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Ode to the 1950s

from *BUILDING BRIDGES - not walls by Steve Shapiro

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The 1950s - Not just poodle skirts and rock and roll.

“America at this moment,” said former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945, “stands at the summit of the world.” The United States was the world’s strongest military power. Its economy was booming, and the fruits of this prosperity–new cars, suburban houses and other consumer goods–were available to more people than ever before. However, the 1950s were also an era of great conflict. The nascent civil rights movement and the crusade against communism at home and abroad exposed the underlying divisions in American society.

Historians use the word “boom” to describe a lot of things about the 1950s: the booming economy, the booming suburbs and most of all the so-called “baby boom.” By the time the boom finally tapered off in 1964, there were almost 77 million “baby boomers.”

A growing group of Americans spoke out against inequality and injustice during the 1950s. The struggle against racism and segregation entered the mainstream of American life. In 1954, in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, the Supreme Court declared that “separate educational facilities” for black children were “inherently unequal.”

In December 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give her seat on a city bus to a white person. Her arrest sparked a 13-month boycott of the city’s buses by its black citizens, which only ended when the bus companies stopped discriminating against African American passengers. Acts of “nonviolent resistance” like the boycott helped shape the civil rights movement of the next decade.

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from *BUILDING BRIDGES - not walls, track released May 2, 2018

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Steve Shapiro Oakland, California

Steve Shapiro has composed music for hundreds of radio and TV commercials, documentary films, infomercials and other TV programs. He was the music director at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which produced hundreds of award-winning educational films and recordings. He has a BA in Music from Brown University and an MA in Music from the Manhattan School of Music. ... more

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