Lecture ch27
Lecture ch27
Lecture ch27
Part One:
Introduction
Part Two:
Memphis
Memphis was a rapidly growing segregated city with whites and blacks of various classes. Elvis Presley listened to both white and black music. Sam Phillips, a white producer, recognized that Elvis could sing with the emotional intensity and power of black performers. Elvis blended black styles of music with white styles to help create a new style of music. Rock n roll united teenagers and gave them the feeling that it was their music (and misunderstood by adults).
Part Three:
Subsidizing Prosperity
The federal government helped subsidize this prosperity by providing loans for homes and assisting the growth of suburbs. One of the first planned communities was built by William Levitt and encompassed 17,000 homes, without a single African-American resident. The federal government:
paid for veterans college education built an interstate highway system following the Russian launch of a satellite spent millions on education
Suburban Life
Suburban life:
strengthened the domestic ideal provided a model of the efficient, patient suburban wife for television
Suburban growth corresponded with an increase in church attendance. Chart: Growth of Suburbs Popular religious figures stressed the importance of fitting in.
Part Four:
Youth Culture
Black singer-guitarist Chuck Berry was probably the most influential artist after Elvis.
Almost Grown
Rock n roll united teenagers, giving them a feeling it was their music and focused on the trials and tribulations of teenage life. Ironically, teenagers were torn between their identification with youth culture and the desire to become adults as quickly as possible. Many adult observers saw rock n roll as unleashing youthful passions in a dangerous way. Rock n roll was closely linked to juvenile delinquency. Popular films like The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause showed the different reactions of youth and adults to the growing generation gap.
Part Five:
Culture Critics
The new mass culture prompted a growing chorus of critics. Intellectual critics bemoaned the great Middlebrow Culture that was driving out high culture. The Beats articulated some of the sharpest dissents from conformity, celebrating spontaneity, jazz, open sexuality, drug use, and American outcasts. The Beats foreshadowed the mass youth rebellion of the 1960s.
Part Six:
Foreign Affairs
Ike refused to intervene to aid anticommunist uprisings in East Berlin and Hungary. After Stalin died, new Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev raised hopes for a warming of relations. Following some steps toward a more peaceful coexistence, the thaw quickly froze when the Soviets shot down an American spy plane.
Vietnam
The United States provided France with massive military aid in its struggle to hold on to Vietnam. Ike rejected the use of American ground troops, but believed that if Vietnam fell the rest of Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes. Vietnam was temporarily divided at the 17th parallel.
Ikes Warning
A growing public anxiety over nuclear weapons led to small but well-publicized protests. Ike expressed his own doubts when he warned the nation of the growing military industrial complex.
Part Seven:
The Cuban Revolution brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959. Ike cut off aid when Castro began a land reform program and later the United States severed diplomatic relations. JFK implemented Ikes plan for a CIA-backed invasion by Cuban exiles. The plan failed, leading Castro to ask Khrushchev for help.
Assassination
The November 22, 1963, assassination of Kennedy made him a martyr and raised questions about what he would have achieved, had he lived.
Part Eight:
Conclusion
America at Midcentury
America in 1963 still enjoyed the postwar economic boom, but Kennedys election had symbolized the changing of generations. Media: Chronology