History 17C The American People, World War I to the Present

The Fifties

Themes: For most Americans, the Fifties were a decade of unprecedented affluence, yet millions of Americans were prevented from fully partaking of the American Dream

Themes: On the surface, conformity and passivity prevailed, but below the surface there was considerable dissatisfaction with the status quo

Prosperity in the 1950s

Fuller Employment Rising Home Ownership

Federal involvement in private economy increased citizens’ purchasing power and solved problem of underconsumption

With Cold War came renewed government spending on military production

... which led to civilian spin-offs

Consumption was fueled by advertising— increasingly on television

GI Bill of Rights (1944) helped to lift millions of Americans into middle class

Those left behind

Suburbia

Suburbanization was facilitated by GI Bill loans

William Levitt... and by revolution in construction and marketing of housing

Levitt’s mass-production techniques

“Levittown”

Levittowns

Life in the suburbs

William Levitt

Anticommunism

Science fiction movies

The cult of female domesticity

Betty Friedan 1963

World War II legacy: Influx of women into workforce

World War II legacy: Myth and reality of “Rosie the Riveter”

World War II legacy: Gordon Parks, “American Gothic,” 1942

Women’s Employment, YearPercentage of Women in Paid Employment

Women’s Employment, YearPercentage of Paid Workers Who Were Women

Women in Higher Education

Arthur Schlesinger Critics

Allen Ginsberg Jack Kerouac The “Beats”

Rhythm and Blues

Dwight D. Eisenhower,

With Vice President Richard M. Nixon Eisenhower was highly popular with the general public but less so with liberal intellectuals

Eisenhower’s Army Background

With Prime Minister Winston Churchill With Gen. George C. Patton

Eisenhower’s Army Background With Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the Bonus March, 1932

Dwight D. Eisenhower,

Ike and Mamie Eisenhower host a state visit by the Khrushchevs, 1959 Eisenhower and foreign relations

1954—Declined to bail out France in Vietnam Eisenhower and foreign relations

... and allowed communists to take over northern half of Vietnam Eisenhower and foreign relations

Eisenhower’s failings Appeasing Sen. Joseph McCarthy

Eisenhower and Marshall

1954—Army-McCarthy Hearings were televised, causing McCarthy to lose public support

Lack of leadership on Civil Rights Eisenhower’s failings

Citizens of Topeka, KS, protesting school segregation Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954

Nettie Hunt and Daughter Nickie on Supreme Court Steps, 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954

Lack of leadership on Civil Rights Eisenhower’s failings

Little Rock, Arkansas, school desegregation crisis, 1957

Emmett Till case, 1955 Mose Wright (Emmett Till’s Great-Uncle) and Mamie Bradley (Till’s Mother)

Arrest of Rosa Parks, December 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott,

Martin Luther King speaking at Holt Street Baptist Church, December 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott,

Jo Ann Robinson and other local black women activists Montgomery Bus Boycott,