America in the 1950s

1
America in the 1950s

• Images and sounds of the era

2
End of World War II

• 12 Million Gis return home for jobs, homes,
  family
• The alliance with Russia ends and the Cold War
  begins
• The Baby Boom
• The New Prosperity
• The impact of Television

3
Rosie the Riveter
4
Higher Wages
Jobs in war industries meant 40-50 higher wages
for women and created large savings to be used in
postwar demand.
5
Women and the Work Force

• From 1940 to 1945, women had come to make up 36
  of the work force
• Nearly 5 million worked in industrial jobs
• Three million left those jobs in 1945-46, and the
  numbers dropped further in 1947-48
• By late 1950s, 75 of working women had female
  jobs secretarial, nursing, etc.

6
Russian allies aided by American Lend-lease
program
7
Losses
Russia had suffered highest losses of the war
20 million deaths and much of its industry
destroyed. But it had the largest army in Europe.
8
Stalin
US news had tried to reassure readers that Stalin
was like a kindly uncle to the Russian people
he executed 3-5 million Russians during the war.
9
Russian Bloc in Eastern Europe
RUSSIA
POLAND
ROUMANIA
YUGO.
10
Iron Curtain
In response to the Russian domination of Poland,
President Truman cut of aid to Russia and invited
Churchill to the U.S., to warn Americans that an
iron curtain was falling over eastern Europe.
The Cold War was on.
11
Baby Boom
12
Levittown prototype for suburbia
13
Open, modern style
14
Children as Adults
15
Television

• In 1950, only 10 of American families had
  television sets
• Over 60 had sets by 1954

16
Early Television

• Early television was dominated by sports
  (especially boxing), wrestling, comedies and
  variety shows
• Some special shows included Captain Video (left)
  and The Goldbergs

17
Comedy

• Ernie Kovacs comedy show was a forerunner to
  Second City TV and SNL inspired shock
  comedians like Lennie Bruce and George Carlin

18
Race and TV

• Amos n Andy, easily the most controversial show
  on TV, was pulled in 1953 after 2 years on the
  air.

19
Civil Rights in Wartime
20
Civil Rights FEPC

• The Fair Employment Practice Commission was
  established in 1942 to ensure that African
  Americans could receive jobs in war industries
• 1 million African Americans moved to northern
  states during the war for better employment

21
Army Service in WWII
22
White Flight to Suburbs

• While millions of white families obtained GI or
  FHA loans for suburban homes, blacks were often
  screened out of the process
• Local banks generally refused loans to blacks if
  they wished to live a new suburban neighborhood
• Homes in urban centers were cheaply bought,
  divided into smaller units and rented to black
  families at 10-25 higher rents

23
Southern states remained strictly segregated
24
Parting the Waters

• By the early 1950s, the US military had been
  desegregated
• Segregated facilities had ceased to exist in most
  states that had not been part of the Civil
  War-era Confederacy
• Segregation in the Old South was
  well-entrenched even though national public
  opinion favored desegregation, this would not
  occur peacefully

25
Martin Luther King
In 1954, Martin Luther King became a pastor in
Montgomery Alabama. Twenty-nine years old, King
was determined to begin ending segregation in
Alabama.
26
Freedom Riders
1955 King leads a boycott of the Montgomery bus
system
27
National Publicity
1955 Rosa Parks arrested in Montgomery for
refusing to sit in the back of the bus.
28
Civil Rights and Television
Television played a major role in the civil
rights movement from the beginning (left --camera
crew in 1963 covering Kings I Have a Dream
speech in Washington
29
Television Entertainment
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz pioneered the
3-camera studio set that became the standard for
most television recording until the 1970s
30
Breaking into the Act
I Love Lucy was so popular that Lucille Balls
real-life pregnancy was written into the show
TV never showed pregnant women on the air until
then (and seldom did again until the 1960s).
31
Television and the Family
The family of four (or five) was the standard
focus of most situation comedies on 1950s
television. Mom always stayed at home.
32
The Suppressed Fear
Russia detonates an atomic bomb in August 1949.
U.S. responds by developing H-bomb, NATO, giving
atomic secrets to Britain Russia tests hydrogen
bombs in August 1953. U.S. concludes spies have
stolen atomic secrets.
33
The Red Scare
Alger Hiss (left) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
(right)
34
Television and Communism
The Goldbergs, an unusual sitcom about a Jewish
family, did well from 1949 to 1951, when Philip
Loeb (left) was blacklisted from show business
for pro-communist sympathies. The show died
soon after he did.
35
Red Channels
After star Edward G. Robinson was threatened
because he had given a donation to a communist
front group, he published How the Reds Made a
Sucker Out of Me as an apology.
36
Joe McCarthy
Joe McCarthys fame as Americas number one
commie hunter was made by newspapers in 1954,
he was ruined by television
37
Parody
In 1974, Sam Eagle (of The Muppet Show) parodied
McCarthy by announcing I have a list of the
so-called endangered species in America
including the Bald Eagle.
38
Critics of Middle-Class Culture
Lenny Bruce used comedy to challenge Americans to
recognize racism, challenge complacency, and
reject long-held taboos in the arts.
39
The White Negro
In essays like Jazz and America, and The White
Negro, Norman Mailer wanted readers to see that
insecurity underlay much of American culture in
the 1950s.
40
Jack Kerouac
Kerouac rejected both liberalism and
conservatism, saying that the only Marxism that
made sense to him was Harpo Marxism.