Chapter24 Fifties America Ike.pdf - KenyonUSHistory

Norton Media Library 

Give Me Liberty! 

AN AMERICAN HISTORY 

THIRD EDITION 

by 

Eric Foner


Chapter 24 

An Affluent Society, 

1953 –1960 

Eric Foner

A portrait of affluence 

Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition 

Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

Figure 24.1 Real Gross Domestic Product Per 

Capita, 1790–2000 



Golden Age of Capitalism 

• Economic Expansion 

• Stable Prices 

• Low unemployment 

• Rising Standard of Living 

• Americans of this generation had better diet, 

housing, income, education, and recreation then 

their parents or grandparents. 

• Poverty Rate: 1950 (30%) 1960 (22%) (1 in 5) 

• 60 % of Americans living in the middle class

Vice President Richard Nixon 



• TV, AC, Dishwasher, Jet Travel 

• Electricity, heating, pluming now a common feature 

of life. 

• Sunbelt: Western States who receive government 

money for technology (aircraft, guided missiles, radar 

systems) 

• South: Government money for Shipyards and 

Military bases 

• New England: Aircrafts and Submarines 

• 50’s beginning of the decline of Manufacturing in the 

US and the Growth of corporations 

• 1956: 1 st Time White Collar Jobs outnumber Blue 

Collar

Levittown, New York 



Suburban Nation 

• Suburbs = Housing, TV, Appliances, Cars 

• Whites Only: De Facto Segregation 

• Conformity: Lawns & Decorations 

• Levittown, PA 

• Malls no longer city centers 

• Western Growth: Decentralized clusters, 

homes and business connected by highways 

(unlike the public transportation cities of 

the east coast)

This aerial view of Westchester, a community 

in Los Angeles 



Ernst Haas’s 1969 photograph of Albuquerque, 

New Mexico 



Map 24.1 The Interstate Highway System 



A 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz 



Consumerism 

• “Luxuries of today are the necessities of tomorrow” 

• Freedom = Ability to buy consumer goods 

• Debt: Americans comfortable living in debt 

• Market American products around the world: Weapon 

in Cold War (Coca Cola, Levi) 

• By end of 50’s: 9/10 families own TV sets 

• TV replaces Newspapers, leisure activities, eating habits 

• TV ads = Suburban good life of endless consumption 

• Car = essential to enjoying American Freedom 

• By 1960: 80% of families own a car 

• Cars designed to out of style and promote future sales

In this 1950 photograph, television sets move 

through an assembly line. 



TV became the most effective advertising 

medium in history. 



Introduced in 1954, the frozen TV dinner 

was marketed in a package designed 



Figure 24.3 The Baby Boom and its Decline 



Figure 24.2 Average Daily Television Viewing 



Jack Gould’s 1946 photograph 



Advertisers during the 1950s 



Elliott Erwitt’s 



Suburban builders sometimes openly advertised 

the fact 



De Facto-Segregation 

• Americanization: suburbia is a move away from the 

urban ethnic communities 

• Still a rigid racial barrier 

• 1990: 90% of suburban whites lived in communities 

with non white populations of 1% 

• Housing Act passed by congress (1949) authorizes the 

construction of public housing. 

• Law sets an extremely low ceiling on income level for 

residents: segregated neighborhoods in inner cities. 

• Urban Renewal: cities demolish poor neighborhoods in 

city centers that had valuable real estate. Put in 

shopping and white middle class housing in their place.

Suburbs Harden Racial Lines 

• Blockbusting: real estate brokers would spread 

rumors about a coming influx of black resident 

• 1950-1970: 7 Million Whites leave the cities for the 

suburbs while 3 Million blacks leave the south and 

move into Northern cities.

An aerial photograph of Boulevard Houses 



Students at an East Harlem elementary school in 1947. 

. 



This postage stamp depicts four chaplains who 

Perished during the sinking of an American ship 

during World War II. 



Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 



Map 24.2 The Presidential Election of 1952 



“Do you call C-minus catching up with 

Russia?” 



An advertisement for a government film explaining 

to children 



Louis Severance and his son in their underground 

fallout shelter 



Mohammed Mossadegh, prime minister of Iran 



The military junta installed in Guatemala 



Save the Holy Places 



Commuters returning from work in downtown 

Chicago 



Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips appealed 



Rebels without a cause. 



A Beat coffeehouse in San Francisco 



A segregated school in West Memphis 



The mug shot of Rosa Parks 



Black residents of Montgomery 



If the civil rights movement borrowed the 

language of freedom 



The Problem We All Live With 



Federal troops at Little Rock’s Central 

High School 



The 1960 presidential campaign produced a floo 

of anti-Catholic propaganda. 



Map 24.3 The Presidential Election of 1960 



Jack & Jackie 



Residents of Los Angeles don gas masks at a 1954 



Andy Warhol’s 1962 painting 




Independent and Employee-Owned 

This concludes the Norton Media Library 

Slide Set for Chapter 24 

Give Me Liberty! 

AN AMERICAN HISTORY 

THIRD EDITION 

by 

Eric Foner

Chapter24 Fifties America Ike.pdf - KenyonUSHistory

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