1950's And 1960s American Culture

1950s to 1960s American Culture

The 1950’s and 1960’s were a pivotal time in American history for change. My focus question for this paper is How did American Culture in the 1950’s and 60’s impact Civil Rights Movements? The purpose of the paper is to examine the 1950’s and 60’s and analyze how technology, music, the Baby Boom and Space Race all led to a new and an increasing emphasis on Civil Rights that previously had not been experienced.

During the 1950’s and 1960s the civil rights movement became more pronounced and people began to speak out about inequality and injustice in more powerful ways than they had in the past.African americans had been fighting for equal rights for a long time. But racism and segregation entered the mainstream of american life. Some evidence for this is in the 1896 Supreme Court court case Plessy vs Ferguson which made the practice of segregation legal. This institutional practice became deeply ingrained in the Southern way of life and made it OK to have separate drinking fountains, schools and restrooms for colored people and whites. Today we know this was wrong and a great injustice but what people don’t understand is how long this practice took to get rid of by changing people’s minds about it. As the culture changed in America so too did these old outdated ideas. equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races” on its railroads.

In the 1950s, the relatively new technology of television began to compete with motion pictures as a major form of popular entertainment. More people had access to different parts of the country including the South to see how people lived. Actors such as Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge were seen on the big screens around the country and helped many people see their experiences as inspiration for overcoming the problems they faced in