The Rise of the Suburbs

• The seeds of a suburban nation were planted in New Deal government programs

  • In response to the mass foreclosures during the Great Depression, FDR’s New Deal created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), which began purchasing and refinancing existing mortgages at risk of default

    • Homeownership was opened to the multitudes who could now gain residential stability, lower monthly mortgage payments, and accrue wealth as property values rose over time

• Government spending during World War II pushed the United States out of the Depression and into an economic boom that would be sustained after the war by continued government spending

  • Government expenditures provided loans to veterans, subsidized corporate research and development, and built the interstate highway system

• The rapid growth of home ownership and the rise of suburban communities helped drive the postwar economic boom

  • As manufacturers converted from war materials back to consumer goods, and as the suburbs developed, appliance and automobile sales rose dramatically

  • Credit cards, first issued in 1950, further increased access to credit

    • Consumers bought countless washers, dryers, refrigerators, freezers, and, suddenly, televisions

  • The postwar economic boom turned America into a land of abundance

• Wealth created by the booming economy filtered through social structures with built-in privileges and prejudices

  • Many African Americans and other racial minorities found themselves systematically shut out

    • The exclusionary forms of the postwar economy prompted protest from African Americans and other minorities who were excluded

• The introduction of mass production techniques in housing wrought ecological destruction

  • Developers sought cheaper land ever farther away from urban cores, wreaking havoc on susceptible lands such as wetlands, hills, and floodplains

Race and Education

• Older battles over racial exclusion also confronted postwar American society

  • One long-simmering struggle targeted segregated schooling

    • In 1896, the Supreme Court declared the principle of “separate but equal” constitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson

    • On May 17, 1954, after two years of argument, re-argument, and deliberation, the Supreme Court’s decision on segregated schooling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared that racial segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

• Decades of African American–led litigation, local agitation against racial inequality, and liberal Supreme Court justices made Brown possible

  • In the early 1930s, the NAACP began an effort to erode the legal underpinnings of segregation in the American South

• Though Brown repudiated Plessy, the Court’s orders did not extend to segregation in places other than public schools

  • However, it offered constitutional cover for the creation of one of the greatest social movements in American history

Civil Rights in an Affluent Society

• African Americans fought against a variety of racist policies, cultures, and beliefs in all aspects of American life

  • When persistent racism and racial segregation undercut the promise of economic and social mobility, African Americans began mobilizing on an unprecedented scale against the various discriminatory social and legal structures

• The 1950s were a significant decade in the sometimes tragic, sometimes triumphant march of civil rights in the United States

  • In 1953, years before Rosa Parks’s iconic confrontation on a Montgomery city bus, an African American woman named Sarah Keys publicly challenged segregated public transportation

    • Her refusal to give up her seat landed her in jail in 1953 and led to a landmark 1955 decision, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, in which the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled that “separate but equal” violated the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution

  • In the summer of 1955, two white men in Mississippi kidnapped and brutally murdered fourteen-year-old Emmett Till

    • Till, visiting from Chicago and perhaps unfamiliar with the “etiquette” of Jim Crow, allegedly whistled at a white woman named Carolyn Bryant

    • Emmett’s mother held an open-casket funeral so that Till’s disfigured body could make national news

    • The men were brought to trial and the evidence was damning, but an all-white jury found the two not guilty

  • On December 1, 1955, four months after Till’s death and six days after the Keys v. Carolina Coach Company decision, Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat on a Montgomery city bus and was arrested

    • Parks was not the first to protest the policy by staying seated, but she was the first around whom Montgomery activists rallied

• As pressure built, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first such measure passed since Reconstruction

  • It basically did nothing, but the act signaled that pressure was finally mounting on Americans to confront the legacy of discrimination

Gender and Culture in the Affluent Society

• America’s consumer economy reshaped how Americans experienced the culture and shaped their identities

• Televisions became wildly popular, with every household having at least 1

• Postwar prosperity facilitated, and in turn was supported by, the ongoing postwar baby boom

  • From 1946 to 1964, American fertility experienced an unprecedented spike

  • After years of economic depression, families were now wealthy enough to support larger families and had homes large enough to accommodate them, while women married younger and American culture celebrated the ideal of a large, insular family

• Underlying this “reproductive consensus” was the new cult of professionalism that pervaded postwar American culture, including the professionalization of homemaking

  • Mothers and fathers alike flocked to the experts for their opinions on marriage, sexuality, and, most especially, child-rearing

  • Women took being a housewife as a career, and a cultural obsession with kids began

    • They also bore the brunt of the pressure to raise perfect children

• Keenly aware of the discontent bubbling beneath the surface of the Affluent Society, many youths embraced rebellion

Politics and Ideology in the Affluent Society

• Postwar economic prosperity and the creation of new suburban spaces inevitably shaped American politics

  • The new prosperity renewed belief in the superiority of capitalism, cultural conservatism, and religion

  • The ethos of individualism became the building block for a new political movement

• The Republican sweep in the 1952 election, owing in part to Eisenhower’s popularity, translated into few tangible legislative accomplishments

  • As with any president, however, Eisenhower’s impact was bigger than just legislation

    • He sought to keep the United States from direct interventions abroad by bolstering anti-communist and procapitalist allies