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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.
They were as aware as we are. There's a misconception propagated by history books and media that everything was racist and provincial but that was certain parts of the country and the world but not the entire story of a generation of people. Case in point. A 1956 debate with exchange students from across the world discussing racism, culture, and geopolitical affairs from that time.
I think the first post is right. Even though they didn't have the internet and didn't always get the news immediately, they would sit around the radio to hear the network news, watch the news on tv, and everybody read the newspaper every single day. Newspapers went into great detail and covered your town, your state, the nation, and international news. Newspapers were an amazing source of information.
As a young child in the 1950s, from tv I can remember something about Freedom Riders boarding busses to head South. I also remember seeing Nikita Khruschev on tv telling us they would destroy us from within. I remember something about McCarthy and that he could call someone he didn't like a Communist and that would ruin their lives. I got that from tv but the adults (who could read!) knew more of what was going on from the newspaper.
It was a utopia for a lot of kids but I don't know what it was like for adults. My own parents and their friends and relatives seemed excited and happy, looking forward to opportunities. But that could have been due to their youthful ages or it could have been the times.
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?
Just to add another tidbit, yes, turbulence was confined to certain areas but people all over the country knew about it. I think people back then had more time to pay attention, to listen to the news and to read the newspapers carefully. They also subscribed to newsy magazines like Look Magazine and Life Magazine. Huge pictures in your face and articles that were highly informative and compelling.
Besides the fears you mentioned, another major player was the fear of getting polio. Everybody knew at least one person crippled by that terrifying disease. Also, debates on tv as to whether you would let your friends into your backyard bomb shelter if we were attacked and your friends hadn't bothered to build anything for themselves. Then when Sputnik was launched it signaled a fear and a realization that we were not as great as maybe we thought we were. President Eisenhower declared some sort of new emphasis on the study of science in school so that we could beat the Russians. Yes, I think the assassination of JFK signaled the end of the era.
How did people in the 1950s perceive the times they were living in...
The people with enough maturity/experience to have perspective ... in ~1955?
They had all lived through WW2 and The Depression before then.
On the whole ... they perceived the world might actually work out for them afterall.
btw ... asking a question in a thread title but then answering it yourself
in the body of the OP? Really bad form. Tedious and Annoying.
Have a Q? Ask it. Want to tell a tale or lecture a point? Do that.
Pls don't mix up the two.
Can't speak for up north, other than one of my uncles got so tired of racism he moved to NY - the south was devolving. In VA, it was hysteria over integration. In VA, Massive Resistance took hold as public school systems shut down rather than integrate, most of my friends went to private schools rapidly formed rather than go to schools which were in theory intergrated, but which in fact were still segregated; southern legislators issued the Southern Manifesto;Citizen Councils were formed as a more benign alternative to the Klan. It was peaceful and prosperous on the surface, under the surface, the ugliness festered until it boiled over into terror for those who supported integration.
And as noted above, polio. In 1952 an estimated 60,000 children got polio; this number is low since in African American communities and in poor white communities, especially rural communities, there was little, sometimes no medical care. In 1950 in VA, a particular deadly form of it hit; one of my playmates died of it. In VA, 1950 was known as the Summer Without Children. https://virginiahumanities.org/2020/...hout-children/
It seems impossible for some to understand how segregation permeated every part of life. Even medical care was segregated; African American patients would die being turned away from white only hospitals. On the more curious side, some Jewish cemeteries in the south have tombstones with Chinese engravings; since cemeteries were segregated, even though a Jewish Cemetery is consecrated ground, the local authorities deemed that is where those of Chinese descent would be buried.
But there was the miracle of white bread. Loaded with vitamins, it was used to get rid of pellagra. We ate white bread for every meal and sometimes bread pudding for dessert.
I'll quote my Grandmother on the topic. She was born in 1910. Her take was "Everyone talks about the good old days. I lived through the good old days and they were not that good as compared to today".
When I started college in 1976, I had a Black roommate. I said something about the 1950's being great times, and he replied "Sure, if you were white." I had not been around many Blacks prior to that, and was a fairly clueless 17 year old. The roommate definitely changed my perspective.
I think much of our perception of that era is clouded by the old TV shows we've seen that present everything as peachy clean fun, ignoring the large number of hard drinking WWII veterans dealing with PTSD, which wasn't well understood at the time. There was a lot of spousal abuse then, my Mom talks about living in small towns in West Texas and New Mexico and hearing wives getting slapped around in the apartments next door.
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.
You might read The Fifties by David Halberstam. Halberstam shows that while on the surface things seem calm and happy that underneath the surface things were anything, but calm.
1. Men were not all happy wearing white shirts, black ties and going to work in meaningless jobs from 9 to 5.
2. Women were not all happy being housewives with every new appliance in their kitchen with 4 kids.
3. Blacks and other minorities encountered segregation in the south and poverty in the north.
4. A substantial part of the US population remained poor despite economic gains made after World War II.
5. Too many Americans were unwilling to stand up to "red baiting" and accusations that completely normal people were "communists" by Senator Joe McCarthy and others.
6. Despite good economic times, a recession took place in 1958.
The Sixties are known as a turbulent decade rife with protest and struggle. It didn't all magically begin in the Sixties. Social repression in the Fifties is what lead to this explosion just a few years later.
The Fifties certainly were not all bad. Many who are old remember them well. However, it was not the idyllic time that some claim it was.
From what I saw, folks in the 1950s did not look back upon any previous era as ideal. The numbers of people still affected by and remembering WWII and Korea prevented such nostalgia. There was more an attitude of hope that we were past that.
The forties and fifties were the first decades when use of electricity changed life, and when real paved or concrete roads made personal travel convenient enough to become an everyday occurrence. I remember when going to a small city 12 miles away was a big deal, and a trip to the one 30 miles away to shop was a huge journey.
"Traditional values..." "faith binding community." With no birth control, abortions being a hushed secret, the woman out of wedlock who became pregnant became the talk of the town and was often shipped off to have the child. Fear bound the communities more than faith. Hate was there as well, just under the surface. The commonality of racial epithets was astounding.
The fifties was a time of looking forward. Technology and the success of huge projects like the interstate highways gave hope. The media of the times showed us how we were living lifestyles far above that of most other countries, and there was pride. Industry, freed of wartime restraints, was peaking.
OP, some of the people who have idolized the 50's on this forum have been incels who were born long after that era, and who think that it was a time when every man of decent standing in society was issued a wife, guaranteed. They want to get back to an era, when all a guy had to do to attract a wife was make at least a modest living. None of these guys, though, has ever shown any awareness of the fact, that back then, they'd be expected to support the wife, and the eventually resulting kids.
Anyway, the point is, there's a contingent of men out there, who have a completely unrealistic view of the 50's, based on their own personal issues. They're active enough on the internet, that they can give the impression there's a significant trend toward nostalgia for the 50's. Some of this also may be politically driven by a family-values crowd, that's unhappy with the easier divorce laws of today, and other societal changes, like the rise of policies that are inclusive of once-marginalized populations.
I don't know anyone in real life, who idolizes the 50's. Do you know anyone who does? I wonder if this is mostly an internet phenomenon. Here on C-D, it has been far from "many" who hold a candle to the 50's. It's been a fairly rare, occasional single voice.
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