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Introduction
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Significant TV News Events of the Fifties
Posted By
Mike Palumbo
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Preface
World War I
The Start of the War
The Western Front
The Christmas Truce of 1914
The Southern Front-Gallipoli
German Submarine Warfare
The United States Enters the War
Segregated Armed Forces
The End of the War
The Industrial Age, Immigration and Labor Wars
The Industrial Age
Ellis Island and Immigration
Xenophobia
Sacco and Vanzetti
The Rise of Labor Unions
Working Conditions in Mines and Mills
Famous Mine and Mill Strikes
Labor in the Textile Mills
The Lawrence Mill Strike
The Almanac Singers
Later-Day Labor Issues
The Roaring Twenties
Preface – The League of Nations
The Twenties Zeitgeist – Cultural Wars
The Arrival of the Flapper and Sheik
The Lost Generation
The “Algonquin Round Table”
The Harlem Renaissance
Ballyhoo, Fads, Fashions and Follies
Charles A. Lindbergh
The Scopes Trial
Religious Celebrities
Car Culture and Consumer Economy
Radio, Hollywood, and Art Deco
Radio
Art Deco
Reaction to all the Cultural Change
Prohibition
Speakeasies and Gangsterism
Jazz was the Sound of the Speakeasies
The Politics of Passivity
Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
“The Boom”
The Great Stock “Bubble”
SUMMARY
The Great Depression
The Great Economic Disaster
Homelessness and Hoovervilles
The Plight of the Farmer
The Dust Bowl
Hoboes
The Bonus Army
Dance Marathons
Hoover’s Failures
The Liberal Reaction
The Election of 1932
The New Deal
National Recovery Administration
Agricultural Adjustment Administration
Farm Security Administration
Civilian Conservation Corps
Civil Works Administration
Works Progress Administration
Public Works Administration
Tennessee Valley Authority
Social Security
Opposition to the New Deal
Prohibition and Gangsters
Pop Culture during the Great Depression
Race Relations
Introduction
The Jim Crow Experience
Lynchings
The Scottsboro Boys
Racial Equality Organizations
Segregation, Racial Hatred and Integration
The Beginning of the Civil Rights Movement
School Integration
The Lunch Counter Sit-ins
The Freedom Riders
James Meredith’s Attempt to Enroll
Desegregation in Birmingham, Alabama
The Killing of Medgar Evers
The March on Washington
Bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church
Freedom Summer
The Marches from Selma
Northern Urban Riots
Black Nationalism and Militancy
The Black Panther Party
The Assassination of Martin Luther King
World War II
Inter-war Isolationism
The World Marches toward Armageddon
The Rise of Italian Fascism
The Spanish Civil War
Japanese Expansion in the Pacific
The Start of World War Two
Lend-Lease
Pearl Harbor
Internment of Japanese-Americans
The War in the Atlantic
The Battle of Britain
Operation Barbarossa
Russian Campaign Summer 1942
The Battle of Stalingrad
The 1944 Warsaw Uprising
Mediterranean Campaign and Invasion of Italy
The Normandy Landings, D-Day
The Battle of the Bulge
The Holocaust
The Nuremberg Trials
The Pacific Theatre
The Pacific Theatre – Island hopping
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Home Front
War Time Production
Music and News on the Home Front
Entertaining the Troops
Post World War II
The Cold War
The Atomic Scare
The Berlin Airlift
The Korean “Police Action”
The Red Scare
The House Un-American Activities Committee
McCarthyism and Red Hunting
Blacklisting
Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs
The Cuban Missile Crisis
Berlin
The Fifties
Introduction
Post-war Politics
The 1952 Presidential Election
The 1956 Presidential Election
The 1960 Presidential Election
Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial Complex Speech
Suburbanization
The Stereotypical Family of the Fifties
Baby Boomers, The Consumption Society and Conformity
Downtown Gives Way to the Shopping Mall
Fifties Diners (Drive-ins)
Advent and Growth of Television
Television Shaped Family Life in The Fifties
Game Shows/Quiz Shows
Westerns
Kid Shows
Sit-Coms
Comedy and Variety Shows
Anthology Shows
1950s Soap Operas
Religion on TV
Norman Vincent Peale
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Billy Graham – William Franklin Graham Jr.
Sports on TV in The Fifties
Major League Baseball during the 1950s
Professional Football in The Fifties
College Football during the Fifties
Boxing on TV in the Fifties
Other Sports on TV in The Fifties
NBA/NCAA Basketball
Hockey
Television of News, Current Events and Politics in the Fifties
Significant TV News Events of the Fifties
Kefauver Hearings (1950-51)
Nixon’s “Checkers” Speech
Edward R. Murrow-See It Now
McCarthy-Army Hearings
MacArthur’s Triumphant Return
Presidential Nominating Conventions
Presidential Press Conferences
Kennedy-Nixon debates
Criticism of 1950s Television
Polio and The Salk Vaccine
Social Criticism in The Fifties
The Affluent Society Demanded Conformity
Women’s Role in the 1950’s
The Fifties’ Teenage Phenomenon
Hollywood – Heroes or Hoods
West Side Story
The Rise of Rock & Roll in The Fifties
Rock and Roll is Here to Stay
Transition from Pop to Rock & Roll
Rock & Roll Stars and Personalities
Criticism of “The Devil’s Music” (Rock & Roll)
Doo Wops/Street Corner Harmony
White Cover Records
American Bandstand
Criticism of the Fifties’ Culture
Revolutionary Road
The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
The Lonely Crowd
The Organization Man
The Feminine Mystique
The Catcher in the Rye
Ayn Rand – “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead”
The Beat Generation
Conclusion – The Day the Music Died
The Vietnam War
French Indochina after World War II
Early American Vietnamese Policy
The Kennedy Administration on Vietnam
President Johnson Expands the War
The Draft
The Soldier’s Experience in Vietnam
The My Lai Massacre
Agent Orange and Napalm
Hawks and Doves
The Tet Offensive and its Consequences
Nixon’s Plan for Peace
The Troops Come Home
Cultural Rebellion
Cultural Rebellion Introduction
The Flower Children/Hippies/LSD
Haight Ashbury
Communes
Woman’s Rights/The Feminist Movement
Women’s Liberation
The Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.)
The Sexual Revolution
Abortion and the Right to Choose
LGBT Civil Rights
Stonewall Inn Riots
HIV/AIDS – not just a “gay plague”
The AIDS Memorial Quilt
Menu
Preface
World War I
The Start of the War
The Western Front
The Christmas Truce of 1914
The Southern Front-Gallipoli
German Submarine Warfare
The United States Enters the War
Segregated Armed Forces
The End of the War
The Industrial Age, Immigration and Labor Wars
The Industrial Age
Ellis Island and Immigration
Xenophobia
Sacco and Vanzetti
The Rise of Labor Unions
Working Conditions in Mines and Mills
Famous Mine and Mill Strikes
Labor in the Textile Mills
The Lawrence Mill Strike
The Almanac Singers
Later-Day Labor Issues
The Roaring Twenties
Preface – The League of Nations
The Twenties Zeitgeist – Cultural Wars
The Arrival of the Flapper and Sheik
The Lost Generation
The “Algonquin Round Table”
The Harlem Renaissance
Ballyhoo, Fads, Fashions and Follies
Charles A. Lindbergh
The Scopes Trial
Religious Celebrities
Car Culture and Consumer Economy
Radio, Hollywood, and Art Deco
Radio
Art Deco
Reaction to all the Cultural Change
Prohibition
Speakeasies and Gangsterism
Jazz was the Sound of the Speakeasies
The Politics of Passivity
Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
“The Boom”
The Great Stock “Bubble”
SUMMARY
The Great Depression
The Great Economic Disaster
Homelessness and Hoovervilles
The Plight of the Farmer
The Dust Bowl
Hoboes
The Bonus Army
Dance Marathons
Hoover’s Failures
The Liberal Reaction
The Election of 1932
The New Deal
National Recovery Administration
Agricultural Adjustment Administration
Farm Security Administration
Civilian Conservation Corps
Civil Works Administration
Works Progress Administration
Public Works Administration
Tennessee Valley Authority
Social Security
Opposition to the New Deal
Prohibition and Gangsters
Pop Culture during the Great Depression
Race Relations
Introduction
The Jim Crow Experience
Lynchings
The Scottsboro Boys
Racial Equality Organizations
Segregation, Racial Hatred and Integration
The Beginning of the Civil Rights Movement
School Integration
The Lunch Counter Sit-ins
The Freedom Riders
James Meredith’s Attempt to Enroll
Desegregation in Birmingham, Alabama
The Killing of Medgar Evers
The March on Washington
Bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church
Freedom Summer
The Marches from Selma
Northern Urban Riots
Black Nationalism and Militancy
The Black Panther Party
The Assassination of Martin Luther King
World War II
Inter-war Isolationism
The World Marches toward Armageddon
The Rise of Italian Fascism
The Spanish Civil War
Japanese Expansion in the Pacific
The Start of World War Two
Lend-Lease
Pearl Harbor
Internment of Japanese-Americans
The War in the Atlantic
The Battle of Britain
Operation Barbarossa
Russian Campaign Summer 1942
The Battle of Stalingrad
The 1944 Warsaw Uprising
Mediterranean Campaign and Invasion of Italy
The Normandy Landings, D-Day
The Battle of the Bulge
The Holocaust
The Nuremberg Trials
The Pacific Theatre
The Pacific Theatre – Island hopping
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Home Front
War Time Production
Music and News on the Home Front
Entertaining the Troops
Post World War II
The Cold War
The Atomic Scare
The Berlin Airlift
The Korean “Police Action”
The Red Scare
The House Un-American Activities Committee
McCarthyism and Red Hunting
Blacklisting
Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs
The Cuban Missile Crisis
Berlin
The Fifties
Introduction
Post-war Politics
The 1952 Presidential Election
The 1956 Presidential Election
The 1960 Presidential Election
Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial Complex Speech
Suburbanization
The Stereotypical Family of the Fifties
Baby Boomers, The Consumption Society and Conformity
Downtown Gives Way to the Shopping Mall
Fifties Diners (Drive-ins)
Advent and Growth of Television
Television Shaped Family Life in The Fifties
Game Shows/Quiz Shows
Westerns
Kid Shows
Sit-Coms
Comedy and Variety Shows
Anthology Shows
1950s Soap Operas
Religion on TV
Norman Vincent Peale
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Billy Graham – William Franklin Graham Jr.
Sports on TV in The Fifties
Major League Baseball during the 1950s
Professional Football in The Fifties
College Football during the Fifties
Boxing on TV in the Fifties
Other Sports on TV in The Fifties
NBA/NCAA Basketball
Hockey
Television of News, Current Events and Politics in the Fifties
Significant TV News Events of the Fifties
Kefauver Hearings (1950-51)
Nixon’s “Checkers” Speech
Edward R. Murrow-See It Now
McCarthy-Army Hearings
MacArthur’s Triumphant Return
Presidential Nominating Conventions
Presidential Press Conferences
Kennedy-Nixon debates
Criticism of 1950s Television
Polio and The Salk Vaccine
Social Criticism in The Fifties
The Affluent Society Demanded Conformity
Women’s Role in the 1950’s
The Fifties’ Teenage Phenomenon
Hollywood – Heroes or Hoods
West Side Story
The Rise of Rock & Roll in The Fifties
Rock and Roll is Here to Stay
Transition from Pop to Rock & Roll
Rock & Roll Stars and Personalities
Criticism of “The Devil’s Music” (Rock & Roll)
Doo Wops/Street Corner Harmony
White Cover Records
American Bandstand
Criticism of the Fifties’ Culture
Revolutionary Road
The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
The Lonely Crowd
The Organization Man
The Feminine Mystique
The Catcher in the Rye
Ayn Rand – “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead”
The Beat Generation
Conclusion – The Day the Music Died
The Vietnam War
French Indochina after World War II
Early American Vietnamese Policy
The Kennedy Administration on Vietnam
President Johnson Expands the War
The Draft
The Soldier’s Experience in Vietnam
The My Lai Massacre
Agent Orange and Napalm
Hawks and Doves
The Tet Offensive and its Consequences
Nixon’s Plan for Peace
The Troops Come Home
Cultural Rebellion
Cultural Rebellion Introduction
The Flower Children/Hippies/LSD
Haight Ashbury
Communes
Woman’s Rights/The Feminist Movement
Women’s Liberation
The Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.)
The Sexual Revolution
Abortion and the Right to Choose
LGBT Civil Rights
Stonewall Inn Riots
HIV/AIDS – not just a “gay plague”
The AIDS Memorial Quilt
Post Vietnam
Watergate and Nixon’s Resignation
Nixon’s Resignation
The Watergate Legacy
America and the Middle East
The Arab Oil Embargo
The Camp David Accords
The Iranian Revolution
The Persian Gulf War
Reagan’s Central American Foreign Policy
Eastern Europeans against the Soviet Union
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
The Balkan Wars of the 1990s
Al Qaeda
1980s – The Reagan Years
General Characteristics of the 1980s – The Reagan Years
Ronald Reagan and National Politics
The Presidential election of 1980
Reagan gets Four More Years
“Reaganomics”, “Supply Side Economics”
Economic Crises of the Reagan Years
The New Right
Social Problems during the 1980s
The War on Drugs
Economic Inequality and Homelessness
Race Relations during the Reagan Years
Technology in the 1980s
Summary of the Reagan Years
1988 Presidential Election
Sources for “The Eighties-The Reagan Years”
Song Index for “The Eighties-The Reagan Years”
Conclusion
Index of Songs
Bibliography
Sources
Discography
Copyright Disclaimer
Menu
Post Vietnam
Watergate and Nixon’s Resignation
Nixon’s Resignation
The Watergate Legacy
America and the Middle East
The Arab Oil Embargo
The Camp David Accords
The Iranian Revolution
The Persian Gulf War
Reagan’s Central American Foreign Policy
Eastern Europeans against the Soviet Union
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
The Balkan Wars of the 1990s
Al Qaeda
1980s – The Reagan Years
General Characteristics of the 1980s – The Reagan Years
Ronald Reagan and National Politics
The Presidential election of 1980
Reagan gets Four More Years
“Reaganomics”, “Supply Side Economics”
Economic Crises of the Reagan Years
The New Right
Social Problems during the 1980s
The War on Drugs
Economic Inequality and Homelessness
Race Relations during the Reagan Years
Technology in the 1980s
Summary of the Reagan Years
1988 Presidential Election
Sources for “The Eighties-The Reagan Years”
Song Index for “The Eighties-The Reagan Years”
Conclusion
Index of Songs
Bibliography
Sources
Discography
Copyright Disclaimer