America Dreaming Read online

  Copyright

  Text copyright © 2007 by Laban Carrick Hill

  All rights reserved.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/littlebrown

  First eBook Edition: June 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-316-07883-2

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  1. The Fifties Romper Room

  2. I Wanna Hold Your Hand

  3. Sitting at the Counter

  4. You Say You Want a Revolution

  5. Feeling Groovy

  6. Burn, Baby, Burn

  7. Our Bodies, Our Politics

  8. Upside-Down Flag

  9. Somos Latinos

  10. Earth Day

  11. Making a Rainbow

  A Brief Chronology of Events

  Selected Bibliography

  Web Sites

  Credits

  Also by Carrick Hill: Harlem Stomp!

  For Elise, always and forever

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Without Elise Whittemore-Hill and her support, insight, and inspired design, this book would not be what it is today. I would also like to thank Jennifer Hunt for her superb editing, Susan Cohen for her outstanding support and advocacy, Megan Tingley for recognizing I might have something, and Christine Cuccio for her unerring copy-editing.

  Introduction

  Whether you call them the “Boomer Generation” or the “Pepsi Generation,” those who came of age in the ’60s make up the largest and most influential generation ever in American history. Wilder than Gen X, more activist than Gen Y, these youths changed their world like no other generation has before or since. Their music, their language, and their style still define our culture today. America Dreaming is more than the story of a youth movement. It’s the story of the power and optimism of young people building a world in their own image. Through the lens of pop culture and rock-and-roll, this book tells the story of teens and twenty-somethings who caused a seismic change in American culture.

  The full impact of the ’60s on American culture has been obscured by the media. When we think of this era, we picture an age of “sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll” radicalism. We imagine a period of extremes and excess. This image has been reinforced not only by films—such as the rockumentary Woodstock—but also by memoirs celebrating campus protests of the Vietnam War. In truth, only a small minority of ’60s teenagers were hippies and/or campus radicals. The real story of the ’60s depicts the largest generation in American history coming of age in an unprecedented period of economic growth, and questioning the very basis of our government, culture, and economy. This is the story of young African Americans, young Latinos, young women, young Native Americans, and simply young Americans who woke up one day and decided they wanted something more.

  These were teens who dared to dream of an America that was fair and just. America Dreaming tells their story.

  —LCH

  Romper, bomper, stomper, boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me do. Magic mirror, tell me today. Did all my friends have fun at play? I see Natalie, I see David, I see Ella…

  —“Mirror Song” from Romper Room

  the fifties ROMPER ROOM

  PRESCHOOL FOR THE BOOMER GENERATION

  Miss Nancy, the host of the children’s television show Romper Room, sang this sugary little tune at the end of each episode. She sang it to you if you were part of the Boomer Generation. This generation represented an extra -ordinary spike in birthrates that began in 1945, at the end of World War II, and continued until 1964. First appearing on air in 1954, Romper Room showed just how much America had changed from a country at war to one of rebirth. The half-hour show essentially televised a preschool class in which Miss Nancy would read from books to seven or eight kids on the set and teach the alphabet, manners, and values in a gentle way. Like this popular show, America was all about raising children. The idealized Romper Room world marked the degree to which the country had changed from a society in crisis to a community in renewal—or rather, a community preoccupied with raising children. In short, 1950s America became essentially one giant playpen.

  The only massive public project begun in the ‘50s was the building of the interstate. This put people in their own cars and made it possible for them to drive across the country without using public transportation such as buses, trains, and airplanes.

  * * *

  BOOMERS BY THE NUMBERS

  80 million children born between 1946 and 1964

  By 1959, more than 50 million children (30 percent of the population) under the age of 14 lived in the United States.

  There were as many children in 1959 as there were people living in the United States in 1881.

  By 1965, 41 percent of all Americans were under the age of 20. (In 2000, 25.7 percent of the U.S. population was under 18.)

  * * *

  After fifteen years of decline and suffering that began on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, with the stock market crash, continuing through the 1930s with the Depression and mass unemployment, and morphing into the horror of World War II, America was ready for prosperity. Winning the war raised America to global supremacy, and the country hungered to taste the fruits of this success. Americans were tired of the social and political demands of the previous decade and a half. They were desperately eager for the American Dream—marriage, children, good jobs, a home. The peace dividend of winning the war made all this possible to a large percentage of the population for the first time in history. America was no longer in a depression, and the economy was no longer pouring every cent into the war effort.

  Your future is great in a growing America. Every day 11,000 babies are born in America. This means new business, new jobs, new opportunities.

  —sign in the New York City subway in the 1950s

  The U.S. government helped the boom along by providing returning soldiers with the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act, commonly known as the G.I. bill, which Congress passed in 1944. This program offered veterans unemployment compensation, medical benefits, loans to start new businesses and buy a home, and tuition benefits for higher education. The result was that the government infused the economy with hundreds of millions of dollars just when it was needed most. This spurred an economic boom, which led to the largest expansion in American history. With the U.S. government directing public funds into private spaces and private goods, not public services—such as dams, rural electrification, executing the war, and other large government projects—as was done in the previous decades, there was a profound change in the American psyche. The result was that all segments of society were improving their positions. This improvement was not in relation to one another, but in relation to every person’s past and that of his or her family. This meant that everyone in the country was doing at least a little better than they had before. In the beginning, that was enough to fuel a kind of euphoria not seen previously in America. For the first time it appeared possible that the country would achieve that ideal of the “city on a hill” that was first imagined by the early Puritans. This new economic security fueled a confidence in the future and a dream that America could truly become the first utopian society.

  Every seven seconds, a woman became pregnant. This added about a city the size of Los Angeles to the U.S. population each year.

  —historian William Manchester

  BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME

  The first step to achieving the good life was to own a home. A home represented the embodiment of the American Dream. Home ownership offered all the possibilities that Hollywood films
and television sitcoms depicted: the perfect family where dad had a good job, mom was the doting housewife, the kids went to good schools and, eventually, college. America was meant to be just like the television shows Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and a dozen others. In these sitcoms the dad went off each day to work, the mom stayed home and took care of the kids, who somehow got into some domestic trouble that was resolved by the end of the half hour.

  Two brothers, Alfred and William J. Levitt, recognized this shift in the culture. The skills they learned building military housing and instant airfields in the Pacific during the war taught them that the old ways of building were obsolete, simply because those methods took too long. Together the brothers broke down the construction of a house into twenty-seven separate steps and trained twenty-seven separate crews to specialize in just one step. Borrowing Henry Ford’s mass production system for cars, William Levitt flipped the model. Instead of moving a car along an assembly line past each workstation, the workers themselves would move from one house to the next. Each house stood on a 60-by-100-foot plot, and the crews would perform their individualized tasks and move on. One crew would pour the foundation. The next would build the frame. This would continue until all twenty-seven construction crews had completed their tasks and a new house was finished.

  * * *

  SPOCK BABIES

  Pediatrician Benjamin Spock, MD, wrote the child-rearing bible for Boomer parents, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946). This book changed the way Americans raised their children. His most common advice was: “Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.”

  This was a revolutionary idea when traditional baby manuals offered authoritarian directives on strict feeding schedules and rigid routines. Instead, Spock mirrored the optimism of the era by reinforcing that parents were their own experts. They had the power to raise a perfect child without interference by so-called authorities. Spock was one of the first influential proponents of what would become a search for self-fulfillment in the 1960s.

  * * *

  The Levitts revolutionized the way homes were built. In the past, the typical builder constructed fewer than five houses a year. By 1948, the Levitts were able to build 180 houses a week, which broke down to thirty-six houses a day. “Eighteen houses completed on the shift from eight to noon, and eighteen more houses finished on the shift from twelve-thirty to four-thirty,” noted Bill Levitt. Because of these innovations, it was possible for ordinary people—people who had never thought of themselves as middle-class before—to own an inexpensive, attractive home. The first housing development built by the Levitts was located twenty miles outside New York City on Long Island. It contained 17,000 homes, and 82,000 people lived there. Schools, churches, and grocery and other retail stores quickly followed.

  This plan for building homes was soon duplicated all over the country. In a matter of years, suburban communities just outside cities sprouted where farms used to be, and families achieved the American Dream. Along with a new home, people had good jobs that paid a decent wage, and they could afford things that just a few years before were beyond reach: new cars, televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, and a host of other appliances and technologies that made life easier and more convenient. Suddenly, it seemed that everyone was affluent, not just the rich.

  Economist John Maynard Keynes coined the term “relentless consumption” to describe the new era, meaning that as long as industry produced enough goods and services to employ most of the country, people would have the financial means to purchase these goods and services and better their lives. The argument concluded that nearly all economic and social issues would be solved because goods and services would be plentiful and affordable, and people would have the income to purchase them.

  On the surface, this seemed to work exceedingly well. Not only were plenty of homes being built, but other businesses were popping up to fill needs that hadn’t existed before. With everyone so busy enjoying improved lives, families didn’t always have time to make dinner. McDonald’s filled the void and changed the way a family ate together. With more dollars in their pockets, families could afford to travel and see the country. Holiday Inns sprung up along the new interstates, with affordable accommodations. This affluence also gave people more choices in how they spent their money. To give consumers this variety of choices in one convenient location, shopping malls spread across America where dozens of stores competed to give shoppers a cornucopia of products. All of these goods and services changed the way America lived, and at the time it all seemed for the better. Life was indeed very good and quickly getting better.

  This is Levittown! All yours for $58. You’re a lucky fellow, Mr. Veteran. Uncle Sam and the world’s largest builder have made it possible for you to live in a charming house in a delightful community without having to pay for them with your eyeteeth.

  —an advertisement for the Levitt brothers’ homes

  An aerial photograph of Levittown, PA.

  The average Baby Boomer had viewed between 12,000 and 15,000 hours of TV by the age of sixteen.

  —political scientist Paul Light

  One person’s paradise, however, can be another’s hell. Social critic Lewis Mumford tartly characterized these suburban utopias as actual suburban dystopias:

  A multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances on uniform roads, in a treeless command of waste, inhabited by people of the same class, the same incomes, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless prefabricated foods, from the same freezers, conforming in every outward and inward respect to a common mold manufactured in the same central metropolis. Thus the ultimate effect of the suburban escape in our time is, ironically, a low-grade uniform environment from which escape is impossible.

  * * *

  * * *

  Get It New!

  New is good, better, best.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Hug the hoop to the backside, push hard with the right hand, now rock it, swing it, sway it…you got it.” So goes the advice given by Wham-O to 30 million hula hoop users in 1959.

  For Mumford and many others, the new suburban communities were a wasteland, soulless and culturally empty. These critics had a point. Everything was new, and if it was new, it was not broken, dirty, or worn out, like just about everything had been during the Depression and World War II.

  Advertisers discovered in the ’50s that the best way to get consumers to identify with their product was to humanize it. Alka Seltzer’s Speedy was one of the most successful of these campaigns.

  * * *

  Never has so much been available to so many of us as now…that open sesame to wealth and freedom…freedom from tedium, space, work and your own inexperience.

  —Food writer Poppy Cannon in Life magazine, 1954

  * * *

  Writer John Updike wrote the satiric poem “Superman” in 1954 to poke fun at the era’s unfounded optimism:

  I drive my car to supermarket,

  …

  A superlot is where I park it,

  And Super Suds are what I buy.

  Many saw the social conformity of the era as not just soulless but dangerous to the culture as a whole. Columbia University sociologist and philosopher C. Wright Mills wrote two groundbreaking volumes on the subject: White Collar (1951) and The Power Elite (1956). In these criticisms of contemporary culture, Mills warned that America was becoming an affluent society without purpose. He argued against materialism and the predictability of corporate life. Around the same time, social scientist David Riesman examined how the increasing power of corporate and government organizations influenced national character. The result of Riesman’s study was the critique The Lonely Crowd (1950), in which he suggests that every age produces certain personality types: Wars create warriors, and an era of expansion creates adventurers. He concluded that the ’50s required people who were flexible and willing to acco
mmodate others to win approval: in short, people pleasers. This was the era of conformity. According to Riesman’s estimation, these types of people were essential to big organizations, but they were not innovators or visionaries.

  Economist John Kenneth Galbraith attacked what he saw as a fatal flaw in the era. In his bestseller The Affluent Society he challenged Keynes’s economic theories about the primacy of affluence. Galbraith argued that what Keynes’s notion of investing in production and acquisition really accomplished was an impoverished society, starved of public services. He wrote that in placing so much faith in the general curative powers of increased production, America was inviting grave social ills. In order for a community to function well, “even the stalwart conservative who dares not to venture out in the street at night, pays heavily for private security guards, thinks often about kidnapping and hesitates on occasion to drink the water or breathe the air, must, on occasion, wonder if keeping public services at a minimum is really a practical formula for expanding his personal liberty.”

  The questions these critics raised would not have an immediate effect on America, but these dissentions sowed the seeds of discontent that set the stage for the coming ’60s decade.

  * * *

  Interestingly, horror movies as well as comics became incredibly popular during the ’50s. When The Invasion of the Body Snatchers hit the screens in 1956, screenwriter Ron Rosenbaum explained that the film was “about the horror of being in the ’burbs, about neighbors whose lives had so lost their individual distinctiveness they could be taken over by alien vegetable pods—and no one would know the difference.”