社會觀察家阿文君的部落格

Economic

Social

Political

With economic prosperity, people spent more on luxury items. Lawn mowers, air conditioners, and television sets. 

Billy Graham, a Christian evangelist, is very popular. He has a radio program called “The Hour of Decision,” he started the magazine Christianity Today, and in 1957 holds a “Billy Graham Crusade” in New York City that runs every night for 16 weeks and is covered by the national media.

Eisenhower won the presidential election of 1956.

Americans shopped for food that was more “convenient” including frozen dinners, instant foods, and “space age” products.

Television became the most influential and popular form of mass media.

The Eisenhower administration ended the Korean War

Church attendance swelled from 64.5 million (48% of the population) to 110 million (63% of the population) in 1958.

“I am an invisible man,” declared Ralph Ellison’s African American narrator in his novel. “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

In 1957, the Russians fired the first satellite into space – Sputnik.

Despite economic optimism, 1/5 of the nation’s population lived in poverty.

The media portrayed the 1950s as a time with large cars, cheap gas, and affordable homes in the suburbs.

The Space Race grew out of the Cold War. Both the U.S. and Soviet Union wanted to put satellites into space.

By the mid 1950s, Americans had twice as much real income (income measured by the amount of goods and services it will buy regardless of inflation) as they had in the 1920s.

“A woman isn’t a woman until she’s been married and had children” – this quote from the movie The Tender Trap in 1955 shows a popular belief concerning a woman’s role in society.

A fear of communism swept the nation – especially after the influence of McCarthyism.