How did Levittown impact the lives of Americans in the 1950's?
It was basically a 'bedroom' community established for veterans (and their families) of World War II. Its impact would have been to provide a local pool of labour for the industries of the region - eg. New York and New Jersey.
How significant is Levittown?
Levittown is significant from a multitude of perspectives. In particular it is an example of the mass assembly of homes. An argument can also be made that it is one of the best early examples of suburban planning. For example, in every section property was set aside for public schools. Other areas were designated for churches. It also allowed for the immense steel mill located along the river to flourish. Although, it is now a shell of it's former self. For further reading check out the great wikipedia articles on both Levit and Levittown.
How did southern Whites limit the voting rights of African Americans?
Primarily by terror. For most of the 80+ years of Jim Crow rule in the South, the people who were trying to keep African Americans from voting didn't feel the need to provide any pretext such as insufficient literacy. The fact that they dared to vote was considered sufficient grounds to terrorize or kill them. The terrorists' white neighbors either supported what they were doing or were too afraid of retribution to say otherwise. If you were black in the South during that time, you knew that if you came off 'uppity' in any way, you were likely to wind up mutilated and hanging from a tree branch. You also knew, based on experience, that murder of a black man by one or more white men was essentially legal, as no jury would convict a white man of the crime.Voting was just one very obvious way to invite retribution by bigots, so black people knew to avoid it if they valued their longevity.
How did WW2 affect the rights of African Americans?
As others have said, WW II had a big impact on what African Americans would tolerate. I am inclined to disagree that the blacks migrating found far better circumstances in the north. But in the ‘50s, that could be true. After all, people did come, thanks to The Defender, right down the street from where I live.I think a factor that others haven't mentioned is that deployed blacks were treated as just American in a lot of the countries they went to, particularly France. There is another potential factor I haven't read about in books, but always wondered about. How do you think seeing the images of Selma looked on TV after America’s WWII experience? Refugee Jews and Poles, GI’s that liberated death camps, sailors who witnessed the kamikaze; how would they feel seeing the police turn dogs on children?
How did the baby boom of the 1950s affect American life?
Why do you people ask these COMMON SENSE questions? Do you even KNOW what the "Baby Boom" IS? Because if you actually know and are not just asking this buzz word question because you don't have a clue... then the Baby boom was that HUGE increase in population after WW2... from the years 1945 through 1962 and it resulted in more people being born... and what HAPPENS when you have more people?... you need more of everything to support them... RIGHT? So what would COMMON SENSE tell you would be the result of a huge sudden increase in people?.. just THINK ABOUT IT... You can answer your own question if you just use some common sense and THINK about it
What misconceptions do Americans have about the 1950s?
This one got me to smile. But even I wasn’t around in the ‘50’s. I do know that it was the beginning of various changes, which manifested as rock music. Rock music was the key to the release of the repressive attitudes, primarily setting the foundation for what happened in the ‘60’s. The misconceptions is that it was all white people, and everything was as portrayed in various TV shows like Leave it to Beaver and My Three Sons and perhaps others. The attitude was that of strict control and a form of morality that was supposed to come from Biblical roots, but wasn’t. If there were non-whites, they were all servants or maids. The singer Harry Belafonte, a black man, sang with a white woman on TV, and everyone went completely nuts. That’s just not how it’s supposed to be! She TOUCHED him! On his arm! His BLACK arm! Reality is, many whites interacted with nonwhites, especially in urban areas, but the middle class isolated themselves from this encroachment and pretended it didn’t exist. But on TV, they couldn’t avoid it. So there was a change in both the music and attitudes, and the influence of nonwhite culture, in music, jazz and blues in particular, was the foundation of rock music, which was instrumental (no pun really intended) in changing the whole face of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. The misconceptions were trying to deny the changes were taking place and everyone was white and nice and Christian and separate from the Others. They tried to create a world that didn’t exist. Once young people started listening to that BLACK music, blues and jazz, and later rock, everything crumbled. They were exposed to other points of view and found out that things they were taught by their parents and TV programming was not necessarily true. Some of it was completely fabricated BS (i.e. smoking is good for you! DDT is safe! Marijuana will make you attack people and eat broken glass! You can trust your government!). That is one reason preacher opposed rock music so much, saying it will get your kids to take drugs and copulate in the streets (really).
What are Baby Boomers? Why are they important?
In case you have no access to the internet or a library, I'll give a brief reason because there is tons of info available about this subject. Especially via Sociology and Marketing/Advertising books.After World War II ended, everyone who had fought the Japanese & the Germans came home. Some brought home new wives (maybe husbands too). Those people began marrying and had children throughout the rest of the 1940’s and the 1950’s. There were so many births it became known as a “boom.”That generation had a very different lifestyle from their parents because they didn't have the very significant, negative experiences of the Depression and the War. Instead, they experienced an affluent, positive lifestyle (in general) that their newly comfortable, middle class parents could finally enjoy and provide. This led to a consumer-oriented culture and leisure time being normalized. This led to new inventions, more products, new conveniences, & improvements of old products (like the clothes washing machine and frozen foods) Money + the new invention, television, brought about new advertising & marketing techniques, new forms of entertainment, with arts/culture, brought into the home, and more consumerism.All these things - along with a booming economy and federal money going into infrastructure improvements and public education, among other things - made the “boomers” a huge, financially powerful, well educated demographic.This is all very generalized according to the whole population, as there was also poverty, "old world” lifestyles, radicalism & Communism)