenged and ultimately reshaped the boundaries of urban belonging. Drawing on more than ten years of ethnographic research in Hamtramck, which boasts one of the largest concentrations of Muslim residents of any American city, Alisa Perkins shows how the Muslim American population has grown and asserted itself in public life. She explores, for example, the efforts of Muslim American women to maintain gender norms in neighborhoods, mosques, and schools, as well as Muslim Americans' efforts to organize public responses to municipal initiatives. Her in-depth fieldwork incorporates the perspectives of both Muslims and non-Muslims, including Polish Catholics, African American Protestants, and other city residents. Drawing particular attention to Muslim American expressions of religious and cultural identity in civil life--particularly in response to discrimination and stereotyping--Perkins questions the popular assumption that the religiosity of Muslim minorities hinders their capacity for full citizenship in secular societies. She shows how Muslims and non-Muslims have, through their negotiations over the issues over the use of space, together invested Muslim practice with new forms of social capital and challenged nationalist and secularist notions of belonging.
ISBN: 9781479828012
Publication Date: 2020-07-07

Separating Truth From Myth in the So-Called ‘Golden Age’ of the Detroit Auto Industry This online article from the Smithsonian reconsiders what the "Golden Age" of Detroit auto-manufacturing really meant for workers.
Vernor's Ginger Ale A brief overview of the history of Vernor's Ginger Ale, and its construction of a new plant in Detroit in 1954.
Wonder, Stevie A short biography of Stevie Wonder from the Detroit Historical Society. He moved with his family to Detroit in 1954.
Islamic Center of America A short history of the Islamic Center of America in Detroit, which Imam Mohammed Jawed Chirri became the leader of the organization behind it in 1954, called the Islamic Center Foundation Society.

Political and International Events in 1954

Encompassing such events as U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower's "Domino Theory" speech, the condemnation of senator Joseph Mccarthy, a CIA-coordinated coup in Guatemala, the 1954 Berlin and later Geneva Conference, the First Indochina War and the Battle of Bien Dien Phu, 1954's political landscape was one that saw the end to, beginnings, and unfolding of important changes to the Cold War arena and the world.

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'Hell in a Very Small Place' Cold War and Decolonisation in the Assault on the Vietnamese Body at Dien Bien Phu Abstract: This essay examines how Vietnamese combatants of the communist-led Democratic Republic of Vietnam may have experienced battle during the Indochina War's most intensive phase beginning in 1950 and culminating in the Vietnamese victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. It seeks to provide what is almost always missing in military histories of Dien Bien Phu—the unprecedented assault on the Vietnamese body. It uses the Vietnamese experience to think about what might be some of the similarities and differences between the Western experience of war and those occurring in the non-Western world, especially at this deadly southern intersection between decolonization and the Cold War. Vietnamese bodies were particularly vulnerable to the technological destruction of modern war as decolonization and the Cold War combined in an explosive and uneven mix from 1950.
Dien Bien Phu—fifty years on Abstract: Although 2004 marks the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the end of France's colonial presence in Indochina, the war seems to have little resonance for the majority in today's France. Official commemorations of the anniversary, though muted in France, niythologise the battle as epic and legendary: the epitome of military honour and heroism. Veterans' memories, however, are evoked in terms of betrayal, abandonment and humiliation. What little debate exists over the war has stalled over the issue of whether the war would have been lost had its opponents not sought to scupper the French effort in Indochina.
Neutralizing Indochina The 1954 Geneva Conference and China’s Efforts to Isolate the United States Based on declassified documents from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Vietnam, and the former Soviet Union, this essay examines China’s policy toward the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina in relation to the United States. The article shows that Chinese leaders wanted to neutralize Indochina in order to forestall U.S. military intervention in the conflict, which, if it occurred, would directly threaten the PRC’s southern flank. In pursuit of this objective, Chinese officials sought to exploit differences between the United States and its two main allies, Britain and France, and thereby induce U.S. policymakers to agree to end the first Indochina War between France and Vietnam. Because Chinese leaders worried that the United States might respond by trying to foment splits within the Communist camp, they worked to build a united front with the Soviet Union and North Vietnam, both of which shared Beijing’s anxiety about U.S. intervention, and to convince the Viet Minh guerrilla leaders to make necessary concessions for a negotiated settlement at Geneva.
Strategic Plan Of The Major Countries At The Geneva Conference On Indochina And The Position Of The Democratic Republic Of Vietnam On The Issue Of Restoring Peace In Indochina In 1954 Abstract: On July 21, 1954, the Geneva Accords on Indochina was signed in Geneva, Switzerland, ending the Vietnamese people's long-term resistance war against the French colonialists, completely liberating North Vietnam, opening a new phase of the Vietnamese revolution with the aim of reunifying the country. The signing of the Geneva Accords on Indochina confirmed the first international legal recognition of the three Indochina countries signed and recognized by the major countries attending the Conference. In particular, for Vietnam, this is also the first time that major countries have had to recognize Vietnam's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, creating a very important premise and legal basis for Vietnam to continue its struggle against the intervention and aggression of the US imperialists. Many foreign and Vietnamese scholars have researched and published many works in the form of books and articles from different perspectives and approaches regarding the Geneva Conference and Accords on Indochina. In this article, the author approaches from the perspective of a researcher about the two wars against France and the US of the Vietnamese people on the basis of accessing published domestic and international open sources with the hope of clarifying three issues: 1. Analyzing and clarifying the international context at the time of the Geneva Conference on Indochina; 2. Clarifying strategic intentions and purposes of major countries attending the Geneva Conference on Indochina; 3. Clarifying the position of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam towards the Geneva Conference on the restoration of peace in Indochina.
The Democratic Domino Theory: An Empirical Investigation Abstract: According to the democratic domino theory, increases or decreases in democracy in one country spread and “infect” neighboring countries, increasing or decreasing their democracy in turn. Using spatial econometrics and panel data that cover over 130 countries between 1850 and 2000, this article empirically investigates the democratic domino theory. We find that democratic dominoes do in fact fall as the theory contends. However, these dominoes fall significantly “lighter” than the importance of this model suggests. Countries “catch” only about 11% of the increases or decreases in their average geographic neighbors’ increases or decreases in democracy. This finding has potentially important foreign policy implications. The “lightness” with which democratic dominoes fall suggests that even if foreign military intervention aimed at promoting democracy in undemocratic countries succeeds in democratizing these nations, intervention is likely to have only a small effect on democracy in their broader regions.
A “Moral Challenge”: Journalists, Joe McCarthy, and the Struggle for Truth, 1950–1955 News coverage of US Sen. Joseph McCarthy has long been studied, and consistent throughout this extensive research is the implication that he influenced journalism standards—specifically, objectivity. Drawing on trade publications and professional magazines to examine those implications, journalists not only discussed McCarthy coverage but acknowledged that reporting on the senator was difficult. Often, journalists were confronted by their own shortcomings and prompted to question their practices. Many felt objectivity hampered their ability to portray the truth about the senator; indeed, some believed that objectivity spread misinformation. Journalists responded by discussing, and in many instances embracing, interpretive reporting to provide context. They saw covering McCarthy as an opportunity to improve journalism. Between 1950 and 1955, journalists reconsidered objectivity and expanded the idea of fairness beyond simple balance. It also led journalists toward a responsibility to interpret and explain facts as well as convey a fuller truth. These strategies could still benefit journalists today
Revisiting the 1954 Coup in Guatemala Abstract: This article reevaluates the U.S.-backed coup in 1954 that overthrew Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. The coup is generally portrayed as the opening shot of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere and a watershed moment for U.S.–Latin American relations, when the United States supplanted its Good Neighbor Policy with a hardline anti-Communist approach. Despite the extensive literature on the coup, the Soviet Union’s perspectives on the matter have received scant discussion. Using Soviet-bloc and United Nations (UN) archival sources, this article shows that Latin American Communists and Soviet sympathizers were hugely influential in shaping Moscow’s perceptions of hemispheric relations. Although regional Communists petitioned the Soviet Union to provide support to Árbenz, officials in Moscow were unwilling to prop up what they considered a “bourgeoisdemocratic” revolution tottering under the weight of U.S. military pressure. Soviet leaders were, however, keen to use their position on the UN Security Council to challenge the authority of the Organization of American States and undermine U.S. conceptions of “hemispheric solidarity.” The coup, moreover, revealed the force of anti-U.S. nationalism in Latin America during a period in which Soviet foreign policy was in flux and the Cold War was becoming globalized.

Dien Bien Phu by Anthony Tucker-Jones When the world held its breath It is 25 years since the end of the Cold War, now a generation old. It began over 75 years ago, in 1944long before the last shots of the Second World War had echoed across the wastelands of Eastern Europewith the brutal Greek Civil War. The battle lines are no longer drawn, but they linger on, unwittingly or not, in conflict zones such as Iraq, Somalia and Ukraine. In an era of mass-produced AK-47s and ICBMs, one such flashpoint was French Indochina At the end of the Second World War France sought to reassert its military prestige, but instead suffered humiliating defeat at Dien Bien Phu in French colonial Indochina. The First Indochina war became a textbook example of how not to conduct counterinsurgency warfare against nationalist guerrillas. Anthony Tucker-Jones guides the reader through this decisive conflict with a concise text and contemporary photographs, providing critical insight into the conduct of the war by both sides and its wider ramifications.The Viet Minh, after resisting the Japanese in Indochina, sought independence for Vietnam from France. The French, with limited military resources, moved swiftly to reassert control in 1945, sparking a decade-long conflict. French defense of Hanoi rested on holding the Red River Delta, making it a key battleground. When the Viet Minh invaded neighboring Laos the French deployed to fight a set-piece battle at Dien Bien Phu, in 1954, but instead were trapped. All relief attempts failed and French defenses were slowly overwhelmed. America considered coming to the garrisons rescue using nuclear weapons, but instead left it to its fate, which set the scene for the Algerian and the Vietnam conflicts.
ISBN: 9781526708014
Publication Date: 2017-08-30
Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 by Pierre Asselin Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War opens in 1954 with the signing of the Geneva accords that ended the eight-year-long Franco-Indochinese War and created two Vietnams. In agreeing to the accords, Ho Chi Minh and other leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam anticipated a new period of peace leading to national reunification under their rule; they never imagined that within a decade they would be engaged in an even bigger feud with the United States. Basing his work on new and largely inaccessible Vietnamese materials as well as French, British, Canadian, and American documents, Pierre Asselin explores the communist path to war. Specifically, he examines the internal debates and other elements that shaped Hanoi's revolutionary strategy in the decade preceding U.S. military intervention, and resulting domestic and foreign programs. Without exonerating Washington for its role in the advent of hostilities in 1965, Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War demonstrates that those who directed the effort against the United States and its allies in Saigon were at least equally responsible for creating the circumstances that culminated in arguably the most tragic conflict of the Cold War era.
ISBN: 9780520956551
Publication Date: 2013-08-02
The End of the First Indochina War by James Waite The French withdrawal from Vietnam in 1954 was the product of global pressures and triggered significant global consequences. By treating the war as an international issue, this book places Indochina at the center of the Cold War in the mid-1950s. Arguing that the Indochina War cannot be understood as a topic of Franco-US relations, but ought to be treated as international history, this volume brings in Vietnamese and other global agents, including New Zealand, Australia, and especially Britain, as well as China and the Soviet Union. Importantly, the book also argues that the successful French withdrawal from Vietnam - a political defeat for the Eisenhower administration - helped to avert outright warfare between the major powers, although with very mixed results for the inhabitants of Vietnam who faced partition and further bloodshed. The End of the First Indochina War explores the complexities of intra-alliance competition over global strategy - especially between the United States and British Commonwealth - arguing that these rivalries are as important to understanding the Cold War as east-west confrontation. This is the first truly global interpretation of the French defeat in 1954, based on the author's research in five western countries and the latest scholarship from historians of Vietnam, China, and Russia. Readers will find much that is new both in terms of archival revelations and original interpretations.
ISBN: 9780203110041
Publication Date: 2012-08-21
Geneva 1954. the Settlement of the Indochinese War by Robert F. Randle In this full account of the Geneva Accords of 1954, Dr. Randle assesses the Eisenhower-Dulles policies in the critical months leading up to the conference, the effects of the antipathy between Foster Dulles and Anthony Eden, Mendes-France's policies in Indochina and Europe, and the day-by-day bargaining over political issues at Geneva. He presents a careful legal analysis of the defects of the Agreements and discusses the actual implementation of them in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Originally published in 1969.
ISBN: 9781400877560
Publication Date: 2015-12-08
The Last Days of Stalin by Joshua Rubenstein A gripping account of the months before and after Stalin's death and how his demise reshaped the course of twentieth-century history Joshua Rubenstein's riveting account takes us back to the second half of 1952 when no one could foresee an end to Joseph Stalin's murderous regime. He was poised to challenge the newly elected U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower with armed force, and was also broadening a vicious campaign against Soviet Jews. Stalin's sudden collapse and death in March 1953 was as dramatic and mysterious as his life. It is no overstatement to say that his passing marked a major turning point in the twentieth century.   The Last Days of Stalin is an engaging, briskly told account of the dictator's final active months, the vigil at his deathbed, and the unfolding of Soviet and international events in the months after his death. Rubenstein throws fresh light on the devious plotting of Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, and other "comrades in arms" who well understood the significance of the dictator's impending death; the witness-documented events of his death as compared to official published versions; Stalin's rumored plans to forcibly exile Soviet Jews; the responses of Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles to the Kremlin's conciliatory gestures after Stalin's death; and the momentous repercussions when Stalin's regime of terror was cut short.
ISBN: 9780300192223
Publication Date: 2016-05-31
Bad Faith by Andrew Feffer In late summer 1940, as war spread across Europe and as the nation pulled itself out of the Great Depression, an anticommunist hysteria convulsed New York City. Targeting the city's municipal colleges and public schools, the New York state legislature's Rapp-Coudert investigation dragged hundreds of suspects before public and private tribunals to root out a perceived communist conspiracy to hijack the city's teachers unions, subvert public education, and indoctrinate the nation's youth. Drawing on the vast archive of Rapp-Coudert records, Bad Faith provides the first full history of this witch-hunt, which lasted from August 1940 to March 1942. Anticipating McCarthyism and making it possible, the episode would have repercussions for decades to come. In recapturing this moment in the history of prewar anticommunism, Bad Faith challenges assumptions about the origins of McCarthyism, the liberal political tradition, and the role of anticommunism in modern American life. With roots in the city's political culture, Rapp-Coudert enjoyed the support of not only conservatives but also key liberal reformers and intellectuals who, well before the Cold War raised threats to national security, joined in accusing communists of "bad faith" and branded them enemies of American democracy. Exploring fundamental schisms between liberals and communists, Bad Faith uncovers a dark, "countersubversive" side of liberalism, which involved charges of misrepresentation, lying, and deception, and led many liberals to argue that the communist left should be excluded from American educational institutions and political life. This study of the Rapp-Coudert inquisition raises difficult questions about the good faith of the many liberals willing to aid and endorse the emerging Red scare, as they sacrificed principles of open debate and academic freedom in the interest of achieving what they believed would be effective modern government based on bipartisanship and a new and seemingly permanent economic prosperity.
ISBN: 9780823281183
Publication Date: 2019-01-08
After the Coup by Timothy J. Smith (Editor, Contribution by); Abigail E. Adams (Editor, Contribution by); Richard N. Adams (Contribution by); David Carey Jr (Contribution by); Christa Little-Siebold (Contribution by); Judith M. Maxwell (Contribution by); Victor D. Montejo (Contribution by); June C. Nash (Contribution by) This exceptional collection revisits the aftermath of the 1954 coup that ousted the democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz. Contributors frame the impact of 1954 not only in terms of the liberal reforms and coffee revolutions of the nineteenth century, but also in terms of post-1954 U.S. foreign policy and the genocide of the 1970s and 1980s. This volume is of particular interest in the current era of the United States' re-emerging foreign policy based on preemptive strikes and a presumed clash of civilizations. Recent research and the release of newly declassified U.S. government documents underscore the importance of reading Guatemala's current history through the lens of 1954. Scholars and researchers who have worked in Guatemala from the 1940s to the present articulate how the coup fits into ethnographic representations of Guatemala. Highlighting the voices of individuals with whom they have lived and worked, the contributors also offer an unmatched understanding of how the events preceding and following the coup played out on the ground. Contributors are Abigail E. Adams, Richard N. Adams, David Carey Jr., Christa Little-Siebold, Judith M. Maxwell, Victor D. Montejo, June C. Nash, and Timothy J. Smith.
ISBN: 9780252094026
Publication Date: 2011-08-11

VIDEO: Geneva Conference Accords (From The Vietnam War : A Film by Ken Burns) Learn about the international conference that settled the future of Vietnam, splitting it into north and south. The agreement did not satisfy the Vietnamese, France, China, or Russia and sewed the seeds for future violence.
VIDEO: Joseph McCarthy's Downfall Was Accusing the Army of Communism In mid-1954, a riveted nation watched Senator Joseph McCarthy accuse the U.S. Army of being infiltrated by communists. But the army's lawyer, Joseph Welch refused to be bullied, and struck back. (03:23)

(03/01/1954). "Four power discussions at Berlin [statements and memoranda issued by the conference of foreign ministers, Jan. 25-29, 1954]; foreign ministers continue Berlin talks [Jan. 28-Feb. 4, 1954]; foreign ministers' discussions continue [Feb. 5-10, Statements and memoranda issued after the talks at the 1954 Berlin Conference.

Society, Culture, and the Law in 1954

Giving a brief glimpse into some of the cultural and societal changes that took place in the year 1954, this section covers events such as the Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed segregated schools at the federal level, the first Newport Jazz Festival, the release of Elvis Presley's first single "That's All Right (Mama)", and the first published versions of The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Flies, and Sports Illustrated. The resources included in this section attempt to give a more in-depth look at some of these important happenings.

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RECONCEPTUALIZING THE HARMS OF DISCRIMINATION: HOW BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION HELPED TO FURTHER WHITE SUPREMACY An article examining the harmful effects of racial discrimination and the failure to recognize these harms in the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
The Troublesome Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education This article reflects on the 60th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision while discussing the significant lessons learned from this and subsequent court decisions.
New Evidence about Brown v. Board of Education: The Complex Effects of School Racial Composition on Achievement Abstract: Uncovering the effect of school racial composition is difficult because racial mixing is not accidental but instead an outcome of government and family choices. Using rich panel data on the achievement of Texas students, we disentangle racial composition effects from other aspects of school quality and from differences in abilities and family background. The estimates strongly indicate that a higher percentage of black schoolmates reduces achievement for blacks, while it implies a much smaller and generally insignificant effect on whites. These results suggest that existing levels of segregation in Texas explain a small but meaningful portion of the racial achievement gap.
An Exercise in Subtleties and the Transmission of Racism: An Analysis of Sports Illustrated Covers For the first time in the popular culture, white Americans were exposed to, applauded, recognized, and rewarded minorities for their achievements. Since the initial integration of sports, minority participation has increased dramatically; and perhaps more importantly, white Americans have not only accepted, but have celebrated minority athletes in ways unimaginable when Jackie Robison first donned a Dodgers uniform in 1947 (Price 1997b). To the extent that minorities have been historically underrepresented in the central positions, judgments about the players, their contributions to the outcomes of games, and their contributions to their respective sports are likely to have been affected. [...]negative racial stereotypes (associating crime, violence, lower intelligence levels, and superior athletic ability with blacks in general) are commonly reproduced by the images and discourse surrounding minority athletes (Helmreich 1997). Sport fans range in age from 3- and 4-years olds playing Pee Wee baseball and youth soccer, to retirees participating in or watching tennis, bowling, golf, and many other sports. Because sport has the potential to influence the perceptions and beliefs of people through the communication of racial messages-positive and negative, obvious and subtle-it is important that we fully understand the power of sport. [...]no similar data source exists for professional basketball. [...]to estimate minority participation in basketball, the number of black and white players on championship-winning teams was counted.
What Color is a Golden Boy? The Glorification and Disparagement of Male Superstar Athletes in Sports Illustrated This study examined media representations of male superstar athletes over more than three decades. Some journalists portrayed their subjects as smart, physically attractive young men at the top of their games. Other writers emphasized their flaws and told stories of tarnished heroes. Based on an analysis of 140 references to sports stars in Sports Illustrated magazine articles, the results showed that favorable and unfavorable framing of athletes depended on their race/ethnicity, the dominance of their sport, and the historical context in which they played. Compared to white sports stars, racial minority athletes were more often portrayed with unfavorable frames, such as unintelligent, immoral, or lacking charm. Athletes from lesser-known sports were also more likely to be described with unfavorable frames than athletes from the four most dominant sports in the US (football, basketball, baseball, and hockey). Both favorable and unfavorable frames were more common in articles published in the most recent period (2013–2021) than in earlier decades (1987–2012), signaling an increasing interest among journalists in the personal qualities of sports stars. The study provides new empirical and theoretical insight on the relationships between three social antecedents—racism, hegemonic sport culture, and technological change—and the framing of superstar athletes.
Antenarratives of organizational change: The microstoria of Burger King’s storytelling in space, time and strategic context Abstract: This research extends our understanding of organizational sensemaking through storytelling to highlight complex processes of organizational change in space, time and strategic context. We focus on the concept of antenarratives, how managers’ and other stakeholders’ fragmented speculations regarding futures may legitimate or resist organizational change. Antenarratives are not yet fully-formed narratives, but rather pieces of organizational discourse that help to construct identities and interests. We explain the theoretical relevance of Russian socio-linguist Mikhail Bakhtin’s space and time conceptualizations (chronotopes) for strategic narratives of change, and illustrate how antenarratives play important roles in narrative chronotopes. We relate German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s reasons for being in relation to others (existential ontology) to stakeholders’ and organizational identities, and to antenarrative glimpses in Bakhtin’s chronotopes. Through these theorizations, we contribute to conversations surrounding managerial discourses of organizational change, and discussions on how researchers may analyze antenarratives in relation to stabilized narratives. We use microstoria, or little-story analysis, and the case of Burger King Corporation’s international strategizing, to highlight emergent conflicts and their resolution for sensemaking that includes diverse organizational stakeholders and affects organizational effectiveness.
Hipsters, Bluebloods, Rebels, and Hooligans: The Cultural Politics of the Newport Jazz Festival, 1954–1960 A look at the Newport Jazz Festival begun in 1954 and its cultural implications.
Beyond environmental imagination: Revisiting J.R.R. Tolkien's literary landscapes in The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) Abstract: J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was highly influential in shaping modern fantasy literature and popularising medievalism. Scholarship has examined various aspects of Tolkien's literary imagination in The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955); however, to date, there has been no thorough scrutiny of the significance of aesthetics in his creative works. This paper contends that Tolkien's magnum opus as part of his long-life myth-making project was shaped profoundly by the late 18th-century aesthetics of the sublime. It draws on Burkean physiological sublime to argue that contrary to Kantian rationality, certain Tolkienian landscapes demonstrate the qualities of the natural sublime and generate physical experiences on the observer that accentuates the primacy of emotions over reason. The article proposes a new direction in Tolkien studies by highlighting the aesthetic overtones of Tolkien's engagement with the sublime, which played a significant role in constructing his English mythology.
‘I lost the faith in humanity.’ Using William Golding’s Lord of the Flies to explore ethical and moral issues through transnational, online literary exchange Abstract: Researchers into Literature and Education from Norway, Pakistan and the United Kingdom used William Golding’s Lord of the Flies to explore the potential of a literary text to encourage intercultural dialogue, employing an innovative teaching method, Google Circles, to provide a platform for asynchronous online discussion among three cohorts of students in higher education. The authors present here the ethical and moral responses to the novel. The authors’ analysis of the data explores the students’ thoughts about human nature and law and order, as well as responses made by the students to moral turning points in Golding’s novel. The authors report that – although the novel provided a space for students from three national contexts to debate major existential questions using the affordances of the asynchronous digital platform – the students found it difficult to distinguish between the writer, the implied author and the narrative voice.

The Brown V. Board of Education Trial by Julia Garbus (Editor) William E. Cox shares the story of what student life was like for an African American boy before segregation. Another first-hand narrative explains how a young African American teen, facing a mob, helped integrate a high school. Joan Johns Cobb, the sister of a "Brown" plaintiff, describes the day that her sister stood up for better school conditions. This volume not only gives a foundational understanding of the Brown v. Board of Education trial and its events, it gives readers a compelling, unforgettable first-hand look from those who lived through it.
ISBN: 9780737773422
Publication Date: 2014-12-05
Keep on Keeping On by Brian J. Daugherity Virginia was a battleground state in the struggle to implement Brown v. Board of Education, with one of the South?s largest and strongest NAACP units fighting against a program of noncompliance crafted by the state?s political leaders. Keep On Keeping On offers a detailed examination of how African Americans and the NAACP in Virginia successfully pursued a legal agenda that provided new educational opportunities for the state?s black population in the face of fierce opposition from segregationists and the Democratic Party of Harry F. Byrd Sr. Keep On Keeping On is the first book to offer a comprehensive view of African Americans? efforts to obtain racial equality in Virginia in the later twentieth century. Brian J. Daugherity considers the relationship between the various levels of the NAACP, the ideas and actions of other African American organizations, and the stances of Virginia?s political leaders, white liberals and moderates, and segregationists. In doing so, the author provides a better understanding of the connections between the actions of white political leaders and those of black civil rights activists working to bring about school desegregation. Blending social, legal, southern, and African American history, this book sheds new light on the civil rights movement and white resistance to civil rights in Virginia and the South.
ISBN: 9780813938899
Publication Date: 2016-08-03
Skimpy Coverage by Bonnie M. Hagerman Skimpy Coverage explores Sports Illustrated?s treatment of female athletes since the iconic magazine?s founding in 1954. The first book-length study of its kind, this accessible account charts the ways in which Sports Illustrated?arguably the leading sports publication in postwar America?engaged with the social and cultural changes affecting women?s athletics and the conversations about gender and identity they spawned. Bonnie Hagerman examines the emergence of the magazine?s archetypal female athlete?good-looking, straight, and white?and argues that such qualities were the same ones the magazine prized in the women who appeared in its wildly successful Swimsuit Issue. As Hagerman shows, the female athlete and the swimsuit model, at least for the magazine, were essentially one and the same. Despite this conflation, and the challenges it poses, Hagerman also tracks the distance that sportswomen?including Wilma Rudolph, Billie Jean King, Serena Williams, and Megan Rapinoe?have traveled both within Sports Illustrated?s pages and without. Blending sports with gender history, Skimpy Coverage profiles numerous sportswomen who have used athletics and the platform sport offers to push for empowerment, freedom, equality, and acceptance in ways that have complemented and inspired broader feminist agendas.
ISBN: 9780813949239
Publication Date: 2023-05-15
The History of Jazz by Ted Gioia Ted Gioia's History of Jazz has been universally hailed as a classic--acclaimed by jazz critics and fans around the world. Now Gioia brings his magnificent work completely up-to-date, drawing on the latest research and revisiting virtually every aspect of the music, past and present.Gioia tells the story of jazz as it had never been told before, in a book that brilliantly portrays the legendary jazz players, the breakthrough styles, and the world in which it evolved. Here are the giants of jazz and the great moments of jazz history--Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, cool jazz greats such as Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, and Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie's advocacy of modern jazz in the 1940s, Miles Davis's 1955 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, Ornette Coleman's experiments with atonality, Pat Metheny's visionary extension of jazz-rock fusion, the contemporary sounds of Wynton Marsalis, and the post-modernists of the current day. Gioia provides the reader with lively portraits of these and many other great musicians, intertwined with vibrant commentary on the music they created. He also evokes the many worlds of jazz, taking the reader to the swamp lands of the Mississippi Delta, the bawdy houses of New Orleans, the rent parties of Harlem, the speakeasies of Chicago during the Jazz Age, the after hours spots of corrupt Kansas city, the Cotton Club, the Savoy, and the other locales where the history of jazz was made. And as he traces the spread of this protean form, Gioia provides much insight into the social context in which the music was born.
ISBN: 9780199830589
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy by Gregory Bassham (Editor); Eric Bronson (Editor) The Lord of the Rings is intended to be applicable to the real world of relationships, religion, pleasure, pain, and politics. Tolkien himself said that his grand tale of wizards, orcs, hobbits, and elves was aimed at truth and good morals in the actual world. Analysis of the popular appeal of The Lord of the Rings (on websites and elsewhere) shows that Tolkien fans are hungry for discussion of the urgent moral and cosmological issues arising out of this fantastic epic story. Can political power be wielded for good, or must it always corrupt? Does technology destroy the truly human? Is it morally wrong to give up hope? Can we find meaning in chance events? In The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy, seventeen young philosophy professors, all of them ardent Tolkien fans and most of them contributors to the four earlier volumes in the Popular Culture and Philosophy series, address some of these important issues and show how clues to their solutions may be found in the imaginary world of Middle-earth. The book is divided into five sections, concerned with Power and the Ring, the Quest for Happiness, Good and Evil in Middle-earth, Time and Mortality, and the Relevance
ISBN: 9780812698060
Publication Date: 2013-11-13
Elvis Presley by Spencer Leigh; Russell Watson (Foreword by) Published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of Elvis's death. With unique material and exclusive interviews with fellow musicians, author Spencer Leigh has written a compelling biography and the most definitive account of one of the world's biggest musical stars.
ISBN: 9780857161659
Publication Date: 2018-01-30

Brittanica, Burger King Corporation An overview of Burger King, the restaurant food chain that self-proclaims its founding to be in 1954 in Miami, Florida.
Brown v. Board of Education from the National Archives Overview of the Brown v. Board of Education case.

Video narrated by Clint Smith, an educational video about the Brown v. Board of Education case from Crashcourse Black American History.

A description of the themes of William Golding's 1954 novel The Lord of the Flies. Some spoilers follow.

Recording of Elvis Presley's first single released 1954, a cover of "That's all Right (Mama)".

Science, Technology and Medicine in 1954

Delving into the history of science, technology, and medicine in 1954, we find many significant changes. The Georgetown-IBM experiment demoed machines' ability for use in language translation, and hopefully looked to a future where language would become less and less of a barrier. The polio vaccine trials conducted by Jonas Salk this year was one of the largest and most publicized clinical trials ever undertaken. It tested the new vaccine and a placebo on 623,972 children in 11 states. A year later Salk found an 80-90 percent success rate in the trials. The first atomic power station was put into operation in Obninsk, the first kidney was successfully transplanted, and the rollout of the first commercial transistor radio made media more portable than ever.

Check out the tabs above to dive deeper into the history of science, technology, and medicine in 1954.

“A calculated risk”: the Salk polio vaccine field trials of 1954 Meldrum examined the process by which the design of the 1954 polio vaccine field trials was negotiated and the roles of the several actors.
The Dostoevsky Machine in Georgetown: scientific translation in the Cold War Summary: Machine Translation (MT) is now ubiquitous in discussions of translation. The roots of this phenomenon — first publicly unveiled in the so-called ‘Georgetown-IBM Experiment’ on 9 January 1954 — displayed not only the technological utopianism still associated with dreams of a universal computer translator, but was deeply enmeshed in the political pressures of the Cold War and a dominating conception of scientific writing as both the goal of machine translation as well as its method. Machine translation was created, in part, as a solution to a perceived crisis sparked by the massive expansion of Soviet science. Scientific prose was also perceived as linguistically simpler, and so served as the model for how to turn a language into a series of algorithms. This paper follows the rise of the Georgetown program — the largest single program in the world — from 1954 to the (as it turns out, temporary) collapse of MT in 1964.
“Always on and always on them”: Portable radios and the creation of the mobile media experience This article investigates the early history of portable radio in the United States from 1920 through 1954. As the first mobile electronic device, the portable radio reveals important information about how the mobile media experience has developed over time. Portable radio afforded several new experiences that are relevant to today’s media landscape: it allowed users to create customizable, mobile media environments that they could take with them wherever they went; it redefined the radio listening context by allowing users to bring their preferred forms of entertainment with them when travelling to unfamiliar places; and it facilitated more continuous media consumption habits. This interdisciplinary essay combines close textual analysis of historical newspaper articles and advertisements, which are viewed through the lens of a range of media theories. The goal is to uncover some of the complex effects of early mobile media and to lay the groundwork for future in-depth studies of mobile media history.
From the first nuclear power plant to fourth-generation nuclear power installations [on the 60th anniversary of the World’s First nuclear power plant] Abstract: Successful commissioning in the 1954 of the World’s First nuclear power plant constructed at the Institute for Physics and Power Engineering (IPPE) in Obninsk signaled a turn from military programs to peaceful utilization of atomic energy. Up to the decommissioning of this plant, the AM reactor served as one of the main reactor bases on which neutron-physical investigations and investigations in solid state physics were carried out, fuel rods and electricity generating channels were tested, and isotope products were bred. The plant served as a center for training Soviet and foreign specialists on nuclear power plants, the personnel of the Lenin nuclear-powered icebreaker, and others. The IPPE development history is linked with the names of I.V. Kurchatov, A.I. Leipunskii, D.I. Blokhintsev, A.P. Aleksandrov, and E.P. Slavskii. More than 120 projects of various nuclear power installations were developed under the scientific leadership of the IPPE for submarine, terrestrial, and space applications, including two water-cooled power units at the Beloyarsk NPP in Ural, the Bilibino nuclear cogeneration station in Chukotka, crawler-mounted transportable TES-3 power station, the BN-350 reactor in Kazakhstan, and the BN-600 power unit at the Beloyarsk NPP. Owing to efforts taken on implementing the program for developing fast-neutron reactors, Russia occupied leading positions around the world in this field. All this time, IPPE specialists worked on elaborating the principles of energy supertechnologies of the 21st century. New large experimental installations have been put in operation, including the nuclear-laser setup B, the EGP-15 accelerator, the large physical setup BFS, the high-pressure setup SVD-2; scientific, engineering, and technological schools have been established in the field of high- and intermediate-energy nuclear physics, electrostatic accelerators of multicharge ions, plasma processes in thermionic converters and nuclear-pumped lasers, physics of compact nuclear reactors and radiation protection, thermal physics, physical chemistry and technology of liquid metal coolants, and physics of radiation-induced defects, and radiation materials science. The activity of the institute is aimed at solving matters concerned with technological development of large-scale nuclear power engineering on the basis of a closed nuclear fuel cycle with the use of fast-neutron reactors (referred to henceforth as fast reactors), development of innovative nuclear and conventional technologies, and extension of their application fields.
Joseph Murray (1919–2012): First transplant surgeon Prior to the 1900s, it seemed that human organ transplantation would be an impossible feat. Several attempts had been made but all had ended in rejection of the donor kidney. Thanks to the groundbreaking work of Dr Joseph Murray in the 1950s and 1960s, renal transplants now take place throughout the world on a daily basis. Murray was the first surgeon to successfully perform renal transplantation, first in identical twins, then in non-identical twins and, finally, using a cadaveric donor. For his pioneering work concerning organ transplantation in the treatment of human diseases, Murray was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990.

Selling Science by Stephen E. Mawdsley Today, when many parents seem reluctant to have their children vaccinated, even with long proven medications, the Salk vaccine trial, which enrolled millions of healthy children to test an unproven medical intervention, seems nothing short of astonishing. In Selling Science, medical historian Stephen E. Mawdsley recounts the untold story of the first large clinical trial to control polio using healthy children--55,000 healthy children--revealing how this long-forgotten incident cleared the path for Salk's later trial.   Mawdsley describes how, in the early 1950s, Dr. William Hammon and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis launched a pioneering medical experiment on a previously untried scale. Conducted on over 55,000 healthy children in Texas, Utah, Iowa, and Nebraska, this landmark study assessed the safety and effectiveness of a blood component, gamma globulin, to prevent paralytic polio. The value of the proposed experiment was questioned by many prominent health professionals as it harbored potential health risks, but as Mawdsley points out, compromise and coercion moved it forward. And though the trial returned dubious results, it was presented to the public as a triumph and used to justify a federally sanctioned mass immunization study on thousands of families between 1953 and 1954. Indeed, the concept, conduct, and outcome of the GG study were sold to health professionals, medical researchers, and the public at each stage. At a time when most Americans trusted scientists, their mutual encounter under the auspices of conquering disease was shaped by politics, marketing, and at times, deception. Drawing on oral history interviews, medical journals, newspapers, meeting minutes, and private institutional records, Selling Science sheds light on the ethics of scientific conduct, and on the power of marketing to shape public opinion about medical experimentation.  
ISBN: 9780813574394
Publication Date: 2016-08-01
The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media by Gerard Goggin (Editor); Larissa Hjorth (Editor) The last decade has witnessed the rise of the cell phone from a mode of communication to an indispensable multimedia device, and this phenomenon has led to the burgeoning of mobile communication studies in media, cultural studies, and communication departments across the academy. The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media seeks to be the definitive publication for scholars and students interested in comprehending all the various aspects of mobile media. This collection, which gathers together original articles by a global roster of contributors from a variety of disciplines, sets out to contextualize the increasingly convergent areas surrounding social, geosocial, and mobile media discourses. Features include: comprehensive and interdisciplinary models and approaches for analyzing mobile media; wide-ranging case studies that draw from this truly global field, including China, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, as well as Europe, the UK, and the US; a consideration of mobile media as part of broader media ecologies and histories; chapters setting out the economic and policy underpinnings of mobile media; explorations of the artistic and creative dimensions of mobile media; studies of emerging issues such as ecological sustainability; up-to-date overviews on social and locative media by pioneers in the field. Drawn from a range of theoretical, artistic, and cultural approaches, The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media will serve as a crucial reference text to inform and orient those interested in this quickly expanding and far-reaching field.
ISBN: 9780203434833
Publication Date: 2014-05-09

IBM Press release, January 8, 1954

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Historical Photographs Related to Events in 1954

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School Integration May 27, 1955

Little Rock, Ark.,1959

U.S. Supreme Court May 17, 1954

New York City, 1954

Pittsburgh, 1954

Geneva, July 21, 1954

Dien Bien Phu, March 23, 1954.

General Vo Nguyen Giap May 22, 1954.

A Statement on Historical Narrative

Detroit in 1954

Political and International Events in 1954

Society, Culture, and the Law in 1954

Science, Technology and Medicine in 1954

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Purdy/Kresge Library Globe

Newport, 1954

Newport, 1954

Supreme Court, 1953

School Integration May 27, 1955

Little Rock, Ark.,1959

U.S. Supreme Court May 17, 1954

New York City, 1954

Pittsburgh, 1954

Geneva, July 21, 1954

Dien Bien Phu, March 23, 1954.

General Vo Nguyen Giap May 22, 1954.

A Statement on Historical Narrative

Detroit in 1954

Political and International Events in 1954

Society, Culture, and the Law in 1954

Science, Technology and Medicine in 1954

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