How the 1950s changed America forever

A bibliographic essay
Jacob Fulps
Ottawa University

Abstract
This paper discusses and highlights the main events and people from
the 1950s whose impact we still see today. The focus of this paper is to
consider how some of these events changed not just America forever, but
also its perception among other countries. There are many events that took
place that had situations that could have been handled differently, and one
of the focal points of this essay will be to realize what they were, and how
things would be different. America is in a much different place than it was in
the 1950s, while much has changed over time, it is vital to understand what
brought about these changes, and the events and people that were involved.
In this essay I will demonstrate these changes and provide research that
supports the overall theme of the essay, and answers the underlying
question, how did 1950s America change the U.S. forever? Throughout this
essay hopefully some connections will be made, and there will be a much
better overall understand on the impact the 1950s had. I will do so through
a wide array of events that occurred, and explain their meaning and how we
see them today.
The invention of birth control

The time frame of 1946-1964 in America is considered the time of the baby boomers.
There are a few main reasons for this, WWII had just ended and the troops were coming back to
start families. Another reason the spike occurred because during this time, people felt it was their
destinies and right to start a family. Finally, possibly one of the biggest reasons it not only
occurred, but also finally started to slow down was the invention of a reliable and discreet birth
control pill for women. As methods of birth control become more widely available and a period
of relative familial stability could have allowed couple to wait longer before having children or
limit the number of children they had. The fact that the birth rates rose from their depression era
lows indicate that there was an intentional decision to have children in the numbers they were
having, creating the baby boom with a peak in 1956. (May, 1988)

The invention/progression of the TV

You see it every day, and your living room probably revolves around it. The television is
a common appliance in just about every American home. It is our center for getting news,
watching the weather, or just our favorite shows. It was not always like this, and TV has
progressed a lot in the last 50 years. During the 1950s, the television was just beginning to come
in on its own. While there were not many channels, there were some hit TV shows that each
American family owning a TV would turn on each day. The TV also helped give many people a
career and in some cases, even famous. For example, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen used the television
to help further his fight against communism. His prime time show enjoyed unprecedented
popularity for all shows on the new medium, resulting in his making the cover of such major
publications as TV Guide, Colliers, Look, and Time magazines. By the time his television show
ended in 1957, a national poll listed Sheen as one of the top ten public figures in America.
(Winsoboro and Epple, 2005) There are various other characters who used the introduction of the
television to help further their career, such as Edward Sullivan, Elvis Presley, Lucille Ball, James
Dean and many more. Another thing that was helped by the growth of TV was Disneyland,
which is still Americas favorite road trip destination. The opening of the Amusement park was
aired on TV and helped it gain a lot of exposure. But TV made everything look new. Or rather,
TV looked- and that was new. Disneyland was the first made-for-TV place, in which the fictive
content of the programming dictated the honest to gosh activity of Americans in physical space.
(Marling, 1994)
Brown vs. Board
While just about everyone has heard of this case, and know the basic outline of
what happened, it is important to know how it impacts us today. During the 1950s many

schools and stores were segregated. The African American schools were extremely
underfunded, and many times the kids would have to walk long distances in order to get
to class. It was a time of hate and ignorance that finally came to a close with this case.
While I would like to believe that racism is a thing of the past, sadly this isnt true. If you
think about how far we have come in the last 50 years, we have made significant
progress; we even have a black president. The fact that there had to be separate
bathrooms, separate water fountains, and separate schools is just sad. What is worse was
the fact the judges were very hesitant to change the law. Michael Klarman, author of the
book From Jim Crow to civil rights states when the law is indeterminate, judges have
little choice but to make decisions based on political factors. This is a interesting
viewpoint, and goes hand in hand with later discussions about the integrity and honesty
of the American government.
Cold War tensions
This was one of the first times that Americans felt uneasy and unsafe on their own
soil. There were talks of a nuclear war with the Soviets, and everyone feared a bomb gap.
While the American government was surely prepared, there were a few major moments
that helped alleviate some of the tension. One of these moments was when the leader of
the Soviets, Nikola Khrushchev, came to visit the United States. He was accompanied by
President Eisenhower, and wanted to see how America operated. It is also important to
note this was also the same time the television became a lot more mainstream, and much
of the Khrushchev event was also on TV. The two countries had two completely different
methodologies, and who knows which one we would have today if there had been a
nuclear war. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had been born in revolution.

Both embraced ideologies with global aspirations: what worked at home, their leaders
assumed, would also do so for the rest of the world. (Gaddis, 2005)
The U-2 spy plane
Like previously stated, during the Cold war there was a great fear of a bomb gap.
America was worried the Soviets had capable and destructive nuclear bombs. A big reason they
felt this way was because the Soviets kept everything quiet, and never released any of their
information. Finally, they (the government) decided to create a u-2 spy plane. The purpose of this
spy plane was to hover around just out of Soviets air defenses, and see what they were building.
The important fact regarding this subject is the American Citizens were never told. Most, if not
all, were worried about a bomb gap, and when the government realized there was not one, they
still refused to tell them. This came to a climax when the soviets shot down the plane, and
captured its pilot. The soviets did not release the fact they had caught the pilot (Gary Powers),
leaving it up the United States to give their story. Rather than being forthcoming, they decided to
try and cover up all of their lies by saying the plane shot down was nothing more than a weather
drone that was off course. This definitely came back to haunt them. On May 7, six days after
Powers had been shot down, Khrushchev announced to the Supreme Soviet that he had the
wreckage of the plane, and the live pilot and, of course, the film. (Halberstam, 1996) While this
was probably not the first time the Government hid something from the public, and definitely
wont be the last, it was the first time they got caught and many of the American citizens lost
respect and trust for our government. For the first time, there is hard evidence that the United
States lied both to Congress and the American public in saying that the American biological
warfare program was purely defensive and for retaliation only. (Endicott, 1999)
Random Tidbits

While I have focused on details regarding the previous events and people, I will use this
section to add some of the other notable devices and inventions that are critical to everyday life
now. The 1950s were also a time where the first credit card was used, and also when the first
highway layouts were proposed. Both of these things have such major impacts on our everyday
lives, yet we rarely go back to think how or when they started. This was also the time that Alaska
and Hawaii became states and joined the United States of America.
A different social norm
To fully understand how much different times were back then, it is
important to look at the social norm, and how much it has progressed over
the years. During the 1940s women were finally getting the same
opportunities as men, not only educationally and politically, they were also
finally able to get more jobs. After the end of World War II the troops
returned, and all needed jobs. The women suffered the biggest set back
here, as their jobs were given to the soldiers, and their growth was stunted.
During the 1950s women were taught how to raise a family and take care of
a household more often than encouraged to go to school and get a
secondary education. This was also a time of teen rebellion, where many
teens disregarded their parents, and sexual behavior was much more
common. I suggest that Presley and Dean were actually followers, not leaders, in a
widespread cultural movement that was initially unleashed by the likes of Hugh Hefner, Alfred C.
Kinsey, Grace Metalious, and Tennessee Williams. These grownups were part of a vast wave of
dissent that forcefully challenged the dominant political culture of America in the forties and
fifties that was grounded in notions of personal sacrifice, traditional moral behavior, and, at
times, white supremacy. (Bodnar, 2012)

I believe that the combination of all of these things taking place in the 1950s, postwar
America was a much different place. The 1950s was a very tense time full of change,
technological advancements, progressive movements in various subjects such as equality, equal
opportunities, and sexual tensions. This along with the advancements of the television, and the
changing social norms have a direct correlation with present day American society.

Work Cited:
1. McCarthy, A. (2013). The citizen machine: Governing by television in 1950s America.
New York: New York University Press.
2. Marling, K. (1994). As seen on TV: The visual culture of everyday life in the 1950s.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
3. Halberstam, D. (1996). The fifties (Collector's ed.). Norwalk: The Easton Press.
4. Gaddi, J. (2005). The cold war: a new History
5. Endicott, S. (1999). The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the early
Cold War and Korean War.
6. Klarman, M. (2004). From Jim Crow to civil rights the Supreme Court and the
struggle for racial equality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
7. Polmar, N. (2001). Spyplane: The U-2 history declassified. Osceola, WI: MBI Pub.
8. Repo, J. (2013). The Biopolitical Birth of Gender: Social Control, Hermaphroditism,
and the New Sexual Apparatus. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 228-244.
9. Winsboro, I., & Epple, M. (2009). Religion, Culture, and the Cold War: Bishop Fulton
J. Sheen and America's Anti-Communist Crusade of the 1950s. Historian, 209-233
10. .Bodnar, J. (2012). Unruly Adults: Social Change and Mass Culture in the 1950s.
26(4).