Post WW2,1950s
America, and the
Civil Rights
Movement
US History AP
Chapters 36 and 37
Economics after WW2
 People worry about return to depression
 Initial years after WW2
 GNP slumped
 Price controls relaxed – prices skyrocket,
inflation
 Epidemic of strikes
 Government reinstitutes controls
 Unions lose power – Taft-Hartley Act
 Outlaws closed shops
 Union membership begins to decline
Economics after WW2
 Economy recovers – why?
 Cheap energy – low cost of petroleum
 Productivity
 cold war spending, marshall plan
 1950-1970 long economic boom
 National income doubles in 1950s and again
in 1960s
 Middle class doubles
 Agribusiness - mechanization
GI Bill of 1944
 15 million returning veterans
 Encourage veterans to get an
education
 Unemployment benefits
 Loans for homes, farms, businesses
Elections
 1948 – Truman v. Dewey v. Thurmond
 Truman-- Whistlestop campaign – country wide
train campaign against “do nothing congress”
 Thurmond – Dixiecrat (anti-civil rights, pro
states’rights)
 Thomas Dewey – Republican (gov. of NY)
 1952 - Eisenhower (R) v. Stevenson (D)
 Eisenhower – middle of the road approach
 Pledged to personally go to Korea to end war
 Nixon’s checker’s speech
Eisenhower
 TV – commercialized campaign
 Modern Republicanism – middle road
 Conservative with money
 Liberal with people
 Raised minimum wage, extended Soc.
Sec., public housing, etc.
Video Clips
 I Like Ike!
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va5Btg
4kkUE
 Checkers Speech (start at 3 min)
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4UEv
_jjPL0
Prosperity of 1950s/1960s
 Result of colossal military budget, govt
funded high tech industry, and R and D
 Cheap energy – US controlled oil
 Highways, air conditioners, etc.
 Higher productivity – better educated and
better equipped
 Increased standard of living
 Agribusiness – mechanized farming
 More workers shift to industry/white collar
 Middle Class doubles to 60% of pop’n
 Own cars, TVs, washing machines
Suburban Living




FHA/VA low interest loans
Tax deductions for mortgage payers
1956 Interstate Highway Act
By 1960, 25% of Americans live in suburbs
 By 2000, the percentage goes up to 50%
 White Flight –
 Middle Class white Americans left the cities
 Moved to the suburbs
 Cities lose income
 Poor suffers – education, police, fire




Suburban Living
The American Dream
1949  William Levitt built 150 houses/week.
Standardized plans, factory assembled frames
$7,990 or $60/month with no down payment.
Consumerism
 1950  Introduction of the Diner’s Card
 Modern advertising
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
 Largest generation in US history
 Increase in school enrollments, canned
food.
 Leads to a youth culture
Baby Boom
Teen Culture
 In the 1950s  the word “teenager” entered
the American language.
 1951  “race music”  “ROCK ‘N ROLL”
 roots lay mainly in rhythm and blues, country, folk,
gospel, and jazz
 “Juvenile Delinquency”
Teen Culture
 The “Beat” Generation:
 rejection of mainstream American values
 celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous
creativity
 Jack Kerouac  On The Road
 Allen Ginsberg  poem, “Howl”
 Neal Cassady
 William S. Burroughs
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
 Women lose factory jobs in the post war
period, but gain service sector jobs
 “pink collar” sector – secretarial work
 Pop culture still glorifies the housewife and the
cult of domesticity
 Betty Friedan and NOW reject this image
 Feminine Mystique
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
The Culture of the Car
 Car registrations: 1945  25,000,000
1960  60,000,000
 2-family cars doubles from 1951-1958
 1956  Interstate Highway Act  largest
public works project in American
history!
 Cost $32 billion.
 41,000 miles of new highways built.
The Culture of the Car
• America became a more homogeneous
nation because of the automobile.
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.)
Television
 1946  7,000 TV sets in the U. S.
1950  50,000,000 TV sets in the U. S.
 Mass Audience  TV celebrated
traditional American values.
 “Television is a vast wasteland.” 
Newton Minnow, Chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission,
1961
Television in the 1950s and 1960s
 Leave It to Beaver
1957-1963
 Father Knows Best 1954-1958
 The Ozzie & Harriet Show
1952-1966
Religious Revival
 Church membership: 1940  64,000,000
1960  114,000,000
 Television Preachers:
 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.
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
The 50s Come to a Close
 1959  Nixon-Khrushchev “Kitchen Debate”
 An entire house was built that the American
exhibitors claimed anyone in America could
afford. It was filled with labor saving and
recreational devices meant to represent the fruits
of the capitalist American consumer market.
Civil Rights Movement – post WW2
through 1960s
 Civil Rights Act of 1875 -- Outlawed segregation
 Supreme Court overturned it in 1883
 Plessy v. Ferguson
 “separate but equal” did not violate the 14th amendment
(equal treatment)
 Allowed Southern states to pass Jim Crow laws (separating
the races)
 Allowed restrictions on inter-race contact
 WW2 set the stage for the civil rights movement
 Opened new job opportunities
 One million African Americans served
 Came home and fought to end discrimination
 During the war, civil rights organizations fought for voting
rights and challenged Jim Crow laws
 Truman ends segregation in civil service, armed forces
Civil Rights Movement
 Campaign led by the NAACP
 Focused on inequality between separate schools that
states provided
 Thurgood Marshall argued many of these cases
 1950 – Sweatt v. Painter
 Separate professional schools are not equal
 1954 - Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
 Marshall’s most stunning victory
 Supreme Court struck down segregation in public schools
as a violation of 14th amendment
 2nd case - To be implemented “with all deliberate speed”
Civil Rights Movement
 1955 – Montgomery Bus Boycott
 African Americans were impatient with the slow speed of change
 Took direct action
 1955 – Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and was
arrested
 JoAnn Robinson suggested a boycott of the buses
 Leaders of the African American community formed the
Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA)
 Elected 26 yr old Martin Luther King to lead
 Dr. King made a passionate speech and filled the audience with
a sense of mission
 African Americans boycotted the buses for 381 days and filed a
lawsuit
 Organized car pools
 Walked long distances
 1956 – Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation
Civil Rights Movement
 1957 – Little Rock 9 - State had been
planning for desegregation
 Governor Faubus ordered the National Guard to
turn away the “Little Rock Nine”
 the 9 African American students who would
integrate Little Rock Central High
 A Federal judge ordered Faubus to let the
students attend the school
 Eisenhower placed the National Guard under
federal control to watch the 9 attend school
 A year later, Faubus shut down the high school
Civil Rights Movement
 Civil Rights Act – 1957
 Establishes Civil Rights Commission to investigate
violations
 1957 – Southern Christian Leadership
Conference established (SCLS)
 Mobilize black churches for civil rights
 1960 – Student Non-violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) formed
 1960 – Sit-in movement – focus on segregated
lunch counters
 1st – Greensboro, NC
Civil Rights Movement
 Freedom Riders
 Civil Rights activists would ride busses to test
the Supreme Court decision that banned
segregation on buses and in bus terminals
 Provoking a violent reaction to force the JFK
administration to enforce the law
 Riders were tormented and beaten
 Newspaper coverage and the violence provoked
JFK to send federal marshals to protect the
riders
 Segregation in all interstate travel facilities was
banned
Civil Rights Movement
 1962 – Integrating Ole Miss
 Air Force Veteran James Meredith won a federal
court case that allowed him to enroll in the all-white
University of Mississippi (Ole Miss)
 Governor Ross Barnett refused to let him register
 Kennedy ordered federal marshals to escort
Meredith
 Riots broke out and resulted in 2 deaths
 Federal officials accompanied Meredith to class to
protect him
Civil Rights Movement
 Birmingham
 Strictly enforced its segregation
 Reputation for racial violence
 Reverend Shuttlesworth, MLK, and the SCLC tested their
non-violence
 MLK and others were arrested during a nonviolent
demonstration
 MLK wrote Letters from a Birmingham Jail
 With MLK out of jail, the SCLC planned a children’s march in
Birmingham
 Police Commissioner “Bull” Connor arrested them
 Later, the police met the marchers with high pressure fire hoses
and attack dogs
 TV cameras captured the scene
 Birmingham officials finally ended segregation
 Convinced JFK to write a civil rights act
Civil Rights Movement
 1963 - March on Washington
 To show support for JFK’s civil rights bill, a march on
Washington was formed
 Aug. 28, 1963, 250,000 people assembled in
Washington
 MLK gave his “I have a Dream” speech
 Appeals for peace and harmony
 Two weeks later, 4 girls were killed in a Birmingham
church
 Two months later, JFK is assassinated
 LBJ pledges to carry out JFK’s work
 Passes Civil Rights Act of 1964
 Prohibited discrimination
 Gave equal access to public accommodations
Civil Rights Movement
 1964 – 24th Amendment – abolished poll tax
 1964 – Freedom Summer - CORE and SNCC worked
to register as many African-American voters as
possible – push for voting rights bill
 1964 - SNCC organized the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party to give African Americans a political
voice
 Fannie Lou Hamer spoke at the Democratic National
Convention in 1964
 Support poured in for the MFDP
 Civil Rights leaders compromised with the Democratic
Party (MFDP got two seats in Congress)
Civil Rights Movement
 1965 - SNCC led a voting rights campaign in
Selma, Alabama
 After a demonstrator was shot, MLK organized a 50
mile march to Montgomery
 Mayhem broke out and TV crews caught police
beating and gassing marchers
 Johnson presented a voting rights act and gave
marchers federal protection
 Voting Rights Act of 1965 – eliminates literacy
tests, allows federal officials to oversee
registration, voting
 * end of nonviolence *
Civil Rights Movement
 Malcolm X




Began as militant black nationalist
Black separatism
Went on Hajj, moved away from separatism
Assassinated in 1965
 Black Power
 Black Panther party
 Stokely Carmichael – leader of SNCC began to preach black
power – 1966
 Exercise political and economic rights to speed integration
 Emphasized their distinctiveness
 1968 – MLK assassinated