Throughout the history of the United States, periods of radical change in political, legal, and economic systems have been referred to as “Reconstructions.” One of the most prominent was the Reconstruction era following the Civil War. Another two periods of change included the New Deal enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and the Civil Rights Movement starting in the 1950s. Both the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement should be considered reconstructions according to two authors. In Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, William E. Leuchtenburg argues for the idea of “The Roosevelt Reconstruction,” saying that radical changes occurred as a result of acts being passed in that era. Similarly, in his article Demanding Democracy:
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt, starting in 1933, began signing executive orders and pushing Congress to pass laws that focused on relief, recovery, and reform. These changes were in response to the Great Depression, and were an attempt to make sure nothing of that impact would happen again in the United States. Roosevelt greatly expanded the president’s legislative functions, and used his ability to draft bills to send to Congress more frequently than past presidents. He also shifted the Bureau of the Budget from a Treasury responsibility and put it under the Executive Branch. Because of his moves to extend presidential power over the economy, Roosevelt became much more personally involved in the well-being of the people. He radically terminated the separation of bank and state, leading him to be called the “people’s president.” As Leuchtenburg states, “Franklin Roosevelt personified the state as protector. It became commonplace to say that people felt toward the President the kind of trust they would normally express for a warm and understanding father who comforted them in their grief or safeguarded them from harm,” (Leuchtenburg …show more content…
Leaders of the movement such as Martin Luther King Jr., as well as “major organizations involved with the Civil Rights movement came to insist that the lessons of the postwar period had been well-learnt and that there would be no return to the violence of form or spirit that characterized radicalism in the late Depression years,” (Stears 150). Civil Rights activists did not want to drastically change laws, they simply wanted to hold the government to its word and make sure that everyone was equal. Unlike movements in the past, the methods of protest the leaders called for (such as sit-in protests and peaceful rallies) sought to speak to society’s morals. This peaceful protest strategy largely reconstructed America because it, along with the contrasting strategies of the Black Power movement, helped to enable outlawing racial segregation and create voting equality. “The argument was reinforced by the fact that many of the struggles that the movement was engaged in were in pursuit not of now laws based on abstract ideals but of effective enforcement of already existing federal legislation and judicially recognized constitutional rights,” (Stears
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, starting in 1933, began signing executive orders and pushing Congress to pass laws that focused on relief, recovery, and reform. These changes were in response to the Great Depression, and were an attempt to make sure nothing of that impact would happen again in the United States. Roosevelt greatly expanded the president’s legislative functions, and used his ability to draft bills to send to Congress more frequently than past presidents. He also shifted the Bureau of the Budget from a Treasury responsibility and put it under the Executive Branch. Because of his moves to extend presidential power over the economy, Roosevelt became much more personally involved in the well-being of the people. He radically terminated the separation of bank and state, leading him to be called the “people’s president.” As Leuchtenburg states, “Franklin Roosevelt personified the state as protector. It became commonplace to say that people felt toward the President the kind of trust they would normally express for a warm and understanding father who comforted them in their grief or safeguarded them from harm,” (Leuchtenburg …show more content…
Leaders of the movement such as Martin Luther King Jr., as well as “major organizations involved with the Civil Rights movement came to insist that the lessons of the postwar period had been well-learnt and that there would be no return to the violence of form or spirit that characterized radicalism in the late Depression years,” (Stears 150). Civil Rights activists did not want to drastically change laws, they simply wanted to hold the government to its word and make sure that everyone was equal. Unlike movements in the past, the methods of protest the leaders called for (such as sit-in protests and peaceful rallies) sought to speak to society’s morals. This peaceful protest strategy largely reconstructed America because it, along with the contrasting strategies of the Black Power movement, helped to enable outlawing racial segregation and create voting equality. “The argument was reinforced by the fact that many of the struggles that the movement was engaged in were in pursuit not of now laws based on abstract ideals but of effective enforcement of already existing federal legislation and judicially recognized constitutional rights,” (Stears