- Contradictions in the 1950s
- 1950s seemed kinder, simpler, and more innocent than previous decades
- No roaring '20s
- No 1930s depression
- No World Wars (except for a small one in Korea)
- Popular television shows championed conservative family values
- Father Knows Best
- Leave It to Beaver
- President Eisenhower was like everyone's grandfather
- Booming American economy
- New homes were built
- Manufacture of appliances
- New roads to connect suburbs
- More automobiles were built
- Cars were equipped with AM radios
- Teenagers could listen to "forbidden Rhythm and Blues and Rock" in cars
- They could escape disapproving parents' scrutiny of this new music (made for them!)
- Fear of communism
- Fears arose that communists would overtake our government
- Senator Joseph McCarthy headed a committee to find communists in the U.S. Communists were suspected among
- Politicians
- Creative people involved in the entertainment industry (Their ideas could reach millions of unsuspecting fans through their work.)
- Labor unions
- Hugh Hefner introduced Playboy in 1953
- Calendar of a nude Marilyn Monroe
- Focus on the previously taboo subject of sexuality and morality in general
- Civil rights movement
- Brown vs. Board Education 1954
- Linda Brown denied opportunity to attend an all-white public school in Topeka, Kansas
- Supreme Court ruled that to be unconstitutional
- Montgomery, Alabama 1955
- Black woman, Rosa Parks, refused to sit in the back of the segregated bus
- Martin Luther King Jr. organized a peaceful bus boycott
- 1956 Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional
- Controversy over civil rights became a bonding element in the 1950s folk music scene
- Rhythm and blues was seen as a threat because of its roots in black culture
- The contradictions:
- Joseph McCarthy and Martin Luther King Jr.
- Leave it to Beaver and Playboy
- Consumerism and the civil rights movement
- Rock and roll brought opposites together during the 1950s
- Black and white
- Urban and rural
- North and south
