Important Keywords

• Brown v. Board of Education (1954): Supreme Court decision stating that “separate but equal” schools for white and black students were unconstitutional and that school districts across America must desegregate with “all deliberate speed”; controversy over enforcement of this decision was to last for more than a decade.

• Montgomery bus boycott (1955): Effort by blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, to have the local bus company end discriminatory seating and hiring policies. The movement started with the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man; the boycott was later led by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Baby boom: From 1947 to 1962 Americans married and had children at a record pace; the “high point” of the baby boom was 1957.

• The Feminine Mystique: Book written by Betty Friedan describing the frustration felt by suburban women in the 1950s; this book was a landmark for feminists of the 1960s and 1970s.

• James Dean: Young actor whose character in the film Rebel Without a Cause inspired many rebellious young people of the 1950s.

• Beat Generation: Literary movement of the 1950s; writers of this movement rejected the materialistic American culture of the decade. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs were key writers of this movement.

Key Timeline

• 1944: GI Bill enacted

• 1947: Taft-Hartley Act enacted Jackie Robinson first plays for Brooklyn Dodgers

• 1948: Truman elected president in stunning upset Truman orders desegregation of armed forces

• 1950: Diner’s Club credit card offered

• 1951: Publication of The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

• 1952: Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president

• 1953: Defense budget at $47 billion Alan Freed begins to play rock ‘n’ roll on the radio in Cleveland, Ohio

• 1954: Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision

• 1955: First McDonald’s opens Rebel Without a Cause released Bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama

• 1956: Interstate Highway Act enacted Majority of U.S. workers hold whitecollar jobs Howl by Allen Ginsberg first read

• 1957: Baby boom peaks Publication of On the Road by Jack Kerouac Resistance to school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas

• 1960: Three-quarters of all American homes have a TV set

The Return of Prosperity

• Many individuals, from ordinary citizens to politicians to economists, believed that the conclusion of World War II would lead to a severe recession or a return to the 1930s Depression.

  • The predicted economic slump didn't happen.

  • Instead, the US economy thrived from 1945 and 1960.

  • From $200 billion in 1945 to over $500 billion in 1960, the US GNP expanded.

• This economic boom was caused by many sources.

  • Due to wartime constraints, employees earned a lot of money but had fewer products to buy.

  • Military gear was produced by automakers and other consumer goods businesses.

  • Manufacturers resumed civilian manufacturing and customers were eager to spend after the war.

  • A spending frenzy boosted the American economy.

  • In the postwar years, credit cards were a simple means to make transactions.

  • Restaurants benefited from Diner's Club cards in 1950.

• Many Americans' love of the vehicle was frustrated throughout the Depression and the changeover to military manufacture following Pearl Harbor.

  • New automobile sales surged after the war.

  • This demand and consumer preferences were fueled by a revitalized advertising sector.

  • By the 1950s, advertising had reached 1920s levels.

  • In the 1950s, consumers were enticed by huge, opulent cars with sporty fins and plenty of chrome.

  • The Eisenhower administration's enormous interstate highway system mirrored Americans' love of vehicles.

  • The interstate roads helped America's automobile culture grow by allowing vehicles to quickly reach suburban areas in the event of World War III.

  • Cars made interurban travel simpler, so hotels and fast-food restaurants sprung up nationwide.

• Defense expenditures throughout the cold war also boosted the economy.

  • Millions were spent on military and weaponry systems and technology research and development.

  • In the 1950s and 1960s, the "military-industrial complex" spent billions.

• Postwar housing building also flourished.

  • After the war, housing demand exceeded supply.

  • Two families lived in one flat in several places.

  • Building increased to accommodate the urgent demand for additional residences.

  • Returning veterans received low-interest mortgage loans under the 1944 GI Bill, which boosted building.

  • By subsidizing veterans' education, the GI Bill expanded the middle class and homebuyer pool.

• William Levitt's initial Levittown development eased the housing problem.

  • He built Levittowns using wartime prefabrication methods.

  • The houses in these swiftly built subdivisions originally appeared comparable, yet they were well crafted and affordable.

  • Middle-class families moved to the suburbs thanks to Levitt.

  • The postwar demographic movement from cities to suburbs was one of the most important social developments.

Politics in the Postwar Era

• In 1945, President Harry Truman faced a major problem.

  • After 12 years in office, charismatic Franklin Roosevelt led the US through a decade of crises.

  • Compared to his predecessor, Truman was unremarkable.

  • However, the new president tried to expand New Deal liberal programs and leave his own political imprint.

  • Given the nation's growing conservatism, this was hard.

• Since 1930, the Republicans regained control of Congress in 1946.

  • After a wave of strikes, Congress established the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947.

  • Union officials had to publicly swear that they were not Communists under this law, which prohibited union members from contributing to federal elections.

  • If strikes threaten public safety or health, the president might order an 80-day cooling down period during which employees would return to work and labor and management would negotiate.

  • Congress overrode President Truman's veto of the TaftHartley Act, which the unions opposed.

• During the 1948 election, Truman offered the Fair Deal.

  • He demanded universal healthcare, more education and public housing funding, and the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act.

  • Unlike other Southern Democrats, he advocated a civil rights measure.

• Most political analysts predicted that Thomas Dewey, the Republican governor of New York who had defeated Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, would defeat Truman in the 1948 presidential election. Roosevelt's popularity was never Truman's.

  • Democratic Party divisions looked to destroy his campaign.

  • Dixiecrat presidential candidate Strom Thurmond was a Southern Democrat outraged by Truman's civil rights measure.

  • Left-wing Democrats dissatisfied with Truman's cold war policy supported former vice president Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party's candidacy.

  • Truman energetically campaigned, calling Congress's rejection of his measure "do-nothing" and appealing to the 1930s New Deal alliance.

  • Truman won an upset presidential election thanks to his efforts.

  • Congress was retaken by Democrats.

  • Truman failed to pass most of his Fair Deal agenda in his second term despite this historic accomplishment.

  • He was nonetheless thwarted by Republicans and conservative Democrats.

  • Truman's reputation and political capital were damaged by "soft on communist" accusations, the drawn-out Korean War, and government corruption.

  • In 1952, he declined reelection.

• In 1952, Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson easily because to the Democrats' unpopularity following 20 years of nearly uninterrupted rule in Washington.

  • Eisenhower was respected and admired as the leader of Allied troops in Europe during World War II.

  • As president, he was a moderate conservative who did not want to overturn the New Deal welfare state.

  • He sought to curb government expansion and elevate the judiciary and Congress.

  • He collaborated with both parties to pass the Interstate Highways Act and two civil rights measures.

  • Eisenhower felt that America's main business was business, like the Republican presidents of the 1920s.

    • He nominated many corporate people to his cabinet and was close with them.

  • Eisenhower's support of private business made him a good 1950s president.

• Eisenhower's vice president was Richard Nixon, a talented and ambitious politician who had represented California in the House and Senate.

  • While on HUAC, Nixon pursued the Alger Hiss case.

  • He was noted for his fierce anti-Communism.

  • Nixon was accused of using a political slush fund to pay for personal expenditures during the 1952 race.

  • Eisenhower faced pressure to withdraw his running companion.

  • Nixon gave a nationally broadcast response.

  • In his Checkers Speech, Nixon denied wrongdoing. He noted that his wife Pat wore a "quite respectable Republican cloth coat" and that his lone present was a puppy called Checkers, now his kids' pet. The people loved this speech.

  • Nixon remained on the ticket and had one of the most remarkable political careers in American history.

The Rise of the Civil Rights Movement

• World War II inspired African-American resistance against prejudice at home.

  • African-American veterans were disappointed that Jim Crow laws persisted in the South and progress against discrimination was delayed.

  • In 1948, President Truman sought civil rights activists' political backing.

  • He banned federal employment discrimination and military segregation.

  • The military was not completely integrated until the Eisenhower administration because Truman's idea was resisted by the government.

• African-American athletes were heroes and role models for African-American kids when they achieved national fame.

  • The 1930s idolized boxer Joe Louis and Olympic athlete Jesse Owens.

  • Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, becoming Major League Baseball's first African American player.

  • Robinson endured persistent racist hostility in his debut season.

  • Robinson performed well and with respect despite this.

  • In 1947, he was named National League Rookie of the Year.

• Civil rights advocates sought to reverse the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that upheld "separate but equal" facilities for African Americans.

  • Their main interest was schools.

  • White and African American schools were separate but unequal in the early 1950s.

  • Southern schools gave 80–85% of their funds to white schools.

  • The NAACP supported Oliver Brown's lawsuit against the Topeka, Kansas, school system because his daughter had to be bused to an all-African-American school.

• Thurgood Marshall represented Brown's claim for the NAACP.

  • He became the Supreme Court's first African-American justice.

  • The Supreme Court was prepared to overrule Plessy vs. Ferguson.

• The new chief justice, Earl Warren, appointed by President Eisenhower, was committed to fight racial inequity.

  • He carefully worked with his other judges and fashioned a unanimous judgment that declared "separate but equal" illegal.

• In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education ordered all school districts to desegregate with "all deliberate haste."

  • Many Southern officials, parents, and students refused to comply with the court decision, proclaiming “2, 4, 6, 8. Integration is not our goal.”

• From 1953 through 1969, Earl Warren was chief justice.

  • The "Warren Court" was noted for its liberal views and "judicial activism," ruling on difficult matters like school prayer and criminal rights.

• In 1955, Montgomery, Alabama, became a civil rights hotspot.

  • African Americans had to sit at the rear of the bus and give up their seats to white passengers if requested under Montgomery's Jim Crow laws.

  • Rosa Parks, a Montgomery NAACP employee, was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white man.

  • Civil rights activists organized the Montgomery bus boycott. Black people walked or carpooled instead of using public buses.

• Despite the African-American community's amazing display of solidarity, the bus operator maintained its discriminatory seating practices.

  • Segregation on public transportation was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court in 1956.

  • A major win for civil rights. Martin Luther King, Jr., the boycotters' spokesperson, became a civil rights leader.

• White Southerners continued to oppose Brown v. Board of Education.

  • A tiny number of African-American pupils prepared to attend Little Rock's Central High School in 1957.

  • Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to bar these children from attending the institution.

  • President Eisenhower rejected this appeal to the Supreme Court and federal law.

  • Federal forces escorted African-American pupils into Central High School after he nationalized the Arkansas National Guard.

  • These kids were safeguarded all year by federal forces.

  • The Little Rock crisis foreshadowed the 1960s civil rights upheaval.

Life in Suburbia

• Many of the Great Depression and World War II generation chose to raise kids in the suburbs.

  • After years of hardship, these individuals sought home pleasure.

  • A baby boom resulted.

  • From 1945 through 1962, the baby boom occurred. 4.5 million babies were born in 1957.

• The suburbs were ideal for raising these kids.

  • Many homes in new subdivisions looked similarly, and people drove similar vehicles, used similar equipment, wore similar clothing, and watched the same TV programs.

• In 1956, William H. Whyte's The Organization Man examined suburbia conservatism.

  • But it gave kids a lot of security.

  • In the suburbs, women drove their children to scout meetings, sports practices, and PTA meetings.

  • According to some social historians, baby boomer parents tried to shield their children from the economic and social upheavals that had shaped their childhoods.

• World War II veterans had trouble transitioning to peacetime.

  • Some disliked 9-to-5 job.

  • The novel and film The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit depicted men in unfulfilling corporate positions.

  • Many males enjoyed hunting and fishing.

  • 1950s men's publications ranged from Field and Stream to Playboy.

• 1950s women were likewise frustrated.

  • Women were portrayed as homemakers in the media.

  • Doris Day's "girl-next-door" look made her a popular movie actress of the decade.

  • Women attended college in large numbers, frequently to find a suitable partner.

  • Many women enjoyed being moms and homemakers, but an increasingly vocal minority did not.

  • In the late 1950s, more women worked than during World War II, despite the traditional focus on feminine domesticity.

  • Many of these women worked for financial reasons, but others did so for personal joy.

• In 1963's The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan spoke for housewives who were fed up.

  • In 1966, Friedan founded the National Organization for Women (NOW).

• The 1950s were the first generation of teens heavily targeted by advertisements.

  • Mass media influenced their style and music.

  • Because they were more engaged in school and partying than politics, 1950s teens were termed the "silent generation."

  • School leaders and parents discouraged defiance.

  • Self-control and respect for authority were stressed in school films.

  • These rules were observed by kids on Ozzie and Harriet.

• Despite their elders' attempts, many 1950s youth rebelled.

  • The Wild One (1953) and Rebel Without a Cause (1967) inspired some students to be anti-establishment (1955).

  • In addition to teenage revolt, cultural iconoclasm showed that the 1950s were not a time of uniformity.

  • Abstract expressionist painting was pioneered by Jackson Pollock and others.

• A loosely linked collection of authors, poets, and painters who opposed the norms and morals of a materialistic America living in the shadow of the atomic bomb is known as the Beat Generation.

  • Instead, the Beats prized freedom, spontaneity, and creative improvisation.

  • Drugs, jazz, and Eastern mysticism were their passions.

  • Jack Kerouac's 1957 book On the Road, about two friends' cross-country adventure, was the most influential Beat work.

  • Howl (1955) by Allen Ginsberg criticizes contemporary society's corrupting impact on humans.

  • While few young people actively engaged in the Beat movement, many adopted a "Beatnik" aesthetic, wearing black turtleneck sweaters, dark eyeglasses, and berets and listening to experimental poetry at coffeehouses.

  • J.D. Salinger's 1951 book Catcher in the Rye depicts Holden Caulfield's estrangement from middle-class American norms.

• In the 1950s, rock ‘n' roll was the most popular form of young revolt.

  • Rock 'n' roll's unbridled rhythms and pounding shocked many adults, who called it "devil's music."

  • Rock music was blamed for teenage misbehavior and Communism by overwrought adults.

  • Young people might challenge their elders by listening to rock 'n' roll and dancing during "sock hops."

  • Little Richard's "Good Golly Miss Molly" didn't teach kids to "manage their emotions."

• Rock 'n' roll was connected with "uninhibited" African-American music by many worried parents.

  • Rock was significantly inspired by jazz, country, gospel, the blues (R&B, boogie-woogie piano style), and many African-American musicians became popular with white youths in the 1950s.

  • White rock artists were inspired by African-American music and performance methods, especially Elvis Presley, who pleased youthful audiences but horrified many older people with his sexually charged TV performances.

  • When he joined the Army in 1958, Elvis was quieted.

  • As the 1950s ended, rock ‘n' roll grew milder and more commercial.

  • The 1960s' extreme social upheaval was heavily inspired by 1950s cultural revolutionaries. Hippies followed the Beats.

  • In the 1960s, youth defied their elders even more.

Chapter 27: America in an Era of Turmoil (1960– 1975)