America after WWII
Election 1952
 Rep- Eisenhower
 Nixon was chosen as VP
as a concession to hard
line anticommunists
 Ike said he would
personally go to Korea to
help end the war
 Ike’s greatest asset- The
affection and respect of
the Am. people
 Dem- Stevenson
Domestic America
  Growth of sunbelt
  Baby Boom (50 mil by end of 1950)-reached peak by late 50s
  Growth of suburbs “white flight”
  Whites fleeing from racial change
  Govt home loans
  Govt. home loans not available to African-Am’s
  Tax deductions on interest’
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Expansion of homeowning middle class
Post WWII expansion mostly benefited women
Growth of urban poverty
Govt. built highways
New prosperity based on money from fed. govt.
Welcome to Suburbia!
 The return of the
veterans
 Growth of incomes
  suburbs grow
(suburbanization = small
residential communities
that surround a bigger
city)
 Growth of suburbs led to
urban poverty
The Culture of the Automobile
 Don’t Write!!
 Growth in car
ownership with more
multi-car families
 The interstate
highway system
 Drive-in theaters
 Drive-in restaurants
1950’s:An Era of Social
Conformity
  The new large corporations
brought about the rise of the
"company/organization
man".
  Many workers accepted loss
of individuality in exchange
for secure well paying jobs.
The Baby Boom
  Name given to children born between
1946 and 1964.
  This is the largest generation in the
history of the U.S.
  What were some of the factors that
led to the baby boom?
  Vets returning home after WW
II
  Confidence in continued
economic prosperity and growing
middle class
  Advances in medicine
 Example-Dr. Jonas Salk
developing a vaccine for
polio
28 million
18%
Consumerism
  Consumerism = The buying
and selling of material goods
(keeping up with the Jones').
  People were now buying:
  Electronic appliances, TV’s
and stereo’s
  recreation equipment
  casual clothing
  toys
  barbecue equipment and
lawn and patio furniture
  swimming pools (or bomb
shelters)
Jim Crow Laws
 Racial segregation
 Persisted mostly in the south
Plessy v. Ferguson
 1896
 Allowed “separate-but-equal” facilities
Brown v. Topeka Board of Ed.
 1954
 Overturned Plessy case
 Separate facilities are inherently unequal
Rosa Parks
  1955 Refused to move from the white section of a bus in
Montgomery, Alabama
  Sparked a year long boycott
  1956 desegregated public transportation
Little Rock Nine-1957
 Central High integrated
Civil Rights Events
 1960 Woolworth counter in Greensboro, NC
was the spot for the first sit-in
 SNCC- organized the sit-ins
 1957- Civil Rights act- no discrimination in
voting
Thurgood Marshall
 Lawyer who argued on
the side of “Brown”
 First black person on
the Supreme Court
Suez Canal
 Egypt-dam up-kept
water for irrigation
 British and French took
control
 U.S. condemned them
 U.S. used oil as a
weapon
SE Asia
 Ho Chi Minh- leader of
the nationalist
movement in Vietnam
 1955 Geneva
conference- divided
Vietnam at the 49th
parallel
Election 1960
  Dem.-John Fitzgerald
Kennedy
  Lyndon Johnson- VP
  New Frontier
  Rep.- Nixon
  First publicly televised
debates
  TV is the reason Nixon lost
  JFK- “Ask not what your
country can do for you, ask
what you can do for your
country”