How the 1950s Impacted the 1960s: From Innocence to Turbulence - Essay Example

Sur Supervisor How the 1950s Impacted the 1960s: From Innocence to Turbulence The 1950s ushered in a decade of peace and happiness that the United States had been a long time without. Finally free of the grip of the Great Depression and its resulting instability as well as the wartime rationing of World War II, the country was focused on peacetime efforts of building families, economic growth, and technological advances. Little could be done to foresee the next decade of the 1960s, when the happiness and innocence of the previous decade would soon be a thing of the past. As a direct response to events both political and social in the 1950s came turbulence and change in the 1960s in the form of movements for the rights of minorities, a rebellion against conformity and previously held social norms and a changing response to the never-ending fight against communism of the Cold War. Though on the surface the United States in the 1950s was a place of growth and opportunity, just below that surface simmered a riptide of dissent. Segregation was still alive, and Jim Crow laws throughout the South kept the African-American population oppressed (Lindop and DeCapua 58). In 1954, the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education ruled segregated schools to be unconstitutional, and in 1957 that decision was enforced in Little Rock, Arkansas (Lindop and DeCapua 60). Due to this and other court rulings regarding segregation, the 1960s saw a strong Civil Rights Movement sweep across the United States. African-Americans sent word to the entire nation that in the eyes of the law they were now thought of as equal; thus, they would solider on until society accepted them as such. In Greensboro, North Carolina, four African-American students waged a sit-in at a previously segregated, all-white lunch counter on February 1, 1960, igniting non-violent protests at lunch counters all across the still-segregated South (Farber and Baily 16). The next year saw whites and African-Americans riding buses side-by-side protesting segregation throughout the South while 1963 brought a massive march on Washington, D.C for equal rights (Morgan 23). All of these actions culminated in the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which did away with discrimination based on race, color, creed, or sex, and the Voting Rights Act, which finally allowed African-Americans to vote without being afraid of violence or harm (Morgan 21). While the 1960s saw the main action of the Civil Rights Movement, the 1950s were its predecessor, its catalyst, and its instigator as the African-American population of the nation sought to prove what had been laid out by law. African-Americans were not alone in their quest for equal treatment. Women who had previously enjoyed independence while the men were abroad in World War II were once again relegated to home and kitchen in the 1950s (Lindop and DeCapua 130). It was taught that a woman should have little ambition in life aside from finding a good husband and settling down to bear children (Lindop and DeCapua 130). This attitude ceased in the 1960s when alongside the Civil Rights Movement, the feminist movement was also alive and well (Morgan 220). Covered in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbade discrimination based on color, creed, or sex, women still fought for equal treatment and pay in the workplace (Morgan 221). Groups, such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Women’s Equity Action League, found no shortage of supporters (Morgan 221). Again, though the actions took place in the 1960s, they were a direct response to the 1950s, when the strong image of a woman supporting the home front was replaced with a woman relegated to shopping, cleaning, and cooking. Had the 1950s not worked so hard on repressing the women that only years before had attained independence supporting their families, then the 1960s may not have produced such a startling and strong feminist movement. If the 1950s were known to advocate anything, it was conformity. Suburban tracts of homes were built that looked exactly like one another (Lindop and DeCapua 54). The societal norm of the “typical family”, as portrayed on the newly-invented television, consisted of a mother, father, two children and a dog complete with a station wagon as their family car (Lindop and DeCapua 55). Unfortunately, these images and the lifestyle of the 1950s left in most teenagers the feeling of emptiness and denied self-expression, thus leading to the 1960s counterculture that specifically went against such notions. Advocating actions such as premarital sex, public nudity, the use of mind-altering drugs, and a general hatred of authority, rebellion against previously held social norms swept through the nation (Morgan 187). The “New Left”, as it became known, formed out of student organizations at universities and the simple need for freedom of expression (Farber and Baily 91). Parents saw their once-obedient children turn overnight into young adults with a distaste for everything that smacked of authority, from teachers to government, as they had sexual relations freely and experimented (often recklessly) with illegal, mind-altering drugs (Morgan 188). While the rebellious counterculture of America is seen as an action of the 1960s alone, its seeds were sown in the 1950s, when conformity was seen as the penultimate goal. The 1960s were simply an attempt to break free of the mold and create the self-expression that had been denied in the previous decade. The changes between the 1950s and 1960s were not only felt nationally, but on a global scale. The Cold War in the 1950s meant a time of terror when next door neighbors could be Communist spies, families built bomb shelters, and children took part in drills to save themselves in the event of a nuclear attack (Lindop and DeCapua 26). The strategy of the Cold War 1950s to political leaders, however, was one of containment; they felt that there was little they could do about the nations that were already under Communist control, but they could certainly stop the spread of it (Pike). Unbeknownst to the American public, the government had started to send advisors to Vietnam to try and contain the spread of communism, an action that would have dire consequences in the 1960s (Pike). The early 1960s, however, first brought the Cold War closer to home with the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 as Cuba endured revolution and became a Communist nation, and the Soviet Union placed missile batteries aimed at the United States along its shoreline (Pike). Though the situation was diffused, it was a wake-up call to the entire nation that Communism could and would spread if left unchecked (Pike). The latter half of the 1960s did not help, as Vietnam rose from an advisory situation into full-scale war, and the United States began to send troops to the aid of the South Vietnamese army under the guise of stopping the spread of Communism (Pike). This time, however, little support was found for a war that most believed should not be fought by Americans for another country (Morgan 139). The United States, once seen in 1950 as a global superpower able to contain anything, even Communism, failed miserably in its plan, with thousands of lives lost by its end (Morgan 140). As a direct result of the containment strategy put into place in the 1950s, the Cold War in fact escalated into a full-fledged combat situation in Vietnam, and the nation never forgot the loss of life incurred in that struggle. Though the 1950s were seen as the last era of innocence and happiness, stable family life and happy Americans, they were in fact a grave catalyst and instigator for the actions of the 1960s. Almost every action taken in the 1960s, from the Civil Rights Movement to the Vietnam War, to the counterculture and rebellion that took place on university campuses as a new generation voiced their previously unheard-of opinions, can be traced back to previous actions in the 1950s. No matter how big or how small independent decisions or simply the actions of fate may seem, there are always later impacts to be dealt with, as seen in how the 1950s shaped the 1960s, and how the 1960s responded to those decisions. Works Cited Farber, David R., and Beth L. Bailey. The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s. West Sussex, NY: Columbia University Press, 2001. Print. Lindop, Edmund, and Sarah DeCapua. America in the 1950s. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publishing, Inc., 2010. Print. Morgan, Edward P. The Sixties Experience: Hard Lessons About Modern America. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991. Print. Pike, John. “Cold War in the 1950s.” Global Security. GlobalSecurity.org, 08 26. Web. 30 Oct 2012. Read More