Transcript The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement

An Affluent Society
1953 – 1960
Chapter 24
BUSINESS
Per Capita Income: Average income per person; increased from $1526 to
$2788
Business Conglomerates: a large corporation that owns many smaller
companies that produce different goods & services (ATT owned Avis,
Sheratons, Banks)
Franchises: opening a restaurant using a parent company’s brand name &
system
TECHNOLOGY
Television
 1955 the average family watched TV 5 hours a day
 I Love Lucy, American Bandstand, Mickey Mouse Club
 Raised money through commercials
LABOR
White Collar Jobs: held by a majority of Americans in 1956;
encouraged by good conditions; “power elite”
1955 AFL-CIO Merger: 25% of all Americans were unionized
SUBURBS & HIGHWAYS
Baby Boom: birthrate increased to 25 per 1,000 people – due to better jobs
and pay
Suburbs: areas surrounding major cities where growing families sought new
houses
Levittown: communities outside major cities built with mass-production
technique by developer William Levitt; used pre-cut, preassembled materials
Cars
• Growth of suburbs = increased dependence on cars, less on public transit
• Began introducing new designs every year
• Resulted in need for better roads
• Interstate Highway Act: provided $26 billion to build an interstate system
more than 40,000 miles long (original purpose was for mass evacuation in
nuclear attacks)
• Sparked tourism, drive-in theatres & restaurants
CONSUMERS
Credit Cards: allowed people to charge gas purchases when they were on the
road; lending companies picked up the idea – American Express, Visa; buying
was attached to status/success
CULTURE
Men
• Go to school, find jobs to support wife/kids
• Worked, made important political, economic, social decisions
• Judged by what they could buy
Women
• Reluctant to give up wartime jobs
• Not in public sphere, supportive of husband
• Kept house, cooked meals, raised children
• Life Magazine: 1947 “The American Woman’s Dilemma” to 1956 “Busy Wife’s
Achievements”
• Democratic Presidential Candidate in 1952: told college girls “the
assignment for you, as wives and mothers, you can do in the living room with
a baby in your lap or in the kitchen with a can opener in your hand”
CHALLENGES TO CONFORMITY
Hollywood: James Dean, Marilyn Monroe
Rock & Roll: Clevland, OH, 1953, music grown out of rhythm-and-blues
tradition.
Elvis Presley: flamboyant style, good looks – adults feared promotion of
immorality
Beatniks: “Beat Generation” writers, artists, stress spontaneity & spirituality
instead of conformity
EISENHOWER PRESIDENCY
Election of 1952
• Republican Candidate: “I Like Ike”
• Scandal: papers reported accused Ike’s running mate, Nixon, of receiving
illegal gifts from rich supporters  Nixon went on TV to deny it, said they got
the family dog, “Checkers” as a gift
Administration
• Modern Republicanism: cutting govt spending, reducing taxes, and
balancing the national budget, limit the President’s power
• Favored big business – as cabinet members, Secretary of Defense was GM
president
• New Deal Extention: Soc Sec extended to 10 million more workers, minimum
wage was raised from 75 cents to $1
• National Defense Education Act: reaction to the launch of Sputnik (Russian
satellite) – in 1958 law was designed to improve science and math instruction
in schools
THE EARLY CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Segregation in the 1950s
• Poverty – 50% of black families, lack of job security
• In South – colleges, hotels, restaurants, housing, performers
• In North – 28 million kids in segregated schools
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
• Schools were not equal – no running water, no toilets, no busses
• Oliver Brown sued Topeka Board to allow 8 year old daughter Linda to
attend a closer white-only school (had to walk 6 blocks)
• Argued by lawyer Thurgood Marshall
• Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled “separate facilities are
inherently unequal”
• “separate but equal” was no longer ok in public education
• Court ruled all schools to desegregate “with all deliberate speed”
Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955
• Began with Rosa Parks in December – refused to move, was arrested and
stood trial
• Organized a boycott – called for African Americans to refuse to use the
entire bus system until the company agreed to change its policy
• 26 year old Baptist minister became the spokesperson for the protest
movement
• Movement went on for 1 year – 50,000 walked, biked, or car pooled
• Supreme Court ruled bus segregation was unconstitutional
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference: coalition of black ministers,
civil rights activists focused on desegregation
Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957
• Reaction to Brown v. Board – whites hostile, 82 Congressmen opposed the
ruling
• Governor Orval Faubus said he could not keep order if he had to enforce
integration
• Faubus placed AK National Guardsman at high school who stopped black
students
• Direct challenge to Constitution
• Eisenhower used the 101st airborne to protect black students
Election of 1960
• JFK – 43 years old, Roman Catholic from Massachusetts
• Cold War outlook – U.S. needs to rally, respond to Sputnik
• Claimed Republicans lied about the “missile gap”
• Jacqueline K. – “Will & Kate effect”
• Nixon-Kennedy TV debate
• Kennedy won by only 120,000 votes
• Ike’s farewell: don’t get too trigger-happy, beware of the military-industrial
complex