While we're on the topic of summarizing the 50's, here's a nice little intro vid.
The video highlights a lot of different accomplishments; way too many to focus on individually, but I would like to point out a few. Oh, and I know what you're thinking. They totally forgot to mention poodle skirts!
First and foremost, let's cover CREDIT.
With higher wages, inflation and unemployment low, and increased leisure time, the middle-class was ready to spend their money! And for the first time after the war, with the expansion of consumer goods readily available and flexible forms of credit, such as the first general-purpose charge card, consumerism boomed. These cards included the Diner's Club card, American Express, and the BankAmericard.
This second "achievement" I would like to highlight, is the fact that 90% of Americans owned a TELEVISION. Acting became more prominent of a career with popular shows including I Love Lucy, and other shows that targeted the white suburban middle class and urban working class families. Game shows also rose in popularity. The $64,000 Question consisted of contestants competing for money, household appliances, and cars.
Speaking of cars, in the 50's the AUTOMOBILE became the single most important symbol of American prosperity. Manufacturers like GM, Ford, and Chrysler started to incorporate luxuries and accessories into the cars. The fancier cars had curves, oversized bumpers, and bulging headlamps. Cars were made to target the suburban families prioritizing their comfort while making them affordable. Other auto industries lobbied for the interstate highway system which was set in place by Eisenhower with a bill that came to be the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (1956).
The video also mentioned the first microwave which was priced between $2000-$3000 with the first home model priced at $1295. HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES were huge especially with the image of the housewife. Our textbook mentions that by the mid-fifties, households spent on average almost a third more of their income on food than they had spent prior to WWII with the consumption of meat and convenience foods rising dramatically. The supermarkets were developed near suburbs and the majority of what was stocked were brightly packaged, chemically preserved foods.
This housewife ideology meant that women were supposed to remain out of the workforce and fully take on their roles as wives and mothers. The only jobs that women were left with were the "women" jobs which were limited to teacher, secretary, nurse, etc. The typical family usually consisted of a mother and a father, with two children. Divorce rates were low because divorce was frowned upon. The man was the head of the household and worked (most likely a white collared job) to support his family, the wife was obviously doing housework or grocery shopping (sheesh), and the children were in school. Unless of course, you were a teenager in the 50's. If that were the case, you might be at a drive-in heavy petting or be cruising around aimlessly in your parent's new automobile that they had just purchased with the fancy bumpers and cushiony seats. Which was probably fine by the way. Gas was only 23 cents a gallon! Anywho, that's basically the depiction of the average family in the 50's. Women had a bunch of babies because they were getting married younger and there was a huge emphasis on having a family. Hence, the baby boom generation.
This "ideal" family lifestyle wasn't the case for all Americans and America in the 50's wasn't entirely peachy. The 50's were still a time of conflict and anti-communism after the Cold War. There were also Civil Rights issues going on at the time. However, instead of focusing on the bad I want to wrap this up by focussing on what we have achieved. So with that being said, the video emphasized the DESEGREGATION OF SCHOOLS. Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1945) was a case made up of five lawsuits that parents had initiated against local school boards combined into one single suit. This case challenged the principle of "separate but equal" and argued that racial segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. The Supreme Court agreed that the segregation of schools was unconstitutional making that day a very important day in history. Another attempt at desegregating the South was the Montgomery Bus Boycott which formed when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on a city bus. Rosa was arrested, but what happened as a result of that was amazing! Martin Luther King Jr. led a boycott against the bus company which caused the bus company to fail and eventually led the Supreme Court to strike down segregation of all forms of public transportation.
It's safe to say we've come pretty far as a country and although we're still struggling with some very prominent issues in our own time, it's refreshing to look back at history and see how far we have come. Obviously, you still have a lot of people set in their ways, but I have hope that people will progress in a humane way.
Sources Used:
Becoming America Volume II: From Reconstruction by David Henkin and Rebecca McLennan
http://fiftiesweb.com/pop/info-family/
http://www.history.com/topics/1950s
No comments:
Post a Comment