Contrasting Cultures: The
“Fifties” and the “Sixties”
-Key Concepts-
I. The “Fifties”: Affluence and
Anxiety
A. Life in the Suburbs
• Optimism and pessimism
both characterized the 50’s
• Explosion of
homebuilding during the
decade
• Levittown
• Ease of financing for new
homes
• Levittown “uniformity”
A. Life in the Suburbs (cont.)
• Diversity under the
surface at Levittown
• Post-war growth of
American suburbs
• Dramatic population
growth in the “Sunbelt”
• Increased mobility in the
American population in
general
• American “car culture”
A. Life in the Suburbs (cont.)
• Post-War “Baby
Boom”
• A new “Consumer
Revolution”
• Origins of Fifties
economic growth
• Real economic growth
crossed class lines
A. Life in the Suburbs (cont.)
• Age of the credit card
arrived
• Leisure hours
increased
• Growth of the “middle
class” white-collar
sector
• Big business kept
getting bigger
A. Life in the Suburbs (cont.)
• Changes in American
shopping patterns
• Concerns with
growing materialism
• The crucial role of
advertising
• Doubts about the
strength of national
character
B. Life in the Home
• Home became the
focus of activities
• “Togetherness”
• Television image of
family togetherness
• No encouragement of
feminism after WWII
• Life’s “ideal” middleclass woman (1956)
B. Life in the Home (cont.)
• The advice of baby doctor
Benjamin Spock
--The Common Sense
Book of Baby and Child
Care (1946)
• Number of working
women doubled between
1940-1960
--40% of all women and
33% of all married women
worked outside of the
home by 1960
C. Religion and the Media
• Organized religion
flourished in the 50’s
-- “Church shopping”
• The Power of Positive
Thinking (1952)
• Fifties preaching avoided
condemnation and
controversy
• Symbols of 50’s Religious
Enthusiasm
-- “In God We Trust”
C. Religion and the Media
(cont.)
• Religion and the Cold
War
• Religion on television
• “Neo-orthodoxy” and
critics of 50’s religious
culture
• Educational
controversy during the
decade
C. Religion and the Media
(cont.)
• Television became the
largest growth area for an
expanding American
media
--1946: 7,000 sets
--1960: 50 million sets
• TV’s impact on culture
• Advertising on TV
• Fifties television
programming
D. The Politics of the 1950’s
(1) The Election of 1952
• Competition for the
Republican nomination
• Democrats nominated
Governor Adlai Stevenson
of Illinois
• The Campaign and
Results
-- “I Like Ike”
• Republicans failed to
control Congress in the
50’s
(2) “Dynamic Conservatism”:
The Eisenhower Presidency
• Eisenhower’s
background and
personality
• Eisenhower’s
controversial cabinet
• Eisenhower’s priority
of budget cutting
• Extending the reach of
the “New Deal”
(2) “Dynamic Conservatism”
(cont.)
• Eisenhower’s heart attack
and the election of 1956
• Second Term “problems”
• Second Term
“accomplishments”
--Hawaii and Alaska
statehood (1959)
• Eisenhower’s “Farewell
Address”
-- “military-industrial”
complex
E. An Underlying Anxiety
(1) Critics of Consumer Society
• Abundance of selfcriticism in the 1950’s
• David Riesman’s The
Lonely Crowd (1950)
-- “inner-directed” vs.
“outer-directed”
• Arthur Miller’s Death of a
Salesman (1949)
• Other literary critiques of
the 1950’s
(1) Critics of Consumer Society
(cont.)
• Critique of American
business in the 50’s
• The art of Edward Hopper
• Art becomes increasingly
abstract
• The subculture of the
“Beatniks”
• Beatniks pursue personal
versus social solutions to
their anxieties
(1) Critics of Consumer Society
(cont.)
• Beat poet Allen Ginsberg
-- “Howl” (1956)
• William Burroughs
-- Naked Lunch (1959)
• Jack Kerouac
-- On the Road (1957)
• Contrast with the Hippies
• Anti-authority movies
• The Elvis “Revolution”
(2) The Second “Red Scare”
• House Un-American
Activities Committee
(HUAC)
• Presidential loyalty oaths
(1947)
• The Alger Hiss affair
(1948)
• The climate for
“McCarthyism”
--Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg
(2) The Second “Red Scare”
(cont.)
• “Communists in the State
Department” (February of
1950)
• McCarthy’s tactics
• Growing fear of McCarthy
in Washington, D.C.
• McCarthy’s attack on
“subversive” books
• McCarthy and Eisenhower
(2) The Second “Red Scare”
(cont.)
• The Army-McCarthy
Hearings (1954)
--Army counsel
Joseph Welch
• McCarthy’s demise
• Spirit of McCarthyism
lived on
• “Frozen dissent”
during the 1950’s
(3) Reaction to Sputnik
• Soviets launch “Sputnik”
(October, 1957)
• American reaction to
Sputnik
• NASA created (1958)
• “Project Apollo” and the
race to the moon
• National Defense
Education Act (1958)
• Commission on National
Goals
II. The “Sixties”: Protest and
Reaction
A. The Politics of the 1960’s
(1) The Election of 1960
• Richard Nixon (R-Ca) vs.
John F. Kennedy (DMass)
• The Kennedy family and
political ambition
-- Profiles in Courage
(1956)
• Campaign issues and
strategies
• Election Results
(2) The “New Frontier” Under
Kennedy
• Kennedy youthfulness and
Cabinet appointments
--Robert McNamara
• The “Kennedy” Style
• Difficulties in launching a
domestic program
--The Peace Corps (1961)
• Kennedy’s assassination
(November 22, 1963)
--The “Camelot” mystique
B. Important Supreme Court
Decisions of the 1960’s
• Warren Court decisions
continue to be
controversial
• Prohibition of school
prayer (1962)
• Gideon v. Wainwright
(1963)
• Escobedo v. Illinois (1964)
• Miranda v. Arizona (1966)
C. Life on College Campuses
• Boom in college
enrollments
• A new “adversarial”
culture attacking
materialism
• “Students for a
Democratic Society”
(SDS)
-- “participatory
democracy”
--Founder: Tom Hayden
-- “The New Left”
C. Life on College Campuses
(cont.)
• Growth of the SDS
• Increasing radicalism and
violence
• The “Weathermen”
• By 1971, the “New Left”
was dead
• SDS as a symbol of youth
in the 60’s
• Still, SDS was a minority
symbol of the era
D. Student Revolt
• Roots of student protest
• The Free Speech
Movement (1964)
--Berkeley student leader
Mario Savio
• Causes of campus unrest
-- “Don’t trust anyone
over thirty!”
• First student teach-ins at
the University of
Michigan (1965)
D. Student Revolt (cont.)
• Growing threat of the draft
to college men
• Draft resistance and
evasion
• Mass student protests at
Central Park and the
Pentagon (1967)
• Sit-ins at Columbia
University (April, 1968)
• Major gains of the protest
were educational
E. The Cultural Revolution
• Much more pervasive and
influential than the
political revolution of the
60’s
• Values challenged through
physical appearance
• The rise and fall of
communal living
--Haight-Ashbury
E. The Cultural Revolution
(cont.)
• The Woodstock Music
Festival (August,
1969)
• Protest music of the
mid-60’s
--Joan Baez, Bob
Dylan, Simon and
Garfunkel
E. The Cultural Revolution
(cont.)
• Drug music and
political radicalism of
the late sixties
-- “Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds”
-- “You Say You Want
a Revolution”
--Grateful Dead and
the Jefferson Airplane
E. The Cultural Revolution
(cont.)
• The role of drugs in the
Counter-Culture
--Dr. Timothy Leary
• The “Yippies”
• The Crippling of the
Cultural Revolution
(1969-1970)
• The commercialization of
the Counter-Culture
• Environmentalism
becomes the new student
cause of the 70’s
F. Native American Nationalism
• The poor, different
nationalities and
homosexuals all emulated
the Black Power
movement
• The plight of Native
Americans in the 60’s
• Protest of sports mascots
• AIM and its takeover of
Alcatraz (1969)
• Legal action taken
G. Hispanic Nationalism
• Cesar Chavez and the
National Farm Workers
Association
--boycott strategy
• Explosive growth of
Hispanic American
population
-- “Chicanos”
• Campaign for educational
opportunities and
programs
• No more “Frito Bandito”
H. Women’s Liberation
• New wave of feminism
grew out of other reform
efforts
• Signs of gender inequality
during the 60’s
• Betty Friedan’s The
Feminine Mystique (1963)
• 1964 Civil Rights Act: no
job discrimination on the
basis of sex
H. Women’s Liberation (cont.)
• Forms of protest by 60’s
women activists
• National Organization of
Women (NOW—1966)
• Division within the
women’s movement
• The Equal Rights
Amendment (1972)
• Roe v. Wade (1973)
• The “quiet revolution”
III. Comparisons of the Fifties
and the Sixties?