The Tragedy of Billie Holiday
https://youtu.be/tZJoVPFoYPM In January 1949 Police broke into a room in the Mark Twain Hotel in San Francisco and arrested Billie Holiday and her manager John Levy on charges of possession of opium. Her defense attorney Jake Erlich, fingered Levy as an informer and...
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Alger Hiss
https://youtu.be/HvBpuPMNuaA In 1948 Whittaker Chambers, ex-communist and editor with Time magazine, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Alger Hiss was a communist who had passed him top secret documents during his work in the...
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Civil Rights 1949
The Law of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: A Handbook of Your Basic Rights, by Edwin S. Newman, Oceana Publications 1949. In 1949, racism was still firmly rooted in the laws of many individual statest in the United States of America. States without stripes or...
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Pingjin Campaign
https://youtu.be/wdTPFW6RZPo Pingjing Campaign (Wikipedia) People's Liberation Army enters Peking January 1949 (Wikipedia) The Pingjin Campaign was part of the three major campaigns launched by the People's Liberation Army during the late stage of the Chinese Civil...
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Truman Begins Second Term
https://youtu.be/vkQlSD8KDKI State of the Union Address January 1949 On January 5, 1949, President Harry Truman presented the state of the union address to the U.S. Congress. Issues discussed included: poor medical care, low minimum wage, inflation, poorly managed...
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Truman Defeats Dewey
Although New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey was fully expected to win the 1948 presidential election, Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman defeated him by >2 million popular votes. Wikipedia Prior to the vote, political analysts,...
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UN Mediator Assassinated
In September 1948 members of the Lehi militant organization (AKA the Stern gang) assassinated the Swedish UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in Palestine -- presumably for proposing an Arab administration for Jerusalem. The Lehi (Hebrew for "Fighters for the...
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America Reinstitutes Military Draft
Although a great proponent of demobilization after WWII, President Harry S. Truman re-instituted the military draft in July 1948 with a proclamation calling for conscription of ~10 million men. > 16 million men and women served in the U.S. military during...
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General Elections in Korea
In May 1948 the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK) arrived in Seoul to set up supervised Korean elections, after which the country would become independent of U.S. and Soviet control. Rejecting U.N. supervision of elections, Northern Korea blocked...
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U.S. Armed Forces Desegregated
During WWII, the U.S. Army had become the nation's largest minority employer. More than one million of 2.5 million African-American males were inducted into the armed forces by 1945. African Americans, ~11% of all registrants liable for military service,...
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Jeju Uprising
Jeju Island is a 40km x 90km island province of South Korea 120 km south of the Korean Peninsula The Jeju uprising, which began on April 3, 1948, resulted in extreme suppression by the South Korean Army, police and right-wing paramilitary groups. The rebellion...
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Communists Take Over Czechoslovakia
Summary of 1948 events in Czechoslovakia from MACROHISTORY Feb 8 - The Czechoslovakian Communist party, in cooperation with the General Confederation of Labor and left-wing Social Democrats, is preparing measures to nationalize apartment houses, office buildings and...
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Marshall Plan Initiated
In April 1948 sixteen nations joined the Marshall Plan's economic cooperation organization. In the Cold War atmosphere, Eastern European countries in the Soviet sphere that did not join were Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Albania. Finland also...
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Mahatma Gandhi Assassinated
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 –1948) led Indians in a nonviolent independence movement from British colonization. Known worldwide by his honorific Sanskrit title Mahātmā (high-souled, venerable) he was also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for father)...
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Meet The Press
Meet the Press has had the longest run of any television program in the United States. Although it began as a Saturday night program moderated by the charmingly Southern-accented Martha Rountree, it ultimately became a popular NBC Sunday morning show hosted by a...
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Hollywood Black List
In October 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee (created in 1938) re-convened in Washington D.C. for public hearings on alleged communist infiltration within the American motion picture industry. 50 top Hollywood executives decided to suspend those who...
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Post-WWII USSR
Here is an optimistic view of postwar relationships between Great Britain and the USSR. To get a sense of life in the USSR in 1947 it's worth fast forwarding through these interesting, rather upbeat color scenes of everyday life. You don't need to...
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Korean Turmoil
In 1945 the unconditional surrender of Japan led to the division of Korea into two occupation zones. The 1945 division of Korea was meant to be temporary. The stated Allied intention was to reunify the country once a single government could be...
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Palestine Partitioned
Britain, which controlled Palestine since 1917, promoted the idea of establishing a Jewish state in the holy land. With sympathy for Jews greatly enhanced after the Holocaust, the Palestine issue was brought before the newly created United Nations In...
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Mexican-Americans in WWII
Ethnic and racial discrimination in WWII-era America was a powerful social force. Just as the civil rights of African-Americans were restricted in the South, similar discrimination weighed heavily against many "Tejanos" of Mexican descent in the Southwest. ...
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Truman Doctrine
The purpose of the Truman Doctrine delineated in 1947 was to counter geopolitical expansion of the Soviet Union. Initially, in place of direct military action, the U.S. Congress appropriated financial aid to support the economies and militaries of Greece and Turkey....
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New Japanese Constitution
Based on American models, the Supreme Allied Commander General Douglas MacArthur directed an effective restoration of the industry and society of occupied Japan. The majority of the Japanese people apparently welcomed his progressive reforms. Most important,...
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Post-WWII Labor Strikes
In 1946, a year after WWII ended, >5 million American workers went on prolonged strikes in numerous industries and public utilities. The American strike wave of 1945–1946 became the largest series of labor strikes in American history. During WWII, the...
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Fulbright Scholarship
Aug 1, 1946 President Truman signed the Fulbright Program into law, establishing the scholarships named for Arkansas Sen. William J. Fulbright. After WWII, Senator J. William Fulbright proposed that the U.S. government sell surplus war property to fund an...
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Germany Divided
At the 1945 Potsdam conference, the four great Allied powers agreed to divide Germany into four administrative occupation zones. ...
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