In the post-World War II years, state and local governments took on new roles as responsibilities changed in response to the growing role of the federal government.
The growth of the federal government provided the framework for changes at other levels. The New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the principle that the federal government would help those who could not help themselves. Harry S. Truman’s program, the Fair Deal, followed the same patterns that the New Deal had defined. When Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won the presidency in 1952, he wanted to scale back the role of the federal government, but refused to eliminate reforms, such as Social Security, that were now part of American life, and his acceptance of the broad outlines of the New Deal underscored its role in the country once and for all. In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society further extended the reach of federal power. More and more, national government took responsibility for functions it had not handled before.
Meanwhile, local and state governments were necessarily defining a new role for themselves. With the huge suburbanization movement, school districts proliferated. State governments began to realize that some small school districts simply were not viable, and mandated that they be consolidated. The growth of the national highway program, mandated by the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, made transportation easier, and the act encouraged the consolidation process. Districts understood that if minimum standards were not met, consolidation had to occur.
At the same time, many urban regions began to establish special sewer and water districts, with fee authority to charge customers for services. Prior to the huge expansion of public works in the New Deal era, consumers paid for services, such as water, on the basis of a property tax. Now they began to pay fees based on their actual consumption. These new districts were autonomous. They had their own governing boards. They could issue bonds for construction. They set the clean water standards they intended to follow. The states maintained audit responsibility and engaged in some oversight, but most decisions were still taken at the district level.
Still another development involved the creation of gated communities. These residential areas were governed on the basis of covenants within a larger community. They were like community associations, which provided services and which had the power of coercion even though they were not, strictly speaking, real governments. The creation of these gated communities began in the 1920s, but they accelerated in the 1950s.
Municipal governments became increasingly professionalized in the postwar years. Federal expansion encouraged the trend toward professionalism in the delivery of services to constituents.
Further reading: Nancy Burns, The Formation of American Local Governments: Private Values in Public Institutions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994).
—Clayton Douglas
Graham, Billy (1918- ) evangelist William Franklin Graham, Jr., better known simply as Billy Graham, was a Presbyterian clergyman who became a world-renowned Christian evangelist in the 1950s and the decades that followed.
Born on November 7, 1918, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and raised in the reformed Presbyterian Church, Graham became a “born again” Christian (repenting of sins and receiving Christ as his savior) at a revival meeting in North Carolina when he was a teenager. Instilled with a passion for ministry, he began his career in 1943 as pastor of a Baptist church and shortly thereafter became involved with Youth for Christ (YFC), a religious organization, whose mission was to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to young people everywhere. Eventually, Graham developed his own dreams of a nationwide religious revival. In September 1949, Graham saw his dream become a reality as he and a team of fellow visionaries led a three-week tent revival in Los Angeles.
The mid-1940s and the early 1950s were receptive years for a new voice in evangelical Protestantism. Two major world wars surrounding a period of severe economic depression left the American people with little sense of material or national security. In this time of transition, people searched for something stable. Graham offered a sense of meaning and purpose obtained through a life rooted in religion. Across the nation, people flocked to churches searching for the spiritual fulfillment that Graham’s teachings offered.
By the 1950s, it was apparent that the United States was in a state of religious revival. Across the country, Graham led three-day - to eight-week-long revivals. Often taking place in concert halls, amphitheaters, and football stadiums, these revival meetings opened with testimony from widely known “born again” Christians, followed by music, and concluded with Graham’s powerful message calling people to come into a new relationship with Jesus Christ. He represented the fundamental Protestant beliefs that Jesus was Lord, God was the sovereign power, and people’s lives could be changed through religious conversion.
Those previously uninvolved in church activities sought a stable set of beliefs during times of difficulty. Confusion caused by dislocation induced by war and unemployment, together with the longing for a consistency in life that resisted the continual changes of society, brought the nation to church. Critical voices became muted and religion gained both popularity and respectability.
Graham felt it important to present his message in the context of modern-day political and social circumstances. “Geared to the times, anchored to the Rock,” became the motto of Graham’s movement as he saw the importance of being knowledgeable in current events. At the same time, he was a meticulous strategic planner. With each crusade, Graham and his team, the Billy Graham Evangelical Association (BGEA), exerted an enormous amount of effort to prepare a city for an upcoming event.
The period of the COLD WAR had a profound impact on people throughout the nation. Graham passionately despised this “Godless COMMUNISM,” and he felt that it was not only a threat to America but also a battle between Christ and the anti-Christ. Graham spoke to this issue at revivals as well as on the radio and TELEVISION, calling the American people to “be born again by the Holy Spirit, by repenting of their sins, and receiving Christ as Savior. The greatest and most effective weapon against Communism today is to be born again Christian.”
In the 1960s, Graham was an advocate for the Civil Rights movement. Speaking in favor of the CiviL Rights Act OF 1964, he rejected claims that the Christian Bible supported SEGREGATION or barred intermarriage. In an article that appeared in Life magazine, Graham set forth his clear belief that racial prejudice was a sin, and he repeated this consistently in interviews and press conferences.
Graham was the only religious leader to maintain personal relationships with every U. S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. With no political affiliations, Graham served as a type of spiritual adviser and political strategist for the president, and he established particularly close relations with presidents Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon.
Further reading: Joe E. Barnhart, The Billy Graham Religion (Philadelphia: United Church Press, 1972); Billy Graham, Just as I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997); William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William Morrow, 1991).
—Susan F. Yates
World History
