AMERICA in
the ’50s
THE G.I. BILL
Provided college for returning
World War II veterans
(commonly referred to as GIs)
Provided one year of
unemployment compensation
Millions of GIs bought homes,
attended college, started
business venture, or found jobs
THE G.I. BILL
President Franklin Roosevelt signs the GI Bill in 1944
Between 1945 and 1954, the
U.S. added 13 million new
homes to its housing stock
VA Mortgages paid
for nearly 5 million
new homes, by
making homes
affordable with low
interest rates and 30
year loans.
Truman and Civil Rights
One of the major acts Harry
Truman made as president
was in when 1948 Truman
made an executive order
to end segregation in
the armed forces
Truman also asked
Congress to pass a civil
rights bill that would make
lynching a federal crime
ELECTION of 1948
Truman angered many
Southern Democrats by
supporting segregation
Many people didn’t think
he would be re-elected
Harry S Truman
Thomas Dewey
Strom Thurmond
People were so sure that
Truman would lose that one
headline even incorrectly said
that Dewey had won
Historians view the Election of
1948 as the greatest election
upset in American history
ELECTION
of
1948
 Southern Democrats leave national party in
response to Truman's support for Civil Rights
 Strom Thurmond – South Carolina Senator, runs
for president as a Dixicrat
 Dixicrats were Southern Democrats who backed
racial segregation and limiting the voting rights
of African Americans. The party was also known
as the States Rights Party.
 Thomas Dewey, New York’s Governor, runs for
the Republicans
 Truman appeared to lose – but appeals directly to
the people, citing the “Do-nothing Republican
Congress” and wins the Election
Truman’s “Fair Deal”
Truman said that all
Americans had the right
to expect a “fair deal”
from the government
“The buck stops here.”
-- Harry Truman
What did the Fair Deal do?
It increased the minimum wage
Expansion of Social Security benefits
National Housing Act was passed to provide funding to
build low-income housing
The Taft-Hartley Act
The federal law that
greatly restricting the
activities and power
of labor unions
 Closed shops illegal (Businesses could
hire non-union workers)
 Union shop only after a vote of a
majority of the employees.
 No more jurisdictional strikes and
secondary boycotts.
 Employers have right to be exempted
from bargaining with unions
The TaftHartley Act
Labor unions hated
the Taft-Hartley Act
Interstate Highways Built
The Federal Highway
Act was passed in 1956
This was the largest
public works program in
American history.
Law called for the building
of 40,000 miles of interstate
Interstate roads in CO are
I-25, I-70, I-225 and I-76
Suburbia in America
During the ’50s, many
people began to move into
the suburbs.
Suburbs are places
outside the city
where many whitecollar workers live
The New York suburb
of Levittown was the
first modern suburb
Suburbs = The American Dream
 Affordable single-
 New highways,
family housing
affordable
automobiles, low
gasoline prices
 Good schools
 Friendly
 A safe, healthy
neighbors like
themselves
environment for
children
13 million
homes
built in the
1950s –
85% were
suburban
The Baby Boom
The American birthrate
exploded after World War II.
From 1945 -61 more than 65
million children were born
This period became known as
the Baby Boom
Contributing factors:
The end of wars led to more
young couples getting married
G.I. Bill encouraged growth of
families by offering generous
benefits for home purchases
Pop culture glorified pregnancy,
parenthood and large families
Technological Breakthroughs
Jonas Salk and polio vaccine
Medical advances of the 1950s:
• antibiotics to fight
infections
• new drugs to fight cancer,
diabetes and heart disease
• polio vaccine developed
Jonas Salk developed
the vaccine that
prevented polio. Not
long after, the threat
of polio would almost
completely disappear
Birth of television
By 1957, there were about 40
million television sets in use and
TV became an important source
of information
Shows like I
Love Lucy and
The
Honeymooners
were the most
popular TV
shows of the
’50s
Pop Culture of the 1950s
Father Knows
Best
1954-1958
The Ozzie and
Harriet Show
1952-1966
Leave it to
Beaver
1957-1963
Pop Culture of the 1950s
Hollywood: apex of the biblical epics.
The Robe
1953
The Ten Commandments
1956
It’s un-American to be un-religious!
-- The Christian Century, 1954
Ben Hur
1959
The Automobile Culture
America became a more
uniform nation because of the
automobile.
First McDonald’s
(1955)
Drive-In Movies
Holiday Inn
Birth of Rock ’n Roll
In the 1950s, many teenagers
rebelled against the middle-class
suburban values, particularly
conformity and wanted to be unique.
 It was during this period that many
youths turned to new and
unconventional styles of music
 Soon white artists began making
music that was based on African
American rhythm and blues
 This form of music became known
as rock ‘n’ roll and it became wildly
popular with the nation’s teenagers
Elvis Presley
The King of Rock ’n Roll
Presley’s extraordinary
popularity established rock
’n’ roll as an unprecedented
mass-market phenomenon
His reputation as a performer
endured up to his death in
1977 at the age of 42.
Graceland, his home
in Memphis, is now a
public museum
visited by upwards
of 600,000 people
annually.
The Generation Gap
Many parents viewed rock ’n’ roll as loud
and dangerous.
The music was banned in some
communities.
The music united teens in their own world
and helped to create what became known as
the generation gap.
The generation gap was the cultural
separation between children and their
parents.
The Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was the
cultural movement of the 1950s
when young people – often writers –
ditched society’s normal standards
for new ways of thinking
The major works
of Beat writing
are Allen
Ginsberg's
Howl, William S.
Burroughs's
Naked Lunch
Members of the Beat Generation
and Jack
were referred to as “beatniks” and set
Kerouac's On
the stage for the rise of the counterthe Road
culture and hippies during the 1960s
Juvenile Delinquency
Another problem facing the
nation was juvenile delinquency,
which was antisocial or criminal
behavior by teenagers
Juvenile crime rose 45% between 1948 and
1953. Car thefts by juveniles increased and
more teenagers joined street gangs
Many attributed this rise in teenage
rebellion to movies such as “Rebel
Without a Cause” and books like J.D.
Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”
Pop Culture of the 50s
Top
TV
Shows
The Lone Ranger
The Honeymooners
Father Knows Best
Pop Culture of the 50s
Top in
Movies
Coming Up:
The 1960s