Loving v. Virginia Landmark Court Case
Loving v. Virginia was a 1958 Supreme Court case that struck down state laws banning interracial marriage in the United States. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and Black woman whose marriage was...
Mao’s Great Leap Forward
https://youtu.be/60_Q-kAZbXA The Great Leap Forward in the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign from 1958 to 1962 that was launched by Chairman Mao Zedong in an attempt to restructure the country from an...
Miss USA (a mother) Loses Her Title
After 18 year old Mary Leona Gage was crowned Miss USA in 1957, she was stripped of her title when it was revealed that she was married and the mother of two children.
Christmas in the 1950s
Brown v. Board of Education
In the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. The case became one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement,...
Sexist and Prejudicial Public Service Announcements
https://youtu.be/xuZzHOKhKAI https://youtu.be/Oe7qdnBTJy8
Family Bomb Shelters for Atomic Attack
https://youtu.be/8UW0LgiHFQQ As Cold War tension regarding the threat of Soviet nuclear attack rose in the 1950s, children learned to duck and cover under their school desks and many families across the country built fallout shelters in their basements and...
American Home Front
As their sailors, soldiers and airmen became mired in a brutal war in Korea, life went on in the USA. https://youtu.be/R1zM5WF1NF0
1950s Christmas Traditions
Here is an interesting post about origins of Christmas traditions
Peanuts Comic Strip
https://youtu.be/dKc8OTRBYXY Peanuts, an American comic strip, written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, ran from October 1950, to February 2000. 17,897 published Peanuts strips ran in over 2,600 newspapers. Translated into 21 languages, Peanuts had a...
Thanksgiving
https://youtu.be/-yJ6QpDJMAw A severe blizzard began the day after Thanksgiving https://youtu.be/rTTASQXPRb0 Meanwhile in Korea U.S. troops were at the Chinese border
Cost of Living 1950
https://youtu.be/mzhUuMrkdcA In 1950: a new house cost $8,450.00 the average income per year was $3,210.00 a gallon of gas was 18 cents the average cost of new car was $1,510.00 A few more prices from the 50's and how much things costChrysler New Yorker $43471958...
American Shopping Mall
Pinterest In April 1950 Northgate Center, the first urban shopping mall, was opened in Seattle.Originally an open air complex where the stores faced each other, Northgate began adding a roof over the concourse in 1962 and was completely enclosed by 1974....
Death of a Salesman
#Death of a Salesman, a play by Arthur Miller, won the Pulitzer prize for drama in 1949.
Christmas in America
In 1948 Christmas was a period of peace, productivity, and prosperity for Americans. https://youtu.be/E7PBOub4j8U Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer first appeared in a 1939 booklet written by Robert L. May and published by the Montgomery...
American Economy
US federal spending as a share of GDP Here is a conservative view of this epoch from the Mercatus Center/George Mason University (alternative comments would be most welcome) In the four years from peak World War II spending in 1944 to 1948, the U.S. government cut...
Tupperware Parties
The type of plastic that would ultimately be used for food containers was developed by Earl Tupper in 1938. Marketed after WWII as a new lightweight, unbreakable and airtight alternative for food storage, initial hardware and retail store sales were...
Back in Time
These images seem reflective of the sense of hope and prosperity of post-WWII middle-America. I was only five years old at the time - yet many of these images seem familiar to me. How about you?
TELEVISION
https://youtu.be/qCLtr33MBZ4 Television shows in 1947 Series Debut Ended Picture Page (UK) October 8, 1936 1939 1946 1952 Starlight (UK) November 3, 1936 1939 1946 1949 For The Children (UK) April 24, 1937 1939 July 7, 1946 1950 The Voice of Firestone Televues...
Postwar Hiroshima & Nagasaki
This home movie really took me there. Although grainy, watch this short film clip of 8mm home movies taken by U.S. Army Major Morris Hall during a 3-month tour of Japan less than a year after surrender. Filming with an 8mm home movie camera, Major Hall documented the...
Dr. Benjamin Spock
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, published in 1946, sold over 50 million copies by the time of Spock's death in 1998. The book has also been translated into 39 languages. Prior to Spock's book, child care experts recommended rigid...
Baby Boom
We were the War Children 1945 When all the soldiers came marching home Love looks in their eye -Van Morrison Almost exactly nine months after World War II ended, “the cry of the baby was heard across the land,” as historian Landon Jones later described...
Allies Occupy Germany
Your Job In Germany was a short film shown to US soldiers embarking on post-war occupation duty in Germany. Produced by the United States War Department in 1945, the film was made by a military film unit directed by Frank Capra and was written...
Bomb Kills Oregon Picnickers
Radiolab just broadcast an excellent, detailed account of the Japanese balloon bomb incident at Bly, Oregon LISTEN: http://www.radiolab.org/story/war-our-shore/ My history-inspired novel Enemy in the Mirror: Love and Fury in the Pacific War includes a...
Home Front USA
In the spring of 1945, with much of Europe and the Pacific in ruins, the end of the war was in sight for Americans. While total U.S. military deaths exceeded 400,000 in the European, North African and Pacific theaters, mainland USA never became a significant site of...