BABY BOOM. The end of World War II and the return of service personnel from abroad saw a sudden increase in marriage and consequently births. Marriage rates (per 1,000 unmarried women over the age of 15) rose from 73.0 in 1939 to 118.1 in 1946. In 1946, the birth rate (number of live births per 1,000 people) rose from under 20 in the late 1930s to 26.6 in 1947. In 1946, 3.4 million babies were born, and in 1947 the number was 3.8 million. Between 1948 and 1953 more babies were born than in the preceding 30 years. The long-term effect was felt in the 1960s when these children came of age and were a dominant social and cultural force.
“BABY FACE” NELSON (LESTER JOHN GILLIS) (1908–1934). The notorious bank robber and murderer was born Lester John Gillis in Chicago, but by 1931 he had assumed several aliases, including George Nelson. Because of his size (5'4" tall) and youthful appearance, he was known as “Baby Face.” Nelson was a juvenile delinquent who was first sent to a boy’s home in 1922. He was jailed for bank robbery in 1931 but escaped while being transferred between jails in 1932. After taking part in a number of robberies in which people were killed, Nelson joined up with John Dillinger in 1934. When Dillinger was shot dead in April of that year, Nelson replaced him as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Public Enemy Number One.” Cornered by agents in Barrington, Illinois, near Chicago, in November 1934, Nelson killed two lawmen and escaped, though he was badly wounded. He died several hours later.
BACALL, LAUREN (1924– ). Born Betty Joan Perske in New York city, Lauren Bacall trained as an actor at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and had a number of acting and modeling roles before she appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar in March 1943 and was cast by the film producer Howard Hawks in To Have and Have Not with Humphrey Bogart in 1944. The film was a great success, and Bacall went on to star in several more thrillers alongside Bogart, who she married in 1945, including The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948), also starring Edward G. Robinson. Bacall also played lighter roles in Bright Leaf (1950) with Gary Cooper and in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable. After Bogart’s death in 1957, her film career declined, and she turned to Broadway, where she won Tony Awards for her roles in Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981). She appeared in films in the 1960s and 1970s and achieved some success in Shock Treatment (1964) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974). See also CINEMA.
BAER, MAX (1909–1959). Born Maximilian Adelbart Baer Cussen to German immigrant parents in Omaha, Nebraska, boxer Max Baer developed his strength and physique working on cattle ranches in Colorado. This power gave him a devastating right-hand punch and a fearsome reputation in the ring. He turned professional in 1929. In 1930, he was charged with manslaughter when his opponent Frankie Campbell died after Baer knocked him out. Although cleared, he was suspended for a year. Baer, who always indicated his Jewish origins with a Star of David on his trunks, knocked out the German boxer Max Schmeling in 1933, and the following year he felled the giant Italian Primo Carnera 11 times before finally knocking him out in the 11th round to become world heavy weight champion. In June 1935, he lost the title to the “Cinderella Man,” Jim Braddock, but he continued fighting until 1941. He was twice beaten by Joe Louis.
Baer acted in a number of films, usually playing the role of a boxer, as in The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933) and The Harder They Fall (1956).
BALDWIN, RAYMOND EARL (1893–1986). Born in Rye, New York, Raymond Baldwin moved to Middletown, Connecticut, as a child, and it was in that state he made his political career. After being educated at Wesleyan University and serving in the U.S. Navy during World War I, he graduated from Yale Law School in 1921. He established a law practice in Bridgeport and New Haven, Connecticut. A Republican, Baldwin served as town prosecutor (1927–1930) and judge (1931–1933) in Stratford, and also sat as a representative in the Connecticut General Assembly (1930–1935). In 1938, he was elected state governor and, although defeated in 1940, he was reelected again in 1942 and 1944. As governor Baldwin was responsible for a wave of reform, including labor reform, the introduction of workmen’s compensation, comprehensive pensions for state employees, and the creation of an Interracial Commission. In 1946, he was elected to the U.S. Senate but resigned in 1949 to become a justice on the Connecticut Supreme Court. He became chief justice of the court in 1959 and served until 1963.
BANKHEAD, JOHN HOLLIS (1872–1946). Born in Lamar County, Alabama, John H. Bankhead graduated from the University of Alabama in 1891, and from Georgetown University Law School in 1893. He and his brother William B. Bankhead established their own law company in 1905. A Democrat, from 1903 to 1907 John Bankhead was a member of the Alabama state legislature. In 1930, he was elected to the U.S. Senate—a position he held until 1946. Bankhead drafted several pieces of legislation relating to agriculture, particularly cotton, and he was coauthor of the revised Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. See also BANKHEAD COTTON ACT; BANKHEAD COTTON CONTROL ACT.
BANKHEAD, WILLIAM BROCKMAN (1874–1940). Born in Lamar County, Alabama, William B. Bankhead graduated from the University of Alabama in 1893, and from Georgetown University Law School in Washington, D.C., in 1895. He practiced law in Huntsville, Alabama, where he became city attorney from 1898 to 1901. A Democrat, he was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1900 and 1901, and to the national House of Representatives in 1916. He served until 1940 and was majority leader from 1935 to 1937 and speaker of the House from 1935 to 1939. With his brother, John H. Bankhead, he was associated with legislation to aid cotton and tobacco farmers. See also AGRICULTURE; BANKHEAD COTTON ACT; BANKHEAD COTTON CONTROL ACT.
BANKHEAD COTTON ACT, 1934. The Bankhead Cotton Act was a supplement to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 introduced by William B. Bankhead and passed in 1934 to establish a national quota of cotton production in order to raise prices and to establish a tax to be imposed on any cotton produced in excess of individual quotas by licensed growers. A similar measure was introduced for tobacco. The act was repealed in 1936 after the Supreme Court had declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 unconstitutional. See also AGRICULTURE.
BANKHEAD COTTON CONTROL ACT, 1934. Drafted by John H. Bankhead and William B. Bankhead, the Bankhead Cotton Control Act of 1934 supplemented the provisions of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 by taxing those farmers who produced excess cotton to limit production. When the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was declared unconstitutional in 1936, the act was repealed. See also AGRICULTURE.
BANKHEAD-JONES FARM TENANCY ACT, 1937. The Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenancy Act was an act passed in 1937 to help tenant farmers buy their own land, animals, and feed by providing low-interest federal loans over a three year period. The act was drafted by Senator John H. Bankhead of Alabama and representative Marvin Jones of Texas. Under the legislation, Congress was also empowered to purchase land that was no longer capable of maintaining a sufficient living standard for farm families. The Farm Security Administration was set up by Henry A. Wallace to administer the program. The funding of $85 million proved inadequate, and few of the impoverished sharecroppers benefited. See also AGRICULTURE.
BANKING. Historically, banking in the United States was a complex political and economic issue. Opposition to a strong centralized government led to the demise of the National Bank in 1836. Although national banking was restored with the banking acts of 1863 and 1864, the banking system was complicated and inclined to instability. A three-tier system of national banks chartered by the federal government, state banks chartered by individual states, and local banks, all of which remained independent and essentially local businesses, existed. Lack of regulation and the impact of local events, such as problems in agriculture, often resulted in bank collapses. Bank panics—the worst being in 1907—and the 19th-century crisis in farming led to demands for regulation that resulted in the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. While this brought some stability, it did not solve all the problems as only about one-third of all banks registered with the Federal Reserve. Between 1921 and 1928 5,000 banks were forced to close.
With the collapse in investors’ confidence following the Wall Street Crash, a further 1,345 banks failed in 1930 alone. Banking failure contributed enormously to the coming of the Great Depression as credit shrank and business loans and mortgages on homes and farms were called in. While President Herbert Hoover attempted to tackle the problem with a number of measures, many banks remained closed on the eve of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration. It was only with the banking reforms of the New Deal, beginning with an Emergency Banking Act of 9 March 1933, closing all the nation’s banks temporarily in a “bank holiday,” and then with the Banking Acts of 1933 and 1935, that some semblance of order and stability returned. In the process, some 1,000 banks were liquidated.
BANKING ACTS, 1933, 1935. The 1933 Banking Act, known as the Glass-Steagall Act, passed on 16 June 1933, restricted the use of the Federal Reserve for speculative purposes and established a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure money deposited by approved banks. The 1935 act reorganized the Federal Reserve Bank, reducing the Federal Reserve Board of governors. The act also strengthened the board’s powers to limit speculation and required all large state banks to join the Federal Reserve system by 1942. See also BANKING.
BARKLEY, ALBEN WILLIAM (1877–1956). 35th vice president of the United States, 1949–1953. The son of poor tenant farmers, Alben Barkley was born and raised in Kentucky. After schooling in Kentucky, Barkley went to Emory College in Georgia, and then the University of Virginia Law School. He was admitted to the bar in 1901 and practiced law in Paducah, Kentucky, where he became prosecuting attorney and then judge of McCracken County Court, from 1909 to 1913. A Democrat and Woodrow Wilson supporter, he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1913 and held his seat until he became a U. S. Senator in 1927. He was reelected three times and served as Democratic majority leader in the Senate from 1937 to 1947 and minority leader from 1947 to 1949. A supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1944 Barkley resigned when the president rejected the tax bill he had brokered; Roosevelt backed down and Barkley was reelected majority leader.
An effective public speaker and a popular senator acceptable to the South, Barkley ran successfully as vice presidential candidate with Harry S. Truman in 1948, despite his age. Referred to as “Veep,” Barkley supported the treaty that created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, involvement in the Korean War, and the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur. After serving as vice president, he was regarded as too old to be the presidential candidate in 1952, but he was reelected to the Senate and served from 1955 until his death in 1956.
BARTON, BRUCE FAIRCHILD (1886–1967). Born in Tennessee, Bruce Barton graduated from Amherst College in 1907. After a series of jobs in newspaper and magazine journalism, he became assistant sales manager for the publisher Colliers in 1912 and then editor of Every Week in 1914, where he developed the skill of writing inspirational articles. He became a regular contributor of such work to the American Magazine, McCall’s, Collier’s, Good Housekeeping, and Reader’s Digest. Several volumes of his writings were published between 1917 and 1924.
During World War I, Barton worked as publicity director for the United War Work Agencies. In 1919, he joined Roy S. Durstine and Alex F. Osborne to form an advertising agency that by 1928 was the fourth largest in the United States. In 1925, Barton published the best-selling The Man Nobody Knows, in which he portrayed Christ as “the world’s greatest salesman.” He also wrote a study of the Bible in a similar vein, The Book Nobody Knows (1926), and a portrait of St. Paul, He Upset the World (1932).
A Republican, Barton supported and wrote speeches for Calvin Coolidge. In 1937, he was elected to fill an unexpired term in Congress as a representative for New York. He won a full term in 1938. He campaigned against the New Deal, and together with Joseph Martin and Hamilton Fish, was ridiculed by Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of “Martin, Barton & Fish” during the 1940 election campaign. He failed to win election to the Senate in 1940 and returned to his advertising company. Barton continued to advise Republican politicians, including Thomas E. Dewey and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
BARUCH, BERNARD MANNES (1870–1965). Born in South Carolina, after graduating from City College in New York, Bernard Baruch became a financier and successful Wall Street broker and investor. He supported Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and was appointed to the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense in 1916. In 1918, he became chairman of the War Industries Board, where he directed the industrial war effort. He helped formulate the economic provisions of the Versailles Treaty. Baruch was less in the public eye during the 1920s and 1930s. His plans for wartime industrial mobilization were presented to the Senate Military Affairs Committee in 1937. As special “park bench” adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration during World War II, he chaired the Rubber Survey Committee that drafted an influential report on rubber rationing, and he also authored a report on postwar conversion. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman named the 70-five-year-old Baruch to present the U.S. plan for the international control of atomic energy drafted by Dean Acheson and David E. Lilienthal, but known as the Baruch Plan, to the United Nations. Despite a dramatic opening speech by Baruch, the negotiations came to naught due to a veto by the Soviet Union. Baruch’s influence subsequently declined.
BARUCH PLAN, 1946. The Baruch Plan was the proposal to control the use of atomic power presented to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission in 1946 by Bernard Baruch. It called for the information about nuclear power to be made open, the implementation of international controls to ensure the peaceful use of atomic power, the elimination of atomic weapons, and a system of international inspection to ensure compliance. The proposal was rejected by the Soviet Union because it opposed the principle of external inspectors, which it saw as a threat to its national sovereignty. See also ATOMIC BOMB; HYDROGEN BOMB.
BASTOGNE. A key battle in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, Bastogne was a village in Belgium where several important roads converged and where U.S. forces held the attacking German army between December 1944 and January 1945. Offered the opportunity to surrender, the U.S. commander simply replied “Nuts,” and General George S. Patton’s forces relieved the siege and the Germans were pushed back.
BATAAN. Bataan is the peninsula on the island of Luzon in the Philippines where General Douglas MacArthur took a stand against the advancing Japanese army in January 1942. While MacArthur withdrew in March to head the buildup of U.S. forces elsewhere, together with Filipino troops, U.S. forces held out in Bataan for three months before being forced to surrender in April. Some 75,000 prisoners were then force-marched more than 100 miles in a week to camps, enduring harsh treatment and high temperatures en route. Almost 10,000 soldiers died as a result. The battle had, however, significantly slowed the Japanese advance and gave U.S. forces a chance to regroup in the Pacific. Bataan was liberated from the Japanese by U.S. forces in February 1945. See also JAPAN; WORLD WAR II.
BATTLE OF THE BULGE. In December 1944, German forces launched a strong counteroffensive against U.S. forces in the Ardennes region of Europe, forcing them back a distance of 60 miles and creating a huge bulge in Allied lines. Two entire U.S. regiments were forced to surrender. However, a successful counteroffensive was launched, and the German armies were pushed back by the end of January 1945. Although U.S. losses numbered almost 40,000, the Germans lost more than 200,000, and this was their last offensive effort of World War II.
BEER AND WINE REVENUE ACT, 1933. Passed on 22 March 1933 the Beer Act repealed the Volstead Act of 1919 and confirmed the end of prohibition under the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution. It permitted the manufacture and sale of alcohol, as well as raising revenue by taxing alcoholic beverages.
BENNY, JACK (1894–1974). Comedian Jack Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky to a Russian immigrant father and Lithuanian mother in Chicago. He began his career in vaudeville at the age of 18 as Ben K. Benny. During World War I, Benny served in the navy and perfected his comedy routine performing to naval audiences. After the war, he took the name Jack and presented himself as a “monologist.” In 1926 Benny performed on Broadway in the musical revue The Great Temptations, and his success led to a film contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film studios. After appearing in a number of films, including Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929), Chasing Rainbows (1930), and The Medicine Man (1930), Benny returned to the stage to do a musical revue. This led to a radio performance and the beginning of a radio show that ran from 1932 until 1955. More than a series of jokes, Benny’s program involved a narrative of regular characters, most notably “Rochester,” played by Eddie Anderson.
Benny continued to appear in movies, most famously To Be or Not to Be (1942). Others included George Washington Slept Here (1942), The Meanest Man in the World (1943), and The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945). In 1948, Benny switched from NBC to CBS, and his radio program ran on the CBS network until 1955 when it transferred to television. After a slow start, the television program established itself and ran until 1965. Benny continued to appear in nightclub shows and gave “musical” performances with his violin for charitable causes almost until his death. See also CINEMA.
BENTON, THOMAS HART (1889–1975). Born in Neosho, Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton briefly attended military school before going to study at Chicago Art Institute in 1906 and then in Paris from 1908 to 1911. In 1913, he moved to New York City, where he had his first successful show in 1916 as part of a modernist collection in the Forum exhibition. He served in the navy during World War I and afterward abandoned modernism in favor of the American scene and the rural emphasis associated with regionalism during the 1930s. During the 1920s, he completed 18 works as part of The American Historical Epic, and in 1930 he produced a series of murals entitled America Today. The vibrant colors and depictions of ordinary working people led some critics to compare him to both right- and left-wing art. His Indiana murals painted in 1933 to mark a Century of Progress and those in The Social History of the State of Missouri in the state capitol in Jefferson, Missouri, celebrated American settlement but also depicted scenes of racism and violence. Nonetheless, Benton made the cover of Time magazine in December 1934 and was regarded as one of the country’s leading artists.
The richness of color and content in Benton’s voluptuous rural scenes, such as Cradling Wheat (1938) and Threshing Wheat (1939), were in stark contrast to the arid landscapes of the Dust Bowl recorded by the photographers of the Farm Security Administration. His autobiography, An Artist in America, appeared in 1937. From 1935 to 1941 Benton taught at the Kansas City Art Institute, where one of his students was Jackson Pollock, and during World War II he produced several paintings of Nazi atrocities. Although his style went out of fashion in the 1940s and 1950s, in 1961 he completed another mural depicting historical scenes, Independence and the Opening of the West, in the Truman library in Independence, Missouri.
BENTON, WILLIAM BURNETT (1900–1973). Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and educated at Shattuck Military Academy and Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, William Benton graduated from Yale University in 1921 and entered advertising. In 1929, he established Benton & Bowles with Chester Bowles. In 1937, he became vice president of the University of Chicago and in 1943 was instrumental in the university’s acquisition of Encyclopedia Britannica, which he managed and later purchased. Benton served as assistant secretary of state from 1945 to 1947, and although a Democrat, was appointed to the U.S. Senate for Connecticut in 1949 to fill the post following the resignation of Republican incumbent Raymond Baldwin. Benton was an outspoken critic of Joseph McCarthy, who in turn labeled the Connecticut senator a communist sympathizer. As a result, Benton failed to win the election in 1952. He then concentrated on his publishing business, which expanded in 1964 when he took over Webster’s Dictionary. From 1963 until 1968 Benton was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization in Paris.
BERKELEY, BUSBY (1895–1976). Born Busby Berkeley William Enos in Los Angles, California, the film choreographer and director attended military school and was first employed in entertainment by the army in France during World War I. After the war, he worked as an actor and stage manager. Berkeley’s first dance directing was in the musical A Connecticut Yankee (1927). After a series of successful Broadway musicals including Street Singer (1929), Berkeley went to Hollywood and staged the dances in Whoopee starring Eddie Cantor in 1930. In 1933, he had three big hits with Warner Brothers’ film musicals, 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade, that established his trademark style of lavish singing and dancing routines with large numbers of chorus girls performing eye-catching routines in geometric formations often shot to appear in kaleidoscopic images.
After leaving Warner Brothers for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Berkeley provided choreography and direction for a number of movies starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, including Babes in Arms (1939), Strike Up the Band (1940), Babes on Broadway (1941), and Girl Crazy (1943). He also worked on The Gang’s All Here (1943), memorable for even more elaborate sets and costumes. After the war, Berkeley directed Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) and choreographed Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and Easy to Love (1953). His last film was Jumbo in 1962. See also CINEMA; LITERATURE AND THEATER.
BERLE, ADOLF AUGUSTUS (1895–1971). Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Adolph Berle was a child prodigy who graduated with a B.A. and M.A. in history, a law degree, and passage to the bar all by the age of 21. Although a pacifist, he served in the Signal Corps during World War I and then attended the Paris Peace Conference as a delegate in 1918 but resigned over the terms of the Versailles peace treaty. He became professor of corporate law at Columbia Law School in 1927 and held the post until he retired in 1963. Berle wrote several major books on law, including, with Gardiner C. Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), The 20th Century Capitalist Revolution (1954), and Power without Property (1959).
In the 1930s Berle became a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust” and also an adviser to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York. During World War II, Berle was appointed assistant secretary of state for Latin affairs, and from 1945 to 1946 he was ambassador to Brazil. In 1961, Berle was one of the advisers who helped shape President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress Policy for Latin America. His book, Latin America: Diplomacy and Reality, was published in 1962.
BERLIN. This capital of Germany was overrun by the Red Army in 1945, bringing an end to World War II. Under the Potsdam Agreement, the city was divided between east and west, with the three Allied powers—the United States, Great Britain, and France—each holding a sector in the west, and the Soviet Union (USSR) holding the east. However, the city became the focus of growing disagreements about the postwar future of Germany and the payment of reparations. When the Allies proposed unifying the sectors and introduced a common currency in 1948, the USSR imposed a land blockade. The Allies responded with the Berlin airlift. Berlin remained divided; in April 1961, a wall symbolizing the divisions between East and West in the Cold War was built on the East German side. It remained in place until November 1989, when its destruction indicated the collapse of the communist regime and end of the Cold War.
BERLIN, IRVING (1888–1989). Born Israel Isidore Baline in Russia, Berlin’s family moved to the United States in 1893 and settled in New York’s Lower East Side. He was forced to work from an early age and did a variety of casual jobs, including being a singing waiter. However, Berlin began writing songs. His first published song in 1907 included a misprint of his name, which he then changed to Irving Berlin. From 1908 to 1911 he mainly wrote lyrics for other people’s music, but in 1911 he achieved his first major success with “Alexander’s Rag-time Band.” Berlin entered the army during World War I and staged the revue Yip Yip Yaphank. Following the war he wrote for the Ziegfeld Follies before establishing his own theater, The Music Box. After moderate success, he went through a fairly unproductive period from 1927 to 1932, although one of his hit songs was “Blue Skies” performed by Al Jolson in the movie The Jazz Singer (1927). He began to write hit songs again with Rudy Vallee’s “How Deep Is the Ocean” (1932) and then had a string of hits with the Broadway revue As Thousands Cheer (1933), including the songs “Easter Parade,” “Harlem on My Mind,” and “Heat Wave.” He also wrote the music for the movie Top Hat (1935), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and won an Oscar for the song “Cheek to Cheek.”
Berlin’s film success continued during the war with Holiday Inn, featuring Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas”—the song that became the most played Christmas song—and the reprise of Yip Yip Yaphank retitled This is the Army (1943) based on the revue that had first been staged in 1942. It now included “God Bless America,” a song first performed by Katie Smith in 1938, which was so popular during the war it almost became the nation’s anthem. His contribution to the nation was recognized by President Harry S. Truman with the award of the Medal of Merit in 1945.
Berlin was a huge success after the war with one of his greatest musicals, Annie Get Your Gun (1946), produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, including the songs “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and “Anything You Can Do.” The musical was made into a film in 1950. The movie Easter Parade appeared in 1948. However, Berlin’s subsequent productions, Miss Liberty (1949) and Mr. President (1962), were regarded as flops, and he largely retired thereafter. He did, however, write “I Like Ike,” the campaign song for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952. Berlin is remembered as one of greatest songwriters. See also CINEMA; LITERATURE AND THEATER.
BERLIN AIRLIFT. Following the imposition of a land blockade on Berlin by the Soviet Union in April 1948, the United States and Great Britain began to fly in food, fuel, and other necessities to sustain the population in the Allied sectors of the city. The blockade was finally lifted at the end of September 1949, by which time the Allies had flown in more than 2 million tons of supplies in Operation Vittles. In maintaining their control in West Berlin the Allies had won a major victory in the newly begun Cold War.
BETHUNE, MARY MCLEOD (1875–1955). Born one of 17 children to former slave parents in South Carolina, Mary McCleod Bethune attended a one-room schoolhouse before gaining a college education. She taught in Georgia and South Carolina and then established the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Florida in 1904, which became the Bethune-Cookman College in 1929. An active member and later vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Bethune was also a leader in the organization of black women’s clubs and president of the National Association of Colored Women from 1924–1928. From 1936 to 1950 she was president of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.
Bethune took part in the National Commission for Child Welfare during the administration of Herbert Hoover, and in 1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her director of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration (NYA). She was the first black woman to hold such a high-ranking federal position. Her role made her an important member of the Black Cabinet. She returned to teaching when the NYA came to an end in 1943 but advised the War Department on the appointment of black women army officers for the Women’s Army Corps. In 1945, Bethune was one of several black advisers to attend the United Nations meetings in San Francisco, California. Her work in race relations was recognized with awards from several African countries in addition to the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal and numerous honorary degrees. See also AFRICAN AMERICANS.
BIDDLE, FRANCIS BEVERLEY (1886–1968). Born in Paris, France, to a wealthy American family, Francis Biddle graduated from Groton in 1905 and Harvard Law School in 1911 and was employed as a secretary to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Having failed to get elected to the Pennsylvania state senate in 1912, Biddle began a private law practice. He was assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1922 to 1926, but during the 1930s he changed allegiance from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. In 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Biddle as chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). He resigned in 1935 when the NLRB was declared unconstitutional but was appointed judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of appeals for the Third Circuit in 1939. In 1940, Biddle became U.S. solicitor general and then attorney general in 1941. He was responsible for the implementation of the internment of Japanese Americans during the war, an act he subsequently regretted. He was also responsible for the removal of Sewell Avery from his office in 1944. Biddle resigned as attorney general in 1945 when Harry S. Truman became president and was one of the four judges at the Nuremberg War Trials from 1945 to 1947. From 1950 to 1953 he was head of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. Biddle was a writer as well as lawyer, and among his publications were a novel, Llanfear Pattern (1927), a biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mr. Justice Holmes (1942), a critique of McCarthyism, Fear of Freedom (1951), and his own memoirs, A Casual Past (1961) and Brief Authority (1962).
BILBO, THEODORE GILMORE (1877–1947). Born in Juniper Grove, Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo attended Peabody College in Nashville from 1897 to 1899 but left without graduating. After teaching briefly, he also attended Vanderbilt Law School in 1905 but again left without graduating. Nonetheless, he was admitted to the bar in 1907 and, a Democrat, he was elected to the state senate in 1907 but expelled in 1910 for his involvement in an election scandal. In 1911, Bilbo was elected lieutenant governor, and in 1915 he became governor despite further charges of political corruption. He was a progressive governor who raised taxes and increased appropriations for education and a state highway system. He failed to win reelection in 1923 but was successful in 1927. Bilbo was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934, where, unlike many other southern Democrats and, although an outspoken racist, he remained a staunch supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. He was reelected in 1946 but was denied his seat by the Senate because of charges that he had advocated violence against black veterans who tried to register to vote. He died of cancer shortly after.
BLACK, HUGO LAFAYETTE (1886–1971). One of the longest-serving Supreme Court justices, Hugo Black was born near Ashland, Alabama. Educated at Ashland College, he graduated from Alabama Law School in Tuscaloosa in 1906 and practiced law in Birmingham. Black joined the army in 1917 and became a captain in the artillery but did not see action. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1927 and served until 1937. From 1935 he chaired the Senate Committee on Education and Labor and supported the initial legislation to introduce minimum wages and maximum hours that eventually became the Fair Labor Standards Act.
In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Black to succeed Willis Van Devanter on the Supreme Court. In the furor following Roosevelt’s attempted “court packing,” the nomination was referred to the Judiciary Committee before going before the Senate for approval. Questions were asked both about the constitutional issue of appointing someone still sitting in Congress and about Black’s past connections with the Ku Klux Klan, which Black denied. The nomination was approved, but when the African American newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier revealed that he had defended a Klansman for murder in 1921 and been a Klan member himself from 1923 until 1925, Black was forced to broadcast a retraction of his denial on radio, and he indicated that his membership had been brief and insignificant. His subsequent career in the court, with a commitment to upholding the Bill of Rights, often demonstrated sympathy for civil rights causes and decisions affecting African Americans, such as Shelley v. Kraemer and later Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
Although an advocate of the literal reading of the Constitution, Black supported the expansive use of federal power in matters of commerce and supported decisions to uphold New Deal legislation. With William O. Douglas, Black dissented from the decisions upholding convictions of members of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) under the Smith Act. He also argued for strict separation of church and state. However, he wrote the majority opinion upholding the government’s decision to intern Japanese Americans in Korematsu v. United States, argued in favor of the use of wiretapping, and argued against the notion of constitutional guarantees to rights of privacy. Although a supporter of the principle of free speech, Black distinguished between “speech” and “action” and dissented when the court ruled to allow flag burning or wearing obscene slogans in 1969 and 1971, respectively. He also did not agree that the Constitution prohibited use of the death penalty. He retired shortly before his death.
BLACK CABINET. The Black Cabinet was an informal network of the more than 40 African Americans appointed to positions in various federal agencies by the New Deal by 1936. It included Mary McLeod Bethune, Ralph Bunche, William H. Hastie, and Robert C. Weaver. This black presence in government contributed significantly in the switch in political allegiance of black voters from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in the 1930s.
BLACKLIST. Following the citation of the Hollywood Ten for contempt in 1947, leaders of the major Hollywood film studios met in New York City in 1947 and agreed that the 10 and any other known communists or communist sympathizers should not be employed in the film industry. The Motion Picture Association of America endorsed the decision in November 1947, and the blacklist operated until 1960. See also CINEMA; MCCARTHYISM.
BLOCK, HERBERT (1909–2001). Better known as Herblock, Herbert Block was a political cartoonist. He began work with the Chicago Daily News but moved in the 1930s to Newspaper Enterprises, where he became known as a supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. He joined the Washington Post in 1946 and stayed there for the remainder of his career. Known for his liberal views, Herblock was critical of Joseph McCarthy and coined the phrase “McCarthyism.” He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons in 1942, 1954, and 1979, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.
BLUE EAGLE. A blue American eagle was the symbol of the National Recovery Administration and was used in advertising and posters with the slogan “We Do Our Part” to demonstrate that the company or employer had signed up to the codes of fair competition, wages, and prices.
BOARD OF WAR COMMUNICATIONS. The Board of War Communications was a federal agency established by executive order on 24 September 1940 to coordinate the use of the radio, telegraph, and telephone during a war emergency. After Pearl Harbor, the board, composed of the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, the chief of the Army Signal Corps, the director of Naval Communications, and representatives from the State Department and Treasury, was empowered to establish priorities and use, control, or close any communications service deemed necessary for the war effort. It ceased operation in 1947. See also WORLD WAR II.
BOGART, HUMPHREY DEFOREST (1899–1957). Born into a wealthy family in New York City, Humphrey Bogart served in the navy during World War I and then held a variety of jobs before finding work in the theater in the 1920s. In 1931, he signed a contract with Fox but was not particularly successful until he appeared in The Petrified Forest in 1936. Rather than being conventionally handsome, his rugged looks suited him for parts as a well-worn, world-weary character like those described in the novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Bogart appeared as the hero in both The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946). Among his best films are High Sierra (1941), Casablanca (1942), To Have and Have Not (1944) with Lauren Bacall, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948) with Bacall and Edward G. Robinson, The African Queen (1951), The Caine Mutiny (1954), and The Desperate Hours (1955). He won Academy Awards for both The African Queen and The Caine Mutiny. Bogart actively campaigned against the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigations of Hollywood in 1947 and the introduction of the blacklist. However, faced with criticism in the press, he did not pursue this position. Bogart died of cancer in 1957.
BOHLEN, CHARLES EUSTIS (1904–1974). Born in New York, raised in South Carolina, and educated in Massachusetts, Charles Bohlen graduated from Harvard University in 1927 with a specialization in European history. He entered the Foreign Service in 1929 and after serving in Prague and Paris in 1934 was posted to the embassy in Moscow. After a brief return to Washington, D.C., Bohlen was back in Moscow in 1938 and then Tokyo in 1940. He was interned after the attack on Pearl Harbor but returned to the United States in 1942. Bohlen’s experience and knowledge of Russia made him a key adviser on Soviet affairs, and he acted as interpreter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference, the Yalta Conference, and to President Harry S. Truman at the Potsdam Conference. Bohlen also attended the San Francisco Conference and was an adviser to Secretaries of State James F. Byrnes, George C. Marshall, and Dean Acheson. He was nominated to become ambassador to the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1953 and was approved by the Senate despite criticism from Joseph McCarthy because of his sympathetic attitude toward the USSR. From 1957 to 1959 Bohlen was ambassador to the Philippines, until he became principal adviser to Secretary of State Christian Herter. From 1962 until 1968 he was ambassador to France. He was also an adviser to President John F. Kennedy. Bohlen wrote two books, The Transformation of American Foreign Policy (1969) and Witness to History (1973).
BONUS ACT, 1936. Passed in January 1936 over President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s veto, the Bonus Act authorized the immediate payment of the bonus due to veterans of World War I. The payment had been due to be paid in 1945, but protests from veterans, such as the Bonus Army, forced Congress to bring the payment forward.
BONUS ARMY. In 1932, unemployed veterans of World War I organized a Bonus Expeditionary Force to march on Washington to petition for early payment of bonuses approved in 1924 and due to be paid in 1945. The Bonus Army of 15,000 to 20,000 men established a camp on the Anacostia Flats in Washington, D.C. A Bonus Bill was approved by the House of Representatives but rejected by the Senate in June 1932. Many of the marchers left the capital, and in July the administration of Herbert Hoover, fearing the possibility of violence, ordered the eviction of the remaining individuals. A military force, including tanks, led by General Douglas MacArthur, used teargas and bayonets to drive out the veterans and their families before setting fire to the camp. One veteran was shot dead by police during the confrontation. The images of the veterans fleeing in the face of troops with bayonets drawn and the burning camp against the backdrop of the Capitol buildings were widely shown on newsreels and in newspapers and contributed to the growing unpopularity of President Hoover. See also BONUS ACT, 1936.
BORAH, WILLIAM EDGAR (1865–1940). After a limited education in Kansas, William Borah passed the bar examinations in law in 1887 and practiced for three years before moving to Idaho. Having stood unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1896, Borah turned to the Republicans as a candidate for the Senate in 1902. Unsuccessful again, he was eventually elected in 1906. Borah served six successive terms and was known for his oratory and political independence. In domestic matters, he had progressive tendencies, supporting antitrust legislation, the income tax, popular election of senators, and prohibition. On issues of foreign policy, he was one of the leading opponents of the Versailles Treaty and League of Nations, but he supported the Washington Conference from 1921–1922. As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee from 1924 to 1933, he helped secure ratification of the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928.
During the 1930s, Borah departed from his own party line to support such New Deal measures as the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act, but he also disapproved of other New Deal measures, like the National Industrial Recovery Act. In 1936, he attempted to win the Republican presidential nomination but was unsuccessful. He was, however, able to use his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to help block President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt at “court packing.” As a leading isolationist, Borah supported the Neutrality Acts but was unable to prevent Roosevelt’s revision of them.
BOULDER DAM. See HOOVER DAM.
BOURKE-WHITE, MARGARET (1904–1971). Margaret White (she later added her mother’s name) was born in New York City. She studied at the University of Michigan and Cornell University, where she graduated with a degree in biology in 1927. She had already begun to develop her skill as a photographer, and her work photographing the steel mills of Cleveland brought her to the attention of Henry Luce, who offered her a position as associate editor and photographer at Fortune magazine in 1929. She remained there until 1933. In the meantime, Bourke-White produced Eyes on Russia in 1931. She joined Life magazine in 1936 and worked there until 1957, continuing to contribute even after her retirement. During the 1930s, Bourke-White, like Dorothea Lange, documented the plight of those hit by the Dust Bowl. She also collaborated with Erskine Caldwell (to whom she was briefly married) on You Have Seen Their Faces (1937), North of the Danube (1939), and Russia at War (1942). During World War II, Bourke-White was accredited with the U.S. Air Force. She was later in Moscow during the attack by the Nazi forces, and in 1945 she was present when General George S. Patton liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. After the war, she went on photojournalist assignments in India from 1946 to 1949 and South Africa from 1949 to 1950. She was in Korea in 1952 during the Korean War.
BOWLES, CHESTER BLISS (1901–1986). Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Chester Bowles attended Choate Rosemary Hall School in Connecticut and then went to Yale University, where he graduated with a B.S. in science in 1924. After working as a journalist, he became an advertising copywriter, and in 1929 he established his own advertising agency with William Burnett Benton. He sold his share in 1941 and became director of the Connecticut Office of Price Administration (OPA) in 1942. He was appointed director of the national OPA in 1943 and held the position until 1946, when he was appointed director of the Office of Economic Stabilization. He also attended the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization conference in Paris as one of the U.S. delegates and served briefly as a special adviser in the United Nations. In 1948, Bowles was elected governor of Connecticut, but his liberal policies (including desegregating the state national guard) cost him reelection in 1950.
From 1951 until 1953, Bowles was U.S. ambassador to India. He was elected for one term to the House of Representatives in 1958 and failed on several attempts to become a senator for Connecticut. John F. Kennedy appointed him as a foreign policy adviser, and in 1961 he became undersecretary of state but lost the position because of his opposition to the Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba. After serving as an ambassador at large, he was again appointed ambassador to India in 1963, a position he held until 1968. Bowles was the author of several books dealing with different aspects of his career, among them The Conscience of a Liberal (1962) and Promises to Keep: My Public Life (1971).
BRACEROS. Braceros (meaning “open arms”) were Mexican workers imported into the United States by agreement with the Mexican government in 1942 to fill labor shortages during World War II, particularly in agriculture. It is estimated that some 200,000 workers entered the United States under this agreement, mostly to work in southern California, New Mexico, and Texas; another 200,000 Mexican workers probably entered the country illegally. See also HISPANIC AMERICANS; LOS ANGELES RIOT.
BRADDOCK, JAMES WALTER (1906–1974). Born in New York City but raised in Guttenberg, New Jersey, Jim Braddock began boxing as a teenager and turned professional in 1926. Fighting as a light heavyweight, he fought for the title in 1929 but lost to the holder, Tommy Loughran. Following the Wall Street Crash, Braddock’s investments were lost when his taxicab company failed. He fought 33 fights between 1929 and 1933 and lost all but 10. He also suffered a broken hand and was forced to work as a stevedore. In 1934, he made a comeback as a heavyweight, defeating John Griffin in three rounds. After two more successful bouts, he was matched against heavyweight champion Max Baer on 13 June 1935. Although considered the underdog, Braddock defeated Baer and earned the nickname “Cinderella Man.” He held the title until June 1937, when Joe Louis finally knocked him out in the eighth round. He retired after one more successful fight. During World War II, Braddock enlisted in the army and rose to the rank of captain. After the war, he found successful employment as a marine equipment operator and supplier. See also SPORT.
BRADLEY, OMAR NELSON (1893–1981). Born in Missouri, Omar Bradley graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1915, a contemporary of Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and George S. Patton. Bradley served in the infantry on the Mexican border in 1915 before being posted to service in Montana during World War I. After the war, he taught at West Point; served in Hawaii; attended General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Texas; and in 1938 joined the War Department. During World War II, he served under Patton in North Africa in 1942 and took part in the invasion of Sicily in 1943. He was given command of the U.S. First Army in June 1944 and commanded the Normandy landings at Utah Beach and Omaha Beach. Known as the “the soldiers’ general,” it was Bradley who successfully planned and led the Allied breakout from Normandy in “Operation Cobra” and almost achieved a smashing victory at Falaise. Bradley also commanded U.S. troops during the Battle of the Bulge; later it was his forces that crossed the Rhine and captured the crucial bridge at Remagen and in April 1945 met Soviet troops on the Elbe, effectively bringing the war in Europe to an end.
In 1945, Bradley returned to Washington, D.C., as head of the Veterans’ Administration rather than being sent to Japan. In 1945, he became chief of staff and in 1949 chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The following year Bradley was made general of the army and chair of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization committee. In this capacity, he resisted MacArthur’s attempts to expand the war in Korea into open conflict with China, saying it would be “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.” He retired in 1953. Bradley’s memoirs, A Soldier’s Story and A General’s Story, were published in 1951 and 1983, respectively.
BRAIN TRUST. Sometimes known as the “Brains Trust,” this group of academic advisers was formed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in March 1932 to help plan the “First Hundred Days” of the New Deal. The group initially consisted of three professors from Columbia University, Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolph Berle, but they were joined by Basil O’Connor, Samuel I. Rosenman, Hugh Johnson, Robert Lovett, and Frances Perkins. Named the Brains Trust by New York Times reporter James M. Kier-nan, the group was often attacked in the press for their idealism. Although the original group ceased after 1933, Roosevelt continued to draw upon academics and lawyers for advice and to help write speeches on a number of issues.
BRANDEIS, LOUIS DEMBITZ (1856–1941). The son of Austrian immigrants, future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis was born in Louisville, Kentucky. After traveling in Europe and studying in Dresden, Germany, Brandeis returned to the United States in 1875 and entered Harvard Law School. He graduated in 1877 with the highest grades ever achieved. Brandeis practiced law briefly in St. Louis and then returned to Boston. He gradually developed a reputation as a progressive lawyer who favored equal protection of trade unions in their relations with business and who opposed monopoly. In the landmark case of Muller v. Oregon (1908), Brandeis used statistical and other information rather than legal precedent to establish that long hours of work were potentially harmful to women and persuaded the Supreme Court to uphold Oregon’s laws limiting the hours of work for females. He also supported the prohibition of child labor and laws introducing unemployment and old-age insurance. He backed the candidacy of Woodrow Wilson, who, in turn, appointed Brandeis to the Supreme Court in 1916.
As a Supreme Court justice, Brandeis argued for the qualification on the principle of “clear and present danger” established by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in upholding wartime espionage legislation in Schenck v. United States (1919), arguing in 1920 and 1927 that the danger had to be “serious” and “imminent.” In 1928 he argued that wiretapping was a violation of the Fourth Amendment. He was sympathetic to much of the New Deal but opposed what he saw as excessive centralization. Although with Benjamin Cardozo and Harlan Stone Brandeis was regarded as one of the “liberal” bloc, he voted with the rest of the Court on “Black Monday” to declare the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional. The oldest justice at the time, Brandeis was personally offended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “court packing” proposals. In the end, he was forced to retire because of ill health in 1939. Brandeis University was named after him.
BRANNAN, CHARLES FRANKLIN (1903–1992). Harry S. Truman’s secretary of agriculture, Charles F. Brannan was born in Denver, Colorado. He earned his degree in law from the University of Denver in 1929 and began work in the New Deal as an assistant regional attorney for the Resettlement Administration from 1935 to 1937, and then as regional attorney for the Department of Agriculture. From 1941 to 1944 Brannan worked for the Farm Security Administration and became assistant secretary of agriculture in 1944 and secretary of agriculture in 1948. His proposals to maintain farm income and consumer prices, as outlined in the Brannan Plan, were rejected. After leaving office, he was general counsel to the Farmers’ Union from 1953 until 1990. He was also vice president of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute for National and International Affairs. See also AGRICULTURE.
BRANNAN PLAN, 1949. In April 1949, Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan called upon Congress to expand the agricultural support program to maintain farm income and low food prices through subsidies. The plan proposed to limit the amount of subsidy available to the largest farms. It was rejected by the Republican-dominated Congress. See also AGRICULTURE.
BRETTON WOODS CONFERENCE, 1944. Following discussions led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White and the British Treasury representative John Maynard Keynes about ways to ensure postwar economic stability and prevent another Great Depression, representatives of 45 nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944. The International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or World Bank, sprang from the agreements reached and established, among other things, the principles of international monetary exchange with currencies fixed on the gold standard. This provided the basic framework for much of the Western industrial world until the 1970s.
BRIDGES, HARRY (1901–1990). Born in Australia, militant trade unionist Alfred Renton Bridges became known as Harry after he had come to the United States in 1920. He joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1921 and later became an active trade union organizer within the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) among the dockworkers and longshoremen of San Francisco, California. In May 1934, he led the West Coast Longshore Strike. In 1935, he was elected president of the pacific coast district of the ILA. The pacific branch left the ILA in 1937 to form the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union and affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Attempts to deport Bridges in 1938 on the grounds of his supposed membership in the Communist Party of the United States of America failed in 1939. A second attempt in 1941 also failed, and the Supreme Court overturned the attorney general’s attempts to insist on deportation in 1945. In 1949, Bridges was tried for perjury because of his denial of Communist Party membership when he sought naturalization, but the conviction was also overturned by the Supreme Court in 1953. The government’s attempts to revoke Bridges’s citizenship—granted in 1945—in the civil courts finally ended in 1954. He was, however, jailed briefly for making critical comments about the Korean War. He retired from union work in 1977.
BROWDER, EARL RUSSELL (1891–1973). Born in Wichita, Kansas, Earl Browder joined the Socialist Party in 1906, and in 1914 he formed the League for Democratic Control to oppose U.S. entry into World War I. In 1917, he was jailed for two years for draft evasion. Browder joined the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), went to Moscow in 1921, and was editor of the Labor Herald until 1926. He went to China in 1926 to organize communist trade unions. Upon his return in 1929, he joined the ruling council of the CPUSA and in 1934 became general secretary. He led the call for a united front against fascism, and in 1935 at Moscow’s behest, this became the more inclusive Popular Front. Browder ran in the presidential election of 1936 but obtained a mere 80,159 votes. The Popular Front came to a rapid end when the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939. Browder and the party opposed any involvement in the conflict in Europe, until 1941 when they became committed to all-out support. These swings in position did nothing to enhance support for the CPUSA, and in the election of 1940 Browder’s vote was down to 46,251. In 1941, Browder was jailed for 18 months for passport fraud, but his sentence was commuted in the interests of national unity. In 1944, he declared the Communist Party no longer necessary and replaced it with the Communist Political Association. He was expelled from the CPUSA and replaced by William Z. Foster in 1945.
BUCK, PEARL SYDENSTRICKER (1892–1973). Best-selling author Pearl S. Buck was born in West Virginia, but her missionary parents moved to China in 1892. Buck returned to the United States in 1910 to attend Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Virginia, where she graduated in 1914. She returned to China and taught at Nanking University but came back to the United States to study at Cornell University, where she got her M.A. in 1926. She and her husband finally left China in 1934. Although some of Buck’s novels dealt with pioneer life in the United States, China provided the inspiration for most of her writing, and her first book was East Wind: West Wind (1930). Her second, The Good Earth (1931), won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and the William Dean Howells Medal in 1935. In 1938, she became the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. During World War II, Buck often spoke in defense of China against Japan’s aggression. She wrote almost 100 books, the last, The Three Daughters of Madame Liang, appearing in 1969.
Buck was also active in civil rights and humanitarian concerns and in 1949 established the Welcome House Inc., an interracial adoption agency. In 1960, she also set up the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, and although this was later involved in some controversy regarding its management, it too helped orphaned Amerasian children.
BUENOS AIRES CONFERENCE, 1936. Concerned about the possible impact of conflict in Europe on the western hemisphere, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for an Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace, which met in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the Buenos Aires Conference in December 1936. In his speech at the conference, Roosevelt reaffirmed the “Good Neighbor” Policy outlined in his inaugural address and underlined the end of United States’s unilateral action in the region with a promise that the nations of the western hemisphere would consult with one another for their mutual safety and good. His attempts to reach agreement not to support fascism failed, as Argentina had strong links with the German regime. Participants did agree on a common policy of neutrality in the event of conflict between any two of them.
BULLITT, WILLIAM CHRISTIAN (1891–1967). William C. Bullitt began work as a writer for the Philadelphia Public Ledger from 1915 to 1917 but joined the State Department in 1917. In 1919, he was sent to Moscow to report on the Bolshevik government, and he recommended recognition of the Soviet regime. When this was rejected, he became disaffected and spoke against acceptance of the Versailles Treaty.
Bullitt was recalled from relative obscurity by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who sent him on two private fact-finding tours of Europe in 1932. Bullitt mistakenly reported that Adolf Hitler had little political future. He was appointed ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1933 to 1936. While in Moscow, he abandoned his previous procommunist outlook and became increasingly critical of Joseph Stalin. He continued to express these views during World War II, and many of his views were summed up in his book The Great Globe Itself (1946). Some of these ideas clearly influenced George F. Kennan and helped shape the policy of containment that emerged during the Cold War.
From 1936 to 1941, Bullitt was ambassador to France. He became a special assistant to the secretary of the navy in 1942, but he vacated the position following a dispute with Sumner Welles to serve as an officer in the Free French Army from 1944 to 1945. He continued to write articles on foreign issues for Life magazine and other publications after World War II had ended.
BUNCHE, RALPH JOHNSON (1903–1971). Born in Detroit, Ralph Bunche moved first to Albuquerque with his family in 1914, and then to Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of California in Los Angeles in 1927 with a major in international relations. Bunche undertook postgraduate research at Harvard University and while there in 1934 produced the first political science dissertation by an African American—a prize-winning study—and went on to research in anthropology at Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and Capetown University in South Africa. He was chair of the Department of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, D.C., from 1928 to 1950. In 1938, Bunche joined the research team directed by Gunnar Myrdal that produced An American Dilemma (1944), the classic study of black life and conditions. He was also a member of the Black Cabinet consulted by the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt on racial matters.
During World War II, Bunche worked first in the Office of Strategic Services and then in the African section of the State Department. He became one of the organizers of conferences leading to the organization of the United Nations (UN). He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the General Assembly and in 1946 was placed in charge of the Department of Trusteeship by UN Secretary General Trygve Lie. He then became undersecretary general of the UN and was involved in the mediation between Palestine and Israel from 1947 to 1949. Bunche took over the role of chief mediator following the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948 and was successful in negotiating an armistice and peace settlement.
Bunche was subsequently involved in the peacekeeping efforts following the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the conflict in the Belgian Congo (Zaire) in 1960. In addition to the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in 1950 for his work in the Middle East, Bunche was awarded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples’ Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Honor in 1963, and the U.S. Medal of Freedom in 1963. He continued to work at the UN until shortly before his death.
BURCHFIELD, CHARLES EPHRAIM (1893–1967). Born in Ohio, Charles Burchfield trained at the Cleveland School of Art, and after graduating in 1916, he briefly attended the New York Academy of Design. He served in the army from 1918 to 1919 and then returned to Salem, Ohio. In 1912, he was employed as a wallpaper designer for a company in Buffalo, New York. The focus of much of his painting in the 1920s was on towns and cities, as evident in Old Tavern at Hammondsville (1926–1928), Rainy Night (1928–1930), and Black Iron (1935). While most of his work was done in watercolors, Burchfield did do some work in oil, including his November Evening (1931–1934). Later he produced such fantasy works as The Sphinx and the Milky Way (1946) and toward the end of his career Orion In Winter (1962), but Burchfield is remembered for his depiction of nature and the urban landscape as “a recorder of the American scene.” See also ART.
BUREAU OF THE BUDGET. Established in 1921 under the Budget and Accounting Act, the Bureau of the Budget was headed by the director of the budget with the primary function of preparing the annual executive budget. The bureau was also responsible for the supervision of the administrative management of executive agencies, the improvement of federal statistical services, and the promotion of economic and efficient government running. President Franklin D. Roosevelt reinvigorated the bureau in 1933 and appointed Lewis Douglas, a former Democratic congressman, as director. Roosevelt initially aimed to reduce expenditure and balance the budget, but as the New Deal developed, the policy was abandoned, and Douglas resigned in 1934, to be replaced by Daniel W. Bell from the Treasury Department. By 1938, the bureau was effectively reviewing the financial implications of all legislation, and in 1939 it was transferred from the Treasury to the Executive Office. Harold D. Smith, formerly director of the Michigan state budget, was appointed director. During the war, the bureau grew in size and importance, reflecting the increase of its role in the federal government and federal spending.
BURNS, GEORGE (1896–1996). Born Nathan Birnbaum, comedian George Burns was one of 12 children brought up in poverty in Lower East Side, Manhattan. Burns left school after failing fifth grade and worked various odd jobs but struggled to enter the world of entertainment. He became a song-and-dance man in vaudeville but did not achieve success until he teamed up with Gracie Allen in 1923. Together they formed a comedy partnership in which she delivered the jokes he wrote, and he played the straight man.
Burns and Allen married in 1926, became successful in the theaters of New York, and toured Europe in 1930. They made their radio debut in England and then established “The Burns and Allen Show,” which ran for 26 years, on the radio in the United States. Burns’s career seemed to come to an end after Allen’s death in 1964, but in 1975 he won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in The Sunshine Boys. He had several other movie roles and also starred in several television specials. Burns authored a number of books, including I Love Her, That’s Why (1955), about Allen, and the autobiographical or semiautobiographical The Third Time Around (1980), How to Live to Be 100—or More (1983), Wisdom of the 90s (1991), and 100 Years, 100 Stories (1996). See also CINEMA.
BURTON, HAROLD HITZ (1888–1964). Born in Massachusetts, Harold Burton graduated from Bowdoin College in 1909 and Harvard Law School in 1912. He established a practice in Cleveland, Ohio, and in 1914 went to Salt Lake City, Utah, to work for the Utah Power and Light Company. In 1917, he joined the infantry, and after the war he returned to Cleveland, where he established his own law firm in 1925. In 1927, Burton was elected to the East Cleveland Board of Education, and in 1928, as a Republican in the Ohio House of Representatives. From 1929 until 1932, Burton was Cleveland’s director of law. He returned to his private practice in 1932 but was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1935. In 1940 he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1945, President Harry S. Truman appointed him to succeed Justice Owen Roberts on the Supreme Court. Burton served until 1958, taking a generally centrist position and supporting the federal government in most areas except the extension of powers in commercial fields. After he retired, he served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., until 1962.
BUSH, VANNEVAR (1890–1974). Engineer and physicist Vannevar Bush was born in Massachusetts. He graduated from Tufts University in 1913 and worked for General Electric from 1913 to 1914. He attended Clark University briefly in 1915 and took on a teaching position at Tufts. Bush completed a doctorate in engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Harvard University in 1916 and resumed his teaching position in electrical engineering at Tufts. During World War I, Bush was a consultant with the American Research and Development Corporation, and he designed devices for locating submarines. In 1919, he joined the faculty at MIT, and in 1931 he became vice president and dean of engineering. He also continued to work with industry and was linked to a number of inventions, most notably a differential analyzer. He also began work on the idea for a system of storing information that he called the “memex,” a forerunner of the Internet. His proposal for a method to store fingerprints on film was turned down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In 1938, Bush became president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW), one of the largest research organizations of the day. From 1939 to 1941 he chaired the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and he continued to serve on the committee during World War II. However, his most significant role came in June 1940 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded to his suggestion and created a National Defense and Research Committee with Bush as its chair. In 1941, this became the Office of Scientific Research and Development. After the war, Bush called for the creation of a National Research Foundation in his report Science, the Endless Frontier (1945), and this eventually emerged as the National Science Foundation in 1950. Bush returned to CIW, where he worked until retiring in 1955. He was chair of the MIT Corporation from 1957 to 1959 and director of American Telegraph and Telephone from 1947 to 1962. He was awarded the Medal of Merit by President Harry S. Truman and the National Medal of Science by President Lyndon Johnson in recognition of his contributions to scientific research and development.
BUTLER, PIERCE (1866–1939). The son of Irish immigrants, Pierce Butler was born in Northfield, Minnesota. He was admitted to the Minnesota bar in 1888. He was briefly assistant county attorney and was elected county attorney in 1892 and 1894. In 1908, he was chosen as president of the Minnesota State Bar Association. A Democrat, Butler narrowly lost election to the state senate in 1906, but he continued to advise state governors. As a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota during World War I, he supported the dismissal of professors who expressed pacifist or radical opinions. In 1922, President Warren Harding nominated him to the United States Supreme Court, and he served until 1939. He was generally conservative, committed to principles of laissez faire, and opposed to any expansion of the power of the federal government and voted against almost every New Deal measure. Butler was also conservative on issues of civil liberties and civil rights, and he opposed the rejection of the conviction of the Scottsboro Boys in 1932, and dissented from the decision against the white primaries in Texas that year. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s failed attempt at “court packing” in 1937, Butler was one of the conservative minority. See also MCREYNOLDS, JAMES CLARK; ROBERTS, OWEN JOSEPHUS; SUTHERLAND, (ALEXANDER) GEORGE; VAN DEVANTER, WILLIS.
BYRD, HARRY FLOOD (1887–1966). Although a Democrat, one of the New Deal’s staunchest critics, Harry Byrd was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and began working for the family newspaper in Winchester, Virginia, at the age of 15. He eventually became a newspaper publisher and businessman, and he served in the Virginia state senate from 1915 to 1925, and as state governor from 1926 to 1930. He gained a reputation as a progressive governor, streamlining the state administration and making it more efficient. He also encouraged industrial development and investment in the state. However, at the national level he was a conservative. In 1933, he was appointed to replace Senator Claude Swanson, whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt had appointed secretary of the navy. A defender of states’ rights and fiscal conservatism, Byrd opposed the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act and was incensed by the president’s attempt at “court packing” in 1937. He opposed Roosevelt’s renomination in 1940. His criticism of federal spending continued after the war, and he opposed the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine. In the 1950s, he led the massive resistance to the desegregation of the schools following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, and he consistently opposed the civil rights reforms of the 1960s. In every way, Byrd was representative of the old-fashioned, traditional southern Democrats.
BYRNES, JAMES FRANCIS (1882–1972). Born in Charleston, South Carolina, James F. Byrnes left school early, lied about his age (claiming to have been born in 1879), and was employed as a court stenographer. He passed the South Carolina bar exam in 1903. Byrnes was elected to the House of Representatives in 1911 and served until 1924. He failed to win election to the Senate in 1924, but he was successful in 1930 and was reelected in 1936. An old friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s, he helped see much of the early New Deal legislation through Congress. However, by 1937 he believed the worst of the Great Depression was over and became increasingly conservative. Nonetheless, in 1941 Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court, but he resigned in 1942 to head the Office of Economic Stabilization, later the Office of War Mobilization. This office was effectively the most powerful of all the war agencies, and Byrnes was regarded by some as “assistant” president. It was widely accepted that he would be Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944, but his segregationist background was seen as a handicap, and instead the position of vice president went to Harry S. Truman. Nevertheless, Byrnes was involved in major decision making at home and abroad, and he accompanied Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference.
In 1945, Truman made Byrnes secretary of state. Although not afraid of hard decisions (he supported the use of the atomic bomb), Byrnes was accused by Republican critics of being “soft” on the Soviet Union, and he resigned in 1947. He was governor of South Carolina from 1951 to 1955 and led the massive resistance to school desegregation after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision. In 1952, he declared his support for Dwight D. Eisenhower and in 1960 abandoned his Democratic affiliation to support Richard M. Nixon and in 1964 Barry Goldwater, neither of whom were successful.