Nifty Fifties Essay - Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School

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DOCUMENT FIVE: Brown v. Board of Education DecisionSegregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. Theimpact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted asdenoting the inferiority of the Negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregationwith the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to retard the educational and mental development of Negro childrenand to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system. Whatever mayhave been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported bymodern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.Citation: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).DOCUMENT SIX: Folk Song: Little Boxes by Malvina ReynoldsLittle Boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky,Little Boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same,There's a green one and a pink one, and a blue one and a yellow one,And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.And the people in the houses all went to the university,Where they were put into boxes and they all came out the same,And there's doctors and lawyers, and business executives,And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry,And they all have pretty children and the children go to schoolAnd the children go to summer camp and then to the university,Where they are all put in boxes and they all come out the same.Citation: "Little Boxes," folk song, 1962. Words and music by Malvina Reynolds, 1962. Schroder Music Co.DOCUMENT SEVEN: Quotation from a Suburban Housewife"We were all in the same boat . . . We shared everything; we shared tools and cars, minded each other's kids, passedplay-pens and high-chairs from house to house—everything. It was—at least to us—a Paradise."Citation: Mrs. Klerk, quoted in Barbara M. Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown, (Albany: StateUniversity of New York, 1993).DOCUMENT EIGHT:Excerpt from The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth GalbraithPoverty—grim, degrading, and ineluctable—is not remarkable in India. For few, the fate is otherwise. But in the UnitedStates, the survival of poverty is remarkable. We ignore it because we share with all societies at all times the capacity fornot seeing what we do not wish to see. Anciently this has enabled the nobleman to enjoy his dinner while remainingoblivious to the beggars around his door. In our own day, it enables us to travel in comfort by Harlem and into the lushprecincts of midtown Manhattan. But while our failure to notice can be explained, it cannot be excused. "Poverty," Pittexclaimed, "is no disgrace but it is damned annoying." In the contemporary United States, it is not annoying but it is adisgrace.Citation: John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), 254.6
DOCUMENT NINE: Excerpt from The Other America, by Michael HarringtonThere is a familiar America. It is celebrated in speeches and advertised on television and in the magazines. Ithas the highest mass standard of living the world has ever known.In the 1950s this America worried about itself, yet even its anxieties were products of abundance. The title of abrilliant book was widely misinterpreted, and the familiar America began to call itself “the affluent society.” […] In allthis, there was an implicit assumption that the basic grinding economic problems had been solved in the United States.In this theory the nation’s problems were no longer a matter of basic human needs, of food, shelter, and clothing. Nowthey were seen as qualitative, a question of learning to live decently amid luxury.While this discussion carried on, there existed another America. In it dwelt somewhere between 40,000,000and 50,000,000 citizens of this land. They were poor. They still are.To be sure, the other America is not impoverished in the same sense as those poor nations where millions clingto hunger as a defense against starvation. This country has escaped such extremes. That does not change the fact thattens of millions of Americans are, at this very moment, maimed in body and spirit, existing at levels beneath thosenecessary for human decency. If these people are not starving, they are hungry, and sometimes fat with hunger, for thatis what cheap foods do. They are without adequate housing and education and medical care.The Government has documented what this means to the bodies of the poor…But even more basic, thispoverty twists and deforms the spirit. The American poor are pessimistic and defeated, and they are victimized bymental suffering to a degree unknown in Suburbia…The millions who are poor in the United States tend to become increasingly invisible. Here is a great mass ofpeople, yet it takes an effort of the intellect and will even to see them.Citation: Michael Harrington, The Other America, (New York: Scribner, 1962), 1-2.DOCUMENT TEN: A Neighborhood VoteResidents of the Southwood District of South San Fransisco were triumphant yesterday in their efforts to keep theirneighborhood 100% Caucasian. They achieved this object by the use of one of democracy’s most fundamental instruments –the secret ballot. By a vote of 174 to 26 they told Sing Sheng, a former Chinese Nationalist intelligence officer, that they did notwant him, his pretty wife and his small son as neighbors. They did not want the Shengs as neighbors for a lot of reasons whichadded up to one big reason: the Shengs are Chinese….The suggestion of putting the matter to a ballot came from Sheng himself after he receieved numerous objections to hispurchase of a house on West Orange Avenue last week. Most of the objections asserted that his presence would depressproperty values. “I didn’t know about any racial prejudice at all until I came to Southwood. I was sure everybody really believedin democracy, so I thought up this vote as a test,” he said at that time…Each ballot was tallied aloud, read by South San Franscisco City Manager Emmons McClung. The ballots were phrased so thatthe homeowners were asked whether they objected to the purchase of a home in the neighborhood by this Chinese family…TheShengs heard McClung read the phrase, “I object,” 174 times as he tallied the ballots. By the end of the balloting they lookedcrushed…The homeowners exchanged jubilant remarks as they drifted out of the hall.Citation: David Colbert, Ed., Eyewitness to America, New York: Pantheon Books, 1997.7
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