: Segregation African-Americans and Americans
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans challenged segregation across the land. In Tallahassee, African Americans mounted a successful campaign to end segregated seating on city buses. The Reverend C. K. Steele, leader of the Tallahassee boycott, later became an officer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the premier civil rights organization of the 1960s.
In 1964, the SCLC supported efforts by St. Augustine blacks to desegregate public accommodations and municipal beaches. The involvement of SCLC and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in demonstrations in St. Augustine drew national attention to the civil rights movement while Congress was considering the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many sessions of SCLC's Citizen Education Program, devoted to citizenship and leadership training for southern blacks, took place at Dorchester Academy in Liberty County, Georgia. In Savannah, a strong local movement fought for civil rights without significant outside help.
1940' : The 1940's were dominated by World War II. European artists and intellectuals fled to the United States from Hitler and the Holocaust, bringing new ideas created in disillusionment. War production pulled us out of the Great Depression. Women were needed to replace men who had gone off to war, and so the first great exodus of women from the home to the workplace began. Rationing affected the food we ate, the clothes we wore, the toys with which children played.
After the war, the men returned, having seen the rest of the world. No longer was the family farm an ideal; no longer would blacks accept lesser status. The GI Bill allowed more men than ever before to get a college education. Women had to give up their jobs to the returning men, but they had tasted independence.
1950' : The end of World War II brought thousands of young servicemen back to America to pick up their lives and start new families in new homes with new jobs. With an energy never before experienced, American industry expanded to meet peacetime needs. Americans began buying goods not available during the war, which created corporate expansion and jobs. Growth everywhere. The baby boom was underway...
The purpose of this web and library guide is to help the user gain a broad understanding and appreciation for the culture and history of the fabulous fifties (1950s). In a very small way, this is a bibliographic essay. While there is no way we can link to everything, we have attempted to find areas of special interest and to select information that we hold dear today - movies we watch, songs we sing, events that move us, people we admire.
work with.....
http://www.cr.nps.gov/goldcres/cultural/africasegr.html
http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade40.html
