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You're not helping your cause. 50 happens to be in my rear view mirror, and I am old enough to have seen de facto segregation in towns in your part of the country (geez, isn't that shocking!). Why don't you explain to us how not having the right to vote and having limited choices in where you can live, work, and go to school lead to a better quality of life?
I don’t think most people in the 50s were trying to be mean or oppressive. They just didn’t think about. It was a different time and consciousness. People have changed; society has evolved—for the better in my opinion. But I don’t blame people for thinking differently at the time.
I was born in 1951, so for me growing up in the 50's was fun. Us neighborhood kids played until dark, then we knew it was time to come in. We thought nothing of running and playing in neighbors yards. Weekends were playing baseball at the park. Things seemed so much simpler then, people were kinder.
Whenever I would read comments online people would always say how today is crap compared to living in the 1950s. But I was wondering, where the 1950s as great as everyone says they were like they showed on those TV shows? If you remember the 50s well what do you think? How was your life then?
Though I was born just after the 50s, my family and everyone I've asked this question have all said YES! It was a fabulous time simply because it had all of the ingredients for "Happy Days"
People will say all the racism detracted. What they don't realize is that the death of the KKK started in the 50s. Minority and women's rights grew leaps and bounds. The middle class exploded because of rising wages and lower cost of goods. The highway system was built; airlines were entering the jet age; rail was still fashionable, so people could travel like never before. You could literally leave the door unlocked. Kids could play unattended. Cops actually protected and served. There was common sense, and a common decency.
Progressives may want to spin the fifties as something other than what it was... fantastic!
Now the seventies... Nixon, Carter, Viet Nam, Disco.... hurts just to think about that decade. Probably why Happy Days was so popular.
I don't believe that life was harder at all for black people back in the 1950s. Most of them had a much better quality of life than they do now, and damn sure they weren't killing each other by the thousands, they hand intact families and the opportunity for work and education. Again, people who did not live then do not understand that the whole "civil rights" movement has done very, very little to actually benefit the "average" black man or woman.
I don’t think most people in the 50s were trying to be mean or oppressive. They just didn’t think about. It was a different time and consciousness. People have changed; society has evolved—for the better in my opinion. But I don’t blame people for thinking differently at the time.
This is true. When looking at history, I believe that people have to be judged in the context of the time that they were living in. I'm sure that 60 years from now some people will be judging us through the filters of the 2070s and they will think that we are barbarians. However, the title of this thread implies that some folks feel that the 1950s was the perfect decade. I happen to think that this is due to some sort of nostalgic adolescent fantasy.
Well, the 50s were kind of boring but if you didn't mind being like everyone else, it was okay.
It was fun being a kid back then. From what I hear today, kids have to be scared all the time. In the 50 we rode our bikes everywhere and we weren't afraid of other people. Of course we were told to never speak to strangers, and we did not.
We were disciplined, spanked, and we paid attention in school--or else! We learned, we studied, we thought about what we would be when we grew up. We respected adults and their adult world.
Girls played with dolls, boys -- I don't know too much of what they did. But we all played together outside with softball and elaborate games of tag, hoola hoops, and our first cigarettes back behind the garage when we got a little bit older.
It was a lot like Beaver except the moms weren't that perfect and neither were the dads. The moms did bake cookies though and the dads washed the car in the driveway on Saturday afternoons. We walked or rode our bikes to school--no one drove us and we didn't take buses. Girls might have piano or dance lessons and boys? I know some built soapbox cars and competed in the soapbox derby. But our parents did not hover and they didn't drive us around. We were left on our own.
I knew there was some evil stuff going on because I heard about segregation in the South on tv. Also there was a horrible man, McCarthy, accusing good people of being Communists and ruining their lives. That's more similar to the rotten things that are going on in public life today but today there is so much more of it.
We didn't have shootings and we also did not have much violence on tv except for cowboys with guns going bang bang. But that was just make believe and we knew it. Not like today with tv shows totally about murder and violence for its own sake. No violent video games--the only games we had were board games and penny arcades with pinball machines.
We were not as free back then as we are today. You had to conform and be like everyone else or you wouldn't get ahead and people wouldn't like you. For girls growing up, we knew we had few choices in life--we were supposed to get married and turn into housewives no matter what. Stay home and bake cookies like our mothers. But we were going to school and we were going to go to college so why would we stay home? That part was confusing.
I guess if you were a man you'd be fine. Pick a career and pursue it, marry a woman and get waited on. We had the good, innocent life growing up in the 50s and we probably got a little bit spoiled. Not like kids today who get everything they want but we did get a lot. Our parents had it rough growing up in the Depression and then they endured world war II so they made sure to give us a better life than they had. So we did get a little spoiled and thought we deserved more. Thus, the turmoil of the 60s. We wanted more and we wanted not just a better world but a perfect world. What dreamers!
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