Dwight D. Eisenhower was a war hero before becoming chief executive. His lack of experience in electoral politics made for some early errors, but his reputation has grown with the passage of time. Students will benefit from an opportunity to learn more about this remarkable man, and a biographical lecture will be both interesting and valuable. Particularly noteworthy are Eisenhower's growing political skills as supreme allied commander in Europe in dealing with generals of other nationalities and other persuasions. The two-volume biography by Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower (1983-1984), may be supplemented by other studies cited in the chapter bibliography. See also Chester J. Pach, Jr. and Elmo Richardson, The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (revised edition; 1991). This revised edition of a 1979 work accepts some, but not all, of the Eisenhower revisionism. Eisenhower's approach to Cold War issues also reveals much about him. See Jeff Broadwater, Eisenhower and the Anti-Communist Crusade (1992), and Saki Dockrill, Eisenhower's New Look National Security Policy, 1953-1961 (1996).

Lacking electoral power in precisely those states in which Jim Crow flourished, African-Americans were prevented from using the ballot to deal with school desegregation. They used the courts. A lecture that traces that effort will reveal to students such important concepts as how fragmentation of power gives at least some access to groups with very little of it, how tenaciously those who hold power resist change, and how very pervasive is racism. The instructor may wish to begin by defining the principle of separate but equal established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and then continue with a series of Supreme Court decisions dealing with education: Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), Sipuel v. Oklahoma (1948), and Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma both 1950). Then came the first cases involving not adult students but children. The Court moved slowly and cautiously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and Bolling v. Sharpe. The instructor may wish to look ahead to busing and Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg (1971), but this may better be taken up after consideration of the civil-rights movement. See Mark V. Tushnet, The NAACP's Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925-1950 (1987), and Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education: Black America's Struggle for Equality (1976). Excerpted Court opinions may be found in David E. Fellman, editor, The Supreme Court and Education (third edition; 1976).

Why, students may ask, did so many Native Americans resist Eisenhower's policy of termination? Defining the policy and answering the question makes a good lecture topic. Similarly students may wonder about the anger among so many Mexican-Americans created by Operation Wetback in 1953. What's wrong with sending aliens back where they came from? An explanation of the on-again, off-again policy toward Mexican labor with adequate explanation of the bracero program may help answer that question. For the termination policy, see Larry W. Burt, Tribalism in Crisis: Federal Indian Policy, 1953-1961 (1982). For Mexican-Americans, see Juan Gomez-Quinones, Mexican American Labor, 1600-1990 (1994). See also Ernesto Galarza, Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Story (1969), and Juan Ramon Garcia, Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954 (1980).

The modern civil-rights movement of the 1960s is often dated from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56. But students should be reminded that the civil-rights movement was built upon But there were estrategies of arlier strategies employed in opposition to segregation that stretch back to the turn of the century. A brief history of such groups as the NAACP, the UNIA, the Urban League, LULAC, and the GI Forum will set the stage for a fuller consideration of the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. . One can argue very effectively that the modern civil-rights movement had its beginnings in efforts by African-Americans during the Second World War. See Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement," Journal of American History 75 (December 1988): 786-811. It may be valuable to point out to students that at least some groups among minority populations are constantly at work to end racism and discrimination. A brief history of such groups as the NAACP, the Urban League, LULAC, and the GI Forum will set the stage for a fuller consideration of the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. A good history of the minority group is necessary. See, for example, August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, From Plantation to Ghetto (third edition; 1976), and Rodolfo Acuņa, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (third edition; 1989). See also Charles Flint Kellogg, NAACP: The History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1967); Jesse T. Moore, Jr., A Search for Equality: The National Urban League, 1910-1961 (1981); Benjamin Marquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (1993); and Chapter 22 of Leo Grebler et al., The Mexican-American People: The Nation's Second Largest Minority (1970).