Post War America
The effects of this era can still be
seen today:
The middle class represents the
a large segment of the American
population.
Television is a popular form of
entertainment for many
Americans.
Characteristics of Postwar Economy
Increase
consumer
spending
Higher
prices
Rising
Inflation
Labor
unrest
Republican
Congress
Passes
Taft-Hartley Act–
Outlawed closed shops
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of
1944/GI Bill of Rights


Provided veterans with a
free college education at
a cost of $14.5 billion
Veterans Administration
guaranteed $16 billion in
loans for veterans to buy
homes, farms and small
businesses
“Give ‘em hell
Harry!”
Election 1948

Harry S.
Truman–

Democrat

Civil Rights, 
return of
economy
Strom
Thurmond
– Dixiecrat
Segregation
•Henry
Wallace-

Progressive
•Against
Cold War

Thomas
Dewey–
Republican
Attacks “high
tax”Truman &
labor strikes
Election 1948
http://www.caller2.com/2000/november/09/today/contribu/8712.html
Truman’s Fair Deal
Fair deal legislation
Fair deal programs not enacted
Increase in minimum
wage to 75¢/ hour
National health insurance
Expansion of Social
Security system—10M
Farm subsidies
more served
National Housing Act—
low income housing
Federal aid to schools
Civil rights legislation
Truman’s
Fair Deal
Election of 1952—The Candidates

Democrats—Adlai E.
Stevenson
–
–
Witty, eloquent and courageous
Governor of Illinois

Republicans—Dwight D.
Eisenhower

Dynamic Conservatism
–
–
–
–

Conservative with Economy;
liberal with human beings
“I like Ike”
War hero
Grandfatherly
Peace Prosperity and Progress
Election of 1952 Highlights




“Checkers speech”—Nixon
accused of profiting from a
secret slush fund set up by
wealthy supporters
– TV in politics
Eisenhower pledges to visit
Korea to end the war
Republicans charge that
Democrats are “soft on
communism,” the growing
power of the federal
government & alleged bribery &
corruption in Truman
administration
Truman approval rating at 23%
in 1951
The Fifties Family

The Baby Boom (19461964)
–

~65M babies born
Women
–
–
Focused themselves on
family
Number of working
women actually increased
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
Growth of Consumerism


People purchased more items on credit
Wanted to keep up with the Jones’s
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
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!
ÅCost $32 billion.
Å41,000 miles of new highways built.
The Culture of the Car
America became a more similar nation
because of the automobile.
First McDonald’s
(1955)
Drive-In
Movies
Howard
Johnson’s
Suburbia

Levittown, NY–
planned residential
communities
–
–
–
Track homes
Escape from the
“crime” of the cities
GI Bill helped finance
the homes
2A. Suburban Living
Levittown, L. I.:
Dream”
“The American
1949  William Levitt produced
150 houses per week.
$7,990 or $60/month with no down payment.
2A. Suburban Living:
The New “American Dream”
1 story high
k 12’x19’ living room
k 2 bedrooms
k tiled bathroom
k garage
k small backyard
k 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%
Little Boxes
written and sung by Melvina Reynolds (1962)
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of tickytacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
where they were put in boxes,
and came out all the same.
And there's doctors and there's
lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of tickytacky
And they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.
And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
in boxes made of ticky-tacky,
and they all the look the same.
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of tickytacky
And they all look just the same.
http://support.neosys.com:999/family/users/simon/files/Music/Little%20Boxes%20-%20Pete%20Seeger.mp3
The Attack of the Sprawling City

The American
Suburb

Cityville

Families wanted to live
in neighborhoods
The Interstate System
caused beltlines
around cities
EFFECT= Suburbs,
increase traffic,
country reliant on the
AUTOMOBILE
Technological Breakthroughs

Computers began–
Calculators

Polio epidemic
–
–
1952 58,000 cases
occurred
Dr. Jonas Salk
developed a vaccine
10A. 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
10C. Progress Through Science
UFO Sightings skyrocketed in the 1950s.
War of the
Worlds
Hollywood used aliens as a metaphor
for whom ??
10D. Progress Through Science
Atomic Anxieties:
 “Duck-and-Cover
Generation”
Atomic Testing:
 1946-1962  U. S. exploded 217
the
nuclear weapons over
Pacific and in Nevada.
Pop Culture in the 1950
Pop Culture–
Television


By 1957 80% of
American homes had
TVs
Shows depicted the
middle class
The Typical TV Suburban Families
The Donna
Reed Show
1958-1966
Father Knows Best
1954-1958
Leave It
to Beaver
1957-1963
The Ozzie & Harriet Show
1952-1966
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?
And now the feature presentation…
Brought to you in TECHNICOLOR


Adhered to the
conformity
African Americans were
in stereotypical roles
Pop Culture–
Rock’n’Roll



Rock’n’Roll was the
music of teens
Spoke of sweethearts,
high school, and break
ups
“Music of the Devil”
Pop Culture–
Rock’n’Roll

Rock’n’Roll brought
integration issues to the
foreground
1950s Counter Culture



The Beat Movement– literary
and artistic movement that
criticized conformity
Believed
– Am culture was empty, Am
politics were meaningless,
& Am life was sterile
Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL, and
Jack Kerouac’s ON THE
ROAD defined the mvmt
Society Changes



New Corporate Culture:
“The Company Man”
1956  Sloan Wilson’s The Man in
the Gray Flannel Suit
The Organization Man showed the disapproval
with individuality
The flipside
Not all Americans were the “Nelsons”

Michael Harrington wrote
The Other America
–
–
Showed what he saw in
the hidden, poor
communities.
Hardest for AfAm,
Hispanics, and Appalachia
“Tens of millions of Americans are, at this very moment, maimed in body
and spirit, existing at levels beneath those necessary for human decency.
If these people are not starving, they are hungry, for that is what cheap
foods do. They are without adequate housing and education and medical
care.”
-- from The Other America
The flipside
Not all Americans were the Nelsons
Single Mothers
Elderly
Left out of the
Economic Boom
Minority Groups
Rural America
Inner City
Residents
The flipside
The decline of the Inner Cities


“White Flight” to the
suburbs left the inner
cities in shambles
Urban renewal often tore
down more than it
erected
The flipside
Juvenile Delinquency


Btw 1948-1953 delinquent
crimes rose 45%
1,000,000 Delinquents
calculated that 1 M youths
would commit crime in 1955
–

That was Correct!
Reasons:
–
Poverty, lack of religion, TV,
movies, comic books, busy
parents, racism, rising
divorce rate, anxiety over
military draft, rebelling from
conformity, alcohol and drugs
Review: Use the graphic organizer to list the causes and
effects of the economic boom of the 1950s.
Boom
Causes
Effects
Class Writing Assignment

Write an article for a magazine such as Better
Homes and Gardens describing changes the
American family underwent during the 1950’s.
Summary
Signs of Prosperity
Economy
Population
Patterns
Signs of Inequality
GI
Bill provides loans
Consumer spending 
More Ams own homes
Truman’s
Population
“White
booms
# of working women 
Civil Rights
Bill doesn’t pass
Eisenhower cuts back
New Deal
Flight”
Many poor remain in
cities in cities, creating
economic problems
Summary
Signs of Prosperity
Signs of Inequality
Science,
Breakthroughs– polio vac, Many poor in cities/
Technology, & antibiotics
rural areas have limited
Medicine
access
Improvements in
communication,
transportation, electronics
Popular
Culture
New
music, radio,
cinema, and literature
TV replaced radio
Minorities
not depicted
on TV
Promoted stereotypes
Review Questions
Answer the Following questions on your paper…
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What were two reasons for the economic boom of the
1950s?
What caused many Americans to move to the
suburbs in the 1950s?
Which groups pf Americans found themselves left out
of the boom?
What factors led to the rise in juvenile delinquency
and why?
Harry S. Truman was a Democrat, and Dwight D.
Eisenhower was a Republican. How were the
domestic agendas of these two presidents different?
How were they similar?