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It was probably not fully realized at the time, but the American Dream came true in the middle decade of the 20th century.
Looking back from the sophistication of life more than a half-century later, the 1950s seem quaint and very innocent.
It was the decade after a brutal world war and the time interval before America grew up amid assassinations and generational strife in the chaotic ’60s.
What is the American Dream?
It is the idea that all people are equal in opportunity. By working hard, anyone has the potential to achieve their goals and live a good life.
This singular ideal stems from the basic values of our country and the reasons it came into existence in the first place.
Thomas Jefferson said it best. It is engrained in us by the Declaration of Independence (1776): all men, having been created equally, have inalienable rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The American Dream as such a term was drawn from the sayings of James Truslow Adams, a historian. In 1931 he wrote how the dream is of life better for each one because of the result of their ability or achievements.
Precursors of the American Dream of the 1950s
The Civil War split a growing but still fairly primitive new country. Then came Reconstruction and a checkered recovery.
Immense progress in living standards and industry occurred in the late 1800s and turn of the new century. The course bobbled through WW 1 and the Roaring Twenties.
Then the country stepped back seriously due to the 1929 stock market crash, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. No stopping time before much of the developed world was engulfed in WW 2.
Suddenly the war was over, with its enormous cranking up of national effort, money, and industry in the effort to achieve a free world.
The Cold War gets in the way
Peace and prosperity. Growth in all aspects of the economy and individual lives developed after the strife of the world conflict. We’ll ignore the Korean War, which unofficially lasted between 1950 and 1953. It truly was called, by the way, the “Forgotten War” since it actually was ignored as much as possible in the public mind. Although it was a symptom of the “Cold War” which had already gotten its start in the late 1940s.
Our effort here is to describe the prosperity of the decade, so we’ll dispense with talking about the negatives pretty quickly. They were the Cold War and the related age of McCarthyism.
The McCarthy era
McCarthyism has become infamous as the practice of unfairly making accusations, based on little evidence, of treason and similar crimes or even just disloyalty to the country.
It actually started with President Truman’s orders in 1947 to screen government employees for communist involvement or leanings.
It was further forwarded by Joseph McCarthy, U.S. senator from Wisconsin. Persons in private life, including entertainers and academics, seemed targeted and “blacklisted”. Some were convicted and imprisoned.
It was a blight on American life until about 1956. Public support was waning.
Over the next several years, the Supreme Court came out with decisions that overturned some of the earlier convictions and prevented new ones to become manifest.
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
Army attorney Joseph N. Welch to Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, Army-McCarthy hearings, June 9, 1954
Anti-communism and fear of annihilation by nuclear war were in the background of everyday life thoughout these years. Somehow, the tendencies continued but did not ruin the thrust toward a prosperous life that characterized the day.
It was the era of the rise of the superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Each stood for its way of life: democracy versus communism. The war was “cold” because it was never declared as such and because no physical weapons were used. The battles were ideational and fought with words.
In all its iterations it was to last until the Berlin Wall came down in 1990 and the Soviet Union collapsed a year later. But during the 1950s it was still new, having arisen from the ashes of the second World War.
Bomb shelters
Fallout, or bomb, shelters were talked about, and built, during much of the 1950s. Knowledge of what atomic bombs could do, of course, originated from the result of the U.S. dropping them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and accelerating the end of World War II.
This, combined with the anti-communism that arose in the late 1940s, caused real widespread fear that devastation could come to our homeland.
The federal government under President Eisenhower put out extensive literature to guide people in how to survive such an event.
Primary among these was to build a backyard home cellar in which to ride out the nuclear storm. Vivid and extensive descriptions were given out and many got built. Some folks went to live in them, too.
Another war had begun in Indochina
We tie our memories of the Vietnam War to the 1960s, but this war began in 1955. However, it was not really part of the consciousness of the nation during those early years.
The race to space
The intense and serious rivalry between our country and the Soviet bloc became manifest also in the beginning of the space age.
The technology that had helped to end World War II could now in part be focused elsewhere. Manpower and intellect started the race to space. A point of tension for us was the initial jump into space was by them, not us.
Sputnik, the first artificial satellite launched October 5, 1957. The happening was gravely received by U.S. citizens.
There was some psychological relief at the end of January 1958 when the U.S. sent up Explorer I. (whew)
Our country hastened to develop NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and the space race was on.
The foundation was laid for the singular American achievement of placing a man on the moon in 1969.
So what was good about the ’50s?
The 1950s had a lot going for it. If any decade deserved to be called the golden age of capitalism, this was it.
- advancement in national prosperity
- improving standard of living
- low unemployment
- steady growth in wages
- affordable housing
- increasing home ownership
- inexpensive cost of college
- low crime rate
- low rate of drug abuse
- people more polite, in personal life and politics
- low amount of violence and profanity in entertainment (movies and TV)
- Elvis Presley
Eisenhower and peaceful politics
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a very popular president. He was the connector between the world of war of the 1940s and the world of peace of the 1950s.
Politics was civil. People largely continued their unitary approach, which was probably a remnant of the undivided behavior when all united to fight the common enemy. So the population had a feeling of common ground and peaceful existence. It was an optimistic view.
This was an age of conformity. That’s a term that came to disrepute in the next decade, by the next generation. However, in this post-war world, given the regimentation of the public in the war effort, it is probably understandable.
Along with that came uniformity. Probably another continuing trait legacy from the recent wartime. Men went to work. Women stayed at home and were wives and mothers.
We can see how memories of this decade get the label of “the happy days”.
Happy Days was actually a very popular television show that aired for a number of years starting in the mid-1970s.
It captured many stereotypes of family life in the 1950s and lived up to its name.
The good new days of the post-war era
The enormous national machine of money and manpower, so to speak, that the U.S. had aimed at the world war could now point toward the economy.
It was a period when a lot of the technological advances that had been growing during the previous half-century were coming to fruition.
Eisenhower built on the accomplishments of FDR’s New Deal from the 1930s. He strengthened infrastructure and built interstate highways.
The economy boomed as the decade went on. The standard of living rose. The government balanced the federal budget (thanks Ike!). There was low unemployment. Oil was cheap. The G.I Bill helped returning veterans go to college and get good jobs.
All these improvements led to the prosperity that persisted through the years.
Consumer revolution
After the down days of the Great Depression, followed by the WW 2 effort, consumerism exploded in the 1950s. Well, I guess you could say it was a quieter explosion compared with some. Nevertheless, now goods were available to buy that had not been in years.
Better said: they were also in new forms, inventions coming to fruition that the nation could not afford during the war. Or had not yet developed for non-military uses.
Chief among these was the profusion in the availability of amount and types of plastics.
Saran Wrap and Tupperware, oh my
Plastic had first been developed many years earlier. Bakelite was a significant breakthrough in the early developing industry in 1907 and the first to be called plastic. World War II was a great impetus for the advancement of inventions in all related industries that produced synthetic materials needed for the military supply chain.
Because these materials were quite new to the burgeoning consumer community, some advertising of what they could do prompted interest. It didn’t take long before household use of myriad products skyrocketed.
- Tupperware
- Saran Wrap
- nylon panyhose
- sink racks
- innumerable toys
- plastic dishes and cups
- lighting fixtures
- etc.
(The origins of vinyl replacing shellac in phonograph records during the 1950s interested us too. We wrote about that in another post. It was a major technological advance in music.)
It’s fitting that the first credit cards came out in 1950. Diners Club made them available for restaurants. American Express intended the next one, in 1958, for travel and entertainment-related expenses. Often business generated. But you had to pay the balance off each month. BankAmericard enlarged the playing field in 1960, later transformed in VISA, and y’all know how the availability and use have evolved since!
The middle class could now purchase items that in the past had been luxuries affordable only by much wealthier people. Of course, many of these were new items, not available to anybody before. Such as the TV! But we do think the convertible car is an outstanding example.
Height of the American car culture
This era has sometimes been called the Automobile Revolution. We call it America’s romance with the car.
The number of autos sold almost doubled. Beauty and power were most important. V8 engine. Looks could kill, as the saying goes.
There were a lot of associated changes in the nation’s fabric: the rise of long-distance highways and freeways, shopping centers, quick food marts, and inexpensive motels appeared over the landscape. What about the drive-through for fast food pickup and the drive-in for more food and movies?
A lot of the boom was the Baby Boom
Our memories will always connect the Baby Boom with the next decade, the ’60s. That was the decade the first of the post-war generation came of age and led the protests and upheavals of that coming time. But they were kids in the ’50s. Later, they had babies to care for and feed and families to house and find work. The large numbers fueled a lot of the momentum toward suburban living, modern housing, up-to-date appliances, and entertainment.
Everybody went to the suburbs
If there is anything that exemplifies the 1950s in the minds of many people, it is suburbs. {italics or bold} So much so that the “American Dream” described above has strongly implied suburban living in the desired scenario.
It was the G.I. Bill that gave money to the veterans of WW 2 that helped the young families to afford mortgages and middle-class lives. Also, the availability and affordability of cars was a key element.
William J. Levitt is said to be the originator of the American suburb.
In 1951 and 1952 Levitt and Sons built large tracts of houses in the Levittowns of Long Island, NY, and Pennsylvania. Several repeating patterns were available.
The crews employed elements learned from factory assembly lines to construct similar modern dwellings.
Because of the transistor radio, we got rock and roll
Radio’s golden age had been in the 1930s and sustained everyone during the difficulties of the ’40s. It was still going strong after the conflict had dimmed. The audio imaging and story-telling were super.
People would stay riveted to hear the next installment of a mystery serial, The Shadow, or situational comedy, Burns and Allen. So they were well-trained to expect entertainment to come into their living rooms when television came along.
Wait. Before we get to TV, let’s not forget to talk about the innovation that extended radio into the world of young people and largely made possible the outbreaks in listening to new music of the later decade.
It was the transistor, invented in 1947 at Bell Laboratories. Research came out of WW 2. Well, that sounds boring. No: not so boring.
It made possible small portable radios. First by Texas Instruments. Instead of the big lug in the living room, by the mid-1950s, you could carry it with you. By 1955 it was in your car.
You could say it invented rock and roll! Not really, of course, but what would it have been without an earplug and being able to get away from your (very square) parents? By 1958 the Top 40 hits were on AM radio. P.S. The word teenager was first used about then!
Color TV – need we say more
What an innovation TV was. At this point, it was an extension of movies that they watched in the downtown movie theater and the adventures they heard on the radio. And in color. Television was kind of expected. It took over people’s evening right away. By the end of the era, it was king of the early nighttime. A new morning time activity for kids originated: cartoon shows. (When was Mickey Mouse Club on?}
Home entertainment completed the change from active to passive. From sewing and playing the piano with guests over for board games (the latter still happened), to passive. Get out the popcorn and watch television.
Was this the beginning of social isolation? The whole family rushing through dinner to get to the living room for the favorite TV show, then all sitting in a row on the couch avidly watching it.
I Love Lucy {bold} was perhaps the most popular show, and it was funny.
Quite an unusual feature, a very early precursor of tolerance of minorities that wasn’t emulated for decades, was the acceptance of Cuban American Dezi Arnaz in the leading role of Ricky Ricardo.
However, the show that nailed the image of family that the decade was all about was Father Knows Best. This was the quintessential American family.
Rock ‘n roll
Talk about marvels: TV brought the advent of new music into everyone’s home. When before had a singer been broadcast like this. It was Elvis Presley. Rock and roll had been coming on the scene for a few years (Chuck Berry, and others), but with Elvis, it blasted into the national consciousness. Bye, bye, Sinatra.
Elvis Presley, “Hound Dog”, on the Ed Sullivan Show on October 28, 1956.
Elvis suddenly was the King of rock and roll. New music was born with him. He was unbelievably popular, but also a bit of an anachronism. It was such a conservative decade, but Elvis, for his time, was anything but. When “swivel hips” appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, the nation swooned.
Caveats – the invisible people
So, is it true what we said? Was the American Dream really achieved in the 1950s?
Both “yes” and “no” are true.
“Yes”, we do feel it was achieved. The majority of the population in that decade understood and accepted the Dream. Certainly, that majority did achieve it.
“No”, in that significant segments of the U.S. population remained ignored and did not achieve the so-called American Dream. Many minority groups were shut out of the American Dream. They weren’t even “on the radar”, so to speak.
Previously disenfranchised populations, largely the African American descendants of slavery, improved in well-being during these years. But not much, compared with the general population. Many were among the “invisible poor” of the ’50s.
The continued discrimination, separation, and lack of equality simmered. It brewed to become real trouble and a source of much of the turmoil of the coming 1960s.
Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, AL. She was arrested.
This initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott that lasted over a year. During this, Martin Luther King rose to prominence. It all resulted in the Supreme Court declaring public bus segregation to be unconstitutional.
It’s notable that Martin Luther King expressed his version of the desired outcome, not yet achieved, in his 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech that highlighted the March on Washington.
In our own decades in the early 21st century, people are just starting to understand the existence of the LGBTQ community. People did not understand at all during the years we are discussing in this post.
One group that began to achieve some measure of acceptance was the Japanese American. During this first decade after the wrongful internment camps of WW 2, they were still transitioning back into society. It was not until 1988, under President Ronald Reagan’s administration, that the U.S. government apologized and issued some monetary restitution.
In retrospect, this was not a bright period for respect for Native Americans.
In the movies and on TV, while the popular Western shows garnered a wide following and were positively remembered for years, their treatment of American Indians was stereotyped.
In the simplified view of the “good guys” versus the “bad guys” of the times, if Indians weren’t bad, they could only be sidekicks.
Before you go
We hope you have enjoyed this article. A bit of reminiscing, wasn’t it?
From time to time we write a post that features a period in our national history. You may like one we wrote on colonial life. There is also one that is about the beginning of the 20th century. That was around 50 or so years before the era of this current article. We think we had the most fun writing about the Roaring Twenties.
Thanks for being here.
Living at the turn of the twentieth century