Postwar Boom - An American Golden Age, c. 1945-1960

1. Postwar Boom:
An American Golden Age?
1945-1960

3. McCarthyism during the Red Scare

5. Atomic anxiety

6. Atomic anxiety

7. Sputnik I and UFO craze

8. 1956 interstate highways

9. Recent background:
• Great Depression, 1929-1941
• World War II, 1941-1945

10. Labor issues
• 1946 strikes - 4.5 m. steel, coal, and rail workers on
strike; Truman threatened to draft into US army
• 1947 Taft-Hartley Act – restricted organized labor

11. GI Bill – college and loans for WWII vets; affects 80% of
men born in 1920s, 15% of fed. budget

12. Economic boom
• Avg. family income tripled, 1940-1955
• Americans had $135 b. in savings from defense
work, service pay, and war bonds
• Home ownership 41%  61%, 1940-1955

13. Car culture

14. White flight to suburbs
• William Levitt, new home every 16 min.
• “White flight” – reduces inner city tax base, leads to
urban decay

15. Franchises

16. Family life
• Baby Boom – 65 m. born, every 7 seconds
• Dr. Benjamin Spock – childrearing advice
• Dr. Jonas Salk – polio vaccine

17. Family life
• Role of women
• 1950 median marriage age: 22.8 men, 20.3 women
• 1957 teen pregnancy all-time high: 96.3/1000


18. Consumerism
• TV nuclear family portrayal

19. Consumerism
• Standard of living and leisure time

20. Rock ‘n roll

21. Consumerism
• “a freezer became a promise of plenty, a second car
became a symbol of status, and a mouthwash became
the key to immediate success”

22. Uneven prosperity – 25% of Americans living in poverty

23. Juvenile delinquency

24. Beatniks and the early counterculture

25. Race relations
• 1948 desegregation of armed services
• End discrimination in government hiring

26. 1948 Election
• “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” whistle stop train tour allows
narrow Truman victory over Dewey
• South runs pro-segregation States’ Rights Dixiecrat
Party

29. Truman’s Fair Deal: national health insurance, fed. aid to
education, civil rights, public housing, new farm program,
minimum wage; most of program fails to pass

30. Race relations
• 1952 - Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
• 1957 - Little Rock Nine

31. 1952 and 1956 Elections
• Truman approval at 23% by 1952 due to Korean War.
• WWII general Eisenhower wins, re-elected in 1956