Final Exam Essay Question #3

During the 1950s, many Americans became middle class and enjoyed materialistic lives.
Everyone in the country grew wealthier because of the effect government spending – on such
things as public housing, education, and interstate highways – had on the economy. Government
spending created jobs, in turn, raising consumer demand. The wealth Americans experienced
was at its highest point during the Korean War, because of the need for military supplies and
workers to provide the labor needed to generate them. The baby boom also expanded the
economy by requiring families to buy supplies such as clothes, beds, and food, for their
newborns. The new emphasis on family also caused more families to move to the suburbs, which
created more jobs because more houses were built, in turn, requiring the purchase and use of
many different materials, such as glass, wood, brick, carpet, and everything else required to
construct a house. Levittown was a great example of suburban expansion; Mr. Levitt created the
track home style of building houses which allowed houses to be built more quickly than
previously, accommodating the new growth in families. New jobs and wealth could be made in
such places as universities, automobile factories, and road construction.

What Americans wanted most out of life seemed to be to fulfill the American Dream;
after the war, Americans wanted to make up for all the time, and people, they lost during the war.
They wanted to enjoy life with their families, similar to how the people of the twenties did.
Americans didn’t know how long peace would last, so often times they spent a lot of money,
moved to the suburbs, and had a lot of kids.
Americans expressed their desire to enjoy the peace and live life to the fullest by buying
goods on credit. They just had to have whatever new innovative device was on the market at the
time. New technology of the time fascinated Americans and was very useful; hence, they had to
have the products and enjoy them while they could. Some examples would be the purchases of
homes, TV sets, vacationing, and travel. Also, because Americans put more emphasis on family,
many white Americans moved to the suburbs where they could have more privacy and more kids
than if they lived in the city, illustrating that Americans wanted families and private property.

The possibility of being able to have whatever was desired by way of credit was
appealing to many and drove Americans to establish themselves in suburbs where they could
have bigger houses to fill with more items; hence, the growth of the market and the American
materialist society. Americans desires to have the newest technology kept the market moving,
and the baby boomers provided jobs for people, which allowed them to be able to afford more
goods. Mostly men worked in the 50s though. This is because a woman was viewed at the time
as a homemaker; therefore, women were only found in offices or in other forms of domestic
service.

Mainly minorities were left out of the prosperous society of the 50s. Blacks were banned
from dominantly white suburbs, they – along with Mexicans – made up about 20% of American
society who constantly lived in poverty. Farmers were also often left out because they produced
a surplus of goods, which brought the prices of their crops down. This caused them to leave rural
areas and move to suburban ones. Sharecroppers also often lived in poverty because cotton
picking became industrialized and new synthetic fibers were made that put sharecroppers out of
work. Racial discrimination against minorities kept them from having the same upward mobility
as the rest of society; Unable to access adequate housing, education, or jobs, the minorities of the
50s often made up the poorest of the poor.

When Black people returned home from fighting WWII, they had been fighting alongside
whites and were being treated with a great amount of equality compared to when they came
home. What they faced back home stirred them to change their situation. The Brown v. Edu.
case was the first step toward black rights and advancement. After blacks began going to college
and getting middle class jobs, they were able to advance the civil rights movement even more by
being educated on the obstacles that faced their race. Furthermore, because urban areas were
more dominated by blacks than rural, urban blacks were able to associate with one another more
often and create their own institutions. Educated whites also went to the north to get blacks to
vote and gain more rights, when they finally did vote, their opinions could not be ignored. The
racism Americans witnessed during the 50s was also later seen as a disgrace to the ideal the U.S.
was trying to set during the Cold War.

As in every era of history, the youths were the ones who rebelled against the societal norms. In
the 50s, there were poets, artists, and writer who were referred to as beatniks because of their
desire to differ from the conformity of the era, and because they were tired of the droning of
politics and popular culture. They usually wore all black too. Teens dressed as gangsters did and
rebelled against their parents. Teens of the era loved fast cars and sex.

Elvis Presley is a good example of the way Mainstream culture was reflected in popular culture.
Elvis dressed similarly to the way teens of the era did. Also, sex had become popular, and
because sex seemed to be selling Elvis and his pelvis movements did too. Elvis broke tradition
which gained him the love of many rebellious young people.