Download Civil Rights and Counter

Civil Rights and CounterCulture
1950s:
•The “Age of Affluence”: unprecedented economic advancement
•The End of World War II: The G.I. Bill; creation of suburban
America; new affordability of houses and more access to education
•“Happy Days”: television paced 50s culture with images of America
as successful, placid, even – Father Knows Best and the Andy
Griffith’s Show
1950s: the Communist Menace
• Successful detonation of a nuclear device by the
Soviets in 1949 began the Arms Race
• Arms manufacture in the US: Enormous role in
the economic success of the 50s
• Communism provided Americans with a
powerful narrative of national identity
• Renewal of faith in American Dream:
individualism, hard work, opportunity, patriotism
the only way to deflect the spread of
communism.
1950s: the Critique of
Complacency
• “The Power Elite”: concentration of
economic and political power in the hands
of the few
• Sexual Revolution: the Kinsey Report
disclosed difference between public and
private behavior
• The Selling of Sex
• The Pill
1950s: The Feminine Mystique
• Friedan: attack on conservative vision of
gender relations employed by both
sociologists and popular “authorities”
• Vision of contented women contrasted to
reality of bored, frustrated women
• Kinsey, the Pill, offered a new form of
agency to women otherwise “mystified” by
the conservative, 50s vision of the
contented housewife and mother.
The challenge of feminism
• Feminism: women’s lives should not be
defined by their function in society
• “Functionalism”: suggests that women are
not individuals because their “role” is so
important to a contented society
• Women should claim their individual worth
on their own terms, rather than perform a
social or political function
Another Challenge: Civil Rights
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Jim Crow and Legal Segregation
1954: Brown vs. Board of Education
Little Rock: enforced de-segregation
Rosa Parks and the Bus Boycott
“Freedom Rides”
JFK Election and Southern Democrats
1963: March on Washington: August
1963: Assassination of MLK: November
1964: Civil Rights Act
Black Power
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New positive affirmation of black identity
“Black is beautiful”
Malcolm X: Violence is necessary
Watts riot (1965); Newark (1967); Detroit
(1967)
Black Power and Liberal Politics
• Black activism of the 60s insisted on
importance of race
• Legal Racism no longer allowed; replaced
with “Economic Racism”
• American political culture could no longer
pretend that race isn’t part of the nation’s
political order.
Role of Government in America
• Old Debate: does the government exist to
protect individual liberty, or rather to
minimize the social problems created by
capitalism?
• Tension between individual liberty, and the
government’s ability to check it.
• Country split over Civil Rights not
something radically new