A SOCIETY ON THE MOVE

-In the postwar decades, the automobile entered its golden age
-More people drove farther in more reliable and more comfortable vehicles
over smoother highways
-Development of the interstate highway system begun under Eisenhower in
1956 was a major \
-Air travel also came of age with first jetliner—Boeing 707—in 1958
THE ADVENT OF TELEVISION
-Advent of television as a means of mass communication was another
postwar change
-Television combined the immediacy of radio with the visual impact of films
-As early as 1952, Republicans made effective use of “spots”—20 second
tapes of candidate Eisenhower responding to questions about issues
-Television also brought sporting events to viewers, attracting enormous
audiences and producing so much money in advertising revenue that the
economics of professional sports was revolutionized
-Some excellent drama was presented, especially on the National Educational
Television network, along with many documentaries
-The head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) declared most
television stations to be a “vast wasteland”
AT HOME AND WORK
-In 1946 more than 10% of all single females over the age of 14 got married
-People sough security in domesticity
-Scholars mostly agreed women belonged at home
-The main job of men was to earn enough money to sustain the family
-Salesmen were replaced by “organization men”: Men who went to college,
maintained a B average, joined sports teams and clubs, found work in a large
corporation and subordinated his interests, even his taste in clothes, to the
requirements of the company
-Wife was also expected to conform and, especially, be attractive
-Yet suburban world pictured on TV had little alignment with reality
-More women leaving home to find work, especially in clerical and service
sectors
-1940: only 1 in 4 civilian employees female, one-third married
-1970: 4 in 10 women, two-thirds married
-These women’s lives did not mirrore those on TV
THE GROWING MIDDLE CLASS
-1947 only 5.7 million American families had middle class incomes—enough
to provide something for leisure, entertainment and cultural activities as well
as necessities
-By early 1960s, more than 12 million families (one-third of the population)
had such incomes
-Decline in percentage of immigrants in population
-Increase in incomes of industrial workers and change in character of labor
RELIGION IN CHANGING TIMES
-Many saw expansion of middle class as one of the reasons behind
glorification of conformity
-In wake of WWII, an expansion of religious activity
-Catholic Church built 1000 new schools and more than a hundred hospitals
along with countless new churches
 -By 1950 Southern Baptists had enrolled nearly 300,000 new members and
built some 500 churches
-While most faiths prospered materially, the faithful tended to accept the
world as it was
-1955: Congress added “In God We Trust” to currency
-Expansion of higher education tended to make people more tolerant of
beliefs of others
-Social changes of period had religious ramifications
-Feminists objected to male domination of most Christian churches and called
for ordination of -female ministers and priests
-Every aspect of the sexual revolution, from couples living together outside of
marriage to tolerance of homosexuality and pornography to the legalization
of contraception and abortion caused shock waves in the religious community
-Scientific and technological developments affected religious values and the
way people worshipped
-Many religious people still believed in biblical explanation of creation and
dismissed
-Medical advances seemed to “go against nature”
In vitro fertilization
Organ transplants
Machines to keep the terminally ill alive
-Radio and television directly affected religion
Airwaves enabled rhetorically skilled preachers to reach millions with
emotionally charged messages on religious topics and on political and
social questions
LITERATURE AND ARTS
-After the war, a number of excellent novels based on the military
experiences of young writers appeared
-Young writers’ wariness toward the adult world reflected both the postwar
idealization of adolescence and a wide spread fear of the responsibilities of
adulthood—reflected in John Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy
-Book sales consistently increased, especially paperbacks which were first
introduced in 1939
-Expansion of higher education, new affluence and improvements in printing
technology created a demand for works of art
-U.S. defense and intelligence agencies also funded expositions of American
abstract painters because their aesthetic principles were diametrically
opposed to the representational “realism” endorsed by Stalin and his
ideologues in the Soviet Union
-Abstract expressionists utterly subjective in their approach to art
-Led to op art, which employed the physical impact of pure complementary
colors to produce -dynamic optical effects
-Pop art satirized many aspects of American culture: vapidity, crudeness, and
violence
-Successful artists became national personalities and a few of them became
enormously rich
THE PERILS OF PROGRESS
-DILEMMA 1: Progress was often self-defeating—reforms and innovations
often seemed to make things worse not better
 -DILEMMA 2: Modern industrial society placed an enormous premium on
social cooperation, at the same time undermining the individual citizen’s
sense of being essential to the proper functioning of society
-Paradox: U.S. was the most powerful nation in the world, its people the best
educated, the richest, probably the most energetic; American society was
technologically advanced and dynamic; American traditional values were
idealistic, humane and democratic YET the nation seemed incapable of
mobilizing its resources intelligently to confront the most obvious challenges,
its citizens unable to achieve much personal happiness or identification with
their fellows, the society helpless to live up to its most universally accepted
ideals
NEW RACIAL TURMOIL
-President Johnson and most who supported his policies expected all the
legislation they passed would produce an era of racial peace and social
harmony
-By mid-1960s, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had
become a radical group contemptuous about racial integration and
cooperation
-Black anger erupted in a series of destructive urban riots
-The most important occurred in Watts, Los Angeles, in August 1965, when
the neighborhood erupted in violence for over six days and 15,000 National
Guardsmen had to be called in to assist local police
-April 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee, by
a white man, James Earl Ray
Blacks in more than 100 cities unleashed anger in outbursts of burning
and looting
Whites were shocked and depressed
-While blacks were trapped in ghettos, middle class whites increasingly fled
to the suburbs or called on police to maintain “law and order”
-Middle class whites increasingly resented what they viewed as government
favoritism
NATIVE-BORN ETHNICS
-After WWI, thousands of immigrants from Mexico flocked to the American
Southwest, mingling with far larger native-born Hispanic population
-No immigration restrictions
-During Great Depression, half a million Hispanics who were not citizens sent
back to Mexico
-During WWII and from 1948 to 1065, federal legislation encouraged
importation of braceros (temporary farm workers)
-Many other Mexicans entered country illegally—mojados
-Many of these Mexicans and other Spanish speaking people, including
thousands from Puerto ---Rico who could immigrate legally, moved to big
cities
-Held low paying but usually steady work
-Lived in slums called barrios which were as crowded, segregated and crime-
ridden as ghettoes
HISPANICS
-1960s a new spirit of resistance emerged among previously apolitical
Hispanic populations
-Leaders of new movement called themselves Chicanos
 -Demanded better schools and easier access to higher education
-César Chávez was the most influential Hispanic leader
-1965: Grape workers in the union struck for higher wages and union
recognition
-Chávez turned the strike into a countrywide crusade that included sit-ins, a
march on the --capital and a nationwide boycott that had the support of 17
million people
INDIANS
-The struggles of blacks radicalized many American Indians who began to call
themselves Native -Americans and talk of Red Power
-Some AIM leaders sought total separation from the United States, seeking to
establish states within states
-1973: Radicals occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, and held
it at gunpoint for weeks
-While traditionalists resisted militants; liberal white opinion was generally
sympathetic
-1975: Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination Act, which gave
individual tribes much greater control over such matters as education,
welfare programs, and law enforcement
NATIVE-BORN ETHNICS
-Militant ethnic pride characterized the behavior of other racial minorities and
of many white Americans
-For all ethnics the concern for origins was part nostalgic and romantic
-Racial pride was a reflection of the new black militancy and the
achievements that blacks made in the postwar period
RETHINKING PUBLIC EDUCATION
-After WWI, under the impact of Freudian psychology, the emphasis in
elementary education shifted from using schools as instruments of social
change to using them to promote emotional development
-The demand of society for rigorous intellectual achievement increasingly
made this form of education unsatisfactory
-Conant flayed the schools for failure to teach English grammar and
composition effectively, for neglecting foreign languages and for ignoring the
needs of both the brightest and dullest students
-National Defense Education Act of 1958 allocated funds for upgrading work
in the sciences, foreign languages and other subjects and for experimenting
with television and other new teaching devices
-Critics demanded that secondary schools and colleges raise their standards
and place more stress on the sciences
STUDENTS IN REVOLT
-By the 1960s, students began to feel insignificant and powerless in modern
industrial society with its “soul-less” corporations, computers and unfeeling
bureaucracies
-Port Huron Statement issued by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in
1962
-Main concerns — racial bigotry, the bomb and the “disturbing paradoxes”
associated with these concerns
-First great student outburst convulsed University of California at Berkeley in
fall of 1964
 -Staged sit-down strikes in university buildings to protest the prohibition of
political canvassing on the campus
-Free Speech Movement disrupted the institution of a period of weeks
-Hundreds were arrested, state legislature threatened reprisals, faculty
became involved in the controversy and crisis led to the resignation of the
president of the University of California
-Equally significant in altering the students’ mood was the frustration that so
many of them felt with traditional aspects of college life
-By the end of the 1960s, the SDS, wracked by internal disputes, had lost
much of its influence
-Colleges tried to increase black enrollment through scholarship funds and by
lowering academic entrance requirements when necessary to compensate for
the poor preparation many black students had received
THE COUNTERCULTURE
-Some young people, generally known as hippies, were so “turned off” by the
modern world that they retreated from it, finding refuge in communes, drugs,
and mystical religions, often wandering from place to place
-Yippies like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were professional iconoclasts
-Hippies developed a counterculture directly opposite that of their parents’
generation
-Wore old blue jeans and any nondescript garments they happened to find at
hand
-Male hippies wore their hair long and grew beards
-Females avoided makeup, bras and other devices more conventional women
used to make -themselves attractive
-Being hippie meant not caring about money or material goods or power over
other people
-Love was more important
-Most hippies resembled radicals in their political and social opinions
-Rejected activism and were almost totally apolitical
-World of folk songs and acid rock music, of be-ins, casual sex, and drugs
-Passivity was a philosophy
THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION
-Almost overnight conventional ideas about premarital sex, contraception and
abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and a host of related matters were
openly challenged
-More efficient methods of contraception, especially the birth control pill, and
antibiotics that cured venereal disease removed the two principal arguments
against sex outside marriage
-Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), based on
confidential interviews with thousands of males
-Half had had homosexual activities before adolescence
-90% had masturbated
-Between 30 and 45% had adulterous sexual relations
-70% had patronized prostitutes
-17% of farm boys had had sex with animals
Problems:
Peer pressure could force young people into sexual relations they
weren’t ready for
Rise in the number of illegitimate births
 Rise in sexually transmitted disease and emergence of new disease
AIDS
WOMEN’S LIBERATION
-Sexual freedom contributed to the revival of the women’s rights movement
-New attitudes heightened women’s awareness of the way the old sexual
standards and patterns of family living had restricted their entire existence
-The movement was also fed by concern of the treatment of minorities
because this encouraged women to think about their own treatment and
rights
-The Feminine Mystique sold over a million copies and Friedan was deluged
with letters from women who thought their unease and depression, despite
their “happy” marriage, was unique and unreasonable
-Radicals gathered in small consciousness raising groups to discuss a variety
of questions
-Insisted on total equality
-Men to have equal share in raising children, cooking and doing housework
-Took self defense classes
-Denounced the use of masculine words like “chairman” and advocated Ms.
over the use of Miss or Mrs.