Social Changes In The 1950's

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The United States is built upon change. The country citizens live in today is definitely different from the country established by the Declaration of Independence so many years ago. However, these changes did not take place in a day. Throughout the years, citizens have gone through social unjust and turmoil that have demanded change. From year to year, Americans have done their best to get their voices heard and get the changes they wanted to see. The 1950’s and 1960’s were a very important time of social unjust and upheaval. Politically and socially, changes were taking place throughout the United States. However, social issues close to the hearts of Americans—racial inequality, discrimination against women, and the Sexual Revolution— seemed…show more content…
Most white Americans were still not open to the idea of blending their society with the African American culture. Tensions were at an all time high between white Americans and African Americans. Regarding life between the two racial groups, “No area of national life was more highly charged than the relationship between black and white Americans.” Both groups held angered attitudes towards one another—white Americans did not respect African Americans, and Africans Americans did not respect white Americans. As segregation and separate but equal laws continued, these attitudes raged on. . “In the South, the concept of separate but equal had always been a sham: It might have been separate, but it was never equal” Segregation and ill-treatment towards the African American community followed the race into the workplace. “White teacher salaries were 30 percent higher; and there was virtually no transportation for black children to and from school. The disparity was even greater at the college level, where the Southern states spent $86 million in white colleges and $5 million on black colleges” African Americans simply wanted change. “They demanded equality under the law—to be judged as individuals and not as members of a minority race.” These happenings and social wrongdoings are essentially what caused African Americans to want more of a change than ever before. The continuous determination of African…show more content…
At first, anything sexual and not modest was looked down upon. Regarding the book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, “It is impossible to estimate the damage this book will do in the already deteriorating minds of America.” However, the days of modest teens and young adults were clearly gone. Men and women alike were no longer afraid to experiment with one another—it was an age of so called love and lust, and nothing, as well as nobody, was off limits. As sex-symbols such as Marilyn Monroe began to emerge during the 1950’s, magazines with sexual images began to emerge as well. Playboy magazine first appeared in this time period, and seemed to bring together sex with everyday life. “The women his [Hefner’s] magazine came to feature, seminude (and then, with the more relaxed censorship laws, completely nude) were young, preferably innocent-looking girls, more fresh-faced and bubbly than erotic or sophisticated. They seemed to have stopped off to do a Playboy shoot on their way to cheerleading practice or to the sorority house.” Everything sexual was being intensified—and everyone wanted to be involved, young people in particular. “The most avid participants in all this were in their teens and twenties, the age of sexual awakening… In the ‘underground’ newspapers that proliferated in youth communities, one could find guilt-free narratives of
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