Things society were in a uproar over when you were young? (1950s, biggest)

[nightbird47]

Originally Posted by wideworld

Really? I was growing up when all the Harry Potter books were coming out, too. Never heard one mention of Satanism...

I remember a woman telling us that her engine had caught on fire. The first thing she did after the the fire was out was get in the trunk and throw out the Harry Potter book one of the kids had gotten since she was sure the 'devil' had cause her car to catch fire. So yeah, they were out there.

Considering they were celebrating christan holidays at Hogwarts, I don't see how devilish it could be.

[stan4]

No jobs
Stock market problems
Savings and loan crisis

I am 37

[English Dave]

I was born in 1953. Things were very quiet when I was a young boy, nothing much seemed to happen. Then all of a sudden massive change and upset. Marilyn Monroe died, the Cuban Missile crisis, President Kennedy murdered. Then we got the Beatles and Muhammad Ali. Change came quick in those days.

The Vietnam war gathered pace...... I remember magazines of the time full of photos of American soldiers in Vietnam. Everything was changing fast, with this awful war in the background. Fashion, music, films, and young people growing their hair long with their parents wondering WTH.......

We also had this fear of being blown to bits in a nuclear attack. It was always in the back of our minds. Our parents didn't seem to know what to make of the massive changes, in a very short time. Everyone loved the Beatles in 1964...... by 1967 and Sergeant Pepper, a lot of older people changed their opinion. It was a very interesting period in history to grow up.

[Red3311]

Columbine, Eminem and Marilyn Manson LOL at 1999

[WestCobb]

I was born in 1976. This is a tricky one -- what was controversial in the early 90s? The crack epidemic was huge, gang violence was very high (grew up in southern California), heavy metal music was upsetting the fundamentalist and Baptist types, Married with Children was the show that was supposedly heralding the death of western civilization, and the LA riots was calling attention to continued racial tension. That's about all I can think of right now. It wasn't really a time for uproars.

[roadhogHR]

"Rock" music - (Elvis's pelvis, effects of Motown on us) Atomic bombs, Haight- Ashbury & hippies, drugs (LSD, marijuana, etc.) advent of birth control pill & it's effects on us gals (sexual revolution), Cubans, Castro, Kruschev, political assassinations...........

[pvande55]

Originally Posted by Kimmie

AIDS
Brooke Shields / Calvin Klein Jeans
Space Shuttle Crashed
MTV
Reaganomics
Assasination attempts on the Pope and President Reagan
John Lennon shot and killed
DOS commands
Pac-Man

What I remember most about the 80's, after we got past the hard times up to 1983, was the general optimism. Gas prices dropped to under a dollar, jobs for everyone. The song that captured the spirit of those days
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qrriKcwvlY

[jim9251]

Vietnam.

[Mightyqueen801]

I am 55.

Some things I remember that I've talked to my daughter about were how different things were for women back and how they were changing when I was growing up.

For example, does anyone remember the TV shows on women who were in prison for murder for killing their husbands when there were police records showing that the women had been beaten and abused for years? The abuse didn't matter back then--they went to jail for murder no matter what, and some were beginning to get their convictions overturned. I remember watching one such story. The police had photos of what would eventually become known as "domestic violence" incidents of this woman with bruises, and there were medical records, but back then the cops just told everyone to calm down and then left and no arrests would be made. Eventually her husband attacked and beat her one too many times and she killed him in self-defense then went to prison for murder. She appealed and the conviction was overturned. They interviewed her dead husband's parents and asked them what they thought about the way their son had beaten her, and they said, "She was his wife." That was a pervasive mentality that doesn't exist anymore or at least isn't seen as acceptable by as much of society as it did thirty-forty years ago.

I went to an event at Women's Day magazine in the early 90s and met a woman who had done the first in-depth article for a national magazine on domestic abuse--in 1975. That may seem like a long time ago to some of the youngsters on here, but it really is not that long ago. In addition, in most states, men were allowed, by law, to force their wives to have sex with them and if they didn't want to, too bad. It wasn't rape by law.

Less violently, televisions shows in the 70s like The Mary Tyler Moore Show dealt with women receiving less pay for the same job, justified because they were women. And the help-wanted ads in newspapers were still divided into "Help Wanted Male" and "Help Wanted Female" sections.

I sometimes buy old magazines at estate sales. I have a Life Magazine from 1969 with a Hertz rental car with a model and the caption, "Our girls are not only pretty, they can answer your questions." There's another ad for Northwest Oriental Airlines that shows two groups of what are now called flight attendants, then stewardesses. One group is of white women, the other is of Asians, and the caption is that "we have American girls to help you feel at home, and Orientals to help you get where you need to go." It almost looks like an ad for prostitution. My 22-year-old daughter was amazed that such ads were permitted.

[User1771]

Originally Posted by roadhogHR

"Rock" music - (Elvis's pelvis, effects of Motown on us) Atomic bombs, Haight- Ashbury & hippies, drugs (LSD, marijuana, etc.) advent of birth control pill & it's effects on us gals (sexual revolution), Cubans, Castro, Kruschev, political assassinations...........

What about comic books? There seemed to be a huge uproar over the comic book industry in the 1950s with the book "Seduction of the Innocent".