Write a Brief Definition for Each of the Following Terms: Gl Bill, Baby Boom

Conclusion: Post-War America

The mail-World War II U.s. went through a period of unprecedented economic prosperity for many white Americans that coincided with black Americans' intensifying the struggle for civil rights and economic justice.

Learning Objectives

Summarize the changes in U.S. social club in the years following World War Two

Central Takeaways

Cardinal Points

• Following World War Ii, the United states of america emerged equally 1 of the two dominant superpowers, turning away from its traditional isolationism and toward increased international involvement.
• The United states of america became a global influence in economic, political, military, cultural, and technological affairs. The unprecedented growth of the U.Due south. economy translated into prosperity that resulted in millions of part and factory workers being lifted into a growing heart class that moved to the suburbs and embraced consumer appurtenances.
• The function of women in U.Southward. club became an outcome of particular interest in the postal service-war years, with union and feminine domesticity depicted as the primary goal for the American woman. The post-war baby boom embraced the role of women as caretakers and homemakers.
• The post-Globe War II prosperity did not extend to anybody. Many Americans continued to alive in poverty throughout the 1950s, especially older people and African Americans.
• Voting rights discrimination remained widespread in the south through the 1950s. Although both parties pledged progress in 1948, the only major evolution before 1954 was integration of the military.
• In the early on days of the Ceremonious Rights Movement, litigation and lobbying were the focus of integration efforts. The U.S. Supreme Court decisions inChocolate-brown 5. Lath of Education (1954) and other critical cases led to a shift in tactics, and from 1955 to 1965, "direct activity" was the strategy—primarily bus boycotts, sit-ins, liberty rides, and social movements.

Key Terms

• Civil Rights Movement: A term used to encompass social movements in the United States whose goals were to cease racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans and secure legal recognition and federal protection of the citizenship rights enumerated in the Constitution and federal law.
• infant boom: Any flow marked past a greatly increased fertility rate. This demographic miracle is usually ascribed inside certain geographical bounds. In the United States, the post-World War 2 menstruum was marked by this miracle.
• Space Race: A 20th-century contest between two Cold State of war rivals—the Soviet Wedlock and the United States—for supremacy in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the missile based nuclear arms race between the ii nations that followed World War II, enabled by captured German language rocket technology and personnel. The technological superiority required for such supremacy was seen as necessary for national security, and symbolic of ideological superiority. It spawned pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, unmanned space probes of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and to the Moon.
• Suburbia: Residential areas or mixed-use areas, either existing as function of a city or urban area or every bit a separate residential community within commuting altitude of a urban center. In nearly English language speaking regions, these areas are divers in dissimilarity to central or inner-metropolis areas. Their rapid growth was an important component of the post-World War Two economic boom in the United States.

Political Background

Post-obit World State of war Two, the United states of america emerged as one of the two dominant superpowers, along with the the Soviet Union. The U.South. Senate in a bipartisan vote approved U.S. participation in the United nations (UN), which marked a turn away from the traditional isolationism of the U.s.a. and toward increased international involvement. In 1949, the Usa, rejecting the long-standing policy of no military alliances in peacetime, formed the Northward Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which continues into the 21st century. In response, the Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact of communist states.

In August 1949, the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon, thereby escalating the risk of warfare. Indeed, the threat of mutually assured destruction prevented both powers from going too far, and resulted in proxy wars, about notably in Korea and Vietnam, in which the two sides did non directly confront each other. Within the United States, the Cold State of war prompted concerns about Communist influence. The unexpected leapfrogging of U.Southward. applied science by the Soviets in 1957 with Sputnik, the showtime Globe satellite, began the Space Race, won past the Americans as Apollo 11 landed astronauts on the moon in 1969. The angst about the weaknesses of U.Due south. education led to large-calibration federal support for science education and enquiry.

Economic Prosperity

In the decades following Globe War Ii, the United States became a global influence in economic, political, military, cultural, and technological affairs. Beginning in the 1950s, middle-class civilisation became obsessed with consumer appurtenances. Increasing numbers of workers enjoyed loftier wages, larger houses, better schools, and more cars and household technology. The U.S. economy grew dramatically in the mail-state of war period, expanding at an annual rate of 3.5%. The substantial increase in average family income within a generation resulted in millions of office and mill workers being lifted into a growing middle class, enabling them to sustain a standard of living once considered reserved for the wealthy. As noted by scholar Deone Zell, assembly line work paid well, while unionized factory job served every bit "stepping-stones to the middle class." By the cease of the 1950s, 87% of all U.S. families owned at to the lowest degree one boob tube, 75% owned cars, and 60% endemic their homes. By 1960, blue-collar workers had become the biggest buyers of many luxury goods and services.

The menstruum from 1946 to 1960 also witnessed a meaning increase in the paid leisure time of working people. The 40-hour workweek established by the Fair Labor Standards Act in covered industries became the actual schedule in most workplaces by 1960. The majority of workers too enjoyed paid vacations and industries catering to leisure activities blossomed.

American family unit watching TV in 1958, photograph past Evert F. Baumgardner for National Athenaeum and Records Administration.: The 1950s witnessed the explosion of a consumer goods economic system. By the terminate of the 1950s, 87% of all U.Due south. families endemic at least one television, 75% owned cars, and 60% endemic their homes. Images of prosperous white centre-class families in their suburban homes symbolized the popular narrative of economic stability and traditional family values.

Educational outlays were as well greater than in other countries while a higher proportion of young people were graduating from high schools and universities than elsewhere in the earth, as hundreds of new colleges and universities opened every twelvemonth. At the advanced level, U.Due south. scientific discipline, technology, and medicine were world-famous.

In regard to social welfare, the postwar era saw a considerable improvement in insurance for workers and their dependents against the risks of affliction, as private insurance programs similar Blueish Cross and Blueish Shield expanded. With the notable exception of farm and domestic workers, nearly all members of the labor force were covered by Social Security. In 1959, about ii-thirds of mill workers and 3-fourths of office workers were provided with supplemental private alimony plans.

Many metropolis dwellers gave up cramped urban apartments for a suburban lifestyle centered on children and housewives, with the male breadwinner commuting to work. Past 1960, bourgeoisie encompassed a third of the nation'southward population. The growth of suburbs was non only a effect of postwar prosperity, only innovations of the single-family housing market with low interest rates on 20- and xxx-year mortgages, and depression down payments, especially for veterans. William Levitt began a national trend with his use of mass-product techniques to construct a large "Levittown" housing development on Long Island. Meanwhile, the suburban population swelled because of the baby nail; a dramatic increase in fertility in the period of 1942–1957.

Women

The role of women in U.Due south. society became an issue of particular interest in the post-war years, with marriage and feminine domesticity depicted every bit the primary goal for the American woman. As women had been forced out of the labor market by men returning from the military service, many chafed at the social expectations of being an idle stay-calm housewife who cooked, cleaned, shopped, and tended to the children. Matrimony rates rose sharply in the 1940s and reached all-time highs. Americans began to marry at a younger age and marriage immediately after high schoolhouse was condign commonplace. Women were increasingly under tremendous pressure to ally by the age of 20. The stereotype developed that women were going to higher to earn their M.R.S. (Mrs.) degree.

In 1963, Betty Friedan publisher her volume The Feminine Mystique, which strongly criticized the role of women during the postwar years and was a bestseller and a major catalyst of the new wave of women'due south liberation motility.

Baby Boom

In 1946, alive births in the Us surged from 222,721 in Jan to 339,499 in October. By the stop of the 1940s, about 32 million babies had been born, compared with 24 million in the 1930s. Sylvia Porter, a New York Postal service columnist, first used the term "smash" to refer to the phenomenon of increased births in the postal service-state of war U.s.a. in May 1951. Almanac births first topped iv 1000000 in 1954 and did not drib below that figure until 1965, by which time iv out of ten Americans were nether age 20.

Many factors contributed to the baby boom. In the post-war years, couples that could not beget families during the Nifty Low fabricated upward for lost time. The mood was at present optimistic. Unemployment ended and the economy greatly expanded. Millions of veterans returned home and were forced to reintegrate into society. To facilitate the integration process, Congress passed the M.I. Bill of Rights, which encouraged home ownership and investment in higher education through the distribution of loans to veterans at depression or aught interest rates. The M.I. Bill enabled record numbers of people to finish loftier school and nourish college. This led to an increase in stock of skills and yielded higher incomes to families.

Poverty and Disenfranchisement

The post-Globe War II prosperity did not extend to everyone. Many Americans connected to live in poverty throughout the 1950s, especially older people and African Americans, the latter of whom continued to earn far less on boilerplate than their white counterparts. Immediately later on the war, 12 million returning veterans were in need of work, and in many cases could not find it. In addition, labor strikes rocked the nation, in some cases exacerbated by racial tensions due to African Americans having taken jobs during the state of war and now being faced with irate returning veterans who demanded that they step aside. The huge number of women employed in the workforce in the state of war were also rapidly cleared out to make room for men. Many blue-collar workers continued to live in poverty, with 30% of those employed in industry. Racial differences were staggering. In 1947, 60% of black families lived below the poverty level (defined in one study every bit below $3000 in 1968), compared with 23% of white families. In 1968, 23% of blackness families lived below the poverty level, compared with nine% of white families.

Voting rights discrimination remained widespread in the south through the 1950s. Fewer than 10% voted in the Deep South, although a larger proportion voted in the border states, and black Americans were being organized into Democratic machines in the northern cities. Although both parties pledged progress in 1948, the but major development before 1954 was integration of the military.

In the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, litigation and lobbying were the focus of integration efforts. The Supreme Court decisions in Brown five. Board of Educational activity (1954) and other critical cases led to a shift in tactics, and from 1955 to 1965, "direct action" was the strategy—primarily bus boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, and social movements. Dark-brown was a landmark case that explicitly outlawed segregation of public education facilities for black and white Americans, ruling so on the grounds that the doctrine of "separate just equal" public education could never truly provide blackness Americans with facilities of the same standards bachelor to white Americans.

Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to prevent school integration at Fiddling Rock Cardinal High School in 1957. President Dwight Eisenhower nationalized state forces and sent in the U.Southward. Regular army to enforce federal courtroom orders. Governors Ross Barnett of Mississippi and George Wallace of Alabama physically blocked school doorways at their respective states' universities. Birmingham'southward public safety commissioner Eugene T. "Balderdash" Connor advocated violence against freedom riders and ordered burn down hoses and constabulary dogs turned on demonstrators during the 1963 Birmingham Children's Cause. Sheriff Jim Clark of Dallas County, Alabama, loosed his deputies during the "Bloody Sunday" event of the Selma to Montgomery march, injuring many of the marchers and personally menacing other protesters. Police all across the south arrested civil rights activists on trumped-up charges.

The 1963 March on Washington, photograph past Rowland Scherman for USIA – U.Due south. National Archives and Records Administration.: The intensification of the black struggle for civil rights and economic justice was one of the about important developments in the post-World State of war II U.s.. The fate of African Americans did non match the overall sense of optimism and excitement that many white Americans experienced equally a result of the post war economic boom.

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