Yaolee Chen

HIS 365

Rober McCoy

American Society and Culture in the 1950s

  1. The winners and losers in the economy of abundance were the American people ourselves.
  2. The factors spurred the growth of the economy of abundance were: the increasing families, desegration, liberalism, and postwar consumerism.  Technoloy transform American industry in the postwar years: the National Defence Education, for example, produced higher scientific technology; so, we have better chemical scientific technology, which met the demands of the markets for the capitalis that the U.S. had better cosmetics, luxury items than anyother countryies in the world.  During this period of economic growth, the labors benefited from the higher qualities and cheaper-lower prices of American goods.
  3. The suburbs grew and the cities declined in the 1950s: William J. Levi buit 1,700 suburban bouriogy in New Jersy, for example.  Increasing crabs frontiers provied cheap housing for the middle calss who worked in the cities.  Plus, almost every middle class owned a car.  With cheap housing and convient transportaion to the suburb, the suburbs grew and the cities declined in the 1950s.
  4. Higher education democratized:   By the GI bill, government paid four-years-college education for people who served in the army; through the programs, the intellegent students had better chances to receive the higher education and get graduate.  In 1950s, students had better equal opportunites to receive the education; so, it’s democratized.
  5. The great domestic revival was the T.V.  Under the threat of Red Scare, the American artists were afraid to express their personal opinion; so, Hollywood often focus the topics on family.  As women and children of the 1950s were educated by the TV, Americans increasingly turned to houses of worship.
  6. The television transform American culture and politics into idealized.  In culture, the 1950s was a time of “Women’s Mystigue”.  In politics, increasingly military spending to secure the “fears of the communists”.
  7. The countercurrents to mainstream culture was that, children ran away from home and pissed at the nuclear family.
  8. The teenage whites find rock n’ roll so compelling because they were brain-washed by Elvis Presley.  The adult authorities find it so shocking: the adults were to build the traditional families; but, the results ran into an opposite direction that the adults of the next generation prefer not to have kids or families.  Opposit to the expection, children of the 1950s wore ruggy clothing and made themselves like homeless.