1. CHAPTER 19: POSTWAR BOOM

2. Section 1: Postwar America

3. Readjustment and Recovery
GI Bill of Rights – loans for houses and education
Suburbs – solve the housing crisis

4. What about women?
How do you think women react to their husbands coming home from war? How did women’s roles change during the war?

5. What about the economy? Defense industries close
Office of Price Administration (OPA) no longer controls prices of goods
Congress has to reestablish controls on prices, wages, rents
What new jobs do you think will be created?
People had saved during the war and bought war bonds -> leads to a new demand for cars + houses

6. Social Unrest
Truman asks Congress to pass anti-lynching laws, a ban on the poll tax, and a permanent civil rights commission
Congress does not pass them so Truman issues an executive order to integrate the armed forces and no discrimination when hiring govt. employees

7. Election of 1952 Truman decides not to run for
reelection after Korean War and McCarthyism
Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican) wins
Democrats had been in power for 20 years
Eisenhower did not believe the federal govt. should be involved with desegregation
1954 – Brown v. Board of Education

8. Questions
1. How did the Truman administration respond to millions of veterans not having a job?
2. What was done to help the severe housing shortage?
3. How did Truman and Congress try to solve the problem of high inflation?
4. How did Truman try to stop discrimination and racial violence?
5. What was the Fair Deal?

9. Section 3: Popular Culture

10. Mass Media and Television

11. Mass Media and Television

12. Movies and Radios
1954 – color and smell-o-vision

13. A Subculture Emerges
The beat movement – those who go against the suburban/white view of life portrayed in mass media Nonconformist, no regular work, tried to experience a higher consciousness through Zen Buddhism, music, drugs

14. Rock ‘n’ Roll
A form of American popular music that evolved in the 1950s out of rhythm and blues, country, jazz, gospel and pop
Adults hated it and tried to ban it
600 million records are sold in 1960

15. Jazz
Nat King Cole

16. Section 4: The Other America

17. The Urban Poor Prosperity only for some Americans
White flight – millions of whites moved into suburbs
5 million African Americans move from rural south to northern cities
Cities lost people, business, and income tax
Poverty increased in the inner cities -> cannot pay for good housing, diet, and doctors

18. Urban Renewal
National Housing Act (1949) – rundown neighborhoods were torn down and low-income houses were built
Poor people were moved from one ghetto to the next as shopping center and stadiums were built

19. Poverty Leads to Activism for Mexican Americans
Shortage of agricultural workers during WWII
Hundreds of thousands of Mexican braceros (hired hands) were allowed entrance into U.S.
Many stay due to poor economy back in Mexico
Longoria incident – family of Mexican American war hero denied a funeral service in Texas – leads to the organization of the G.I. Forum

20. Native Americans
Federal government moves away from assimilation and financial assistance with Indian Reorganization Act
National Congress of American Indians helps N. Americans retain their own customs on reservations
Termination policy – individual Native Americans gain control of tribal lands
Bureau of Indian Affairs provides job training in the cities