Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think so, because blacks weren't asking anything of the whites back then. They stood on their own, they took care of their own. They had their own businesses, own schools, so you weren't dependent upon anybody else. Times were changing, people's attitudes were changing. People strive to be better, to do better on their own, without force. When force is used, resentments build on both sides.
Why would black kids want to be thrown into an all white school? Think about that, why? I think it would have been better to be teaching your own, teaching them to excel, teaching your children how to be the best they can be with the gifts God gave them. Separation would give way to not only acceptance but admiration.
Blacks were a proud people then, because they were self-sufficient. There were no ghetto's or projects, not in middle America.
As times change, people change, integration happens naturally. If you were growing up in the 50's, you wouldn't care that you couldn't vote. I was too young, and didn't care about politics then anyway. I vote now, but have come to realize my vote doesn't make a hill o beans difference anyway. The game is rigged. The powerful with money and connections wins. Whoever puts on the best show, is going to win. Hitler was very popular, they loved him.
We have lost our country, but we had something special back then, that you will never comprehend.
In short, you are in favor of segregation. Just come right out and say it. I listen to this stuff and I can see right through to your real agenda. I know better. Asking to be able to vote, and have the same rights and freedoms as Whites is not "asking anything of the whites". It is asking for what Blacks should have had in the first place. Blacks were tired of remaining in a subservient position and were willing to fight and die for what they wanted.
I would care if I couldn't vote. If something is happening in my city, I am going to want to have a say in it. Most laws, Blacks didn't have a say. Only Whites had a say. If you think otherwise, that is utter crap. Why else did the Civil Rights movement start?
And housing projects existed for Blacks in the 1950s and even before that too.
Blacks lived in more widespread poverty in the 1950s. Blacks were often given the worst schools. If you lived in the South and you were Black, you were required by law to attend a school based on your race. Black schools were funded poorly compared to White schools. Blacks got the hand-me-downs from White schools and were often in relatively poor quality buildings compared to the White schools. Separate was never equal. Blacks had to sit in the balcony of the theatre, and the seats were never maintained as well as the seats Whites were allowed to sit in.
Last edited by green_mariner; 02-09-2013 at 08:25 AM..
I wonder where anyone got the idea in the 50s most women didn't have to drive or didn't know how to drive a stick shift. My mom started driving before WW2, of course she drove a stick shift. Most of my girlfriends mom drove and most of us drove. Some of us learned on a stick shift, a few others did start driving after automatics became the in thing.
My grandmother had her own car in 1927, before she even got married. Her father owned a lumber company and she was the secretary.
Going back even further--I have a book somewhere that I found at a garage sale, apparently part of a series called The Motor Girls. It's about three girls who have cars, and they solve mysteries. I have The Motor Girls At Lookout Beach, and it was published in 1911.
I have to say, I see your posts on these threads green_mariner, and I don't see you as "the angry black man" at all. Just realistic.
Anyway, a lot of these people who were kids back then probably are seeing the old days through the rose-colored glasses of their childhood. It wasn't all pretty back then, just that they hid the bad things.
I was born in 1958, the fourth kid of seven. My parents were married in 1949, after the war. My mother was a very unhappy person in those days, and when we look back to our childhood, we can see her bizarre behavior and the things she said and did, but back then there was no treatment for depression or even an acknowledgment that it existed. They said "Keep your chin up" and gave her valium. My father, who had his legs blown off in WWII, would go "into the zone" sometimes--some other place where he seemed unaware of his surroundings or our existence. There was no treatment for PTSD, either. Hey, you were home from the war! You were alive! Let's forget about all those ugly things that happened and buy TVs and cars and live the suburban good life. We don't want to hear about the images you carry with you every day and we can't see those artificial legs under your trousers so we'll just pretend everything is normal.
I know women older than I who grew up in the fifties and were sexually abused but no one would have believed that nice Mr. Smith did that to his daughters so they just had to bear it until they were old enough to move across country. We weren't going to talk about that, were we.
It was 1975 before a national magazine published an article about women being beaten by their husbands and the husbands getting away with it aided and abetted by the police. 1975. In the Fifties, if your husband beat you, you just took it because you had nowhere to go. And if he forced you to have sex, it wasn't rape. He was your husband and he could do that.
Yes, some things were better--less crime, kids could play outside in their neighborhoods, neighbors were more neighborly and community minded. But it was not some idealistic wonderful time when all was lovely. There was a lot of darkness hidden beneath the Father Knows Best image--and remember, Robert Young, who played Mr. Anderson, was himself a ripping alcoholic. They didn't include that fact in TV Guide, though, did they?
Thank you. I say these things because I look at it from reality. Apparently, when I point out things that were not good back then, I'm considered "an angry Black man".
What you said about spousal abuse reminded me of an R&B group from the early 80s called DeBarge. I watched the documentary "Unsung" and DeBarge was mentioned. Their mother was a Black woman and their father was a White man. They went through crap living in 1950s Detroit(and later Grand Rapids). The father, Robert DeBarge Sr., was fired from a job because he was married to a Black woman. The father was also very abusive. He beat on their mother, beat on his children(particularly the elder siblings), and sexually molested his daughter. The police were called many times because of the abuse, but the father never saw any charges because he was a White man and she was a Black woman.
Speaking of how soldiers were treated coming back from the war, this is how I see it. The 50s was about great illusions. No one wanted to hear what was bad. WWII had seen so much carnage. People in Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy, England, France, Belgium, Poland, The Netherlands, and other places affected by the war couldn't forget it. The evidence of war was all around. The USA never had much evidence of war, not visible anyway, other than the rationing of the 40s. However, it was an idea of "come home, start a family, and buy lots of stuff". No one wanted to hear about what happened overseas because that is what the 50s was about. It was about "not a care in the world".
That is why we seemed to be on top in the 1950s. Other nations were recovering from war, and many nations had not fully developed their economies yet. South Korea went from being dominated by Japan for the 1st part of the 20th century to be engulfed in the Korean War in the early 50s. After that, Korea was one of the poorest nations in the world. Japan was also recovering from war as was Germany. With a bit of aid to those nations, they started rebuilding. Those nations caught up to us. Japan went from devastated in the 1940s to givin us Nintendo, Toshiba, and Nissan in the late 1980s. Korea went from being poor and recovering from war and colonialism to pulling off an economic miracle in the 1980s. Today many people drive Hyundais and Kias. Things have changed.
Everyone was about pretending everything was okay. The 1960s, was a dramatic example of "Everything done in the dark will come to the light". Everything that was bad was kept in the dark. Even if some people didn't like some of the abuses that went on in the 50s, many people want a time where you never really heard about bad stuff happening.
I never knew who was an alcoholic from any of those shows. Marylin Monroe was a big film star and a sex symbol of the 50s. Few people ever knew she suffered from drug problems, until she died. No one knew she was an illegitimate child. Alot of stigma in those days. Know one knew she went under alot of psychoanalysis either.
I remember the husband of one of my Aunts once raised his hand with the intention of striking her. She said, "Don't you dare hit me." He backed off and never tried it again. Also, women being beaten was not exclusive to the '50s. It happened in other decades, too.
One thing about female liberation was this. It was about standing up for one's self.
And you're right, women being beaten has happened in other decades, but we are talking about the 1950s, not other decades.
I find this posting to be just stunning. Perhaps, this is an example of why it has been as difficult as it has been for Blacks and other minorities to seek equal rights in this country.
For starters, all Blacks back in the 1950's didn't "just take care of their own". Poverty was much more widespread. Some Blacks lived in urban slums in tenements that were literally falling apart. In 1968, when the Kerner Commission investigated "race riots" that had occurred, they attempted to explain why. One major reason given was the terrible housing in inner cities. On hot summers, these buildings without air conditioning served as literal catalysts for explosive behavior. Other blacks lived down south in conditions of rural poverty. In the 1960's, the state of Mississippi had a public assistance benefit of $8 a month. That's right, $8. Drug use became a big concern for White America in the 1960's. What few realize is that problems like the use of powerfully addictive drugs like heroin began in Black ghettos.
If you were a Black kid and your choices were being educated with in a one room school house with fifteen year old worn textbooks, no laboratory facilities, and the worst teachers available than you'd consider that an inadequate education. "Separate but Equal" (which was allowed before the 1954 Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education) in reality meant "Separate and UNequal". Black parents chose to send their children to schools full of white students because they understood it was an integral step towards getting their families out of poverty.
You speak of "resentments on both sides"? I always marvel at people who "resent" the idea of people demanding equal rights. How dare those uppity Blacks think they should have the same things that white people of that day had! They fought in the same wars, paid the same taxes, and were expected to obey the same laws. How dare they expect equal treatment under the law!
I was born in 59'. My sister was born in 50'. My parents are both veterans of World War II. They had to enter the Navy to even really understand there was a problem of inequality in segregation. Imagine my mother's surprise as a Navy nurse when she was told for the first time that Black and White blood was kept segregated, so that White people would never get a transfusion from "Black blood". Imagine my father's surprise when at age 18 in the Navy, he heard White southern officers talk in violent terms about what ought to be done with "uppity Blacks". Our family which has always lived in the West became acutely aware of the way that Blacks and minorities were treated. I'll admit, it must have been hard for my parents to swallow the "motherhood and apple pie" ideas they had been taught about this country after they way they saw whole segments of our population being treated.
We all know, all-too-well, what the 1950's were like. In my original post on this subject I stated the good as well as the bad. There was plenty of good. However, the bad couldn't be ignored and ultimately had to be redressed. Enacting civil rights laws was one of the greatest things this country ever did.
Putting on rose colored glasses and pretending "all was well" in the 1950's is simply revisionist history. It never happened quite that way. The truth was a lot more painful. The day this country recognized that essential truth was one of our greatest days.
Well said, I was born in 1944 and saw 1st hand the 50's. As I mentioned in my 1st post on the subject, it was the best of times and the worst of times unless you were a minority, then skip the best of times.
Not long ago I was reading about the invasion of Normandy and the months leading up to it. American soldiers were being gathered in in the UK in anticipation of the invasion, and one of the problems the Brits had is that white American soldiers would get upset if black American soldiers were allowed to be in the same pubs they were. Fights would break out. You are getting ready to stage one of the world's largest military operations ever and this stupid pissant stuff is ruling your day. Americans must have looked like idiots.
This reminded me of some other things that happened in the war. Black soldiers were in Germany. It was quite ironic that Black soldiers in Germany and the end of the war, where the Nazi regime had once ruled, and now Hitler was dead and the Nazis were disgraced. Black soldiers could fraternize with German women and it was much more welcomed in Germany than it was in the USA. The objection didn't come from Germans, but from Americans. Ironic, Blacks were fighting for their nation, against a very violently racist regime in another nation, and their own nation still treated them like crap.
Thank you. I say these things because I look at it from reality. Apparently, when I point out things that were not good back then, I'm considered "an angry Black man".
What you said about spousal abuse reminded me of an R&B group from the early 80s called DeBarge. I watched the documentary "Unsung" and DeBarge was mentioned. Their mother was a Black woman and their father was a White man. They went through crap living in 1950s Detroit(and later Grand Rapids). The father, Robert DeBarge Sr., was fired from a job because he was married to a Black woman. The father was also very abusive. He beat on their mother, beat on his children(particularly the elder siblings), and sexually molested his daughter. The police were called many times because of the abuse, but the father never saw any charges because he was a White man and she was a Black woman.
Speaking of how soldiers were treated coming back from the war, this is how I see it. The 50s was about great illusions. No one wanted to hear what was bad. WWII had seen so much carnage. People in Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy, England, France, Belgium, Poland, The Netherlands, and other places affected by the war couldn't forget it. The evidence of war was all around. The USA never had much evidence of war, not visible anyway, other than the rationing of the 40s. However, it was an idea of "come home, start a family, and buy lots of stuff". No one wanted to hear about what happened overseas because that is what the 50s was about. It was about "not a care in the world".
That is why we seemed to be on top in the 1950s. Other nations were recovering from war, and many nations had not fully developed their economies yet. South Korea went from being dominated by Japan for the 1st part of the 20th century to be engulfed in the Korean War in the early 50s. After that, Korea was one of the poorest nations in the world. Japan was also recovering from war as was Germany. With a bit of aid to those nations, they started rebuilding. Those nations caught up to us. Japan went from devastated in the 1940s to givin us Nintendo, Toshiba, and Nissan in the late 1980s. Korea went from being poor and recovering from war and colonialism to pulling off an economic miracle in the 1980s. Today many people drive Hyundais and Kias. Things have changed.
Everyone was about pretending everything was okay. The 1960s, was a dramatic example of "Everything done in the dark will come to the light". Everything that was bad was kept in the dark. Even if some people didn't like some of the abuses that went on in the 50s, many people want a time where you never really heard about bad stuff happening.
I never knew who was an alcoholic from any of those shows. Marylin Monroe was a big film star and a sex symbol of the 50s. Few people ever knew she suffered from drug problems, until she died. No one knew she was an illegitimate child. Alot of stigma in those days. Know one knew she went under alot of psychoanalysis either.
Re the bolded: There is a really good book out there from 2010 called The Liberators: America's Witnesses to the Holocaust. The author sought out WWII vets, now in their 80s and 90s, who were in the American Army and among the first to come across the concentration camps in Germany and Austria. Most of them were married for 50/60 years, and their wives had never before heard the stories that they told to the author of what they saw and experienced. Some of them had PTSD or at the very least, nightmares that had plagued them all their lives. As one of the soldiers said in the book, no one wanted to hear those stories when they came back--they would just change the subject, so they just buried those memories as best they could. It was definitely a time of pretense.
Re the bolded: There is a really good book out there from 2010 called The Liberators: America's Witnesses to the Holocaust. The author sought out WWII vets, now in their 80s and 90s, who were in the American Army and among the first to come across the concentration camps in Germany and Austria. Most of them were married for 50/60 years, and their wives had never before heard the stories that they told to the author of what they saw and experienced. Some of them had PTSD or at the very least, nightmares that had plagued them all their lives. As one of the soldiers said in the book, no one wanted to hear those stories when they came back--they would just change the subject, so they just buried those memories as best they could. It was definitely a time of pretense.
And it wasn't just U.S. soldiers who saw this. Survivors of the Holocaust also came to the USA and wouldn't talk about their experiences. It can be surmised that the ideal of 1950's was, well, pretensions.
Heck, German POWs housed in the US were treated with more respect and dignity than Black folks. I don't think a whole lot has changed and has just gone underground.
The 50s are not unlike today in that people with resources, connections still do better by far than people from the wrong side of town, from single parent homes, from poor families and so on. The rich have gotten richer and the poor---well, poorer. But it has been such throughout history. Winners (few) and losers (many).
Perhaps the major difference from the 50s is that I could walk through town with my .22 rifle to go bottle busting or rat killing at the town dump. No one thought anything of it. Try that today and here comes SWAT.
Today, you can be arrested for most anything whereas in the 50s (where I lived) you got a butt whipping from parents, school principal or even a cop. But you had no arrest record. You just got some hands on guidance.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
