Baby Boom and 1950s Culture

Election of 1952

Republican and war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower campaigned against Democrat Adlai Stevenson for president.

Eisenhower along with Richard M. Nixon became the president (and VP), giving the Republicans control of the White House and Congress.

Questions: Why did Americans endorse a new engagement in international affairs during the Cold War? How did this belief change over time in response to particular events?

July 1953 Fighting ends in Korean War

CIALed by Allen DullesRelied on covert actionsHelped install pro-Western autocratic governments in Iran, Philippines, and Guatemala

1953 US installed Shah Pahlavi as pro-Western dictator; at issue--OIL

CIA in VietnamVietnamese overthrew French rule and then the CIA blocked elections to unify the countryUS supported Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam – pro-Western

Eisenhower Doctrine = US committed to keeping communism out of the Middle EastUS to extend aid (military and economic) to ME nations wanting help resisting communist aggressionArab nationalism is viewed as “communist inspired”

1959/1960 Summit with Eisenhower and KhrushchevUSSR shot down American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers spring of 1960Eisenhower denied it was a US spy planeSoviets produced the plane and pilotKhrushchev left summit… end of “Spirit of Camp David” established earlier at summit in 1959 at Camp David

Eisenhower LegacyRise in gross national productPeaking postwar baby boomBlack families left rural SouthInterstate Hwy systemFailed to denounce McCarthy and racismUse of CIA to subvert foreign governments that the US dislikedFarewell warning about the growing influence of “military industrial complex”

Civil Rights Acts of 1957 & 1960… did little to protect rights of African Americans to vote; est. Federal Civil-rights Commission

Suburbia

Conformity was the rule

Renewed interest in Religion✞Words “under God” are added to the Pledge in 1954

✞Televangelists:Billy Graham-Baptist

Oral Roberts-Pentecostal Holiness

Fulton J. Sheen-Catholic

Education

1958 Eisenhower called for US schools to concentrate on math, science, and foreign language in schools (Sputnik I & II went up in 1957 with a dog on board-) Federal spending on those subjects increased…US wanting to turn out more engineers, scientists, and mathematicians

Anchorman Walter Cronkite uses models to explain America's Explorer 1 mission to viewers on the CBS television network in 1958

Established 1958

Women of the 1950s

Prosperity and ConsumerismThe rise of American manufacturing and global economic dominance in the years after WWII created rising purchasing power, expanding credit, and burgeoning advertising, which stimulated avid consumerism.❈Demand for consumer goods and heavy government spending stimulated economic growth from the late 1940s through the 1950s.

❈Although the rate of economic growth slowed in the second half of the 1950s, most Americans had far more real income during this era than ever before. Higher pay and shorter hours remained as permanent standards in the American workplace.

❈By 1950, production caught up with demand and the gross national product reached a point 50% higher than in 1940.

❈The baby boom and expanding suburbia stimulated consumerism as fear of another depression dissipated.

Cars and Transportation

58 million cars purchased

The Eisenhower administration established the Federal Highway Act of 1956

By mid-1950s color television was created along with a practical remote control

Until1967 mosttelevision showsin black and white

First Credit Card

Fast-food chains begin

Critics of the time found fault with blandness, conformity,corporate dehumanization, and loss of individuality of the 1950s

David Riesman wrote The Lonely Crowd

C. Wright Mills wrote the Power Elite

Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road aboutdrugs, sex, Zen Buddhism, and hitchhiking

Felt the 1950s was an alienating time, esp. thepoor and minorities

Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac “Beat Generation” = Beatniks

Youth

Elvis “the Pelvis”

“Rock & Roll” relied heavily on African American musicaltraditions; form of rhythm and blues

The “Other” America

Native American and Mexican field workers circa 1950

Appalachian farmers

Native Americans on Reservations in 1950 earned $950 yearAverage African American in 1950 earned $2000 yearAverage White American in 1950 earned $4000 year

Poor Americans = 1/5th of the population•Elderly•Tenant farmers•Sharecroppers•Migratory workers•Native Americans•Appalachian whites•African Americans•Hispanics

African AmericansIn 1955 the struggle for Civil Rights for Blacks entered a new phase of nonviolent, direct action with the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks and led by Martin Luther King Jr.

King established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. Through the SCLC Black churches were mobilized, legal attacks and economic boycotts were used to achieve equality.

More Blacks moved from the South and headed north and west during the 1950s.

Jackie Robinson broke color barrier in 1947 …baseball

NAACP used the courts – found support with Warren Supreme Court not with Eisenhower Administration

Eisenhower reluctant to promote integration, but upheld the law with the integration of Central HS. when Gov. Faubus of Arkansas refused to allow black students to enroll at Little Rock’s Central HS….sent in National Guard

Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka Kansas 1954 overturned Plessy vs Ferguson 1896

Elizabeth Eckford

Hispanic Americans and Native AmericansHispanics and Native Americans were among the poorest and most discriminated against minorities in the 1950s. Nearly 1 million Puerto Ricans migrated from the island to northeastern city slums

Mexican-Americans, many of them ‘undocumented aliens’ filled migratory labor, construction, light manufacturing, and domestic-service jobs in the Southwest and faced the constant threat of deportation (sound familiar?)

In the ‘50s the federal government terminated all special federal services for Natives and encouraged the breakup of reservations through the Indian Relocation Program…these policies allowed for the transfer of more than 500,000 acres of Native land to whites and further impoverishment and demoralization of Native Americans

Think about:How did the growth of migration to and within the United States influence demographic change and social attitudes in the nation?