CW - 1950s American Culture (Lesson)

1950s American Culture

The United States and its citizens experienced a rapid series of changes--economic, technological, and demographic changes in the years after World War II—that altered the cultural landscape of the nation that would render it almost unrecognizable by the 1970s!

After World War II, soldiers returned home to the United States and settled back into the lives they had left behind. One result of this re-assimilation was a huge growth in the population called the “Baby Boom.” From the mid-1940s to the end of 1964, the American birthrate quickly increased, reaching its high point in 1957, a year when over four million babies were born. The generation referred to as Baby Boomers is the largest generation in American history. (“Baby Boomers” were born between 1946 and 1964.)

Another effect of the soldiers' return was a housing shortage. The veterans' new and growing families needed homes to live in and they had money to spend--their veterans’ benefits--and new jobs and salaries in a booming economy.

In response, housing developers such as William Levitt created methods of building houses faster, cheaper, and more efficiently.

These methods led to the creation of the first suburbs - communities outside of a city and mostly made up of single-family houses for people whose family members worked in the city.

Furthermore, the tens of thousands of young World War II veterans had the opportunity to complete a college degree program at little to no cost to them as a part of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (1944), commonly referred to as the GI Bill. (This piece of legislation also provided veterans with low-interest mortgages for their homes.)

The first example of a suburb was on New York's Long Island where William Levitt's Levittown was the first master-planned community in America. Because the new suburbs were outside the limits of large cities, there was little public transportation available for the suburban residents. They needed cars to drive to the city for work and to take children to school, and increased car ownership meant more roads were needed.

Suburbs were not new in the post-WWII era—the earliest suburbs grew up around commuter railroad depots in the last quarter of the 19th century—but there were factors that contributed to the proliferation of suburban communities after the war.

The housing crunch caused people to move outside of major cities. The returning soldiers and their wives had families quickly and were in need of immediate housing to shelter their wives and children.

Race also was a factor in the development of “suburbia” because many white people didn’t want to live in the integrated urban neighborhoods after the migration of blacks from the South who had moved north to work in wartime factories.

The movement of middle-class white Americans from urban areas to the suburbs came to be labeled “white flight.”

Congress passed the Interstate Highway Act, authorizing the construction of a national network of highways to connect every major city in America. In all, 41,000 miles of new expressways (or freeways) were built. It was a record-size public works project.

Support for the construction of the interstates was not only in response to increasing the speed and ease of travel.

Government and military leaders learned during the war and in the Cold War era that interstates were limited-access highways that could be used to evacuate cities more rapidly in the case of a nuclear threat, used to transport troops and supplies in the event of a communist invasion and serve as landing strips for aircraft.

While northern cities were expanding into the suburbs, much of the population growth since World War II has been in the south and west. This region, known as the "Sunbelt," drew many people to these regions as industry relocated there. (The industries were often in search of a non-unionized labor force.)

Additionally, the hot climate of these regions was less of a factor for people considering a move to the regions because of the increasingly popular air conditioning...people from northern areas were more amenable to migrating there. Today states such as California, Texas, Florida and Georgia are among the most populated states in the Union despite the heat!

 

Television Changes

The first regular television broadcasts began in 1949 and provided just two hours a week of news and entertainment to a very small area on the East Coast.

By 1956, over 500 stations broadcasted all over the United States and brought news and entertainment into the living rooms of most Americans.

In the 1960 national election campaign, the Kennedy/Nixon presidential debates were the first presidential debates ever shown on TV. Seventy million people tuned in to see the live debate between John F. Kennedy (D) and Richard M. Nixon (R.)

Although Nixon was more knowledgeable about foreign policy and other topics, Kennedy looked and spoke more forcefully because he had been coached by television producers. Kennedy's charismatic performance in the debate helped him narrowly win the presidency. The Kennedy/Nixon debates changed the shape of American politics.

 

Sputnik I and the Cold War

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite - Sputnik I - a feat that caused many Americans to believe the United States had fallen behind the Soviet Union in terms of understanding science and the uses of technology.

The success of the Soviet satellite launch led to increased U.S. government spending on education, especially in mathematics and science, and on national military defense programs. Additionally, Sputnik I increased Cold War tensions by heightening U.S. fears that the Soviet Union might use rockets to launch nuclear weapons against the United States and its allied nations.

Moreover, the advent of the Advanced Placement program took place in the late 1950s as government officials pushed to get young men into colleges and into the workforce more rapidly. Originally, AP courses were in math and science and were an effort to accelerate young males into colleges up to two years earlier than normal---all a part of the push to keep up with the Soviets technologically and militarily.

 

Now it is time to view the presentation below.

 

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