1. Domestic Containment & The 1950s

2. McCarthyism House Un-American Activities Committee
Case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin
Censured by Senate colleagues in 1954

3. McCarthyism Unions – Taft Hartley Act, 1947
Civil Rights – Paul Robeson
Homosexuals – Roy Cohn
Hollywood Ten

4. Conformity
Nuclear family seen as defense against the dangers of the Cold War
Women’s place in the home
Men in Grey Flannel Suits

5. Conformity
G.I. Bill, 1944
Suburbs
Levittown
Consumption

6. American Life in the 1950s

7. “Birth of the Cool”

8. Jazz, Hep Cats, Dope
Jazz: Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charlie “Bird” Parker
Rock and Roll:
Bill Haley, Rock Around the Clock, 1954
Elvis Pressley, Heartbreak Hotel, 1956
The Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs

11. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smokin in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz…
- Allen Ginsberg

12. Rebels Without Causes

13. Popular Culture
Mad Magazine, 1952
Hugh Hefner & Playboy, 1953

14. Domestic Containment Key terms: McCarythism, HUAC, the Rosenbergs,
Taft-Hartley Act, Paul Robeson, Roy Cohn, Hollywood Ten,
Men in Grey Flannel Suits, G.I. Bill, Levittown, “Birth of the Cool”,
Bill Haley, Beatniks, Allen Ginsberg, Rebel Without a Cause,
Mad Magazine, Playboy