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Working Americans Vol. 12: Our History Through Music

1950–1959 Introduction

As the 1950s began, the average American enjoyed an income 15 times greater than that of the average foreigner. Optimism and opportunity were everywhere. The vast majority of families considered themselves middle class; many were enjoying the benefits of health insurance for the first time. Air travel for the upper class was common, and the world was their oyster. America was manufacturing half of the world’s products, 57 percent of the steel, 43 percent of the electricity, and 62 percent of the oil. The economies of Europe and Asia lay in. ruins, while America’s industrial and agricultural structure was untouched and well-oiled to supply the needs of a war-weary world.

America’s music reflected this newfound prosperity and sense of place. Jazz became cool, symphony orchestras bloomed in major cities, and by the mid-1950s, songs by Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, and Little Richard were broadcast into homes, car radios and jukeboxes across America. At the same time, television was altering the definition of “celebrity.” In addition, the war years’ high employment and optimism spurred the longest sustained period of peacetime prosperity in the nation’s history. A decade of full employment and pent-up desire produced demands for all types of consumer goods. Businesses of all sizes prospered. Rapidly swelling families, new suburban homes, televisions, and most of all, big, powerful, shiny automobiles symbolized the hopes of the era. During the 1950s, an average of seven million cars and trucks were sold annually. By 1952, two-thirds of all families owned a television set; home freezers and high-fidelity stereo phonographs were considered necessities. Specialized markets developed to meet the demand of consumers such as amateur photographers, pet lovers, and backpackers. At the same time, shopping malls, supermarkets, and credit cards emerged as important economic forces.

Veterans, using the GI Bill of Rights, flung open the doors of colleges nationwide, attending in record numbers. Inflation was the only pressing economic issue, fueled in large part by the Korean War (in which 54,000 American lives were lost) and the federal expenditures for Cold War defense. As the decade opened, federal spending represented 15.6 percent of the nation’s gross national product. Thanks largely to the Cold War, by 1957, defense consumed half of the federal government’s $165 billion budget.

This economic prosperity also ushered in conservative politics and social conformity. Tidy lawns, bedrooms that were “neat and trim,” and suburban homes that were “proper” were certainly “in” throughout the decade as Americans adjusted to the postwar years. Properly buttoned-down attitudes concerning sexual mores brought stern undergarments for women like bonded girdles and stiff, pointed, or padded bras to confine the body. The

planned community of Levittown, New York, mandated that grass be cut at least once a week and laundry washed on specific days. A virtual revival of Victorian respectability and domesticity reigned; divorce rates and female college attendance fell while birth rates and the sale of Bibles rose. Corporate America promoted the benefits of respectable men in gray flannel suits whose wives remained at home to tend house and raise children. Suburban life included ladies’ club memberships, chauffeuring children to piano and ballet classes, and lots of a newly marketed product known as tranquilizers, whose sales were astounding.

The average wage earner benefited more from the booming industrial system than at any time in American history. The 40-hour work week became standard in manufacturing. In offices many workers were becoming accustomed to a 35-hour week. Health benefits for workers became more common and paid vacations were standard in most industries. In 1950, 25 percent of American wives worked outside the home; by the end of the decade the number had risen to 40 percent. Communications technology, expanding roads, inexpensive airline tickets, and a spirit of unboundedness meant that people and commerce were no longer prisoners of distance. Unfortunately, up to one-third of the population lived below the government’s poverty level, largely overlooked in the midst of prosperity.

The Civil Rights movement was propelled by two momentous events in the 1950s. The first was a decree on May 17, 1954, by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” The message was electric but the pace was slow. Few schools would be integrated for another decade. The second event established the place of the Civil Rights movement. On December 1, 1955, African-American activist Rosa Parks declined to vacate the White-only front section of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus, leading to her arrest and a citywide bus boycott by blacks. Their spokesman became Martin Luther King, Jr., the 26-year-old pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The year-long boycott was the first step toward the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

America’s youths were enchanted by the TV adventures of Leave It to Beaver, westerns, and Father Knows Best, allowing them to accumulate more time watching television during the week (at least 27 hours) than attending school. TV dinners were invented; pink ties and felt skirts with sequined poodle appliqués were worn; Elvis Presley was worshipped and the new phenomena of Playboy and Mickey Spillane fiction were created, only to be read behind closed doors. The ever-glowing eye of television killed the “March of Time” newsreels after 16 years at the movies. Sexual jargon such as “first base” and “home run” entered the language. Learned-When-Sleeping machines appeared, along with Smokey the Bear, Sony tape recorders, adjustable shower heads, Mad Comics, newspaper vending machines, Levi’s faded blue denims, pocket-size transistor radios, and transparent plastic bags for clothing. Ultimately, the real stars of the era were the Salk and Sabin vaccines, which vanquished the siege of polio.

Citation Types

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Format
MLA 9th
"1950–1959 Introduction." Working Americans Vol. 12: Our History Through Music, edited by Scott Derks, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=WA12_0072.
APA 7th
1950–1959 Introduction. Working Americans Vol. 12: Our History Through Music, In S. Derks (Ed.), Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=WA12_0072.
CMOS 17th
"1950–1959 Introduction." Working Americans Vol. 12: Our History Through Music, Edited by Scott Derks. Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=WA12_0072.