1950s

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• Henry Ford
• Model T
• post war boom of economy allowed 

many people to be able to afford a car

• cars were not only sold to wealthy upper

class families 

• one in every six americans employed directly

or indirectly by the automobile industry

• 25 million automobiles in 1950, 67 million by

1968

• National Highway System expanded
• stylings of the space race could be seen in 

the style of automobiles during this time 

The Communication Revolution

•  radio became very popular- almost every

family had one in their house

• commercial broadcasting- people could 

listen to music, or hear things that might be

read in the newspaper 

• television became popular
• began to use digital technology 
• elections were broadcasted on tv which led

campaigning to be more about what the candidates

looked like rather than what they had to say. 

• Plessy v Fergusson allowed segregation in

1896- segragated facilities throughout the north

and the south 

• Civil Rights movement
• Brown v Board of education overturned 
• Plessy v Fergusson in 1954
• integration of schools 

Role/Image of Women

• Margaret Sanger advocated for birth 

control

• granted suffrage in 1920- Woodrow 

Wilson

• "New Women"- seperated spheres of her

life allowed her to be educated and have a job

while still raising a family

• electricity made housework easier
• challenged conventional gender roles
• less constrained than the previous

Victorian women 

• "The feminine mystique" by Betty Friedan
• Women expected to leave the workforce and 

raise their families

• Cult of domesticity 
• Women raised to be good wives and obey

their husbands and not contribute their opinions of

society

• Baby Boom- the American Dream was to 

settle down and get married and have a nice family

that lived in the suburb  

Constitutional Issues - The Red Scare

• the temperance movement led to the 

prohibition of alcohol throughout the 1920s.

• this was the 18th amendment
• women gained the right to vote in 1920

with the passage of the 19th amendment 

• terrified of the threat of communism
• George Kennan, containment
• Korean War
• Trumans dominoe theory- if one country falls

the surrounding countries would fall as well

• Senator McCarthy & the communist witch

trials- said that communists had infiltrated the

central government

• Sacco and Venzetti, the Rosenburgs  

Literary Developments

• The lost generation- lost idea of human 

progress, lost values, Ernest Hemingway made

 this term popular  

• Harlem Renaissance- Langston Hughes
• radical culture changes associated with

prohibition

• mass production of magazines 

• works that challenged postwar United States
• Jack Kerouac- On the Road, Reisman's The 

Lonely Crowd

• Also many books were published during this

time that concerned African American rights, WWII

experiences, and the emergence of the youth

counter culture 

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