There were significant social changes in the American society from 1955 to 1965. These changes included natural changes, institutional changes, changes in relations among people and changes in music, arts and behavior among the American people (Time, 2015). These changes played a major role in the development of the American society and led to its current vibrant nature.
In January 1955, Marian Anderson- a female singer- made history as the first African American vocalist to perform on stage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. This proved that African Americans could also perform in important events and classical music was elevated to another level as America, and the international community as a whole began to take note of it. In the same month, the Pentagon unveiled a plan to build Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, loaded with nuclear weapons (Time, 2015). This move was aimed at protecting the American people against potential threats, particularly from the Soviet Union.
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On 1st February 1955, devastating tornadoes hit the state of Mississippi. These tornadoes led to deaths, the destruction of several homes and plantation schools. One plantation school was rebuilt and renamed after a teacher who died while saving school children and putting them in ditches that were located along the road for safety (Time, 2015). On 2nd March, a fifteen-year-old African-American girl by the name Claudette Colvin was kicked, handcuffed, harassed and taken to the police station after she refused to surrender her seat to a white woman on a Montgomery, Alabama bus after the driver demanded it.
On 5th March 1955, WBBJ-TV signed on the air as WDXI-TV in Tennessee. This saw the expansion of American commercial television into the rural areas of the United States. On 7th March, NBC presented the first Peter Pun’s version of Broadway musical. This was presented exactly as its stage performance was, with no modification. On 21st May, Chuck Berry, a rock and roll pioneer, recorded his first single track called Maybelline. This song became a major hit and was identified one of the first rock and roll songs (Time, 2015). In June, two major films premiered, The $ 64000 Question on CBS and Lady and the Tramp on Walt Disney. In July, the Disneyland theme park was officially opened to the public in the Anaheim part of California. In August, a major hurricane ravaged the northeast, leading to 200 deaths and a property damage of over 1 billion US dollars. In the same month, eleven school-going children lost their lives when their school bus collided with a freight train in Tennessee. On August 28th, racism reared its ugly head again when a 14-year-old African American boy by the name Emmett Louis Till was attacked and killed after a white woman claimed that he had offended her in a grocery store owned by her family.
The first lesbian group met in October 1955, and this led them to form the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian political and civil rights organization. This was a major step in their fight for their rights as opposed to the initial lesbian bars which were often disrupted by raids and harassment by the police (Time, 2015). On 3rd October, ABC aired the first Mickey Mouse Club. On 11th October, the film, ‘Oklahoma!’ came with the introduction of the 70 –mm film that was characterized by high-resolution pictures and this improved motion-picture films a great deal. In November, the United States government banned racial segregation in buses and trains. In December, the Montgomery bus boycott occurred. This protest was organized against racial discrimination that African-Americans were facing at the time. The protest was incited by the arrest of an African-American woman, Rosa Parks after she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus.
In February 1956, Elvis Presley, the disputed rock and roll king and a talented actor, entered- with the help of his Heartbreak Hotel song- the U.S pop charts. In March, he released his first Gold Album with the title, Elvis Presley. In June, the president of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, authorized the now popular phrase “under God” to be included in the Pledge of Allegiance (Time, 2015). On 30th July, he authorized the phrase “In God We Trust” and made it the United States national motto. DuMont Television Network aired its last show, a St. Nicholas Arena’s boxing march on 6th August. This came after it had declared bankruptcy in 1955.
In January 1956, The Ku Klux Klan, a secret movement, forced a truck driver to jump from a bridge into the Alabama River. He jumped, drowned and died. In September, the United States president approved the 1957's Civil Rights Act that saw the establishment of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (Time, 2015). In the same month, The Catholic Memorial High School officially opened to the public in Boston. Brother Joseph G McKenna became the school’s first headmaster. On September 24th, the United States president Dwight Eisenhower, dispatched troops to Arkansas to ensure safe passage for the students who were affected by the Little Rock crisis in which the Arkansas governor had prevented them from going into the Little Rock Central High School which was plagued by racial segregation.
In January 1958, Robert James Fischer, at only 14 years old, won the US Chess Championship. In the same month, a group of Lumbee Indians took up arms and attacked members of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina (Time, 2015). This was a reactionary move by the Lumbee Indians against intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan members who were not happy with the way the Lumbee Indians had been granted some recognition by the federal government. On December 18th, the United States launched SCORE, the first ever communication satellite in the world. The following day, on December 19th, President Dwight Eisenhower, broadcast his message through the satellite.
In 1959, the FDA approved the birth control pill. This allowed both men and women to engage in sexual activities without necessarily siring children. This also gave women the chance to achieve progress in their lives and professionally. In the same year, the United States launched New York’s Guggenheim Museum (Time, 2015). Its architectural design was awe-inspiring and its collection fully showcased abstractionism. The court approved the distribution of a clearly salacious novel by the name Lady Chatterley's Lover.
The nineteen sixties started off well, with the election of the first American born president, John F Kennedy. He was young and many Americans had so much hope in him. His murder, in 1963, came as a huge shock to the American people. The early sixties also saw the growth of rock and roll genre of music (Time, 2015). This genre attracted love and hate in equal measure. While many people loved it, a large group of people disapproved of it because of its raunchy lyrics. The highest rated group at the time was the Beatles, which comprised British singers. This group released major hits, for example, the song, I want to Hold Your Hand, which became the best-selling record in just five weeks.
Civil rights movements were robust in the early 1960s. Women, students, and other minority groups fought hard for their rights in the form of demonstrations. In 1960, four African-American students sat at a counter reserved for whites in a North Carolina restaurant and defiantly stayed refused to sit at any other spot (Time, 2015). This movement inspired many other demonstrators who started going to that counter every lunch hour and other segregated stores and food joints in South Carolina. The protests caught the attention of the country as it exposed the discontent that African-Americans had towards racial discrimination. President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and this banned racial segregation in public places and conferred the Justice Department the power to sue states that carried out discrimination against women and minority groups and promised to ensure no discrimination in the workplace. The equal pay act which was passed in 1963 reduced wage discrimination based on gender. For a long time, women were paid lower wages than men, even in instances where their performance was better. Lobbyists pushed for the end of this discrimination and that led to the passing of the equal pay act. Among the forefront proponents of this legislation were Eleanor Roosevelt, the former first lady and Esther Peterson who headed the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labour. Eleanor Roosevelt was the chair of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women when President Kennedy was running for the presidency.
The Equal Pay Act required employers to award equal wages and benefits to women and men involved in jobs that need equal responsibility, effort, and know-how and which were implemented under indistinguishable working conditions. It also gave provisions for when unequal pay was permitted, based on merit, experience, productivity and other factors unrelated to gender (Time, 2015). The passing of the Equal Pay Act was seen as a step in the right direction but it seemed like more work still had to be done to achieve total gender equality. The 1960s clearly came with major social changes in the United States.
References
Time. (2015, June 4). 25 Moments That Changed America . Time.com. Retrieved from http://time.com/3889533/25-moments-changed-america/ .
