Nettie Hunt explaining to her daughter Nickie the meaning of the high court's ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

A group of Hollywood celebrities are shown here as they arrived at the Capitol this morning to protest the tactics of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee's Investigation into alleged Hollywood Communism

TV Time TogetherA happy family cheerfully sits in their living room and watches a televisied clown and puppet show, 1957. The father holds an newspaper open to the financial section in his hands. (Photo by Lambert/Getty Images)

1950s

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<p>The 1960s was one of the most tumultuous and divisive decades in world history. The era was marked by the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and antiwar protests, countercultural movements, political assassinations and the emerging "generation gap."</p>


1960s

<p>Hispanic Heritage Month is an annual celebration of the history and culture of the U.S. Latin and Hispanic communities. The event, which spans from September 15 to October 15, commemorates how those communities have influenced and contributed to American society at large.</p>


Hispanic History

<p>Art history tells the complex story of human civilization through art, literature and design. It ranges from prehistoric art of the Neolithic period through Renaissance masterpieces, Impressionism, Modernism, the Bauhaus and contemporary art.</p>


Art, Literature and Film History

1959

<p>Inventions from the telephone to the Model T and the computer have defined human history, and inventors like Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney and Alexander Graham Bell have transformed our society.</p>


Inventions & Science

<p>The 1950s were a decade marked by the post-World War II boom, the dawn of the Cold War and the civil rights movement in the United States. At this time the U.S. economy was booming and more (mostly white) Americans could afford new cars, suburban houses and other consumer goods. But the 1950s also saw great conflict and division, from the nascent civil rights movement to the crusade against communism at home and abroad in the Korean War.</p>


The 1950s were a decade marked by the post-World War II boom, the dawn of the Cold War and the civil rights movement in the United States.

The 1950s - Economy, Civil Rights & Korean War | HISTORY

<p>The Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union lasted for decades and resulted in anti-communist suspicions and international incidents that led two superpowers to the brink of nuclear disaster.</p>


Cold War

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<div class="p-rich_text_section">African Americans have played a central role in shaping U.S. history. From slavery and its abolition to the Great Migration, the civil rights movement and military, scientific, cultural and political achievements, explore key moments, milestones and figures in Black History.</div>
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Black History

1947

<p>Paranormal activity refers to any event or situation outside the scope of modern scientific reasoning, such as UFO sightings, the Roswell crash, the predictions of Nostradamus and other curiosities.</p>


Paranormal

1954

<p>Stretching more than 3,000 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, the United States of America is comprised of 50 states, each with its own state capital, traditions and history.</p>


U.S. States

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Historians use the word “boom” to describe a lot of things about the 1950s: the booming economy, the booming suburbs and most of all the so-called “baby boom.” This boom began in 1946, when a record number of babies–3.4 million–were born in the United States. About 4 million babies were born each year during the 1950s. In all, by the time the boom finally tapered off in 1964, there were almost 77 million “baby boomers.”

After <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii">World War II</a> ended, many Americans were eager to have children because they were confident that the future promised peace and prosperity. In many ways, they were right. Between 1945 and 1960, the gross national product more than doubled, growing from $200 billion to more than $500 billion, kicking off “the Golden Age of American Capitalism.” Much of this increase came from government spending: The construction of <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/us-states/interstate-highway-system">interstate highways</a> and schools, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/gi-bill">distribution of veterans’ benefits</a> and most of all the increase in military spending–on goods like airplanes and new technologies like computers–all contributed to the decade’s economic growth. Rates of unemployment and inflation were low, and wages were high. Middle-class people had more money to spend than ever–and, because the variety and availability of consumer goods expanded along with the economy, they also had more things to buy.

The 1950s were about more than just poodle skirts and rock and roll.

The 1950s

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The baby boom and the suburban boom went hand in hand. Almost as soon as World War II ended, developers such as William Levitt (whose “Levittowns” in <a href="/topics/us-states/new-york">New York</a>, <a href="/topics/us-states/new-jersey">New Jersey</a> and <a href="/topics/us-states/pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</a> would become the most famous symbols of suburban life in the 1950s) began to buy land on the outskirts of cities and use mass production techniques to build modest, inexpensive tract houses there. The <a href="/topics/world-war-ii/gi-bill">G.I. Bill</a> subsidized low-cost mortgages for many returning soldiers, which meant that it was often cheaper to buy one of these suburban houses than it was to rent an apartment in the city.

These houses were perfect for young families–they had informal “family rooms,” open floor plans and backyards–and so suburban developments earned nicknames like “Fertility Valley” and “The Rabbit Hutch.”&nbsp;

Though the G.I. Bill helped white Americans prosper and accumulate wealth in the postwar years, it didn’t deliver on that promise for veterans of color. In fact, the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits">wide disparity in the bill’s implementation</a> ended up driving growing gaps in wealth, education and civil rights between white and Black Americans.

Suburban homes, meanwhile, weren't always so perfect for the (mostly white) women who lived in them. In fact, the booms of the 1950s had a particularly confining effect on many American women. Advice books and magazine articles (“Don’t Be Afraid to Marry Young,” “Cooking to Me Is Poetry,” “Femininity Begins At Home”) urged women to leave the workforce and embrace their roles as wives and mothers. The idea that a woman’s most important job was to bear and rear children was hardly a new one, but it began to generate a great deal of dissatisfaction among women who yearned for a more fulfilling life. (In her 1963 book <em>The Feminine Mystique</em>, women’s rights advocate <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/betty-friedan">Betty Friedan</a> argued that the suburbs were “burying women alive.”) This dissatisfaction, in turn, contributed to the rebirth of the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/feminism-womens-history">feminist movement</a> in the 1960s.

A growing group of Americans spoke out against inequality and injustice during the 1950s. African Americans had been fighting against racial discrimination for centuries; during the 1950s, however, the struggle against racism and segregation entered the mainstream of American life. For example, in 1954, in the landmark <a href="/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka"><em>Brown v. Board of Education</em></a> case, the <a href="/topics/supreme-court-facts">Supreme Court</a> declared that “separate educational facilities” for black children were “inherently unequal.” This ruling was the first nail in Jim Crow’s coffin.

In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously strikes down segregation in public schools, sparking the Civil Rights movement.

Brown v. Board of Education

Many Southern whites resisted the Brown ruling. They withdrew their children from public schools and enrolled them in all-white “segregation academies,” and they used violence and intimidation to prevent blacks from asserting their rights. In 1956, more than 100 Southern congressmen even signed a “Southern Manifesto” declaring that they would do all they could to defend segregation.

Despite these efforts, a new movement was born. In December 1955, a Montgomery activist named <a href="/topics/black-history/rosa-parks">Rosa Parks</a> was arrested for refusing to give her seat on a city bus to a white person. Her arrest sparked a <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/montgomery-bus-boycott">13-month boycott</a> of the city’s buses by its black citizens, which only ended when the bus companies stopped discriminating against Black passengers. Acts of “nonviolent resistance” like the boycott helped shape the civil rights movement of the next decade.

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The tension between the United States and the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/history-of-the-soviet-union">Soviet Union</a>, known as the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war">Cold War</a>, was another defining element of the 1950s. After World War II, Western leaders began to worry that the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/russia/history-of-the-soviet-union">USSR</a> had what one American diplomat called “expansive tendencies”; moreover, they believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened democracy and capitalism everywhere. As a result, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/russia/communism-timeline">communism</a> needed to be “contained”–by diplomacy, by threats or by force.&nbsp;

This policy is what <a href="https://www.history.com/news/korean-war-causes-us-involvement">drew American forces into the Korean War </a>in July 1950. A month earlier,&nbsp;some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south.&nbsp;As far as American officials were concerned, fighting on behalf of the Republic of Korea was pushback against forces of international communism itself.

The United States never formally declared war on North Korea. Instead, President <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/harry-truman">Harry Truman</a> referred to the addition of ground troops as a “police action.”&nbsp;The Korean War <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/armistice-ends-the-korean-war">armistice</a>, signed on July 27, 1953, drew a new border between <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/korea/north-korea-history">North Korea</a> and <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/korea/south-korea">South Korea</a>, granting South Korea some additional territory and demilitarizing the zone between the two nations.

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Cold War tensions shaped domestic policy as well. Many people in the United States worried that communists, or “subversives,” could destroy American society from the inside as well as from the outside. Between 1945 and 1952, Congress held 84 hearings designed to put an end to <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/huac">“un-American activities” </a>in the federal government, in universities and public schools and even in Hollywood. These hearings did not uncover many treasonous activities–or even many communists–but it did not matter: Tens of thousands of Americans lost their jobs, as well as their families and friends, in the anti-communist “Red Scare” of the 1950s.

In the 1950s, televisions became something the average family could afford, and by 1950 4.4 million U.S. families had one in their home. The Golden Age of Television was marked by family-friendly shows like <em>I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Twilight Zone</em> and <em>Leave It To Beaver. </em>In movie theaters, actors like John Wayne, James Stuart, Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Elizabeth Taylor and <a href="https://www.biography.com/actor/marilyn-monroe">Marilyn Monroe</a> dominated the box office. The Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning signaled a new age in art, paving the way for the Pop Art of artists like <a href="https://www.history.com/news/andy-warhol-shot-valerie-solanas-the-factory">Andy Warhol</a> in the 1960s.

<a href="https://www.history.com/news/7-fascinating-facts-about-elvis">Elvis Presley</a>. Sam Cooke. Chuck Berry. Fats Domino. Buddy Holly. The 1950s saw the emergence of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the new sound swept the nation. It helped inspire rockabilly music from Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. People swayed to The Platters and The Drifters. Music marketing, changed, too: For the first time, music began to target youth. 

On February 3, 1959, American musicians Buddy Holly. Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson died in a plane crash over Clear Lake, Iowa, in what became known as “<a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-day-the-music-died">The Day The Music Died</a>”—an event immortalized in Don McLean’s 1972 song “American Pie.”

The booming prosperity of the 1950s helped to create a widespread sense of stability, contentment and consensus in the United States. However, that consensus was a fragile one, and it splintered for good during the tumultuous <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/1960s-history">1960s</a>.

The Elvic Oracle. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-elvic-oracle">The New Yorker</a>.<br />1950s Rock ‘n’ Roll. <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/the-50s-a-decade-of-music-that-changed-the-world-229924/">Rolling Stone.</a><br />The Day The Music Died. <a href="https://www.biography.com/news/the-day-the-music-died--plane-crash">Biography.</a><br />The Fifties: The Way We Really Were. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=gq0sy-ns2N0C&amp;pg=PA344&amp;lpg=PA344&amp;dq=4.4+million+tvs&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=myAo16Va_n&amp;sig=ACfU3U1P7unBeutVvK5axx3T2mTxHcX9cw&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjqk4ytgdfoAhW0gnIEHSd4ALUQ6AEwA3oECAgQNA#v=onepage&amp;q=4.4%20million%20tvs&amp;f=false">Douglas T. Miller and Marion Novak</a>.

During the 1950s, the United States was the world’s strongest military power. Its economy was booming, and the fruits of this prosperity–new cars, suburban houses and other consumer goods–were available to more people than ever before. However, the 1950s also saw great conflict. The nascent civil rights movement and the crusade against communism at home and abroad exposed underlying divisions in American society.

The 1950s - American Culture & Society

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1950s

Topics

The 1950s

The Interstate Highway System

Baby Boomers

HUAC

Stories

How ‘Project Blue Book’ Production Designers Evoked the Golden Age of UFOs

The First Birth Control Pill Used Puerto Rican Women as Guinea Pigs

How Dolls Helped Win Brown v. Board of Education

Inside the Rise and Fall of Toys ‘R’ Us

This Day in History

Bill Haley and His Comets record “Rock Around The Clock”

Hawaii becomes 50th state

“A Streetcar Named Desire” opens on Broadway

Topics

The 1950s

The Interstate Highway System

Baby Boomers

HUAC

Stories

How &#8216;Project Blue Book’ Production Designers Evoked the Golden Age of UFOs

The First Birth Control Pill Used Puerto Rican Women as Guinea Pigs

How Dolls Helped Win Brown v. Board of Education

Inside the Rise and Fall of Toys ‘R’ Us

This Day in History

Bill Haley and His Comets record “Rock Around The Clock”

Hawaii becomes 50th state

“A Streetcar Named Desire” opens on Broadway

How ‘Project Blue Book’ Production Designers Evoked the Golden Age of UFOs