How Did Wwii Change The Makeup Of The United States?

Decision: Post-War America

The mail service-World State of war Two United States went through a menses of unprecedented economical prosperity for many white Americans that coincided with black Americans' intensifying the struggle for civil rights and economic justice.

Learning Objectives

Summarize the changes in U.S. order in the years following Earth War Ii

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Post-obit World War 2, the United states emerged as one of the two ascendant superpowers, turning away from its traditional isolationism and toward increased international involvement.
The United States became a global influence in economic, political, armed services, cultural, and technological diplomacy. The unprecedented growth of the U.S. economy translated into prosperity that resulted in millions of office and manufactory workers being lifted into a growing middle class that moved to the suburbs and embraced consumer goods.
The function of women in U.S. club became an issue of particular interest in the post-war years, with marriage and feminine domesticity depicted equally the master goal for the American woman. The post-war baby nail embraced the part of women as caretakers and homemakers.
The post-World War II prosperity did not extend to everyone. Many Americans continued to live in poverty throughout the 1950s, especially older people and African Americans.
Voting rights discrimination remained widespread in the south through the 1950s. Although both parties pledged progress in 1948, the but major evolution before 1954 was integration of the armed forces.
In the early days of the Civil Rights Motion, litigation and lobbying were the focus of integration efforts. The U.S. Supreme Courtroom decisions inBrown v. Board of Education (1954) and other critical cases led to a shift in tactics, and from 1955 to 1965, "direct action" was the strategy—primarily bus boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, and social movements.

Key Terms

Civil Rights Movement: A term used to embrace social movements in the United States whose goals were to cease racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans and secure legal recognition and federal protection of the citizenship rights enumerated in the Constitution and federal police.
baby boom: Any period marked by a profoundly increased fertility rate. This demographic phenomenon is unremarkably ascribed inside sure geographical bounds. In the U.s.a., the post-World War II period was marked by this phenomenon.
Space Race: A 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals—the Soviet Wedlock and the U.s.—for supremacy in spaceflight capability. Information technology had its origins in the missile based nuclear artillery race between the ii nations that followed Globe War Ii, enabled by captured German rocket technology and personnel. The technological superiority required for such supremacy was seen as necessary for national security, and symbolic of ideological superiority. It spawned pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, unmanned space probes of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and to the Moon.
Bourgeoisie: Residential areas or mixed-use areas, either existing as function of a city or urban expanse or as a separate residential community inside commuting altitude of a city. In almost English speaking regions, these areas are defined in dissimilarity to central or inner-city areas. Their rapid growth was an important component of the mail service-World War Ii economic smash in the United States.

Political Background

Following World War II, the U.s.a. emerged as one of the two ascendant superpowers, forth with the the Soviet Marriage. The U.Southward. Senate in a bipartisan vote approved U.S. participation in the United nations (Un), which marked a turn away from the traditional isolationism of the Usa and toward increased international involvement. In 1949, the Us, rejecting the long-standing policy of no war machine alliances in peacetime, formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which continues into the 21st century. In response, the Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact of communist states.

In August 1949, the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon, thereby escalating the risk of warfare. Indeed, the threat of mutually assured destruction prevented both powers from going also far, and resulted in proxy wars, near notably in Korea and Vietnam, in which the two sides did not straight confront each other. Within the The states, the Cold War prompted concerns well-nigh Communist influence. The unexpected leapfrogging of U.S. engineering past the Soviets in 1957 with Sputnik, the commencement World satellite, began the Space Race, won by the Americans equally Apollo 11 landed astronauts on the moon in 1969. The angst about the weaknesses of U.Due south. teaching led to large-scale federal support for scientific discipline didactics and research.

Economic Prosperity

In the decades following World War 2, the U.s.a. became a global influence in economical, political, military, cultural, and technological affairs. Beginning in the 1950s, middle-class civilisation became obsessed with consumer goods. Increasing numbers of workers enjoyed loftier wages, larger houses, better schools, and more cars and household technology. The U.S. economy grew dramatically in the mail service-war period, expanding at an annual rate of 3.five%. The substantial increase in average family income within a generation resulted in millions of office and manufacturing plant workers being lifted into a growing centre course, enabling them to sustain a standard of living one time considered reserved for the wealthy. Every bit noted by scholar Deone Zell, associates line work paid well, while unionized factory job served as "stepping-stones to the middle grade." By the stop of the 1950s, 87% of all U.S. families endemic at least i television, 75% owned cars, and 60% endemic their homes. By 1960, blue-collar workers had become the biggest buyers of many luxury goods and services.

The period from 1946 to 1960 too witnessed a significant increase in the paid leisure time of working people. The 40-hr workweek established by the Fair Labor Standards Act in covered industries became the actual schedule in most workplaces by 1960. The majority of workers also enjoyed paid vacations and industries catering to leisure activities blossomed.

A family of six is gathered around a television set. The mother watches from the couch, while the father, the two sons, and the two daughters sit on the floor near the TV.

American family unit watching TV in 1958, photo past Evert F. Baumgardner for National Archives and Records Administration.: The 1950s witnessed the explosion of a consumer goods economy. By the terminate of the 1950s, 87% of all U.Due south. families owned at least ane boob tube, 75% endemic cars, and 60% owned their homes. Images of prosperous white middle-form families in their suburban homes symbolized the popular narrative of economic stability and traditional family unit values.

Educational outlays were also greater than in other countries while a higher proportion of immature people were graduating from high schools and universities than elsewhere in the globe, as hundreds of new colleges and universities opened every yr. At the advanced level, U.S. science, engineering, and medicine were world-famous.

In regard to social welfare, the postwar era saw a considerable improvement in insurance for workers and their dependents against the risks of illness, every bit private insurance programs similar Bluish Cross and Blue Shield expanded. With the notable exception of farm and domestic workers, virtually all members of the labor force were covered by Social Security. In 1959, near 2-thirds of factory workers and three-fourths of part workers were provided with supplemental private pension plans.

Many city dwellers gave up cramped urban apartments for a suburban lifestyle centered on children and housewives, with the male person breadwinner commuting to work. By 1960, suburbia encompassed a third of the nation's population. The growth of suburbs was not only a outcome of postwar prosperity, but innovations of the single-family housing market with low interest rates on 20- and xxx-year mortgages, and low down payments, specially for veterans. William Levitt began a national trend with his use of mass-production techniques to construct a large "Levittown" housing development on Long Island. Meanwhile, the suburban population swelled considering of the infant boom; a dramatic increase in fertility in the period of 1942–1957.

Women

The role of women in U.S. society became an outcome of particular interest in the mail-war years, with matrimony and feminine domesticity depicted every bit the master goal for the American woman. Every bit women had been forced out of the labor marketplace past men returning from the armed forces service, many chafed at the social expectations of being an idle stay-at-home housewife who cooked, cleaned, shopped, and tended to the children. Marriage rates rose sharply in the 1940s and reached all-time highs. Americans began to ally at a younger age and marriage immediately after loftier school was condign commonplace. Women were increasingly under tremendous force per unit area to ally past the age of twenty. The stereotype developed that women were going to college to earn their One thousand.R.S. (Mrs.) degree.

In 1963, Betty Friedan publisher her book The Feminine Mystique, which strongly criticized the role of women during the postwar years and was a bestseller and a major catalyst of the new moving ridge of women's liberation movement.

Baby Boom

In 1946, alive births in the United States surged from 222,721 in January to 339,499 in October. By the stop of the 1940s, well-nigh 32 million babies had been born, compared with 24 million in the 1930s. Sylvia Porter, a New York Post columnist, commencement used the term "blast" to refer to the phenomenon of increased births in the post-war United states in May 1951. Almanac births offset topped four meg in 1954 and did not drop below that figure until 1965, past which time four out of 10 Americans were under historic period 20.

Many factors contributed to the baby nail. In the postal service-state of war years, couples that could not afford families during the Great Depression made upward for lost time. The mood was now optimistic. Unemployment ended and the economy greatly expanded. Millions of veterans returned habitation and were forced to reintegrate into lodge. To facilitate the integration process, Congress passed the G.I. Bill of Rights, which encouraged dwelling ownership and investment in higher education through the distribution of loans to veterans at low or nix involvement rates. The K.I. Bill enabled tape numbers of people to finish loftier school and nourish college. This led to an increase in stock of skills and yielded college incomes to families.

Poverty and Disenfranchisement

The postal service-World War 2 prosperity did non extend to everyone. Many Americans continued to live in poverty throughout the 1950s, especially older people and African Americans, the latter of whom continued to earn far less on average than their white counterparts. Immediately later on the war, 12 million returning veterans were in need of work, and in many cases could non find it. In addition, labor strikes rocked the nation, in some cases exacerbated by racial tensions due to African Americans having taken jobs during the state of war and now being faced with irate returning veterans who demanded that they stride aside. The huge number of women employed in the workforce in the war were likewise rapidly cleared out to brand room for men. Many blue-collar workers continued to alive in poverty, with 30% of those employed in industry. Racial differences were staggering. In 1947, sixty% of blackness families lived below the poverty level (defined in one study as beneath $3000 in 1968), compared with 23% of white families. In 1968, 23% of black families lived beneath the poverty level, compared with 9% of white families.

Voting rights bigotry remained widespread in the due south through the 1950s. Fewer than 10% voted in the Deep Due south, although a larger proportion voted in the border states, and blackness Americans were being organized into Autonomous machines in the northern cities. Although both parties pledged progress in 1948, the but major development before 1954 was integration of the armed forces.

In the early on days of the Civil Rights Movement, litigation and lobbying were the focus of integration efforts. The Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and other critical cases led to a shift in tactics, and from 1955 to 1965, "direct action" was the strategy—primarily coach boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, and social movements. Chocolate-brown was a landmark case that explicitly outlawed segregation of public didactics facilities for blackness and white Americans, ruling so on the grounds that the doctrine of "split but equal" public education could never truly provide black Americans with facilities of the aforementioned standards available to white Americans.

Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to preclude schoolhouse integration at Petty Rock Key Loftier School in 1957. President Dwight Eisenhower nationalized state forces and sent in the U.S. Army to enforce federal court orders. Governors Ross Barnett of Mississippi and George Wallace of Alabama physically blocked school doorways at their corresponding states' universities. Birmingham's public safety commissioner Eugene T. "Balderdash" Connor advocated violence against freedom riders and ordered fire hoses and police dogs turned on demonstrators during the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade. Sheriff Jim Clark of Dallas County, Alabama, loosed his deputies during the "Encarmine Sunday" event of the Selma to Montgomery march, injuring many of the marchers and personally menacing other protesters. Police all across the south arrested civil rights activists on trumped-up charges.

The leaders in the front march hand-in-hand. Behind them, marchers carry signs that read "End Segregated Rules in Public Schools," "We Demand Voting Rights Now," and "Jobs For All Now," among others.

The 1963 March on Washington, photo by Rowland Scherman for USIA – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.: The intensification of the black struggle for civil rights and economic justice was i of the most important developments in the postal service-Earth War II United states of america. The fate of African Americans did non match the overall sense of optimism and excitement that many white Americans experienced as a result of the post war economic blast.