The 1950s

Johana Jakubíková, 2.Y

 The 1950s in the United States
 Cold War
 McCarthyism & The Red Scare
 Economic growth, world’s strongest military power
 Segregation and the Civil Rights Movement – Rosa Parks
 The Post-war Booms
 Economic boom
 “Baby boom” – the Americans felt confident they would be able to support a larger number of
children
 Suburban boom – developers such as William Levitt began to buy lands on the outskirts of
cities to built large numbers of small, simple and inexpensive houses – Levittowns
 American women in 1950s
 Advice books such as “Don’t Be Afraid to Marry Young,” “Cooking To Me Is Poetry,”
“Femininity Begins At Home” urged women to leave work and dedicate their full time into
taking care of their children and husbands
 The term nuclear family described the stability of the family as the building block of a strong,
healthy society
 In this view, a woman played a key role in waging the Cold War by keeping the family unit
strong and intact
 Pop culture of the fifties
 Televisions became affordable for the average families, so it was a must-have in each household
 In theatres, actors like James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Marylin Monroe dominated
 The art of James Pollock and Willem de Kooning paved the way for the new emerging Pop Art
presented mostly by Andy Warhol
 Rock and roll
 Targeting at the youth for the first time
 Themes of freedom and rebellion against authorities grew in favour among American teens
 Tearing down the color barriers in popular culture, as white youths sought out black musicians
 Elvis Presley
 Beat Movement/Beat Generation
 American social and literary movement
 They rebelled against the conventions of mainstream American life and writing
 They sought to write in an authentic, spontaneous way, following the rule “First thought – best
thought”
 The Beat poets expanded their writing abilities through exploration of hallucinogenic drugs,
Eastern religion, and the natural world
 Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure
 https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/postwar-era/a/the-baby-boom
 https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/1950s-america/a/women-in-the
-1950s
 https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/1950s-america/a/popular-cultu
re-and-mass-media-cnx
 https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/1950s
 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/147552/an-introduction-to-the-beat-poets
Thank you for your attention!