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The American Yawp, Volume 2, edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the original free This shelf’s study material is shared under the same license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Chapter 12 · pp. 374–404
After World War II, the United States entered a long boom that raised living standards for millions. It also kept old problems alive and created new ones. This chapter follows that story through the growth of the suburbs, the fight over segregation in schools and public life, the rise of television and the ideal family, youth and minority cultures that pushed back, and the political shift toward conservatism under Eisenhower.
In 1958 the economist John Kenneth Galbraith published The Affluent Society. He admired America's huge new wealth but criticized an economy built only to produce and sell more goods. His key warning was that businesses create new wants through the same process that satisfies old ones, so the cycle never ends. He thought this was unsound and unsustainable. He also feared private companies would get rich while public needs went neglected. His title stuck as a common name for postwar America (pp. 374–375).
The label fits because the numbers were striking. In the two decades after 1945, living standards rose at every income level and inequality shrank. Yet the gains were uneven. Women, the poor, and racial minorities were often shut out. Suburbs gave the middle class room to grow while cities declined and the environment suffered. The period combined great prosperity with discrimination and pressure to conform (p. 375).
The suburban boom began with New Deal rescue efforts. In 1932 about 250,000 households lost their homes to foreclosure, and by 1933 half of all mortgages were in default. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) bought and refinanced mortgages that were at risk, and eventually held about one in five US mortgages (p. 375).
The HOLC also introduced the amortized mortgage. This is a loan paid back in regular installments that cover both interest and principal over the whole term. Before this, the usual mortgage lasted five years and ended with a large balloon payment. Imagine a family paying small amounts for five years and then owing a huge sum at once. Many could not pay it and lost their homes. The HOLC spread repayment over fifteen years, which made monthly payments lower and predictable. Borrowers paid more in total, but far more families could own a home and build wealth as its value rose (p. 375).
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) went further by insuring mortgages. If a borrower defaulted, the lender was protected from loss. In return, lenders had to offer low rates and terms of twenty to thirty years. By 1964 only a little over a third of homes had FHA-backed loans. Even so, private lenders copied the easier terms for other borrowers, so the effect spread well beyond the FHA itself (p. 376).
Wartime spending had ended the Depression, and continued government spending kept the boom going. It paid for research by companies, the interstate highway system, and veterans' benefits. The G.I. Bill of 1944 gave veterans low-interest home loans, college stipends, business loans, and unemployment benefits (p. 376).
Builder William Levitt turned these programs into houses. In 1946 he built the first Levittown on Long Island, New York. He bought large tracts of land, divided them into lots, and hired crews to build huge numbers of similar homes. Building at that scale lowered the cost per house, so veterans and their families could afford them. Developers across the country copied the model (pp. 376–377).
The results were dramatic:
Suburbs also pushed up spending on consumer goods. Families with rising wages and wartime savings bought on installment plans, and credit cards (first issued in 1950) made borrowing easier. They bought washers, dryers, refrigerators, and cars. Television ownership jumped from 12 percent of households in 1950 to over 87 percent in 1960. The share of families with a car rose from 54 percent in 1948 to 74 percent in 1959 (p. 377).
It is easy to picture the boom as an escalator that carried everyone upward. One businessman used that image for people with a degree, a suit, and some ability. But it described mostly advantaged white men. Under the overall numbers, racial disparity, sex discrimination, and economic inequality continued, and many minorities were blocked from suburban housing (pp. 377–378).
The blocking was built into federal practice. The HOLC worked with local lenders and real estate agents, who filled out standard surveys on each neighborhood. The HOLC then gave each area a letter grade from A to D and a color. D areas, judged the riskiest, were shaded red, and banks limited loans there. Mixed-race and minority neighborhoods were treated as the riskiest, and surveyors used phrases such as "racial hazards" to justify low grades. This practice is redlining. In one 1939 Pasadena report, appraisers admitted a neighborhood had no building or flood hazards, but they still predicted lower values because Black families owned homes there (p. 378).
The HOLC did not last long, but its standards did. The FHA and the Veterans Administration, which handled G.I. Bill mortgages, refused to back loans in redlined areas. Millions of people gained mortgages they could not otherwise have had, but minorities could not borrow to improve homes in their own neighborhoods. They were also denied loans to buy elsewhere, because lenders feared the "red line" would spread. Redlining also indirectly limited access to housing, groceries, and other necessities (pp. 378–380).
Levittown itself sold homes only to whites. Federal policy and private developers together raised ownership and stability for white families while enforcing racial separation (p. 381).
Excluded groups protested, and fair housing became a civil rights priority. In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the Supreme Court ruled that racially restrictive covenants, which were deed rules barring sales to minorities, could not be legally enforced. Discrimination continued anyway, so the push for fair housing went on (p. 381).
Mass-produced housing also damaged the land. Developers looked for cheap land farther from cities and bulldozed wetlands, hills, and floodplains. Historian Adam Rome estimated that an area about the size of Rhode Island was cleared for development every year. Cheap energy and government incentives discouraged energy-saving design, so tract houses were hard to heat and cool. Faulty septic tanks polluted groundwater (pp. 381–382).
Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring exposed the harm done by pesticides such as DDT. It showed that comfort and convenience did not have to cost so much. Still, most early environmentalists did not challenge the suburban ideal. Growing dependence on cars and the dream of a single-family home limited any major change in how land and energy were used (pp. 381–382).
In 1896 the Supreme Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson. It said that public facilities could be divided by race, as long as the separate facilities were equal. This idea became known as "separate but equal." (p. 382)
In real life, the facilities were rarely equal. Black Americans, especially in the South, got less money for their schools. Their buildings were worse, and their books and supplies were poorer. For about fifty years, African Americans fought this unfairness before the Supreme Court looked again at whether "separate but equal" was valid. (p. 382)
The fight was led by the NAACP. Starting in the early 1930s, its lawyers worked to weaken the legal base of segregation in the South. This kind of segregation is called de jure segregation: it is required by law. An example is a state law that sends Black and white children to different schools. This is different from segregation that comes only from habit or custom. (p. 383)
The NAACP's lawyers included Charles Hamilton Houston, Robert L. Clark, and Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Supreme Court justice. They did not try to win everything in one case. They picked their cases with care, on topics such as schools, voting, and jury selection. Their plan had two steps:
Black children faced the most complete and legally enforced segregation, but they were not the only ones. Across the Southwest, Mexican and Mexican American children were sent to separate "Mexican" schools. (pp. 383–384)
In Mendez v. Westminster (1947), Gonzalo Mendez and other parents in California won in federal court. The courts ruled that separating Mexican American children broke the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A Texas family, led by Minerva Delgado, won a similar case. (p. 384)
There was a catch. These victories rested on the idea that Mexican Americans were legally white. Because of that reasoning, the rulings did not challenge Plessy. School segregation of Black children could continue under "separate but equal." That changed with Brown. (p. 384)
Although people remember Brown as one lawsuit, it combined five cases from different places: (pp. 384–385)
The NAACP picked cases from varied backgrounds on purpose. It wanted to show that segregation was not only a Deep South problem. It also wanted the Court to rule broadly on whether Plessy itself was constitutional. (pp. 384–385)
Briggs v. Elliott was the first case the NAACP accepted. It showed how unequal the schools were. In Clarendon County, South Carolina, in 1950, taxpayers spent 43 per Black student. The twelve white schools were worth 194,575. (p. 385)
The Kansas case was different. Its schools were less unequal in money and buildings. So it focused on a different question: does separation itself harm children and make them unequal? The NAACP argued that "separate" and "equal" cannot go together. (p. 385)
On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the Court's ruling. By a unanimous 9–0 vote, the Court held that segregated public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Warren wrote that separate educational facilities are "inherently unequal." In schools, "separate but equal" was no longer constitutional. (pp. 382–383)
To win, the NAACP offered both history and social science. The justices found the historical evidence unclear. They relied more on the argument that segregation caused psychological harm to Black children. One key source was the doll experiments of Kenneth and Mamie Clark. The Clarks found that Black girls, like white girls, often preferred white dolls. They argued this showed that segregation had taught Black children to think badly of themselves. This moved the question from unequal money to the damage done by separation. (p. 385)
Naming an injustice is not the same as fixing it. Brown rejected Plessy, but it covered only public schools, not other segregated places. To keep the vote unanimous, the justices avoided the hard question of how to enforce the ruling. (p. 385)
In 1955, the Court issued a follow-up order known as Brown II. It told school districts to desegregate "with all deliberate speed." This wording was so vague that it left the work in the hands of people who opposed integration. They could delay, and many did. (p. 385)
Real change came in stages:
Once enforcement began, the results were large. In 1968, about 80 percent of Black students in the South still attended schools that were 90 to 100 percent nonwhite. By 1972, only 25 percent did. Also by 1972, 55 percent of Black Southern students attended schools where nonwhite students were a minority. Ironically, Southern public schools became the most integrated in the country. (p. 386)
Still, Brown's greatest importance may lie less in quick changes, which were slow and partial, than in what it stood for. It expressed an ideal and built momentum. The nation's highest court had attacked a main support of Jim Crow and gave constitutional backing to what became one of the largest social movements in American history. (pp. 386–387)
Before World War II, Black Americans had won few victories against Jim Crow. The war changed expectations. The Double V campaign called for victory over fascism abroad and over racism at home. The postwar boom then promised jobs, income, and a share of the good life. When segregation blocked that promise, Black Americans organized on a larger scale than ever before (p. 387).
The Affluent Society treated being a full citizen as including access to goods, services, and public places. So many civil rights fights were not only about voting or representation. They took place where people spent money or used public services: buses, lunch counters, movie theaters, and schools (pp. 387–388).
The best-known events, such as the sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and the March on Washington, came in the 1960s. Still, the 1950s were a key decade of both setbacks and gains (p. 388).
Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1955). Rosa Parks was not the first to challenge bus segregation. In 1953 Sarah Keys, a soldier in the Women's Army Corps, was traveling home to North Carolina. The driver told her to give her seat to a white passenger. She refused and was jailed. Her case went to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which ruled in 1955 that "separate but equal" on interstate buses violated the Interstate Commerce Clause. The ruling was poorly enforced. But it later gave legal support to the Freedom Riders and encouraged more attacks on Jim Crow (p. 388).
Emmett Till. In summer 1955, two white men in Mississippi, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, kidnapped and murdered fourteen-year-old Emmett Till. He was visiting from Chicago and was accused of whistling at a white woman. His mother held an open-casket funeral so the nation could see his mutilated body. An all-white jury acquitted the killers, even though the evidence against them was strong. Months later they told their story to Look magazine. Milam made clear he wanted to set an example for other Black people. The case left a lasting mark on the young activists who would soon push the movement forward (p. 388).
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. City rules made Black riders sit in the back and give up seats to white riders when buses filled (pp. 388–389).
A common misconception. Many people think Parks was a tired stranger who acted alone and was the first to resist. In fact she was a longtime NAACP activist and secretary of the Montgomery chapter. She had attended Septima Clark's workshops. Others, including Sarah Keys, had resisted earlier. Parks was the person around whom Montgomery's activists chose to rally (p. 389).
The boycott was organized quickly:
The result ended bus segregation in Montgomery and energized the whole movement. It also made the MIA's president, twenty-six-year-old minister Martin Luther King Jr., a national leader (p. 389).
The SCLC. Encouraged by Montgomery, King and others founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. Founders included Ralph Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth. Staff included Ella Baker and Septima Clark. Its job was to coordinate civil rights groups across the South and to sustain boycotts and protests against Jim Crow (p. 389).
The Civil Rights Act of 1957. Growing pressure led Congress to pass the first civil rights law since Reconstruction. Compromises weakened it nearly to nothing. It did create the Civil Rights Commission in the Department of Justice to investigate claims of discrimination. Its main importance was as a sign that pressure to face discrimination was growing (p. 389).
Progress met fierce opposition. A year into the boycott, white southerners bombed four Black churches and the homes of King and E. D. Nixon. King, Nixon, and the MIA kept going, but the violence showed what lay ahead. Activists later saw the 1950s as a decade of mixed results. Court rulings and boycotts showed progress. Bombings, death threats, and stubborn legislators showed how far there was still to go (pp. 389–390).
In the Southwest, Mexican Americans faced a similar system, which they called "Juan Crow." A new generation who came of age after the war pushed back. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), founded in 1929, was revived. The American G.I. Forum was new. Both based their claims on American citizenship and the rights it carries (p. 390).
Key figures included:
Their work led to Hernandez v. Texas (1954). Pete Hernandez, a laborer, was tried for murder in Edna, Texas, by an all-Anglo jury. The Supreme Court held that Mexican Americans were a distinct class protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case was about juries, but it also encouraged challenges to unequal treatment in schools and other public institutions (p. 390).
The Little Rock crisis (1957). Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to keep nine Black students, the "Little Rock Nine," out of Central High School. President Eisenhower then sent the 101st Airborne Division to enforce the integration order. Faubus responded by closing all the city's high schools for the next school year. This showed how far some officials would go to resist integration (p. 390).
Early sit-ins. The 1960 Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins won national attention. But students had used the tactic earlier. Morgan State College students in Baltimore sat in during 1953. In July 1958, the NAACP Youth Council in Wichita, Kansas, held a successful three-week sit-in at the Dockum Drug Store lunch counter (p. 391).
Citizenship Schools. Septima Clark was fired from South Carolina's schools for her NAACP work. She then started Citizenship Schools across the Deep South that taught literacy, citizenship, and leadership. King called her the "mother of the movement." Her work and that of many others prepared the ground for the movement's later growth (p. 391).
Television spread faster than almost any earlier household technology. Regular full-scale broadcasting began in 1947. Between 1948 and 1955, about two thirds of American households bought a set. By the end of the 1950s, 90 percent of families owned one, and the average viewer watched almost five hours a day. (p. 392)
TV copied radio's business structure. NBC, CBS, and ABC used their money and technical skill to buy licenses to local stations and push out smaller rivals. The FCC issued no new licenses from 1948 to 1955, which helped keep the "big three" in control. (p. 392)
Because few channels existed and most shows were broadcast live, millions of people watched the same programs at the same time. More than two thirds of TV households, for example, tuned in to I Love Lucy. (p. 392)
Why shows were safe and cheerful. Networks wanted the largest possible audience to attract advertisers. By the mid-1950s, one hour of prime-time programming cost about $150,000 to make. That was too much for most single sponsors, so advertising shifted to thirty-second spot ads paid for by many companies. Programs were therefore aimed at the whole family and avoided controversy. Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver used light humor and guaranteed happy endings. (pp. 392–393)
TV did more than entertain. Shows idealized the white, middle-class nuclear family: a breadwinner father, a homemaker mother, and two or more children. In Cold War America, many people saw this family as the best protection for national prosperity against communism and social "deviancy." It became a symbol of the nation itself. (p. 393)
The baby boom (1946–1964). After a century of falling birth rates, fertility jumped. A popular myth says returning soldiers were especially virile. The real reasons were broader: after the Depression, families had enough money to support more children, and their homes were big enough. Women also married younger, and culture praised large families. (pp. 393–394)
Experts and pressure on mothers. Postwar culture trusted professionals. Parents turned to psychiatrists and to books like Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1946). Many women treated housekeeping as a career that required training. Mothers were then caught in a double bind. They were criticized for giving too little attention to children, especially if they worked. Yet too much attention risked "Momism," which critics claimed made sons weak and open to communism. (p. 394)
Not everyone accepted the "consensus." Many young people raised in comfort felt restless. The film Rebel Without a Cause (1955) showed this mood. Teens also embraced rock 'n' roll, listening to Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and Elvis Presley. Elvis's movements were judged too suggestive for TV audiences. Rock had not yet become the full counterculture of the 1960s, but it gave teenagers an outlet for rebellion. (pp. 394–396)
The Beat Generation of writers, poets, and musicians went further. They rejected consumerism, capitalism, and traditional gender roles. They traveled, studied Eastern religions, and experimented with art, sex, and drugs. (p. 396)
Early gay rights groups. The Mattachine Society (Los Angeles) and the Daughters of Bilitis (San Francisco) were founded in the 1950s. At the time, homosexuality was labeled a mental disorder, and people risked arrest and abuse. The groups held meetings, shared literature, and offered legal and counseling help, often in secret. Government and medical authorities tied sexual and gender nonconformity to Cold War fears of subversion, and some pushed harmful "cures." (p. 396)
Postwar prosperity renewed faith in capitalism, cultural conservatism, and religion. During the Depression, a few groups still defended the free market. The most important was the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which ran "free enterprise" ad campaigns and connected business leaders like J. Howard Pew and Jasper Crane. (p. 397)
This network paid for new groups. Leonard Read's Foundation for Economic Education (1946) spread libertarian ideas, meaning support for individual liberty, property rights, and minimal government regulation. Friedrich Hayek's Mont Pelerin Society (1947) challenged Keynesian economics, the idea that government spending and monetary policy are needed for stability and growth. Milton Friedman and the "Chicago School" gave these ideas academic weight, and novelist Ayn Rand popularized individualism among ordinary readers. (pp. 397–398)
Suburbs and evangelical churches. Suburbs lacked top-down community institutions, even though residents depended on government subsidies. Evangelical churches filled the gap, backing social conservatism and economic individualism together. This created a new conservative constituency, but it had no champion yet. (p. 398)
After Republicans kept losing elections, the party split. Conservatives, led by Senator Robert Taft, wanted to roll back the New Deal. Moderates, like Thomas Dewey, wanted to reform it. (p. 398)
Dwight Eisenhower ran in 1952 to stop Taft. He feared Taft would weaken NATO. He also argued that programs like social security reduced communism's appeal, and that a party trying to abolish them would vanish politically. He beat Taft in a close fight and chose the anticommunist Richard Nixon as running mate to calm conservatives. Eisenhower then won the general election easily. (pp. 398–400)
His domestic record was thin. In 1954 his healthcare plan lost 238–134 when conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats both voted against it. His main successes were expanding social security, creating the cabinet-level HEW, and passing the National Defense Education Act. (p. 400)
In foreign policy, he avoided direct intervention by backing anticommunist allies. He aided the French in Vietnam, supported Taiwan carefully, and relied on "massive retaliation," the threat of nuclear force against communist expansion. His party later moved right, nominating Barry Goldwater in 1964. (p. 400)
