This course analyzes significant events of the 1950s including the growth of the middle class, the move to suburbia, development of new industries, the emergence of television and creation of the national highway system. Racial events covered include the Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Brown school decision and the anti-communist anxiety of the era reflected in the blacklist and McCarthyism. Internationally, we’ll review U.S. assumption of world leadership, the Cold War, the Korean War, nuclear policy, and covert CIA operations in other countries. The politics of the era include the Eisenhower-Stevenson and Kennedy- Nixon contests. Class discussion will compare the 1950s with life today and the impact of that decade on the world in which we live now.
Read: The Fifties, David Halberstam
This course is offered with the generous support of the Association for Continuing Education.