Prosperity and Poverty in the
1950s
Cynthia Williams Resor, Ph.D.
Eastern Kentucky University
June 2013
Leave It to Beaver – 1957-1963
DID MIDDLE CLASS WHITE AMERICANS
IN THE 1950S LOOK LIKE THIS . . . . .
OR LIKE THIS?
The Beverly Hillbillies - 1962 - 1971
• The Real McCoys
• The Red Skelton Show
• The Andy Griffith
Show
• The Beverly Hillbillies
• Petticoat Junction
• Hee Haw
• Green Acres
• Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.
What is my focus?
• Literacy in Social Studies
– Newspaper/magazine articles
– Images
– Songs
• Emphasizing what happened LOCALLY that is
related to national events
– 1950s migration – ORAL HISTORY project
• Examine the HILLBILLY stereotype
The National Economy in the
1950s
1950s – Economic Good Times!
• US economy overall grew by 37% during the
1950s
• During the Eisenhower era (1950s), Americans
achieved a level of prosperity they had never
known before
– By 1960, the median American family had 30% more
purchasing power than in 1950
– unemployment remained low, bottoming at less than
4.5% in the middle of the decade.
– other parts of the world struggled to rebuild from the
devastation of World War II
Why was economy so good in 1950s?
•
U.S. Government had the right combination of
– low taxes on the middle class (high taxes on the wealthy)
•
Corporations, which paid taxes at a rate as high as 67 % during the 1950s
– public spending
•
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Eisenhower extended Social Security
Invested federal money in the Interstate Highway System, one of the large public spending project in
U.S. history
G.I. Bill gave thousands of military veterans affordable access to a college
education
American businesses were willing to pay well for engineering and management
skills
Cheap oil available from domestic wells
Advances in science and technology
No competition from Europe and Asia – they were still recovering from war
Americans were avid consumers; tired of doing without during the 1930s and
1940s
– By the 1950s, though they made up just 6% of the world's population, Americans consumed a
third of all the world's goods and services
•
The world wanted to buy “Made in the USA” goods
– American exports reached all time highs
Was everyone prospering?
• 23 % of citizens lived in poverty in 1950s
• 16% of Americans lived in poverty in 2012
–
–
–
–
then defined as an annual income under $3,000 for a family of four
16.5% of white families lived below the poverty line
54.9% of black families lived below the poverty line
not until 1972 that the federal government published poverty statistics
for Hispanic families. Hispanic families, too, had high rates of
poverty—22.3% in the early 1970s
– In 1959, while 18.3% of inner residents lived below the poverty line
• 33.2% of non-metro areas lived below the poverty line
– the poor were concentrated in the South—the location of 46% of the
nation’s poverty population
– "invisible" poverty - Middle Class Americans didn’t SEE a problem
• urban neighborhoods
– the middle class whites moved from the cities, leaving behind poor people and
deteriorated infrastructure
– no funds to provide relief to the poor urbanites
• depressed rural areas like the Appalachian Mountains
The Great Migration
Also known as
The Southern Diaspora
The Hillbilly Highway
Sources
• Appalachian Odyssey: Historical Perspectives
on the Great Migration
• by Phillip Obermiller, Thomas E. Wagner and E. Bruce
Tucker
• 2000
• The Southern Diaspora: How the Great
Migrations of Black and White Southerners
Transformed America
• By James N. Gregory
• 2005
Rural Migrants
• 1940 – 1960 – 7 million people left Appalachia
– Only 3 million moved into the region (loss of 4 million)
• Appalachians only ONE group of rural migrants
that flooded to the cities looking for a better life
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–
–
–
Also
Southern black and white sharecroppers
Mexican Americans from the southwestern states
Puerto Ricans
2 phases of Appalachian migration
• Phase 1 – before and during World War II
– “Pull”
• Expanding industries recruited Appalachians because constraints on foreign
immigration
– “Push”
• high birthrate and not enough jobs in Appalachian
– Most found better economic circumstances
• Phase 2 – After World War II - 1950s and 1960s
– “pull”
• postwar economic boom in metropolitan areas
– “push”
• collapse of the coal industry
• declining employment opportunities in agriculture and timber
– Many encountered more difficulties – harder time finding housing,
work and coping with urban life
• Leslie County lost 60% of population between 1950
and 1960
• Breathitt, Elliott, Jackson, Magoffin, Owsley, Rockcastle,
and Wolfe Counties lost 40% population
– Between 1950-1955 – Kentucky miners were reduced by
47% (25,000 workers)
• Nine western and south-central counties lost 30%
– Bill Monroe –” The Father of Bluegrass”
• Born in 1911 in Ohio County, western Kentucky
• Moved to Hammond, Indiana to work in a factory –his brothers
were already there
• Started the Monroe Brothers in Indiana
The Hillbilly Problem
• The southern Appalachian mountaineer was
the target of the media beginning in the late
1950s
• even though flatlanders from Tenn. & Ky.
often outnumbered mountaineers
– Twice as many western Tennesseans than those
from east to Chicago between 1955-60
– Kentuckians migrating to Indiana (11% to
northwest IN; 16% to Indianapolis)
• more were from the western part of the state
The Hillbilly Problem in urban areas
• Appalachians seen as an “urban problem” by mid 1950s
– In Cincinnati and Chicago - programs to aid Appalachian migrants in
“urban adjustment”
• Media said they were poorly educated, unskilled riffraff, “a disgrace
to the white race”
• BUT
• Overwhelming majority found a job, worked at it, moved out of the
port-of-entry community into a working-class suburb or a rural
fringe where they could buy a few acres.
– Many returned south after retirement with a big pension
– Newspapers covered this “urban problem” – usually in a very negative
way.
• Cincinnati Enquirer 1957 had one of the first series of articles.
– William Collins, "From the Freedom of the Mountains to the Hurly Burly City, " Cincinnati
Enquirer, July 14-20, 1957.
Literacy in Social Studies
• “ The Hillbillies Invade Chicago.”
– By Albert B Votaw, Harper’s, 1958
– Article in today’s folder
– Underline every negative word that describes "hillbillies“
– What other groups of people does the author mention in a
negative or prejudiced way?
– Circle negative references to other groups of people.
– Draw a star (in the margin) by any statements that are positive
or sympathetic toward the "hillbillies“
– If you could present the opposite side of this criticism of the
hillbillies - what main points could you present in defense of the
"hillbillies?“
– Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics,
culture, finance, and the arts that began publication in
1850. Today it is considered a liberal publication. Based on this
article, would you say it was a liberal publication in 1956?
“hillbilly ghetto” or “hillbilly heaven”
• Cincinnati’s “Over the Rhine” neighborhood
•
•
•
•
1st German – mid-1800s
2nd Hillbilly
3rd Black – 2001 riots
Since 2004 – urban revitalization
– Many people from Somerset moved there
• Appalachians were considered a distinct ethnic group
with special needs, who suffered from prejudices and
negative stereotypes just as other minority groups did
• To showcase mountain culture and handicrafts, the city
organized its first Cincinnati Appalachian Festival, held
at the Music Hall in 1971
– Still held annually, the festival has moved to the city's
Coney Island due to its growth in size
Uptown - Chicago’s “hillbilly ghetto”
• A mile-square neighborhood off Lake Shore Drive on the North Side
of Chicago
• By the 1950s, the middle class was leaving Uptown for more distant
suburbs
• Uptown's housing was getting run down - old mansions were
subdivided
• Residential hotels which had housed wives of sailors attached to
the Great Lakes Naval Station during World War II now served lowincome migrants from the South and Appalachia
• 1970s – urban renewal eliminated much low-cost housing
– low-income Southern white residents dispersed
– New waves of Asian, Hispanic, and African-American migrants moved
in
Solving the “hillbilly problem”
• Roscoe Giffin
• 1949 – started teaching sociology at Berea College
– 1st research project at Berea was to study the people and
society of the Pine Mountain school district in
southeastern Kentucky
• 1954 – became the consultant for the Cincinnati
Mayor’s Friendly Relations Committee
• 1950s – 1960s – ran an urban training workshop at
Berea College
• His published work was used by social workers and
other urban officials
– Meant to explain the seemingly strange behavior of
mountaineers in the city as culturally determined
– they should be understood and explained, not judged
• Problem 1: emphasized the common
behaviors and experiences of mountain
people
– created a homogeneous mountain culture that
didn’t reflect the reality.
• For example - cash income in Pine Mountain ranged
from poorest $750 a month to $2,480 a month
Hillbillies not the “normal” American
•
•
Problem 2:
Despite good intentions “ultimately, Giffin’s efforts to advance
intergroup understanding led to a negative definition
– Appalachian migrants as a group with ‘dysfunctional’ mountain values
who needed to be channeled toward a more acceptable lifestyle
consistent with the ‘rational’ norms of urban America.”
• For example - Contrasted the fact that unmodern mountain people
might earn wages but also had “home production” (gardens, etc)
– With an modern “urban norm” in which people did not engaged in
“home production” – they bought products with wages in the
“normal” consumer economy
• The normal “urban white American” believed in:
– Personal achievement
– Material comfort (over traditional social or familial arrangements)
• Mountain people were not “rational, calculating, disciplined
individuals bent on self-improvement, social betterment and
egalitarian social relations” described in American Society
Results of the Great Migration
• Black and White people fled the south
• What was the impact on the
nation?
Impact of Great Migration
• Religion:
– Revival and spread of evangelical Protestantism (black
and white versions)
• Culture:
– Southernization of American popular music
• Jazz, blues, hillbilly, country
• Politics:
– New forms of black politics and racial liberalism
– New forms of white supremacist and conservative
politics
Example - Religion
– Both Baptist, conservative, southerners
– Both famous evangelists
– But very DIFFERENT audiences
• Billy Graham – North Carolina
– By 1956 – formal announcement that his
“crusades” were NOT segregated
– a voice for both Christian conservatism and
racial progress
• C. L. Franklin – Mississippi (father of Aretha
Franklin)
– Friend of M.L. King
– involved in the civil rights movement
– worked to end discriminatory practices against
black United Auto Workers members in Detroit
Example - Music
• Aretha Franklin – queen of soul
• Grew up in Detroit – parents moved
there from Tennessee
• “Respect”, 1967 – anthem of black
pride
• Merle Haggard – king of country
music
• Grew up in Bakersfield, Calf. – parents
moved there from Oklahoma
• “Workin’ Man Blues” and “Okie from
Muskogee” – anthem of angry and
conservative white working class
Johnny Cash - One Piece At A Time
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Well, I left Kentucky back in '49
An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on cadillacs
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qEG9EnHnw0
Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by
And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry
'Cause I always wanted me one that was long and black.
One day I devised myself a plan
That should be the envy of most any man
I'd sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand
Now gettin' caught meant gettin' fired
But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired
I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand.
Dwight Yoakam - I Sang Dixie
•
I sang Dixie as he died
The people just walked on by as I cried
The bottle had robbed him of all his rebel pride
So I sang Dixie as he died
He said way down yonder in the land of cotton
Old times there ain't near as rotten as they are
On this damned old L.A. street
Then he drew a dying breath
And laid his head against my chest
Please Lord take his soul back home to Dixie
Chorus
He said listen to me son while you still can
Run back home to that Southern land
Don't you see what life here has done to me?
Then he closed those old blue eyes
And fell limp against my side
No more pain, now he's safe back home in Dixie
Chorus:
I sang Dixie as he died
The people just walked on by as I cried
The bottle had robbed him of all his rebel pride
So I sang Dixie as he died
I sang Dixie as he died
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZgXH8IJGgg
• 1956 -born in
Pikeville, Ky
• the son of a keypunch operator
and a gas-station
owner
• raised in
Columbus, Ohio.
Hillbilly Highway – Steve Earle
•
My grandaddy was a miner, but he finally saw the light
He didn't have much, just a beat-up truck and a dream about a better life
Grandmama cried when she waved goodbye, never heard such a lonesome sound
Pretty soon the dirt road turned into blacktop, Detroit City bound
Down that hillbilly highway
That hillbilly highway
Hillbilly highway
Goes on and on
He worked and saved his money so that one day he might send
My old man off to college, to use his brains and not his hands
Grandmama cried when she waved goodbye, never heard such a lonesome sound
But daddy had himself a good job in Houston, one more rollin' down
Down that hillbilly highway
That hillbilly highway
Hillbilly highway
Goes on and on
Grandaddy rolled over in his grave the day that I quit school
I just sat around the house playin' my guitar, Daddy said I was a fool
My mama cried when I said goodbye, I never heard such a lonesome sound
Now I'm standin' on this highway and if you're going my way
You know where I'm bound
• The Immigrants – National Lampoon Radio Hour
(Hillbillies)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE9AQhfz2f
M
• The National Lampoon Radio Hour was a comedy
radio show which was created, produced and
initially written by staff from National Lampoon
magazine. The show ran weekly, for a little over a
year, from November 17, 1973 to December 28,
1974.
More resources
• Historical Sources on Appalachian Migration
and Urban Appalachians, 1870 - 1999: A
Selectively Annotated Bibliography
• http://uacvoice.org/pdf/Historical%20Sources
%20on%20Appalachian%20Migration.pdf
When did Kentucky’s hillbilly
reputation begin?
READ ARTICLES – WHAT YEAR?
Violence in Kentucky
1875 - 1900
“Kinship ties were a key to political
success”
• Rewards were expected for political
support (votes)
– Winners had “right” to put family members
in office – nepotism
• Government was LOCAL
– Local government
Controversial ballot box
from 1948 Texas
Congressional election
• Built roads
• Collected most taxes
• Dispersed all poor relief (the county farm/ poorhouse)
– By 1912 (last county was created – McCreary) Kentucky counties
were, on average, smallest in the US
• Localism / nepotism created semiautonomous “little
kingdoms”
• “vote buying” was quietly accepted or condoned
• “vote buying is as common as buying groceries”
• Counting ballots the day AFTER the election often allowed returns to
be “fixed”
Violence in Kentucky after Civil War
• Ku Klux Klan
– Not as active when Black’s rights were limited again
• “Regulators”
– vigilante groups that contributed to lawlessness
– “punished” people – no trials, no evidence, no appeal
• Between 1875 – 1900
– 166 lynchings (2/3 of victims were black)
– Mobs often murdered people
• Oct. 1899 – Mob burned accused killer to death in Maysville,
dragged body through the streets; no charges filed against
those in mob even though none wore masks
Moonshine and
Violence
• 1862 – new federal tax
on whiskey production
– Failure to pay tax made
“moonshining” illegal
• Federal revenue agents
tried to seize illegal stills
and arrest violators
– Example - 153 arrests
made in 1881
– BUT local community
members helped
moonshiners avoid the
federal law
"The Moonshine Man of Kentucky," showing five scenes of the
moonshining life, including a man chopping down a tree, a man mixing
ingredients, a moonshiner held captive by 3 men, 3 men on horseback
begging for breakfast from framer; and a boy holding a jug by the still
house. Courtesy of the Prints & Photographs Division, Library of
Congress, Washington, D. C
Moonshine and Violence
•
•
Moonshine (1918)
In an act approved on March 29,
1918, the legislature made it
unlawful for anyone "to buy,
bargain, sell, loan, have in
possession, or to operate or aid,
abet, or encourage in the
operation, or to harbor a person
in the possession or in the
operation of an illicit or
'moonshine' still." Persons
violating this act for the first time
were to be fined not less than
fifty dollars or more than five
hundred dollars and imprisoned
for up to six months. Second
offenders were to be imprisoned
not less than one or more than
five years. Persons arresting or
causing the arrest of persons in
violation of this act shall be
entitled to a reward of fifty
dollars for each person so
convicted.
•
http://www.lrc.ky.gov/record/M
oments07RS/21_web_leg_mome
nts.htm
Other Kentucky Violence
• Retributive violence not condemned
– Protecting one’s honor expected
• 1877 – Cassius M. Clay shot & killed Perry White
– Perry White was a black man whose parents had been fired by Clay the day
before the shooting
– many different stories (parents were stealing from him; parents tried to
poison Clay’s son; Clay and White were after same woman)
– Clay found NOT guilty by reason of self-defense
• 1883 – Congressman Philip Thompson from Harrodsburg killed a man
that had “debauched” his wife; jury acquitted him
• 1890s - Louisville husband killed his wife and the son of former
Governor John Young Brown after discovering them together; was
acquitted
• Juries often tainted through kinship or political ties
• BUT – Kentucky probably no worse than the rest of the
South
Kentucky Feuding
• “Feud” defined
• 1. Must take place over time 2. Must involve family 3. Must have the motive of revenge
• Examples
– Hill – Evans feud of Garrard County – 1820 – 1877
• May have been only one male participant left alive in by 1877
– Feud in Carter County may have been more about outlaws and Regulators at
first, but in 1877 turned into a feud
• Lots of arrests / few convictions
• As many as 30 deaths
– Rowan County War of 1880s - Martin-Tolliver-Logan Feud
• 20 murders; 16 wounding in 3 years (only 1,100 people in the county)
– Howard-Turner feud in Harlan County – 1860s - 1880s
• Over 50 people died over several decades
– French-Eversole Feud – Perry County –
• 2-day battle in streets of Hazard in 1880
• 40-50 deaths and 50 orphans by the decline in 1890s
– Hatfield – McCoy Feud
• Not the bloodiest but received national attention because involved 2 state governments
• 12 – 20 deaths
– Breathitt County
• Problems started during Civil War – lasted until 1912
Feud Characteristics
• Many leading citizens were involved
– Like a medieval feudal lord with “hired guns”
• Violence was often cruel and cowardly
– “code of honor” a myth
– A few pitched battles; but one side usually trapped and outnumbered
• Causes usually related to “the troubles” usually related to ineffective law
enforcement
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–
–
–
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Civil War violence
Whiskey at elections
Political partisanship
Economic rivalries
Concealed weapons
Localism made wore by restrictive isolationism
• If legal system is “rotten to the core: then family-oriented vigilantism
develops
– like early Middle Ages after Roman gov. failed in Western Europe
Long-term impact of KY Feuds
• Coal boom helped to off-set economic decline
BUT
• Appalachia stereotypes were created:
1. The forgotten pioneer
• Isolated, happy, self-sufficient people
speaking Shakespeare’s English and
playing dulcimers
2. The violent hillbilly
• Backward, ignorant, immoral, poor people
• Leslie’s Popular Monthly (1902) (popular national
publication) said in Kentucky’s feuding country “the sun set
crimson and the moon rose red”
• New York Times (late 1880s) called Kentuckians
“unreclaimed savages” and “effective assassins:
•
Stories of Kentucky Feuds Index
– http://www.jeanhounshellpeppers.com/Kentucky_Feuds_Index.html
– Based on book written by Harold Wilson Coates
Stories of Kentucky Feuds- published by Holmes-Darst Coal Corporation 1923
•
Kentucky's Famous Feuds and Tragedies: Authentic History of the World
Renowned Vendettas of the Dark and Bloody Ground (1917) •
http://www.archive.org/stream/kentuckysfamousf00mutzuoft/kentuckysfamousf00mutzuoft_djv
u.txt
–
The Hatfield Clan of the
Hatfield-McCoy-feud.
The picture was taken in 1897
and appeared in the Iowa
State Press dated February
11, 1889. The headline read
"In a Careless Moment Devil
Anse Allowed It to be Taken. - The Hatfields Wrecked the
Photographer's
Establishment.“
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
File:HatfieldClan.jpg
• From A New History of Kentucky
• By Lowell Harrison and James Klotter
• 1997