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Thank you for reading as well! Indeed, the Stormy Sixties at least will earn their name, and if Smathers & company want a happy ending to the next decade they're going to have to work for it. While at present I have no plan to go full-dystopia with DDT's future, considering what's happened to...

Thanks for giving it a read! And thank you for sticking around from the beginning & always raising interesting points in your replies! Yes - if Smathers thought threading the moderate needle while campaigning was hard enough, he's in for an even harder ride throughout the '60s. IOTL he doesn't...

You're very welcome! The reverence Haile Selassie enjoys to this day, especially among black Americans & Canadians, was something that confused me ever since I started researching him for a high school project years ago - he came across as less of a living saint and much more like an African...

1960 Four years had passed since the last presidential election, and as a new decade dawned the American people were due to head to the polls once more. The Republican and Democratic political machines rumbled back to life, the former eager to compensate for the severe bruising it took in the...

Thanks for reading all this way! Re: the Dalai Lama's escape and aid to the Tibetans, I agree that it would indeed have required flying through Indian airspace or smuggling overland through NE India before they can reach East Pakistan/Bangladesh (and in the DL's case, head out for Thailand from...

1959 America welcomed two new states into the Union this year: Alaska on January 3, and Hawaii on August 21. Both had few opponents in Congress and had been further aided in their quest for statehood by Vice President Knowland, who (having long chafed at the vice presidency’s lack of...

Hey, thanks for reading! :) You're correct, most Northern blacks were voting Democratic since FDR due to a mix of economic considerations and the Republicans having essentially given up on civil rights under Hoover (who was an ally of the Lily-White faction within the party), and there's several...

Ah yes, British and American interests in the not-yet-former colonies will not necessarily always be aligned. Even now, after an American-assisted victory at Suez and a more openly pro-British/French president than Dewey at the helm, there's already a few cracks emerging: America being quite...

Yes indeed, the Selective Service Act kept being extended every two and then four years; as of the Halleck presidency, much like OTL it's up for renewal in 1959 (having been extended for 4 years for the first time in 1955), so I'll be bringing it up in the next update. Good call on the Indian...

1958 This year began with two advances for the United States in the Space Race: firstly Sputnik fell and burned up just three days after New Year’s, having spent three months in space, and so its presence could no longer taunt President Halleck. Secondly the National Aeronautics and Space Act...

Not likely, but not impossible either. It'd probably require Mac to buy into the same argument behind the 'New Look' policy which his rival Eisenhower pursued in his capacity as Dewey's SoD (and as president IOTL) - basically the idea that you shouldn't need a huge and hugely expensive...

Thanks! Getting rid of the draft in favor of a smaller, sleeker and more efficient all-professional military would be in line with Halleck's budget priorities; however it would likely conflict with Defense Secretary MacArthur's own preference for a huge conventional military. As president...

1957 After being inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States, the ever-dynamic Charles Halleck immediately got to work. Much like Dewey before him, his first task was to assemble a cabinet. Said cabinet would turn out to be a combination of change and continuity from Dewey’s own. At...

Indeedy, this is the longest update so far (possibly the longest I'll write for this timeline) at 7k words. There's just so much happening this year - the election at home, of course, and then Cuba, the European revolutions and Suez abroad. Fortunately I think the foreign affairs half will calm...

1956 Another four years, another presidential election. As Dewey upheld his promise not to seek a third term despite the 22nd Amendment’s grandfather clause allowing him to, the Republican frontrunner was Vice President Charles Halleck instead. The latter had made no secret of his ambition to...

Yes indeed, Colvin was not pregnant at the time of her removal from the bus but did become pregnant later that summer. I've gone back & edited that bit to try to clarify Colvin's situation, as well as to do some general clean-up & especially re-italicize a couple things that lost their italics...

1955 Dewey found his administration’s civil rights legislation sorely tested this summer. Three high-profile murders shook the nation and the president himself in those months: the first was that of George W. Lee, a pastor from Belzoni, MS who also happened to be a prominent local NAACP and...

Indeed, Dewey has grown significantly in the realm of foreign affairs over his first term, but it's still the area of policy where he's at his weakest. Or, at least, where he's most reliant on advisors who may have their own ulterior motives like the Dulles brothers. He's definitely more of a...

1954 Dewey and the Republicans kicked this spring off with increased efforts to advance civil rights. Last year’s passage of the Case Act had been cause for celebration and would hopefully save many black lives if – or when – violence in the South should increase, but now they were moving on to...

Thanks for reading! I'm inclined to agree - the Soviet Union remaining 'orthodox'-Stalinist (to an extreme that not even Brezhnev, who at least had some sense of pragmatism and was a Khrushchev ally, would have gone to) in the long run makes them dangerous even outside of the 1950s and early...