AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY

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AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY

• America Past and Present
• Chapter 29

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The Postwar Boom

• 1945-1960--rapid economic growth
• 1960--fear of another depression wanes

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Postwar Prosperity

• Stimuli to consumer goods industry
• baby boom
• population shift to suburbia
• Increased defense spending
• Increase in capital investments
• Employment expands

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Birthrate, 1940-1970
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Postwar ProsperityLingering Problems

• Agricultural overproduction, low prices
• Older industrial areas decline
• 1957-1958--recession slows decades economic
  growth

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Life in the Suburbs

• Suburbia inhabited by middle class
• Characteristics of suburbs
• dependence on the automobile
• family togetherness
• Traditional feminism discouraged
• Entrance of more women into workplace stimulates
  new feminism

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The Good Life?

• Consumerism the dominant social theme of the
  1950s
• Quality of life leaves Americans anxious and
  dissatisfied

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Areas of Greatest Growth

• Church membership
• School attendance
• Television watching

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Critics of the Consumer Society

• Social critics of suburban culture
• John Keats
• William Whyte
• David Riesman
• C. Wright Mills criticizes corporations
• Jack Kerouac, Beat artists promote
  counterculture

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The Reaction to Sputnik

• 1957--Russians launch Sputnik
• American response
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  (NASA)
• National Defense Education Act--upgrade the
  teaching of science
• Sense of failure, decline by 1960

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Farewell to Reform

• Spirit of reform wanes in postwar years
• Reasons
• growing affluence reduces sense of grievance
• Americans eager to enjoy their new prosperity

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Truman and the Fair Deal

• Fair Deal attempts to expand New Deal
• Limited achievement
• consolidates Roosevelt's reforms
• sets the agenda for future attempts

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Eisenhower's Modern Republicanism

• Eisenhower leaves New Deal intact
• 1954--Democrats regain Congress
• 1956--Highway Act creates interstate highway
  system
• stimulates the economy
• shapes metropolitan growth patterns

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The Interstate Highway System
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The Struggle Over Civil Rights

• Cold War prompts quest for American moral
  superiority
• Legal discrimination against African Americans
  challenges U.S. self-image

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Civil Rights as a Political Issue

• Trumans civil-rights legislation fails
• 1948--African American vote gives Truman his
  margin of victory
• Civil rights made part of the liberal Democratic
  agenda
• Truman integrates the armed forces

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Desegregating the Schools

• 1954--Brown v. Board of Education
• segregated schools unconstitutional
• desegregate "with all deliberate speed"
• Massive resistance in Deep South
• 1957--Eisenhowers actions
• federal troops sent to Little Rock, Arkansas
• Commission on Civil Rights established

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The Beginnings of Black Activism

• NAACP--press for civil rights in courts
• 1955--Martin Luther King, Jr. leads Montgomery
  bus boycott
• 1956--Southern Christian Leadership Conference
  directs anti-segregation
• Sit-ins protest segregation laws
• 1960--Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

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Restoring National Confidence

• American people more optimistic in 1960 than in
  1950
• Fear of economic depression wanes
• Fear of Cold War continues
• Growing recognition of incompatibility of racial
  injustice with American ideals