Dale Mineshima-Lowe
The American Dream for Some

Dale Mineshima-Lowe | The American Dream for Some | 02.08.22

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- Well good afternoon and good evening to everyone. We are very excited to have Dale Mineshima-Lowe on Lockdown University today. She has been teaching in the UK at various higher education institutions for over the past 20 years and specifically at the adult continuing education level for the past 12. She teaches a range of topics including politics and human geography as well as politics and social history, particularly American, modern European and Japanese history. She is a managing editor for the Centre of International Relations, which is a think tank based in Washington DC. Dale, thank you so much for being here and please feel free to begin whenever you’re ready.

• Great. Welcome everyone. I’m Dale and I’m hoping I find some things that you will find interesting today about 1950s America. So you should be able to see my screen, I’m hoping. And the title that I wanted to give this talk this evening or today I should say, is really thinking about this idea of the American dream for some ‘cause I think the 1950s is a really, really interesting time. Obviously you’re coming out of the war period and we’re seeing a lot of change within the United States at this time. So just a few things I thought I wanted to pull together because obviously trying to cover a decade in 45 minutes is a lot of fun and challenging, but there’s certain things I really wanted to share with you all so I’m hoping you can bear with me on them. So it’s thinking about this idea of the American dream but also that what we’re finding in 1950s America is a bit of conformity, but underneath that conformity there’s definitely challenges and discontent and so we’re going to tease those ideas out.

We also know 1950s obviously is the age of the baby boom, baby boom era. It is also the period where we see the real birth and the development of suburbia, the burbs within the US. We’ll talk a bit about the economic boom. I’ve got some fun things that just to tease you with, with in terms of new innovations that we see coming up in the 1950s. And then obviously part of that continuity, their conformity and discontent is thinking about things like the civil rights movement. Now I know we think about the civil rights movement as really starting or really peaking in the 1960s, but much of it also starts in the 1950s. And we’ll talk a bit about Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus, Boycott and then also obviously Brown versus Board of Education and The Little Rock Nine. And then what I wanted to end with is just thinking about what happens at the end of the 1950s and in particular here we’re talking about expansionism. We see the last two states that are part of the current 50 states of the union being added at that time as well. So welcome.

So just thinking about this idea of 1950s America. Now, just some photos here, just a little montage of different things we’re seeing. “Leave It to Beaver”, very popular show or with the Cleaver family, kind of in a sense embodies this idea of wholesomeness that we tend to associate with 1950s America. You also see there like the age of the car. I know that cars in the car boom really kind of starts from the 1920s, but we see that really growth in that area as well in the 1950s for various reasons, including suburbia. Just an image of from Daytona Beach and then obviously Elvis and the music of that period. I’m not going to go and cover music, sorry to all of you who would want to, but I just wanted to mention him in passing that actually part of that music age and that change that Elvis and many of the sort of rock and roll legends bring to the 1950s and bring to America during this decade are really important for shaping the culture but also the society as we move forwards as well out of the 1950s.

Just the image here of the television, television becomes one of the really prominent things and growth of how households with televisions will become a really important aspect of the 1950s. And then unfortunately still part of the 1950s that we see at least at the early part of the 1950s as well, we still see segregation within America. So it shows that image to kind of highlight the fact that we have this real disparity in terms of things that are happening for us behind the scenes. So 1950s, I kind of think of it as conformity but also descent. And I guess one of the reasons why is when we’re looking at American history, what we tend to notice about the 1950s is there seems to be a sense, and I use the word sense of uniformity that pervades American society. At least that’s how it’s perceived, that’s how it’s been described at times. One of the interesting things with that conformity is really this idea of that shift back to, if you like, ideal gender roles in particular that becomes associated with the 1950s.

So we get this sense of conformity, young and old alike follow particular societal group norms rather than striking out on their own. So you begin already to see, although we have conformity, we’re thinking, well we’ve just talked about Elvis and rock and roll. We know that there’s other things happening. So it’s not as conformity in terms of society as it kind of we’re told it is. But I think on the surface level, it feels like there’s a lot of conformity during the 1950s in America. And part of that is a sort of, if you like, a reaction to the end of the World War II, the return of both men and women, but mostly men coming back from the war and sort of that change of society that had happened during the war during the 1940s kind of making a reassessment for a lot of individuals, a lot of individuals looking for their new places within society as well. And so we start to see those patterns that we tend to go back to, we saw this in the sort of, if you like, the 1920s, the late 1910s that actually after World War I there was a resurgence back to traditional ideas and values before changes then happened in the 1920s.

We see the same thing in the 1950s as well. So there is that idealism of conformity and returning back to gender stereotypes and gender roles which had existed before the war. But in actual fact we start to see a dichotomy developing within society as well. So I want to start with thinking about women’s roles and in sort of in the society but also in the workplace in 1950s America. So just some image is here that I’ve borrowed basically to try and capture this sort of montage and idea of what their gender roles were expected but also where they were moving towards. So gender roles in 1950s America is sort of becomes almost intimately we could say connected to the Cold War. So there is this return to the idea of a nuclear family that emerges and it emerges as a way of encouraging stability of the family as being an essential building block for a strong society. And so you see that idea of perhaps women in terms of motherhood in terms of sort of being at the home in a very traditional gender role at this part.

And so what we find is interesting is on one level, women are then, and the role of women within society becomes very much linked to this idea of security and national security during this period where we have the Cold War building. And it’s sort of interesting because the flip side of that is there is also the fact that during the 1950s you also see employment rates of women rising during this period, not surprisingly because many of them were working during the 40s during the war effort as well. And so therefore many of them have developed skills and knowledge but also the desire to work outside of the home. So it’s sort of an interesting complexity that we’re seeing socially, that actually society is telling women on one hand actually, your role should be as mother and housekeeper, but at the same time what we’re seeing is a sort of new era of women who have had different experiences and don’t necessarily want to return back to those traditional roles as well. So there’s a real sort of interesting mix that’s happening.

It’s also during the 1950s that we see women starting and going into higher education a lot more as well. And with that it’s sort of an interesting one. There is twist as well because although we have more women going into higher education, so those are going in and studying different things that many of them were also being sort of, there was also this idea of calling the sort of the M.R.S degree, so The MRS Degree. And so in the 1950s there was also this real pressure on females and they felt a tremendous societal pressure to focus their aspirations on getting married and obtaining a ring. So we even those who went to university and were studying, the thought was that they were going to university or at least the common stereotype was of women that went to college to get a MRS Degree, meaning that they were in college to find a husband and get married and then to become the mother and house keeper within that much more traditional idea of what the family ought to look like. And so you’ve got these things happening despite the fact that there are also women, you know, working in the outside of the home and many of them doing a lot of the jobs that they had previously done.

But also feeling the pressure from society not only to get married but pressure from society to withdraw from the workforce in some way to allow for the returning men in particular to take up that space within the workforce as well. So there’s some really, I think, interesting dynamics that we’re starting to see socially happening as well. Now one of the things that’s quite interesting, I think for post-war American moms, they did start to also find jobs outside of the home. And with that you obviously then have issues about child raising. And this is where that sort of phrase latchkey kids comes to mind because actually for many of them there wasn’t necessarily someone home after school for some of them. So that’s where the term comes from and where we start to see it developing as well as we see society deciding and changing in the 1950s of the direction in terms of gender roles but also in many other ways that we’ll kind of talk about in a moment as well. Oops, that’s not where I want to be, that’s where I want to be. So I want to talk about this idea of boom.

So if you have this societal pressure on women to get married but also there’s also a desirability for young men and women to become married and start families. And so we begin to talk about this idea of a population boom. So if you look at this graph here that I’ve got, it just looks at the total of fertility rates from 1940 to '95. So we don’t need most of that. But we do see here a really interesting trend. So probably late 1940s, but definitely starting to peak in 1950s. There’s some bit of a plateau but then it does start to reach quite a high level during the 1950s before then we start to see changes that will talk about in other substance perhaps when we look at other decades. But in the 1950s we see that real boom in terms of population, the return of servicemen and women, the desire for creating families but also connecting to families and community really starts to develop across the United States.

Here are just another way of looking at the population distribution by age for the year 1950. So we see quite a large boom in the under 5s and then sort of peaking down as well from their all the way to over 80s. And again, it’s just an interesting way of thinking about where the population is growing, how it’s growing, but also where the age differences are across the population. 'Cause that will make a difference in obviously in the coming decades as well. But we start to see that boom. And one of the interesting things we’ll talk about in a moment when we’re looking at that growth of population and that really boom period as well, we begin to start to notice trends in terms of birth rates, death rates, and we’ll talk about net immigration rates in a moment as well. But just to kind of let you know with the 1950 census, so during the 1950 census we have about 100, let me just get this right, yes, the resident population of the United States is about just over 150 and a half million people.

So it’s an increase of about 14.5% over the 1940 census as well. So we see that rule, major growth, most of it as you’ll see in the next slide, is due to births within the United States. So in 1950 there is a huge growth in the birth rates. There is a pretty stable sort of line in terms of death rates from the 1950s onwards. And actually then, so the growth of the population overall as you can see then rises with the birth rates. Now interestingly, we’re seeing with net immigration rates, they’re fairly stagnant and stable for lack of better words. And part of that is due to some of the legislation that had been previously in place, but also legislation that will be put into place in the 1950s as well. So we start to see some really interesting things happening and obviously these lines projecting from 2010 onwards are just protection lines because this data was collected up until 2010. Now thinking about what we were just seeing in terms of an back for a second in terms of that net immigration rates. So we’re thinking about what’s happening within the country.

We know socially we see some conformity, we see a lot of women sort of thinking about getting married, getting married, having families and that development of those family units. But also what we’re starting to see is some interesting things partly related to the Cold War. Now I don’t want to focus completely on the Cold War 'cause actually I’m hoping one of my other colleagues at Lockdown University has already done so or will do so, but I wanted to just mention it because I think it actually has a really important placement in terms of what we see happening socially and economically but also politically within America during this decade. So one of the things that we noticed with that net immigration, so in net immigration in that last slide and immigration is itself is sort of stagnates and is stabilised not really because of the lack of people wanting to come to the United States for instance. But one of the interesting things that we know from history, and this goes back to say the 1940 or sorry, the 1920s in particular. So we have here on my slide the sort of Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.

But actually what’s important behind that is actually previous acts from say, you know, 1924, the Immigration Act then really perhaps one could argue controversially but limited the number of immigrants that were allowed into the United States through a national origins quota. So I’ll repeat that. So there is a quota that is providing immigration visas is based on a quota system from 1924 onwards. And the visa is to 2% of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States. But the interesting thing is they’re not taking the total numbers for that 1924 quota from the 1920 census, which one would assume it would do. It’s taking the 1890 national census for its data in terms of then looking at the total population of each nationality and then using 2% of that sort of numbers from 1890 to then create the quota system that is then implemented from 1924 up until 1952. And so for us it’s a really important one because two things happens with the 1924 Immigration Act. One, it means that the majority of immigrants that would allowed in the US post 1924 will tend to come from northern and western European countries much more than southern or eastern European countries.

It also in 1924 will create an exclusion called the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924 is a part of that package where immigrants from Asia, Chinese had already, Chinese nationals had already been excluded previously in the previous century, but it will then include basically limiting and putting a stop to immigration of the Japanese nationals into the United States from 1924 onwards as well. And so that’s the backdrop into which then in 1952 you have this new act which is trying to redress some of the issues that we saw in 1924 created by the 1924 Immigration Act. So the 1952 Act really is symbolic, one because it will allow for Asian immigration, at least in theory, although in practise we will still find there is discrimination against Asian immigration into the United States. But the new law also sort of tries to readdress and stimulate things. It does uphold the quota system that was created by the 1924 Act, but it also tries to introduce a system of preferences based on skill sets and family reunification as well. I’ll come back to that question David, thank you. I’ve just seen, if you do have any comments or questions, try and drop them in and I’ll do my best at the end to address them as well.

So yes, you’ve got this sort of idea in terms of immigration and I think part of the reason for the Immigration Act is also really relevant to what’s happening in terms of the Cold War. So it’s kind of remarkable. But one of the interesting things for us when we look at the 1952 Immigration Act, whereas the previous one may have been related to political issues abroad and not wanting them to spread here, but also it’s due to sort of the economic and employment situation within the US at the time as well that actually economic factors were relatively unimportant in the debate over the new immigration provisions. And the only thing that perhaps takes precedent is about the Cold War. And so we start to see that happening as well during this period. Now one of the interesting things for us with this 1952 Act, president Truman who was still in office during this period, was concerned about the decisions to maintain the National Origins quota system. Partly because it was establishing racial constructed quotas across the board, but in particular for Asian nations.

And he thought the law was really discriminatory so he actually vetoed it. However, the law had enough support within Congress to pass and override his veto, his presidential veto during this period as well. So it gives you a, perhaps an interesting thought in terms of where things are moving both sort of socially, politically in relation to immigration. Now I kind of want to move on a bit and go back to this idea of the American dream for some. Two sort of ads that came out that I’ve sort of borrowed here for veterans. So veterans if buying a farm home or business you can get a Veterans administration loan but also the Veterans Administration were putting together the G.I. Bill. So these things had been created in the late 1940s, but what we begin to see in the 1950s is the real uptake of it. So by 1950 the US census basically said that nearly 8 million veterans had taken advantage of the benefits that were offered by the G.I. Bill. Now the G.I. Bill had allowed veterans to enrol in college and university and it meant that more men and women were availing themselves of the G.I. Bill provisions which would basically pay for their education.

'Cause one of the things we know from previous decades is that actually getting into university and paying for university was very expensive and was out of the reach of many people. So what the VA’s sort of, if you like G.I. Bill does is it allows for the reskilling and education of veterans coming home. And so the thought was providing them with that but also it’s a sort of trade for their service to their country that actually it meant you would have this great expansion of skills within the labour force as well. And so what we start to see is not just that development in terms of education expansion but actually expansion of what will become the American middle class as well. Partly based on the G.I. Bill. It gave free college and alternatively or additionally I should say it also gave cheap home loans to millions of veterans. Now the exception to both is that in 1950s, early 1950s we still have segregation within the United States. And so because of segregation it meant that many African American, black American veterans were left behind.

They weren’t necessarily able to access the G.I. Bill. And if they could, they were limited in their choices of higher education institutions within the country that they could go and study up. But equally it meant they were discriminated against when it came time for getting veteran VA loans as well for housing. And it’s something we begin to see, some of them will be lucky and they will be able to work with housing associations which will provide them with the ability to take up the VA loans for housing. In other areas, it becomes at the discretion of whoever is running the local authority that is administering the veteran association loans. And that’s where the problem becomes quite apparent as we go through the decade that many of them will be left behind because they won’t be able to access that because there is a level of obviously of segregation but also racial discrimination still in place within the system, within the country that will have an actual impact on how these loans are for housing are administered across the country.

The loans become really important because one of the things we see with the loans, and this ties to the development of suburbia, is many of the veterans who were wanting those loans were wanting either to open farms but also for housing. And most of that housing wasn’t necessarily in the urban centres. There was a real desire, there was a real desire to move out and the two kind of coincide together. So the expansion to suburbs but also the loans offered kind of are really tied together, Anna, that actually what we begin to see is there is a demand for housing and housing is not always available at the type or the size or place in urban centres. And so it then becomes apparent that there needs to be more development elsewhere and this is where we start to see the suburbs developing. And part of that is really based on this sort of idea of planned communities.

So suburban and suburbs are planned communities and the thought was that suburbs would allow veterans to use their housing benefits and their loans to find suitable housing in new tracks on the outskirts of American cities. Now in the 1950s we had the development of suburbs, equally, you have the development of transport systems. So a lot of the sort of major motorways and things also start to get further developed because as people move out of the urban centres there is a necessity for them to be linked back to the cities where many of them are still working or have work. And so you would then see the development of this sort of commuter mentality as well through this. Now one of the interesting side notes that I found that perhaps will make you chuckle. In these new suburbs that are developing, you have a lot of young families or young couples I should say, it wasn’t uncommon for young wives of virtually entire suburban neighbourhoods to be pregnant at around the same time.

But that and also was kind of interesting because it would then push for many of these new suburbs to start to develop other facilities. Think about new schools, think about shops, think about all those other things that we would require if we’re now living in these larger communities that are detached from urban centres. And so those things become growth areas for developers as well. Now one of the major developers of the suburbs if you like and plan communities is Levitt. Now Abraham Levitt found the company but it’s his sons and actually particularly one of his sons, William Levitt who in the 1950s really tries to grow the company. But in particular one of the interesting things is pre-war, the Levitts family had a housing business that was based around building custom homes for the upper middle class communities in Long Island. After the war, William comes home and he starts to think about the fact that actually if you can build things quicker but build them well and you can also build them potentially cheaper at costs, that actually you can begin to mass build communities.

And so one of the things he starts to think about is actually having these versions, five different versions of a house, they all have mostly the same floor plan with slightly different modifications in terms of them, but it allowed them to really push. So he learned through the Navy that you could start to build, you know, sort of mass build cost-effective housing and construction. And so that’s essentially what he proposes to his father for the company. So they move away from custom building homes and he starts to build what becomes known as Levittowns in some areas as well. And just to, you know, sort of, it’s a really interesting one because what we start to see is the development of homes. But one of the things that you’re, if you look into the details of Levittowns, they’re really, really quite fascinating how they build, they construct them. And the construction crew that build them, the reason why they can build, were typically on the day they might be able to build one or two houses.

What they start to be able to do as a crew is build six to 10 houses on site. And part of that is each person has a very specific role within the house structure and that is the only thing they do. So they don’t keep sweeping and changing what they do. They literally go almost like an assembly line, one thing, a beams whatnot as well. And they start to really sort of build these houses on a mass production level. But it’s sort of interesting 'cause the houses are then built faster so they’re available to meet the demand with the supply that come, they can build them cheaper and so they, because they pre construct a lot of and prefab construction, a lot of the houses and the a-frames. And so it really is about putting them together like the jigsaw puzzle in a sense as well. And we start to see that developing.

Now really great one would argue in terms of building the suburbs, one of the downsides, perhaps is the fact that Levitt sounds also because of how they were created, but the agreements they had. Black, many black American veterans were unable to purchase homes in any of the Levittowns. Levitt justifies their clause. So they’ve got a clause in the contract when they’re selling the homes to people and particular those who are using their VA loans. But just anyone, there’s a clause by, that’s a state that in order to maintain the value of the properties, since most whites at the time would’ve preferred to live in non-mixed communities, that anyone selling their home was not able to sell it to someone who was non-white essentially was some of the wording within some of the agreements. And so this becomes quite problematic because then it shuts out many African, black American veterans from being able to use their loans. So they already have, you know, sort of racial discrimination against them in terms of the administration of the loans.

But even if they were lucky enough to get through that process, they then have the trouble of they’re not able to purchase new homes in some areas and even if they’re buying the home from someone else who had already bought it, they’re not allowed to buy it as the second owner of the home as well in many cases. And so it’s only as we then start to see the development of desegregation legislation in the latter part of the 50s that this becomes then redressed. Although there is still that backlash of those within some of those communities, new suburb communities not wanting to live in sort of mixed ethnic groups and mixed communities as well. So it’s a bit of difficulty all around and this is why I said it’s the American dream for some but not all because not everyone is able to access that as well. Gosh, the time flies when we’re having fun, okay.

The economic boom, literally what we see with the development of the suburbs is also then the development of, as I said, other facilities. We said in places like Levittowns, you have in communities like the suburbs, you’ve got the development of schools. But also what we begin to see is the idea of malls being developed. Here, you’ve just got an image of cars with shops going along it. But on the right hand side, a gentleman here is called Victor Gruen and in the middle of the 1950s he is the architect of one of the, if not the first sort of enclosed mall within the US and he has his grand visions for this mall as well. And it gets built, but it is the beginning of that real development of the economic boom, the real development of the mall and the facilities within the mall for people as we see a growing middle class. But also the, you know, sort of the growth of the economy overall as well during the 1950s.

Now one of the interesting things for us as well that I’ll mention here is with that idea of suburbs malls, what you begin to notice perhaps is that many of the ads from the 1950s are actually targeting women. And one of the things we start to notice is because they’re trying to society and the marketing if you like, are trying to push a much more sort of ideal family structure, but also that the father goes to work, the children go to school, the mother takes care of family and home that actually many advertisers recognise the sort of power of women in terms of their purchasing power. They’re the ones that are managing the home, they’re purchasing the groceries, the goods, the services for daily life of their family. So it is quite interesting that women then become the sought after demographic in which advertising in the 1950s will start to target quite readily as well. And so you see here with some of the new inventions particular.

Here, you’ve got the spin washer. I know it feels like something that should have been already done but you know we had automatic washers invented in the 1930s but it lacked any drum suspension so we kind of just keep moving. There wasn’t anything to really anchor it. We start to really begin to see this development of a fully automated with timer for different types of cycles of the washing cycle in the 1950s. And again here, you know, making life easier for women, throwing the women into the advertising for that purpose. Now one of the other interesting innovations and actually feels quite advanced at the time, this idea by seeing it connects its television to what they call the Lazy Bones Remote Control. And you notice very prominently there is a lead. So it’s not like our remote controls now where you’re completely sort of on batteries and remote, but actually the remote means you don’t have to get out of your chair to switch between the, as you can see here, four stations, four channels that you might have on your television as well.

But it’s just something that I thought was quite funny, quite interesting. We begin to see that the television becomes the growth area during the 1950s. By 1955, half of all American homes had a television in it. And that says a lot, it kind of follows the trend in the 1920s where the radio became the really big buy in every home. Many homes had radios in them in the 1920s, 1950s has a television as well. Now other fun facts and other fun things before we go back to a little bit of serious before we finish, other inventions. Yes, Barbie. Barbie comes out in the 1950s. I know the movie Barbie at the moment, but it’s really interesting in terms of the, you know, sort of that longevity. So you’ve got Barbie, Mr. Potato Head gets presented, patented or patented I should say in 1952. Now that’s off the back of what had once upon a time then the original Mr. Potato Head, so this is the original Mr. Potato Head that’s manufactured. But the original idea for the Potato Head was using a real potato and as a toy and you would make a face on it and then it developed into this actual toy where you could then change its shapes and things as well.

The other fun one in the latter part of the 1950s is the hula hoop. Now interestingly the gentleman who invented the hula hoop, Richard Knerr and Arthur Melin didn’t actually invent the idea. What they came across in 1957 was they’d met someone from Australia who had been visiting California who told them that children at home in Australia were twirling bamboo hoops around their waist in gym class. And that spawned for them the idea of well can we replicate that but not using bamboo but something else. And this is where then they sort of took that idea, found a way to manufacture it and really became one of the most popular items in the 1950s. So, and interestingly during the first two months of its release in the 1950s, they sold 25 million hula hoops in two months and it’s almost a hundred million international orders also follow. So it became a really big hit from something that someone had mentioned to them and they had sparked their imagination in terms of that as well.

So some of the few things that we see happening in 1950s, the first non-stick pan was also produced. The first successful kidney transplant is performed in the US by Harvard physicians as well. The patient then survives for an additional seven years from that first kidney transplant as well. There’s a lot of things that are happening that we see in the 1950s partly based on the, just the innovations that always come with sort of booms in economics one could argue but also I think perhaps as well where we’re starting to see different ideas starting to float within the country. So it’s not purely conformist as we’ve been led to believe in terms of the 1950s. Now I’ve dropped this one here and I just wanted to say very briefly 'cause it links between this idea of the 1940s and 50s. So you have the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was created actually in the 1930s, but what they do through the late 40s and into the early 50s is they target Hollywood and it causes a real huge strain. So, but, and part of it is related to communism and support for, or if someone had been a sort of party member of a communist local communist party as well and essentially is linked to McCarthyism.

But what we find through the late 40s going into the 50s in particular, that’s important for us, sorry about that, which is important for us is that link to the Cold War and communism and the Soviets and anyone who is then looking to be supportive of the communists are targeted. Here we have the infamous Hollywood Ten. So you have 10 motion picture producers, directors and screenwriters who then are called forward to the house on American Activities Committee in the 40s. Only this one gentleman here, Edward Dmytryk renounces and announces that he had once been a party to the, you know, a member of the Communist party. But also with that he gives a lot of names of people who are then targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but also by the FBI during this period as well. And he is the only one that turned out of all of them who’d been originally in prison as a sort of sellout.

One could argue as well, a bargaining chip, they let him out of prison. He admits he was a former communist and he also gives them names of other people who were communist supporters within the country as well. But it has a huge impact where many of those here would be blacklisted through the 50s into the early 60s. And it’s only in retrospect that many of them will be able to return back into Hollywood. Some of them that were named not just these 10 but others by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but also by McCarthy will never return to Hollywood as actors, as producers, as directors, as writers because of the, you know, sort of the backlash of that as well. Now I know I’m only supposed to talk for 45 minutes and I’m really sorry. There’s some things that I really want to share with you. So I think one of the big things of the 1950s is also Brown v Board of Education. The US Supreme Court case is major, it is the, if you like, the forefront of civil rights as well because it will create the atmosphere where desegregation of schools need to happen.

We also know previously Truman also signed for desegregation of the military and then on top of that we start to see a real underground movement. And this is where the descent comes in. You have people like Rosa Parks who refuses to give up her seat on a bus to a white gentleman in Alabama. And so you begin to see the change of course and the real sort of movement of the civil rights from the 1950s going into the 1960s. With the Board of Brown versus Board of Education decision by the US Supreme Court, you also have then the Little Rock Nine. So these are nine African American students in Arkansas who were slated to attend a previously all white only high school. However, the Arkansas governor at the time refused to allow them to do so and put the Arkansas National Guard at the door at the gates barring them from entering the high school. It will take a presidential sort of if you like, act and putting the sort of, if you like, the military presence to escort these nine students to really start the desegregation process.

And it is a really tough one for all students, but in particularly for African American students who are trying to get into the schools that are nearest to them. You have the Little Rock Nine, you also have images if you look in the 1950s of very small children, really young African American girl being escorted by the military into the school and a lot of verbal abuse being thrown at her and at the military at her family for letting her go to school and the school being desegregated. A lot of parents withheld their children from the school and protests as well. So this is all happening in the backdrop of this sort of more idealistic idea of the 1950s of America. And then you have the Civil Rights Act of 57, really important for Eisenhower to have passed this. But also it again, interestingly, it’s not the first civil rights act to be passed and for civil rights law, it’s just one that will then need to be enforced a lot more because that’s been one of the issues with the idea of the Civil Rights Acts that have sort of preceded it.

They’ve been put into place but they’ve never been fully committed to being enforced in the same way. And so we start to then see enforcement of civil rights from the 1950s and then really going into the 1960s as well. And I promise the last thing, only because it’s near and dear to my heart. I was born and raised in Hawaii. So for me the interesting thing with thinking about territorial reach, you have statehood for Alaska and America, and Hawaii in the same year in 1959. Now one of the little known things that’s really interesting is Alaska comes first because one of the interesting things is there were certain quarters within the political realm, shall we say, who really wanted Alaska to join the union. But knowing how these have always occurred historically, it creates then an imbalance within Congress in terms of seats. So what you notice throughout American history in previous sort of if you like, decades but also in the century before states tended to be grouped together or come in pairs into joining the union.

And so likewise we find that although President Eisenhower for strategic reasons obviously wanted Hawaii and supported Hawaiian statehood didn’t necessarily support Alaskan statehood until quite late in 1958 when it became clear that both needed to be admitted simultaneously or one after the other in order to appease political parties, both the Democrats as well as the Republicans. 'Cause the Democrats had favoured Alaska, Republicans had wanted Hawaii to be admitted and in order to pacify votes, we see both coming in in 1959 months, just a few months of each other as well. And this is where I think for us it’s quite interesting because it kind of gives us a sense of where America’s at in terms of then this idea of expansion but also it again with this expansion of territory, one of the issues becomes the Cold War for Hawaii because of its strategic place within the Pacific and then for Alaska because of where it is in relation to Russia and having previously been bought from Russia as well kind of makes it a really interesting thing.

But those are just some of the things I, in a nutshell, I really wanted to share with you today about the 1950s. So thank you all so much. I’m going to see if I can pick up any of these questions, some really great questions and sharing as well. So thank you. And I apologise in advance if I don’t get to you.

Q&A and Comments

Someone’s mentioned about their parents immigrating. I see sort of interesting. So there was one person, thank you, mentioned about his parents and himself immigrating from Germany in 1951 to Toronto. They had originally wanted to go to New York, but apparently there was a quota in terms of that. And so therefore then they were kind of in a sense forced, and this is sort of interesting because you begin to see that occurring and it depended on when within that year but also how the quota was being administered, David. So yes, in terms of that. They were also Holocaust survivors. Okay, thank you so much for sharing that. Let’s see, and Anna’s written,

Q: “It’s the expansion of the suburbs of 50s phenomenon. Is it related to the loans offered?” A: So it is seen as a 50s phenomenon in the US in particular because of the return of service personnel, but also this desire for their own homes. So what we start to see in the 1950s is a change in terms of the family structure. So whereas perhaps in previous generations you would’ve had multiple generations living next door to each other, really close to each other or together. What we start to see in the 1950s is young people returning and wanting their own space. And so there is a real demand against supply at least at the beginning. And this is what the suburbs become developed is partly because of ideas like Levitt’s but also partly young loans available to make it cheaper for families, new families to afford to buy homes. But there’s also this desire for a separation of home and work but also a separation from previous generations and having one’s own space as well.

Q: Yolanda’s asked, “Did women also qualify for the benefits of the G.I. Bill?” A: Yes, but it’s, again, it’s sort of interesting because there were still limitations in terms of how they were administered. So kind of like with black Americans in terms of the G.I. Bill and the VA loans for housing, what we find is women do qualify, 'cause women did serve in the military as well to certain degrees. But there were also ways in which sometimes they were excluded from gaining some of those access to those benefits as well. And it’s interesting because when we look back historically, a lot of it is also dependent on who’s administering and where it’s being administered from. That will have a huge impact on who then has access and who’s denied access to those things.

Margarita’s asked whether the locus of the city is on the US but is it applicable cross country, cross, ugh, excuse me, cross-culturally Canada and Great Britain. So it’s sort of interesting, I’m trying to think about that. I’m not sure in so much about Canada, but with Britain some of the things that we’re seeing in the 1950s is happening in Britain as well. But don’t forget, Britain kind of like with most of Western Europe is also having to be reconstructed and redeveloped. And so we’re starting to see those things in terms of women’s roles, yes, there is almost a desire kind of to pull back, but also there is a necessity for women to be in the sort of, if you like, the roles of the sort of within the manufacturing within the working life sector as well in places like Britain with the reconstruction. So it’s sort of interesting, there’s this real tug of war I think with wanting to go backwards to, I say backwards but go to a much more traditional sense of family and community and gender roles. But also in many cases, both the US and Britain, those gender roles had already been mixed because of the war. And so there was a real desire to then maintain that but also move that forward and progress it. But it takes a lot longer in some areas than others. Do you want to talk about it sort of the point, someone growing up in major cities, just reading about the music and how suburbia was viewed.

See if there’s any, someone asked, “A plus in buying a Levitt home was that they all had a built-in television, a bonus at the time.” Oh and someone asked me not to forget with the hula hoop you also had the development of the Frisbee. Yes. In terms of that as well. Many of us growing up in the 1950s look back at the being an ideal time to grow up. And it’s true, I think many people viewed the 1950s as sort of an innocent place and an ideal. But I think it’s interesting 'cause when we start to look underneath what was happening both in the US some people are also mentioning in terms of Canada, we see a lot of undercurrents that had actually already started to develop probably as a result of the war but also carry through and they sit underneath for a little while but then it starts to percolate a lot more. And particularly we see in the US it starts to particularly sort of grow a bit more towards the latter part of the 1950s. And we’ll see that really moving into the 1960s when we think of things like the Civil Rights Movement for instance, but also changes in attitudes about gender roles, about things like sex, for instance, drugs, music. So all these things are completely different.

Q: Could you explain the British flag in the corner of the last slide? A: Ah yes. So it’s interesting, it’s a British flag but it’s actually the Hawaiian state flag. Britain has a place in heart of in relation to Hawaii. And so one of the interesting things is that it’s the Hawaii state flag includes what looks like the British flag along with the very American stripes as well. So sort of an interesting sort of dilemma for them. But yes, thank you for noticing that.

Just looking to see if else someone said, I just went through their whole life. Goodness me, thank you for joining us today. We need income. Just reading really quick, someone mentioned, “We needed the income transitioned into full-time teaching as women or being emancipated out of home duties, marriage detentions develop when women were contributing financially to the home.” Yes, Dan, in terms of that, that it does start to change the relationships and this is what we start to see perhaps not so much in the middle of the 50s, but this definitely towards the end of the 50s and going into the 60s, we definitely start to see a real change in attitude, but also in terms of how women also view themselves and view the world around them in the US as well. So some really interesting things to talk about. I know we’ve reached 8 o'clock at least GMT time, 8 o'clock we’ve finished our, I’m sorry I’ve talked so much and I hope I got to some of your questions. But thank you all so much for joining me. I’ve really enjoyed chatting with all of you about the 1950s as well.

• Oh Dale, thank you so much for an excellent talk and we definitely look forward to having you back on Lockdown soon.

• Great, thank you so much everyone.