The Affluent Society Flashcards
America’s economic prosperity in the 1950s was fueled by
- (ALL OF THESE ANSWERS ARE CORRECT)
- increased public funding of schools, housing, veterans’ benefits, welfare, and interstate highways
- massive military spending inspired by the Cold War
- the “baby boom” and rapid expansion of the suburbs
- increased spending on social programs
Prosperity helped many Americans to ignore which of the following pressing issues during this period?
- (ALL OF THESE ANSWERS ARE CORRECT)
- the 20 percent of Americans who lived in poverty in the 1950s
- the discrimination suffered by minorities
- the discontent of many American women in their traditional roles
- the discontent of returning veterans
Which portion of the nation grew most rapidly during the late 1940s and 1950s?
West
The prosperity of the 1950s was accompanied by
corporate mergers and the formation of conglomerates.
All of the following trends marked the American labor movement of the 1950s EXCEPT
greater success in organizing new workers than in winning benefits for workers already organized in strong unions.
According to many social observers, American culture in the 1950s seemed dominated by a(n)
absorption with consumer goods by a growing middle class.
In contrast to that of the central cities, life in suburbia became attractive to many American families in the 1950s because the suburbs seemed to provide
larger, safer, and more private homes.
According to the widely respected child-care expert of the late 1940s and 1950s, Dr. Benjamin Spock, mothers should
subordinate their activities and interests to the needs of their children.
According to the text, during the 1950s, television
heightened the sense of alienation and powerlessness among minority groups.
According to the text, the most widely revered heroes of the United States during the early 1960s were the nation’s
astronauts
Critics of the increasing influence of organized society argued that these changes
made Americans more focused on their own values and less on the concerns of society.
Both the beats and rock ‘n’ roll
tried to resist the conformity of American culture in the 1950s
When the governor of Arkansas and, later, an angry mob of citizens attempted to prevent the court-ordered racial integration of a high school in Little Rock, President Eisenhower responded by
sending federal troops to uphold the court order.
The Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott was significant in establishing a new form of racial protest and in elevating which black leader to prominence as a new leader in the civil rights movement?
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Joseph McCarthy’s influence in the nation waned quickly mainly as a consequence of
his behavior in the Army-McCarthy hearings.