Evaluation of the Accuracy in the 1950s and 1960’s Portrayals’
The passion for making America a perfect home, “ideal home,” was the key to 1950 becoming or considered by a historian as prosperous and a consensus period. After ten years, a significant change occurred, according to historians, where 1960 is views as the period of confusion, remonstration, and cynicism due to the persistent brawl of public privileges, growing feminism, and some levels of war. Though not all Americans’ had the exact portrayal of this period, the majority seems to concur with the 1950’s and 1960’s portrayals.
One of the most common reasons for the development of the 1950’s period was the growth of the suburb (Shen et al. pg. 1010-1032, 2020). Most of the black Americans moved from the southern to the large towns of the northern region, which was termed “the white flight.” Wealthy and middle-class persons remained to occupy the suburb region to escape delinquency of other towns, showing conformity as they did not live in independence and discrepancy. By the mid-1950s, 60% of the American population were in the middle-class category earning $3,000-$10,000 annually.
During this time, most people appeared to have a similar preference, where they bought similar commodities, creating a large market. Television is one of the tools which aided the emergence of the prominent market; most Americans would regularly take their time to watch the television. Towards the end, of1950s around 90% of the population had a television, with almost everyone having a radio (Offermann & Stefan, pg. 247-278, 2019). This provided a better platform for most entrepreneurs and marketers to advertise their products. Through the advertisements’, suburb developed, and various shopping malls and reasonable residential came up. Intensification of the political and economic car also promoted the progress of large markets by vilifying the soviet within the American people. The leadership of Senator McCarthy held captive hundreds of people alleged to be syndicalist for practicing their rights on the liberty for discourse and correspondents (Ross & Joseph, pg. 1-24, 2018)
The jailing scared the Americans that they never did anything that aimed at disparaging the government; the media personalities also stopped publishing any crucial issue in the government due to the anxiety of being considered socialist and probably being sent to prison. This anxiety caused by the leadership of senator McCarthy led to the revival of some American tradition, hence facilitating the reinforcement of traditionalism and political harmony by the government (Lieberman & Robbie, pg.225-243, 2020). The 1960s were a different period compared to the 1950s as much it was a period of confusion. During the 1960s, women’s liberation deteriorated, and Vietnam combat aggravated, leading to increased fierce in both communal and political arena. Bloody demonstrations persisted in the country, being exhilarated by influential leaders like Malcolm. With the unrelenting dispute and war, the women were unhappy with their continual stay at home ineffectually (Denton et al. pg. 127-149, 2017).
The societal and political grumble caused approval of a divergence- culture in the United States, initiating an emotional perception about the government during the period. With the migration of the whites to suburbs, the cities continued to wallow in the miasma of abject poverty. The level of criminality accompanied by drug addiction persisted, and that is where the cities got the name “black, brown, and broke.” The high poverty level in the cities made the blacks view the soothing philosophy by Martin Luther King, Jr. as unsupportive. According to Malcolm, “revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way…you don’t do any swinging, you’re too busy swinging”.
With the unending rebellion and fierce, many people like Martin Luther King Jr. were detained, which made him changed his philosophy and formed part of the Malcolm movement, backing civic defiance in contradiction of the law (PROCHÁZKOVÁ et al. pg. 7-84, 2019). During this period, more protest occurred in most parts of the country, including the grand “great march on Washington,” where over a quarter of the citizens joined, with the protestors advocating for healthier civic right law, freedom in public schools, and control of police brutality(Li, Victor. Pg.38-47, 2017). Americans stood firm on the U.S. leaving the Vietnam War despite President Lyndon Johnson’s attempt to persuade them that it would reinstate order in the world.
In conclusion, the portrayal of the 1950s and 190s, it is accurate that the two-period were distinct from each other, with the 1950s being more traditionalist than the 1960s, which was full of riots. The difference between the two decades is what makes them essential to the historian.
Reference
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Offermann, Stefan. “Now even Television is Promoting Health?” On the Intertwined History of Television and Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in the German Democratic Republic, the 1950s–1970s.” Generous 76.2 (2019): 247-278.
Ross, Joseph A. The Nuremberg Paradox: How the Trial of the Nazis Challenged American Support of International Human Rights Law. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2018.
Lieberman, Robbie. “The Black and Red Scare in the Twentieth-Century United States.” The Palgrave Handbook of Anti-Communist Persecutions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2020. 225-243.
Denton, Robert E., and Benjamin Voth. “Making Black Lives Matter Today.” Social Fragmentation and the Decline of American Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2017. 127-149.
Lechner, Zachary J. The South of the Mind: American Imaginings of White Southernness, 1960-1980. Vol. 24. University of Georgia Press, 2018.
PROCHÁZKOVÁ, Michaela. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X: Search for the Direction of the Civil Rights Movement. Diss. Masarykova univerzita, Pedagogická fakulta, 2019.
Li, Victor. “RESISTANCE REDUX: CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYERS FROM THE 1960S HAVE LESSONS FOR TODAY’S SOCIAL ACTIVISTS.” ABA Journal 103.8 (2017): 38-47.
https://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/