postwar

• Consumerism


  Buying/ consuming lots of goods, helps the economy
• American Dream


  Money, success, happy families, opportunities
• More money - plenty of jobs, wages higher, baby boom, America was supplying the world with 65% of its manufactured goods by 1952, biggest growth in televisions, plastics, jet engines and cars
• Government told people it was their duty to spend money, to support the economy and returning soldiers
• 25% of people still lived below the poverty line
• Olympics in Berlin - black athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals


  1936
• First televised American football match

  1939
• Consumerism


  Buying/consuming lots of goods, helps the economy
• The perfect life was a house in the suburbs, steady job, being married and having children
• If you worked hard, you could achieve anything
• G.I Bill in 1944


  • Helped veterans from the war by setting up hospitals, providing low interest mortgages and grants for tuition at college and trade schools
  • Helped 9m veterans
• New houses


  • Advertised themselves as victory homes for soldiers returning from the war
• 1950s adverts


  • Showed women as housewives, with domestic gadgets to make their lives easier
• Many women had to work, to help support their families
• Many women wanted to work, and earn their own money, like they had during the war
• Husbands still saw themselves as breadwinners
• McCarthyism


  Making accusations without proper evidence
• Communism


  All property owned by the community, everyone contributes what they can and gets what they need
• Cold War


  Tension between the eastern bloc (Russia and allies) and countries in the west (America and their allies), not an actual war
• McCarthy


  • An American Senator who was worried about Communism spreading
• There were 75,000 members of the Communist Party in America
• McCarthy said there were 200 Communists in the American government
• This led to over 100 investigations, with people working in schools, the army and entertainment industry also targeted
• Hundreds were imprisoned and 10,000 lost their jobs
• Television programs


  • Cartoons like the Flintstones and Top Cat were aimed at adults as well as children
  • Comedies like the Addams Family and I Love Lucy
  • Most television programs were now in colour
  • Televisions were still a luxury but by the early 1960s most families had one
  • People didn't have to leave their homes to be entertained
• Rock and Roll


  • New style of music and dancing
  • Appealed to teenagers - songs about love and being young
  • Lots of older people disapproved - they thought the new bands and singers were a bad influence
  • Elvis Presley, James Brown and the Beatles all became famous
  • Lots of black musicians, including black female groups like the Supremes
  • Drugs were often associated with rock and roll, especially marijuana and LSD
  • Woodstock Festival in 1969 attracted crowds of 400,000 people (like Glastonbury)
• Buses in the southern states of America were segregated, with the front rows reserved for white people while black people had to sit at the back
• If the bus was full, black people had to give up their seats for white people
• The NAACP asked Rosa Parks to challenge this segregation
• On 1st December 1955 Rosa refused to move from her seat, to allow a white man to sit down, and was arrested and fined $14
• NAACP took the Alabama government to court over segregation laws
• Montgomery Bus Boycott


  • Martin Luther King set up the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to coordinate a boycott of local buses until segregation ended
  • It would be non violent action
  • Boycott lasted a year
  • 85% of Montgomery's black people refused to use the buses
  • MIA organised car pools to help people get to work
  • Taxis only charged black people 10 cents a ride, the same as if they used the bus
  • Many people walked everywhere
  • Churches began to provide money for new shoes
  • Some white ladies drove their black domestic servants to and from work
• Bus companies lost 65% of their revenue
• King was fined $500 and sentenced to a year in prison, but only served two weeks
• 20th December 1956 the Supreme Court made segregation on buses illegal
• The Montgomery Bus Company desegregated their buses, so black people could sit where they liked
• The boycott showed the economic power of black people - they had financially crippled the bus companies
• Television reports had shown the injustice of segregation
• Martin Luther King had shown his leadership qualities and become famous
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was set up, to fight for equal rights