contrasting cultures: the “fifties” and the “sixties” -key concepts-
TRANSCRIPT
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” middle-
class 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 self-criticism 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 (D-Mass)
• 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?