1950s Culture

• During the 1950s, “race music”, or music by black artists, was forbidden on many radio shows because DJs didn’t want white folk to listen to black music.


  Alan Freed- changed the “race music” idea by calling black music on his radio “rock and roll”, white people had no idea this music was performed by black people.
• • Alan Freed decided to have his artists perform live shows which is where people started realizing that black people were making the music that they were listening to on the radio.
  • These radio events turned into riots because white people didn’t want they children to be “corrupted” by black music. Freed refused to change the music on his shows despite the threats he was receiving.
  • Other radio shows see how popular “rock and roll” is so they start finding music similar to it to make more money from people listening to their shows.
• Elvis Presley- famous white rock and roll artist in the 1950s.

  • He didn’t care about dancing norms and would dance with what tv show hosts deemed “sexual moves”, which is why we don’t have many videos from the waist down since he moved his hips too much.
  • The older generation didn’t like this rock-and-roll music because “it could lead to teen pregnancy” and Congress started being involved, but all of this is rooted back to the fact that rock-and-roll comes from black artists.
• Age of Conformity - 1950s - 1960s, by 1953 there are at least 23 million homes with televisions in them, suburban houses are more popular, watching TV with your family was popular, all families were depicted as living the same life and fitting into social norms in the 50s.
• • TV shows wouldn’t usually show one single bed in a bedroom because it would imply sex was happening, but eventually they started showing a single bed in bedrooms because it’s not like anyone was going to die from it.
• Leave it to Beaver - a show where gender roles were strictly stereotypical: the mother was a housewife and always showed up on TV with pretty dresses and heels while doing housework, and the father is always at work and is the discipline parent.

  There were no black characters in this show or in many shows like this depicting the typical suburban household.

  Commercials also force suburban life and raise consumerism in the states.

  Women were forced to leave the workforce because they a) wanted to or b) they were told to by society/families.
• Women were going to college during the 50s, if a woman was pregnant then she couldn’t work so they were sent home, men were not allowed to do any housework because they were supposed to be working and making money.

  • Women were also made to go to college to “find their husband”, not get an education.
• Beatniks- kinda like a hippie in the 1950s

  Betty Friedan- published the Feminine Mystique which basically said that this widespread unhappiness and unfulfilling feelings in the suburbs is real and that women have different desires than what is normal, but that these desires are not “American”. Leads to a new women’s movement: The Women’s Liberation Movement.
• A New Art Movement - New visual artists, architecture, authors and musical artists. Catch 22 and The Crucible emerged. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is about the Salem Witch Trials but was mostly a fan fiction centered about the Salem Witch Trials and communist ideas.
• Election of 1960s - Richard Nixon vs. JFK. (John Fitzgerald Kennedy). Kennedy grew up wealthy and was raised with the belief that either him or one of his brothers would become president because they had a good military record and financial record. He was a fairy young candidate which is new at the time. 


  Nixon grew up poor, enlisted in the military to get out of poverty, had intentional military experience and had already been in the White House so he had some experience being in power.