The Story of American Freedom

Foner describes the Freedom Train, a 1947 traveling museum exhibit of historical documents that visited over 300 American cities. With the train’s organizers announcing that, even in the South, the exhibit would be integrated, allowing Black and white visitors to view the museum pieces at the same time, it was clear that there was “a growing sense of national unease about overt expressions of racial inequality” (250). When the FBI began compiling reports on citizens who objected to the Freedom Train, it also became clear how the subsequent Cold War would reshape the meaning of freedom (252). In a 1947 speech, President Harry Truman announced that the United States would assume responsibility for containing the spread of communism across the globe. This policy of containment became known as the Truman Doctrine.

According to Foner, “Cold War freedom was a circular concept. If a nation was part of the worldwide anti-Communist military alliance, led by the United States, it automatically became a member of the ‘free world’” (254). This philosophy led to overseas alliances with anticommunist authoritarian dictators and an assault on civil liberties at home. Loyalty oaths became common in workplaces, and those who were deemed to be sympathetic to communism or subversive to American ideals lost their jobs. Anticommunism became weaponized in that it was used by conservatives to dismantle New Deal programs, thwart regulation of business, and tar any type of dissent as communist. It was also weaponized by white supremacists against civil rights activism, by business and employers against unions, and by supposed morality crusaders against LBGTQ+ individuals (256).

The Cold War also encompassed an economic element, as freedom in the 1950s came to be identified with consumer capitalism and free enterprise (262). The unprecedented economic boom and rising living standards of the 1950s meant that virtually all Americans were better off than their parents and grandparents. With the Cold War affluence of the growing middle class also came the ability of home ownership, leading to the massive growth of suburban housing. Foner describes suburban housing as a “great agent of Americanization, severing urbanites from ethnic communities and bringing them fully into the world of middle-class consumption” (265). While providing access to more freedom for millions, the suburbs also retained the racial boundaries that existed in urban areas. By including racially restrictive provisions in mortgages, federal agencies financed housing segregation. Meanwhile, private developers outright excluded non-whites (267). Foner explains that, for many Black Americans, “the boundary between the free and unfree worlds seemed to run along the color line, not the iron curtain” (267).

Foner describes the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott as “the beginning of the greatest mass movement in modern American history” (275). He argues, “Within a decade, the civil rights revolution had overturned the edifice of de jure segregation and won the ballot for black citizens in the South” (275). In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was initially organized in Black churches and driven by both Black and white students, representing the first time in American history that a youth movement instigated social change (276). Relying on Christian themed rhetoric, Martin Luther King Jr. became the movement’s symbolic leader, as he was able to broadly appeal to the conscience of many whites (279). By 1965, after President Lyndon Johnson won reelection in a landslide, legalized segregation had been outlawed by new federal laws prohibiting discrimination in voting, employment, and public accommodations (281). According to Foner, “Johnson not only presided over the legislative triumphs of the civil rights era—the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968—but launched the most far-reaching domestic agenda since the New Deal” (284). What came to be known as the Great Society was Johnson’s initiative to improve education and housing, provide healthcare for the elderly and the economically disadvantaged, and eradicate poverty.

By the late 1960s, college enrollment had risen from less than 3 million in the mid-1950s to more than 7 million. From its ranks rose a great protest movement inspired by the civil rights revolution but whose membership was primarily white students from affluent backgrounds. This movement of student activists came to be known as the “New Left.” One of the movement’s primary organizations was Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and its guiding document was the 1962 Port Huron Statement, calling for participatory democracy. Foner explains that the Vietnam War, more than anything else, “transformed student protest into a full-fledged generational rebellion” (290). He argues that “with the entire political leadership, liberal no less than conservative, committed to the war for most of the 1960s, young activists were radicalized and turned on their erstwhile liberal supporters” (291). The New Left renewed calls for liberation and equality for women in what was termed the “second wave” of feminism. The new feminists critiqued social values of motherhood and housewives as ones which did not allow women to “grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings” (295). Foner explains, “It is hardly surprising that the civil rights revolution, soon followed by the rise of the New Left and the second wave of feminism, inspired many other American to articulate their grievances and claim their own rights” (299-300). These groups included LGBTQ+ communities, Indigenous Americans, and Chicanos.

In the final chapter of the book, Foner examines the conservative movement which emerged toward the end of the 20th century. In explaining the state of conservatism at the end of World War II, he states that it was “associated in many minds with the crimes of European fascism and the economic policies that had produced the Great Depression, and identified with conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, and an elitist belief in social hierarchy” (308). Two primary strands of conservative thought emerged at mid-century and were with in competition with one another for the remainder of the century. One of these was the libertarian belief in limited government, decentralized political power, and free market economy, coupled with individual freedom and a belief that government could not legislate morality. The other strand was one with a similar belief in the free market but a differing view that America should be grounded in religious, primarily Christian, values.

The two strands of conservativism maintained unity in large part because they had the common foe of liberalism. Both strands rallied against what they called “big government” and called for government programs to be scaled back. The conservative movement began having electoral success in the late 1960s thanks to an expanded base that was largely the result of a backlash against the civil rights movement, student protests, and feminism earlier in the decade. Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate in 1964, was soundly defeated by Johnson, but he became the first Republican of the 20th century to carry states in the Deep South (313). Foner argues that politicians realized they “could strike electoral gold by appealing to white uneasiness with civil rights gains” (315). The conservative base expanded in the 1970s because of the continued white backlash against racial progress, combined with an Evangelical Christian backlash against a myriad of issues dealing with the sexual revolution and women’s rights.

Riding the tide of the expanded conservative base of the 1970s, Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood actor and governor of California, won the presidency in 1980. Foner explains that Reagan’s victory “brought to power a polyglot coalition of old and new conservatism—Sun Belt suburbanites and working-class ethnic Catholics; antigovernment crusaders and advocates of a more aggressive foreign policy; libertarian ideologues and those seeking to restore ‘traditional moral values’ to American life” (320). Perhaps more than any other president, Reagan invoked freedom, but his policies focused primarily on what he considered “economic freedom.” This manifested in a radical reduction in taxes that shifted wealth “from poorer to wealthier Americans” (321-322). Conservatives continued to use the language of freedom in the 1990s, and in 1994 republicans gained control of Congress for the first time since the 1950s (324).