Civil Rights and Counter-Culture

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

• 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

• 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