The Fifties Age of Consensus?

President Truman

• GI Bill of Rights – Free college education – Cheap home loans – Led to growth of the middle class

• “Fair Deal” – More New Deal-like Programs

• Taft-Hartley Act – Ended ‘closed shop’ – 60 day strike notification

• President’s Committee on Civil Rights – Integrated the military

• Dixiecrats – Segregation

Baby Boom (1945-1960)

Slide #14

Cold War at Home

• H-Bomb – Bomb Shelters

– Duck & Cover

Radioactive Fallout

Effects of the Cold War

• Space Exploration

– 1957 Sputnik

– 1958 NASA created

– National Defense Education Act

1957

1961

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/70/Vostok_1_after_landing.jpg

Economy

• Corporations

• Consumerism

• “Planned Obsolescence”

• Conformity

• More white collar (business or professional) jobs

Television

Car Culture

Suburbs

Levittown

Interstate Highway System

Women

• Traditional role for women

• Baby Boom

• Women in the Media

– I Love Lucy

– Marilyn Monroe

The Nuclear Family

Slide #20

Teen Culture

• Rebel Without a Cause (James Dean)

• Rock & Roll (Elvis)

• Juvenile Delinquency

Beatniks