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Affluence and Anxiety: The Transformation of Levittown and America, 1945-1960

Explore the postwar boom, the flight to the suburbs, the struggle over civil rights, and the quest for the good life in 1950s America through the lens of Levittown's suburbanization.

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Affluence and Anxiety: The Transformation of Levittown and America, 1945-1960

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  1. 29 Affluence and Anxiety1945–1960

  2. The houses of Levittown spread over 1,200 acres of former potato fields on Long Island, New York.

  3. Affluence and Anxiety1945–1960 • The Postwar Boom • The Good Life? • The Struggle Over Civil Rights

  4. Levittown:The Flight to the Suburbs • Residential areas surrounding cities nearly doubled in 1950s • Baby boom accompanied massive shift away from cities; economy boomed • Obsession with affluence causes concern as did nuclear bomb, Red Scare • Civil rights movement shows change at work

  5. Figure 29.1 Birthrate, 1940–1970 Source: Compiled from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975.

  6. The Postwar Boom

  7. The Postwar Boom • 1945–1960: Rapid economic growth • 1960: Fear of another depression wanes

  8. Postwar Prosperity • Stimuli to consumer goods industry • Baby boom • Population shift to suburbia • Increased defense spending; capital investments • Employment expands

  9. Postwar Prosperity (cont’d) • Problems with agricultural overproduction, low prices • Older industrial areas declined • 1957–1958: Recession slowed decade's economic growth

  10. Life in the Suburbs • Suburbia inhabited by middle class • Characteristics of suburbs • Dependence on the automobile • Family togetherness • Traditional feminism discouraged • Entrance of more women into workplace stimulated new feminism

  11. The Good Life?

  12. The Good Life? • Consumerism the dominant social theme of the 1950s • Quality of life left Americans anxious and dissatisfied

  13. Areas of Greatest Growth • Church membership • School attendance • Television watching

  14. One of the most popular television programs of the 1950s was I Love Lucy, a situation comedy featuring the real-life husband-and-wife team of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz portraying the fictional couple Lucy and Ricky Ricardo.

  15. Critics of the Consumer Society • Social critics of suburban culture • John Keats • William Whyte • David Riesman • C. Wright Mills criticized corporations • Jack Kerouac, “Beat” artists promote counterculture

  16. The Struggle Over Civil Rights

  17. The Struggle Over Civil Rights • Cold War prompted quest for American moral superiority • Legal discrimination against African Americans challenged U.S. self-image • African-Americans expected more in postwar America

  18. Civil Rights as a Political Issue • Truman's civil-rights legislation failed • 1948: African American vote gave Truman his margin of victory • Civil rights made part of the liberal Democratic agenda • Truman integrated the armed forces

  19. Desegregating the Schools • 1954: Brown v. Board of Education • Segregated schools unconstitutional • Desegregate "with all deliberate speed" • Massive resistance in Deep South • 1957: Eisenhower's actions • Federal troops sent to Little Rock, Arkansas • Commission on Civil Rights established

  20. Demonstrators supporting the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling to desegregate the nation’s schools. The ruling also sparked protests, many of them violent and destructive, by opponents of integration.

  21. The Beginnings of Black Activism • NAACP: Pressed for civil rights in courts • 1955: Martin Luther King, Jr. led Montgomery bus boycott • 1956: Southern Christian Leadership Conference directed anti-segregation • Sit-ins protested segregation laws • 1960: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

  22. Rosa Parks’s refusal to surrender her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus led to a citywide bus boycott that brought Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to prominence as a leader of the civil rights movement. Parks is shown here being fingerprinted in February 1956 after her arrest for violating an anti-boycott law.

  23. In February 1960, black students from North Carolina A&T College staged a sit-in at a “whites only” lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Their nonviolent protest spurred similar demonstrations in public spaces across the South.

  24. Conclusion:Restoring National Confidence

  25. Conclusion:Restoring National Confidence • American people more optimistic in 1960 than in 1950 • Fear of economic depression waned • Fear of Cold War continued • Growing recognition of incompatibility of racial injustice with American ideals

  26. Timeline

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