10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America

The US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan during World War II. The first bomb, dropped on August 6, 1945, on the city of Hiroshima, “killed about a hundred thousand people instantly, and thousands more died later of burns, shock, and radiation poisoning” (177). The second bomb, dropped on August 9 on the city of Nagasaki, killed 40,000 people. Although debate has raged about the ethics of using nuclear weapons to end the war, “few doubt that the United States would have developed the weapon before the end of the war if it had not been for the persistence of an eccentric Hungarian-born physicist named Leo Szilard and his more famous colleague, Albert Einstein” (178). Following World War I, Szilard moved to Berlin to study physics, but fled the country when Nazis rose to power in the 1920s and began persecuting Jewish scientists. In 1933, Szilard conceived the concept of nuclear fission, which was later achieved by German scientists in 1939.

By the late 1930s, it was clear to Szilard that Hitler’s attempted domination of Europe would lead to a second world war. According to Gillon, he was “consumed by the fear that Hitler could get his hands on a new weapon of terrifying destructive potential” (180). Szilard decided that Hitler had to be deterred, so he contacted Einstein, “the most brilliant scientist of his age not for his intellect but for his political connections” (181). By the 1930s, Einstein had already become one of the most famous people in the world following the publication of his theory of relativity, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Like Szilard, Einstein was Jewish and had fled Germany when Nazis came to power. Although Einstein was a pacifist, the rise of Hitler and fascism changed his opinion and when Szilard explained his concerns about the Nazis developing a nuclear weapon, Einstein agreed to help. Within days, the scientists agreed that a letter should be written to American President Franklin D. Roosevelt as well, detailing their concerns.

Despite the lingering isolationist views of many Americans, Roosevelt agreed that fission research should begin. Roughly two years later, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States officially entered the war and “Roosevelt accelerated the program to build the bomb” (189). The program was code-named the Manhattan Project and consisted of secret research labs, factories, and military bases across the nation. By July 1945, the project had succeeded, but both Szilard and Einstein had reservations. Einstein even referred to the letter he wrote to Roosevelt as the “one great mistake in [his] life” (195). Gillon argues that Einstein “had hoped that atom bombs would make wars obsolete, lessen world tensions, and free leaders to focus their limited resources on providing a higher standard of living for their citizens. Instead it produced a nuclear arms race and increased international tension” (195).

In Chapter 9, Gillon examines the cultural shift that took place in America during the 1950s when a new genre of popular music and a charismatic new musician blurred the boundaries of race and transformed the way one generation viewed another. White American life in the 1950s was homogenous, with an ever-growing middle class, the growth of suburbs, the influence of television, and a massive expansion of public education enrollment that “contributed to the development of a teenage culture” (205). Gillon argues that “by segregating young people with many others of the same age, universal education gave teenagers the opportunity to develop their own values” (206). Nothing exemplified this youth culture more than a new genre of popular music: “a mix of rhythm and blues, country, and white gospel music” that had become popular with African Americans in the late 1940s and was initially referred to as “race music” by white audiences (206-07), but which disc jockey Alan Freed renamed rock and roll.

When Elvis Presley went to Sun Records to try making a record in 1953, Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun Records in Memphis had been looking for a white singer with “the Negro sound and Negro feel” (207). Gillon argues that Presley “changed the course of American pop culture” (207). Earning 10 number one hits between 1956 and 1958, Presley was as controversial with adults as he was popular with teenagers: “in addition to challenging racial stereotypes at a critical time in the nation’s history, Elvis tapped into the spirit of rebellion among the army of American teens” (213).

At the time, the popular Ed Sullivan Show was a cultural phenomenon because it was seen as television for the entire family. After first rejecting the idea of Presley appearing on his show because of his controversial nature, Sullivan relented. Presley’s appearance on September 9, 1956, became “one of the most hotly anticipated events in the brief history in the new medium of television” (218). Gillon argues that Presley’s performance “symbolized the emergence of a new youth culture that would transform American culture and politics in the postwar era” (220).

In 1964, three young civil rights workers were murdered by Ku Klux Klan members in rural Mississippi. The three workers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Earl Chaney, were part of the Freedom Summer Project, which was organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in order to help African Americans to register to vote. After the passage of the 15th Amendment guaranteeing citizens voting rights almost a century, individual states were allowed to decide the qualifications for voting. Poll taxes and literacy tests were common requirements for voting in the South, while Mississippi developed even more stringent methods to limit access to voting. In 1964, only 40% of eligible Black people were registered to vote across the South and only 5% of Black Mississippians were registered. According to Gillon, “the state had five counties where blacks made up a majority of residents. The five counties combined did not have a single registered black voter” (229).

In the early days of the Freedom Summer Project, civil rights workers endured beatings and even murders, but this failed to gain national media attention. Robert Moses, who headed the SNCC’s campaign, had the idea to invite well-connected white students from the North to help the cause, reasoning that “if they suffered the same brutal treatment as blacks” the media had to notice (231-32). Gillon argues that “many Mississippi whites viewed the Freedom Summer of 1964 as a foreign invasion” (236): For example, when a Jackson, Mississippi, newspaper claimed that communist forces were aiming for a Black revolution, the city’s mayor doubled its police from 200 to 390, and many local law enforcement officials joined the Klan.

On June 21, the three workers were arrested for speeding after inspecting a church that had recently been burned down. While the workers were held at a local jail, the deputy sheriff contacted local Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen, who formed a posse that ambushed and executed Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. Their bodies were then buried more than 20 miles away to confuse investigators. Gillon argues that “tragically, Moses’s strategy was working. These civil rights workers were not like the other who had been killed—two of them were white” (240). President Lyndon Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy met with the victims’ parents. Hundreds of FBI agents undertook a massive search over the next 44 days. The FBI arrested 21 men for the murders, but only seven were convicted and none faced murder charges or served a prison term longer than six years. According to Gillon, the three civil rights workers “were reluctant martyrs in the nation’s ongoing struggle to realize the full promise of American democracy” (254).

In the brief Epilogue to 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America, Gillon suggests that each of the selected days reveals that “the fabric of our national past is rich, diverse, and full of surprising twists and turns” (256). He makes the case that each day changed the nation, either physically or symbolically, but they “did not resolve the fundamental tensions at the heart of American democracy” (257).