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Standard Of Living In The 1950s Essay

2671 Words11 Pages

The 1950s: An Era of Improved Living Standards for Americans?

Wang Long Lee
CE US History
5/15/2023

After the Great Depression and World War Two, America entered the 1950s. In this decade, Americans see significant changes in society, and are known as a decade of improvement in the standard of living. Post-war economy and workforce rapid success and federal programs like G.I. Bill allows the whole country to start suburbanizing and support the baby-boom generation. Healthcare, education, and automobile transportation to a great extent improved in the 1950s. However, not every single group of Americans were able to experience these improvements. Social inequality and racial discrimination only see some improvement with …show more content…

Racial segregation between black and white children in public schools had always been legal until the 1950s (Newman). This also brings unequal funding in public school systems; for example, in South Carolina public schools, only $115 is spent per black student compared to $165 per white student (Newman). Because of inequality like this, African American students are often never able to receive supplies and services that white students are able to have including very basic accessories like textbooks or even pencils (Newman). During President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration, he often avoided helping African American due to the possible loss of the white South vote; as a result, Civil Rights had not really been improved in the period. In 1951, after Brown’s daughter, Linda Brow was denied access to an all-white elementary school, he fired a lawsuit against the Education System in Topeka, Kansas ("Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka" 347 U.S. 483). The Fourteenth Amendment was being challenged. As a result In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court of The United States defined the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas’s discrimination and segregation toward Brown’s daughter as unconstitutional and demand all public schools in America be desegregated ("Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka" 347 U.S. 483). Although the Supreme Court said all public schools need to be desegregated, the process is very long due to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's fear of losing the white southern vote. In 1955, Rosa Louise McCauley Parks got on a bus but refused to give the seat to a white person; she was arrested for this incident. As a response to this, African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior started the Bus Boycott which forced the bus line Rosa Parks got arrested to be desegregated. Another famous civil rights movement for African American students is the

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