Cold War America

Nature and Americans

Spacious nation

 

Agriculture

      28 million live on farms

      15% of the work force

      Average size: 200 acres

      Little pesticide use yet

 

 

 

 

Electronics and communication

Computers:
ENIAC and UNIVAC

Computer science develops

      Norbert Wiener invents cybernetics, 1948

      Self-regulating mechanisms

      Quickly adopted into other fields

      Systems thinking popular in 1950s and 1960s

      H.T. Odum applies systems to ecology, 1950s

      Science of energy flows through ecosytems

      Flow charts

 

 

Rising prosperity

       1945-60: 250% growth in economy

        GDP/person 1950-1973: 2.5%

       Rise of big multinational corporations, R&D budgets, data processing

       GI Bill fuels education & housing boom

       Baby boom and creation of a youth culture

       Church boom: record church attendance

       Cars, commuting, and suburban sprawl

       Shopping centers, malls, drive-in movies, drive-in dining, fast food

       Interstate highway system, 1956

       Mass transit declines or disappears

 

 

 

Inexpensive window air-conditioner makes possible the rise of the Sunbelt

 

 

Celebration of the Modern

 

Abstract Expressionism

 

Blacks: 10% of population in 1950
Whites: 87%

 

 

Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947

Popular culture

       Television: classic era

       1949 1m sets; 1952 15m; 1960 46m

       Decline in movies, radio, sports, dining out

       Live coverage of politics, hearings, sports

       Suburban ideal

       Popularity of TV and movie Westerns

       Modern advertising

       The Marlboro man, 1955

Teaching conformity

Serious discontent

      Careerism: the “organization man”

      Serious lives in a serious world

      Conformity, rules, morality

      Critics: shallow consumers in a rootless, materialistic world of identical suburbs

Rebels

     “Juvenile delinquency”

     Vogue of Folk Music

     “Beatniks”: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg

The serious subject of sex

      Publicly a very puritanical era

      Moral panic over sex, “deviance”

      On the other hand:

      Playboy founded 1953

      Popularity of James Bond books and movies

      The “Rat Pack” image: booze and broads


Rock and Roll

      The shock of Elvis Presley, 1956

      Driven by cheap 45s & “top 40” radio

The Civil Rights Movement

       Effects of World War II & the Cold War

       Truman desegregates the military

       Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954

       “All deliberate speed”

       Montgomery bus boycott, 1955

       Rosa Parks, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

       Nonviolence: SCLC

       Gov. Faubus, Little Rock, Ark., 1957

       Forces Eisenhower to send army

Postwar politics

       Inflation, wave of strikes hurt Democrats

       Truman unpopular; Republicans wait for 1948

       Truman renominated: “Fair Deal”

       New Deal for prosperous society

       Health insurance, education, housing for poor

       Democrats split: Strom Thurmond & Henry Wallace

       Republicans: NY Gov. Thomas Dewey

       Truman’s surprise victory

Red Scare

      Republicans make issue of spies with atomic secrets, 1946-early 1950s

      House Unamerican Activities Committee investigates

      Richard Nixon emerges

 

McCarthyism

      Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin

      1950 speech: list of 200 names

      Fear of being called “soft on Communism”

      Republicans let him attack Democrats, 1953

      1954 Army hearings

      Tactics seen on national TV

      Senate finally condemns McCarthy 67-22

 

Dwight D. Eisenhower

      War hero: Republican nominee, 1952

      Eisenhower’s “dynamic conservatism”

      Accept New Deal, no new programs

      Foreign policy: John Foster Dulles

      “Massive retaliation”

      Intervention: Iran 1953; Guatemala 1954

Worried mood of the late 1950s

       Sputnik, October 4, 1957

       Shock: Russia’s scientific advances, technological achievement, military threat

       NASA, 1958: civilian, not military

       Push for science in education

       Communists take Cuba, 1959

       “Missile gap”?

       Recession

       Eisenhower’s farewell address:  “Military-industrial complex”