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The 1950s
Baby Boom
It seems to me that every other young
housewife I see is pregnant.
-- British visitor to America, 1958
1957  1 baby born every 7 seconds
Baby Boom
Dr. Benjamin Spock
and the Anderson
Quintuplets
The GI Bill
Social Climate after WWII
• After the war, unions
began to seek the
increases in wages that
were limited during the
war.
• The number of strikes rose
sharply.
Racial Minorities
• Truman issued Executive
Order 9981, which ended
segregation in the U.S. armed
forces.
• Hispanic veterans joined
together in the American GI
Forum.
The Second Red Scare
•In September 1949 Truman
announced that the Soviet
Union had detonated an atomic
bomb.
•This was a shock to the nation.
•Truman began to strengthen
the nation’s military against a
possible Soviet nuclear threat.
• Communists in China had gained
nearly full control of the country.
• The Nationalist government of
Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan
• China was in the hands of the
Communist Party under the
leadership of Mao Zedong.
• Americans worried that China
increased the Communist threat
to the United States.
HUAC
• The House Un-American
Activities Committee
investigated the full range
of radical groups in the
United States, including
Fascists, Communists, and
members of Hollywood
The Hollywood Ten
• The Hollywood Ten
refused to answer
HUAC questions
about their beliefs
or those of their
colleagues.
• Many others in
Hollywood did
testify, for if they
didn’t their names
were placed on a
blacklist.
Spy Cases
• Alger Hiss—convicted of
being a spy for the
Soviets
• Klaus Fuchs—a
Manhattan Project
scientist who gave atomic
bomb information to the
Soviets
• Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg—
convicted of passing
secrets to the Soviets
and executed
Joseph McCarthy
• Joseph
McCarthy was
a senator who
claimed that
there were
205 known
Communists
working for
the U.S.
Department of
State.
• McCarthy’s claims were rarely
backed up with any evidence.
• McCarthyism spread beyond
the Senate into other
branches of government, into
universities, into labor unions,
and into private businesses.
• In 1952 he began to go
after fellow Republicans.
• In 1954 he attacked the
U.S. Army, claiming that it
was protecting Communists.
Suburban Living
Levittown, L. I.:
“The American Dream”
1949  William Levitt produced
150 houses per week.
$7,990 or $60/month with no down payment.
Suburban Living: The New “American Dream”
1 story high
12’x19’ living room
2 bedrooms
tiled bathroom
garage
small backyard
front lawn
By 1960  1/3 of the U. S. population in
the suburbs.
Suburban Living
SHIFTS IN POPULATION
DISTRIBUTION,
1940-1970
Central Cities
Suburbs
Rural Areas/
Small Towns
1940
31.6%
19.5%
48.9%
1950
32.3%
23.8%
43.9%
U. S. Bureau of the Census.
1960
32.6%
30.7%
36.7%
1970
32.0%
41.6%
26.4%
Suburban Living:
The Typical TV Suburban Families
The Donna
Reed Show
Leave It
to Beaver
1957-1963
1958-1966
Father Knows Best
1954-1958
The Ozzie & Harriet Show
1952-1966
Consumerism
1950  Introduction of the Diner’s Card
All babies were potential consumers who
spearheaded a brand-new market for food,
clothing, and shelter.
-- Life Magazine (May, 1958)
Consumerism
A Changing Workplace
Automation:
1947-1957  factory workers decreased by
4.3%, eliminating 1.5 million
blue-collar jobs.
By 1956  more white-collar than blue-collar
jobs in the U. S.
Computers  Mark I (1944). First IBM
mainframe computer (1951).
Corporate Consolidation:
By 1960  600 corporations (1/2% of all
U. S. companies) accounted for
53% of total corporate income.
WHY?? Cold War military buildup.
A Changing Workplace
New Corporate Culture:
“The Company Man”
1956  Sloan Wilson’s The Man in
the Gray Flannel Suit
The Culture of the Car
Car registrations:
1945  25,000,000
1960  60,000,000
2-family cars doubles from 1951-1958
1958 Pink Cadillac
1959 Chevy Corvette
1956  Interstate Highway Act  largest
public works project in American
history!
Å Cost $32 billion.
Å 41,000 miles of new highways built.
The Culture of the Car
America became a more homogeneous
nation because of the automobile.
First McDonald’s
(1955)
Howard
Johnson’s
Drive-In
Movies
The Culture of the Car
The U. S. population was on the move in the
1950s.
NE & Mid-W  S & SW (“Sunbelt” states)
1955  Disneyland opened in Southern California.
(40% of the guests came from outside
California, most by car.)
Frontier Land
Main Street
Tomorrow Land
Television
1946  7,000 TV sets in the U. S.
1950  50,000,000 TV sets in the U. S.
Television is a vast wasteland.  Newton
Minnow, Chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission, 1961
Mass Audience  TV celebrated
traditional
American values.
Truth, Justice, and the American way!
Television – The Western
Davy Crockett
King of the Wild Frontier
Sheriff Matt
Dillon, Gunsmoke
The Lone Ranger
(and his faithful
sidekick, Tonto):
Who is that masked
man??
Television - Family Shows
Glossy view of mostly
middle-class suburban life.
But...
I Love Lucy
Social Winners?...
The Honeymooners
AND…
Losers?
Teen Culture
In the 1950s  the word “teenager” entered
the American language.
By 1956  13 mil. teens with $7 bil. to spend
a year.
1951  “race music”  “ROCK ‘N ROLL”
Elvis Presley  “The King”
Teen Culture
“Juvenile Delinquency”
???
1951  J. D. Salinger’s
A Catcher in the Rye
Marlon Brando in
The Wild One
(1953)
James Dean in
Rebel Without a
Cause (1955)
Teen Culture
The “Beat” Generation:
Jack Kerouac  On The Road
Allen Ginsberg  poem, “Howl”
Neal Cassady
William S. Burroughs
“Beatnik”
“Clean” Teen
Teen Culture
Behavioral Rules of the 1950s:
Obey Authority.
Control Your Emotions.
Don’t Make Waves  Fit in
with the Group.
Don’t Even Think About Sex!!!
Religious Revival
Today in the U. S., the Christian faith is back in
the center of things. -- Time magazine, 1954
Church membership: 1940 
Television Preachers:
64,000,000
1960  114,000,000
1. Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen  “Life is
Worth Living”
2. Methodist Minister Norman Vincent Peale 
The Power of Positive Thinking
3. Reverend Billy Graham  ecumenical message;
warned against the evils of Communism.
Religious Revival
Hollywood: apex of the biblical epics.
The Robe
1953
The Ten Commandments
1956
Ben Hur
1959
It’s un-American to be un-religious!
-- The Christian Century, 1954
Well-Defined Gender Roles
The ideal modern woman married, cooked and
cared for her family, and kept herself busy by
joining the local PTA and leading a troop of
Campfire Girls. She entertained guests in her
family’s suburban house and worked out on the
trampoline to keep her size 12 figure.
-- Life magazine, 1956
The ideal 1950s man was the provider, protector,
and the boss of the house. -- Life magazine, 1955
1956  William H. Whyte, Jr.  The
Organization Man
A
a middle-class, white suburban
male is the ideal.
Marilyn
Monroe
Well-Defined Gender Roles
Changing Sexual Behavior:
Alfred Kinsey:
1948  Sexual Behavior in the Human
Male
1953  Sexual Behavior in the Human
Female
v Premarital sex was common.
v Extramarital affairs were frequent
among married couples.
Kinsey’s results are an assault on the family
as a basic unit of society, a negation of moral
law, and a celebration of licentiousness.
-- Life magazine, early 1950s
Progress Through Science
1951 -- First IBM Mainframe Computer
1952 -- Hydrogen Bomb Test
1953 -- DNA Structure Discovered
1954 -- Salk Vaccine Tested for Polio
1957 -- First Commercial U. S. Nuclear
Power Plant
1958 -- NASA Created
1959 -- Press Conference of the First 7
American Astronauts
Progress Through Science
1957  Russians launch SPUTNIK I
1958  National Defense
Education Act
Progress Through Science
UFO Sightings skyrocketed in the 1950s.
War of the
Worlds
Hollywood used aliens as a metaphor
for whom ??
Progress Through Science
Atomic Anxieties:
 “Duck-and-Cover
Generation”
Atomic Testing:
 1946-1962  U. S. exploded 217
nuclear weapons over the
Pacific and in Nevada.
Politics and War
• The Cold War:
• The tension and rivalry between
the USA and the USSR was
described as the Cold War (19451990).
• There was never a real war
between the two sides between
1945 and 1990, but they were
often very close to war
(Hotspots). Both sides got
involved in other conflicts in the
world to either stop the spread
of communism (USA) or help the
spread (USSR).
• The USA and the
USSR were the two
world Superpowers.
• The USA was a
capitalist society
with a democracy.
• The USSR was a
communist country
with a dictatorship.
• Both wanted to be
the most powerful
nation in the world.
Nuclear Tensions
• The USA had shown its atomic
power when it exploded the Abombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki at the end of World
War 2.
• The USSR was also developing
atomic weapons/bombs.
• The USA and the USSR were
in competition with each other
to have the best, most
powerful weapons in the world
– this was called the Arms
Race.
New Communist Countries
• Many countries became communist
after World War 2 including:
- Czechoslovakia (1948)
- Poland (1947)
- Hungary (1947)
- China (1949)
- Cuba (1959)
- North Korea (1945)
Germany Divided
• Germany, which had been
ruled by the Hitler and the
Nazis until their defeat in
1945 was split in two.
• The western side became
West Germany and the
eastern side became East
Germany.
• East Germany became
another communist country
The Domino Effect
• The USA did not want communism to
spread any further – they were worried
about the domino effect (one country
becomes communist, then another, then
another etc)
The Iron Curtain
• The Iron
Curtain was
a term used
to show that
communism
had created
a sharp
division in
Europe.
America Responds
• The U.S. adopted the policy of
containment and decided to do whatever
it took to contain or stop communism.
• Truman Doctrine:
Provided aid to Turkey and Greece in
order to stop communism in those
countries.
The Marshall Plan
A massive
program of
aid to help
Europe
rebuild and
get back on
its economic
feet.
The Crisis in Berlin
• With the start of the Cold War, it
became clear that the Soviets
planned to keep their German zone
under Communist control.
• The British, Americans, and French
began to take steps to set up a free,
democratic government within their
German zones.
– The western zone eventually became
known as the Federal Republic of
Germany, or West Germany.
• The British, Americans, and French also
tried to set up a democratic government
in West Berlin.
– The Soviets were not happy with the
idea of a Western-style government
and economy in the middle of the
Soviet zone of occupation.
The Soviets Block Traffic
• In June 1948 the Soviets announced
that they would block any road, rail,
or river traffic into West Berlin.
• West Berlin’s residents were cut off
from food, coal, and other products.
• West Berlin was not completely
cutoff because it had airstrips.
The Berlin Airlift
•British and American planes
began making deliveries to West
Berlin.
•The Berlin Airlift continued for
months and months.
•Finally, the Soviet Union lifted
its blockade on May 12, 1949.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949)
 United States
 Luxemburg
 Belgium
 Netherlands
 Britain
 Norway
 Canada
 Portugal
 Denmark
 1952: Greece &
Turkey
 France
 Iceland
 Italy
 1955: West Germany
 1983: Spain
Berlin Blockade & Airlift (1948-49)
The Korean War 1950-1953
The Korean War
• North Korea invaded South
Korea on June 25, 1950.
• Most leaders in the United
States were surprised by this
attack.
• Truman decided that the United
States would take a stand
against Communist aggression in
Korea and sent in ground troops.
Combat in the Korean War
• UN forces made an amphibious
landing behind North Korean lines
at the port city of Inchon.
• The September 1950 invasion at
Inchon was a key victory for UN
forces.
• By October 1950 all of South Korea
was back in UN hands.
• UN forces had begun to move
into North Korea, but the
when 260,000 Chinese troops
joined the North Koreans the
UN began to retreat.
• UN forces retreated all the
way back to Seoul. It was the
longest fallback in U.S.
military history.
MacArthur is Fired
• MacArthur said that
the UN faced a
choice between
defeat by the
Chinese or a major
war with them.
• He wanted to expand
the war by bombing
the Chinese
mainland, perhaps
even with atomic
weapons.
• Lieutenant General Matthew
Ridgway stopped the Chinese
onslaught and pushed them
back to the 38th parallel—
without needing to expand the
war or use atomic weapons.
• MacArthur disagreed with
President Truman about the
direction of the fighting and
challenged the authority of
the president.
Fighting ends in Korea
• In July 1951 peace talks began.
• One major obstacle was the location of
the boundary between the Koreas.
• In October 1951 peace talks stalled
over prisoners of war.
• Negotiators in Panmunjom continued to
argue over the details of a peace
agreement throughout 1952.
• In 1952 Dwight D.
Eisenhower—who promised to
end the war—was elected
president.
•An armistice agreement was
finally reached on July 27,
1953.
•The Korean War left the map
of Korea looking much as it
had in 1950.
Trying to Build a Better World
– 50 nations met in June 1945
to create the UN Charter.
– The Charter committed its
members to respect
fundamental human rights,
respect treaties and
agreements, and to promote
the progress and freedom
of all people.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• It declared that all human beings are born
free and equal.
• It called for an end to slavery, torture,
and inhumane punishment.
• It demanded a variety of civil rights,
including the right to assembly and the
right to access the courts.
• It stated that elementary education
should be free and available to all.
The 50s Come to a Close
1959  Nixon-Khrushchev
“Kitchen Debate”
Cold War ----->
Tensions
<----- Technology
& Affluence