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I just got a nice reminder of freedom in the 1950s and in many ways all the way up to 2001, before the advent of the police surveillance state.
I just watched a video of Paris and the Eiffel Tower. The entire grounds were enclosed in bullet proof glass, with select access gates manned by military.
There was no terrorism in the 1950s. It had not yet been invented in the modern sense. Israel was at war with the neighboring Muslims, but around the world there was no terrorism. We didn't live in constant lockdown.
I went to Paris in 1986. You were free to walk anywhere you liked around the Eiffel Tower grounds. It was free and open, the way any large, popular park ideally should be. It was very beautifull and pleasant. Today, it lies surrounded in a prison of bullet proof glass.
Our entire lives are being subject to the same thing, via surveillance, if not physically in many places. But yes, the 1950s were so bad compared to today.
There was no terrorism in the 1950s. It had not yet been invented in the modern sense.
Unless you ignore Menachem Begin in WWII, Castro in Cuba in the fifties and the Puerto Rican nationalists in the Capitol in 1954. I kept hearing about 'gorilla warfare' in those early days and did not understand what they meant.
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Originally Posted by Igor Blevin
I went to Paris in 1986. You were free to walk anywhere you liked around the Eiffel Tower grounds. It was free and open, the way any large, popular park ideally should be. It was very beautifull and pleasant. Today, it lies surrounded in a prison of bullet proof glass.
I was in Paris in '86. It was the first time I saw policemen in flak jackets carrying long guns. They were using mirrors to check under cars for explosives around the embassies, something I had never seen before. A photog's lightbar exploded during a Mondale speech in England that summer and half the audience hit the floor, thinking it was a bomb. The '86 Chicago Bears had a game scheduled to be played in England and several did not want to go, fearing terrorism, remember?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Igor Blevin
Our entire lives are being subject to the same thing, via surveillance, if not physically in many places. But yes, the 1950s were so bad compared to today.
There was widespread terrorism in the south in the 1950's. Anyone advocating for change was a target. One need only look at how attorneys such as Justice Marshall had to travel to prevent being murdered when advocating a case to see how the entire south was engulfed in and ruled by terror.
Churches and temples were targets.
On Sunday, October 12, 1958, the Jewish Reform Temple on Peachtree Street in Atlanta was bombed. On Nov. 11, 1957, dynamite was discovered at Temple Beth-El in Charlotte, NC. On February 11, 1958, only a faulty fuse prevented Temeple Emanuel in Gastonia NC from being blown up. In total, eight Jewish temples were targeted in 1957 and 1958. Birmingham, Miami, Jacksonville all had temples targeted. https://southernspaces.org/2009/coun...-rights-cause/
In 1956 and again 1958 Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed. On April 28 1957, Allen Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church was bombed during services. These are just some of the bombings.
The last recorded lynching in the south happened in 1981, but even in the 1950's southern states fought the passage of anti-lynching legislation.
Following the Brown SCOTUS decision in addition to the Klan, a new terror organization was formed: Citizens' Councils. Violence was part of their program.
Of course, Birmingham AL had not yet become Bombingham as it was later known, but it was warming up.
Mostly science-related. Physics, astrophysics. Some of the restrictions were more on the career level, as in graduate school. Law school in some universities. Women had trouble getting accepted to medical school. It was felt that women would "take seats away" from men, if they were allowed into certain professional programs.
My aunt worked on the Manhattan project at Columbia. I have her certificate of appreciation signed by Henry Stimson. Her job was clerical and of course she did not know what she was working on until August 1945. But even with that job, certificate and clearances, she was relegated to traditional low level jobs until she found her niche: a hand model. (Yes, shades of Seinfeld here.) Anyone going to the library and looking at Life and Look from the early '50's will see her hands modeling irons and appliances, but her petite hands were a plus in the iron ads - primarily Panasonic.
Many today invoke the 1950s as the ideal time and an example of how society should be. It is portrayed as a peaceful and prosperous time of traditional values, close knit families, and strong faith that binded the community together. It was apple pie and milkshakes. Then, it all came to an abrupt end at some point between the Kennedy assassination and the Beatles arriving in the USA. Did people in the 1950s, who lived through that time, see it that way?
It seems like a turbulent time looking at the actual history. It started with the Korean War and McCarthyism. McCarthyism was much nastier and a bigger deal than what a lot of people know. The threat of nuclear war back then was likely higher than ever because it was pre "mutually assured destruction" and a lot of generals had a quite disturbing view of nuclear weapons. People look at the 60s as the defining decade for civil rights, but you had Brown v Board of Education in the 1950s. Was the turbulence in the '50s confined to specific cities/regions and thus, without the Internet, most of the country was less aware so for them, it was the utopia it's constantly portrayed to be?
Another thing that would be interesting to know is if people in the 1950s had a nostalgic time they collectively looked back on as the "good ole days." Maybe the 1920s or the 1890s? American culture has been obsessed with the 1950s as the "good ole days" since at least the 80s if not before.
McCarthyism was dying out in the 1950s. Anyway it didn't really affect most people. The Korean War was over by 1953. Brown v Board of Education was a positive development, at least for minorities. The civil rights movement was well underway and gave minorities hope for the future. The economy was booming and everybody was making money, and could afford a house and car. Women stayed home and took care of the kids.
The nuclear weapons threat developed in the late 1950s.
The mid-1950s (1953 - 1957) was the high point in US history. Since then it has been all downhill.
The question was how did they perceive it, not how do we perceive it now. For some it was the best of times, for others not, especially in the south for racial and other minorities. The violence perpetrated on minorities in the south in the 1950's increased and spread.
Take for example Virginia where segregation became even more entrenched. Before Morgan v. Virginia, buses in VA segregated the races, but all races could ride on the same bus, after 1950, public buses in VA became segregated; interracial marriage was now punishable by prison, hospitals were already segregated, but now this was extended to state mental hospitals. In 1956 "massive resistance" started with the closing of public schools throughout the Commonwealth. Did African Americans in VA see these as the best of times?
The violence against Jews was an example of how hate was spreading and increasing in the 1950's. Jews had been part of southern history since the early days of the southern colonies (Joachim Gans who was Jewish was part of the failed 1580's Roanoke Colony), even the Confederate States had a Jewish cabinet member - he even appeared on the Confederate $2 - but now, they were subjected to terror just as other minorities were.
Last edited by webster; 05-12-2023 at 05:03 AM..
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