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?