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By the middle of the XX^th Century, following World War II, the United States was a world power. While from across the seas it might have appeared as a gigantic monolith of commerce and culture, within the United States proper the nation was still a collection of distinct sections. There was great variance within the social orders of these various sections: New England, The Midwest, The Old South, The Great Southwest, The Plains, The Pacific Northwest and California. Within these major divisions, there were major subdivisions as well. Social structures varied significantly within each, largely driven by distinct racial groupings of immigrant populations. The earliest colonists from England, Ireland and Europe predominated in New England. The descendants of the slave population were a major influence in The Old South. Hispanics and Native Americans formed much of the social landscape in The Great Southwest while large immigrant populations from the Scandinavian countries and those of Northern and Eastern Europe influenced The Plains and The Midwest. Hispanic populations were plentiful in California along with an influx of Asian laborers into both California and The Pacific Northwest. Each section encompassed its own set of tensions wrought by the intermingling of social orders. Recalling the protocol stacks through which we have examined interactions in general, the situation following World War II was one in which the high level stimuli were emerging, lacking only the low order protocol layers of the stack to instigate mutational interactions of the prevailing social orders. At this point, enter the Interstate Highway System.

A widely recounted but ill-referenced homily related to warfare suggests that “Amateurs study tactics, armchair generals study strategy, true military leaders study logistics and those that win wars study intelligence.” As with most such sayings, there is a bit of truth and a bit of wishful thinking to be found therein. World War II did, however, illustrate the importance of logistics in the conduct of warfare on a global scale. A similar homily suggests that “Armies are trained to fight the last war.” The aftermath of World War II lends some credence to this observation as well. Keying on the effectiveness of the great autobahn roadway system in Germany that allowed rapid movement of military forces and materiel between the two fronts on which Germany fought the war, in 1956 under the leadership of President Dwight Eisenhower who led the Allied Armies in Europe in World War II, the United States undertook the construction of the Interstate Highway System. The underlying benefit of this gigantic effort was to ensure the rapid movement of goods and services throughout the country. While ostensibly aimed at improving commerce, it had a significant contributory effect in transforming the distinct sections of United States’ social structure into a relatively homogenous blend. As we noted in the case of Martin Luther’s instigation of what became the Protestant Reformation, with the correct superposition of stimulus and environment an anecdotal trial balloon can become a societal mutation of the first order. In this case, the seeds of social change unleashed by the United States Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown versus Board of Education fell into the fertile ground offered by seamless transport connectivity among all parts of the United States. The result is a continuing extension of the federal policy infrastructure into all subordinate social orders.

Brown versus Board of Education was a landmark ruling of the Supreme Court issued on May 17, 1954. The ruling overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” facilities that was used as the rationale for segregation along racial lines in the provision of public education. The ruling required enforcement from the federal government, in some cases involving military troops, to dismantle segregated school systems around the country. The underpinnings in law on which this ruling was based were subsequently used to dismantle both de jure segregated facilities in areas of social discourse beyond public education as well as practices that led to de facto segregation. The social aspect of the ruling provided legal mobility for individuals of all races to seek equality of treatment throughout the United States. The parallel development of the Interstate Highway System provided physical mobility for those aspiring to such equality. The confluence of social

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