The Second World War ended the Great Depression in the United States, bringing about a great economic boom that decreased unemployment and increased living standards dramatically. By the end of the war, the United States had the strongest economy and held several advantages over its past commercial rivals: its industry and infrastructure had not been damaged by war. In the first decades following the war, U.S. manufactured goods saturated markets around the world that had previously been dominated by Britain, France, and Germany.

Post war America experienced a genuine social revolution as well: after a long struggle African Americans began to experience major victories against the deeply entrenched system of segregation and discrimination. This civil rights movement advanced on several fronts. The NAACP challenged school segregation in the courts. In 1954 it won a landmark decision in the Supreme Court, which ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Blacks challenged inequality by using Gandhian methods of nonviolent peaceful resistance. In describing his principles for change, the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), said that “Christ furnished the spirit and motivation, while Gandhi furnished the method.” He told the white power structure, “We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws.”13

With African American support in key Northern states, Democrat Lyndon Johnson won the 1964 presidential election in a liberal landslide. A brilliant negotiator, Johnson secured enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in public services and on the job, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in voting. In the mid-1960s President Johnson began an “unconditional war on poverty.” With the support of Congress, Johnson’s administration created a host of antipoverty projects, such as medical care for the poor and aged (Medicaid and Medicare), free preschools for poor children (Head Start), and community-action programs. Thus the United States promoted the kind of fundamental social reform that had succeeded in western Europe after the Second World War.