Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks

"It was time for someone to stand up - or in my case, sit down"

Rosa Parks was born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913 and since she was very young, she didn't feel like she could ignore racism and she became determined to fight segregation. Long before December 1955, when she was arrested, Parks had protested segregation through everyday acts. She refused to use drinking fountains labeled "colored only". When possible, she shunned segregated elevators and climbed stairs instead.
Parks joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943 and became the organization's secretary. In the summer of 1955, she attended a workshop designated to promote integration by giving students the experience of interracial living.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to obey a bus driver`s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. The act became an important symbol of the Modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.
Parks resided in Detroit until she died of natural causes at the age of 92 on October 24, 2005.

Space Program

The space race began on April 12, 1961, when the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. John F. Kennedy saw this as a challenge and decided that the US would pass the Soviets by sending a man to the moon. And we did it. America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began to construct new launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and a mission control center in Houston, Texas. President Kennedy appointed Vice President Johnson as chairman of NASA shortly after they assumed office in 1961. 

Seven years after Gagarin's space trip, Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon. It was July 20, 1969. Because of the space program, universities expanded their science programs. The huge federal funding for research and development gave rise to new industries and technologies, many of which could be used in businesses and industry and also in new consumer goods. Space and defense-related industries sprang up in the Southern and Western, which grew rapidly.

Harry Truman’s Presidency

               Harry S. Truman was born in 1884 in the state of Missouri. After the WW I, he invested in a men clothing store, but the business failed and he sought a career in politics. His blunt and outspoken style won both loyal friends and bitter enemies. As president, his decisiveness and willingness to accept responsibility for his decisions earned him respect that has grown over the years. 

              Truman put his presidency on the line for civil rights, and in 1946 created a President’s Commission on Civil Rights. Following the group’s recommendations, he asked Congress for several measures, including a federal antilynching law, but Congress refused to pass the measures. In 1948, he issued an executive order for integration of the armed forces and ordered an end to discrimination in the hiring of government employees. Although many Americans blamed Truman for the nation’s inflation and labor unrest, he won the elections in 1948. Congress raised the hourly minimum wage from 40 cents to 75 cents, extended Social Security coverage to about 10 million more people and initiated flood control an irrigation projects.

              Despite some social and economic measures (Fair Deal, an extension of Roosevelt’s New Deal, for example), Truman’s approval rating sank to an all-time low of 23 percent in 1951.

1950’s Culture

Compared to another means of communication, television developed with lightning speed during the 1950’s and the 1960’s. At the beginning, it was a small box with round screen and broadcasts were in black and white. During the Post-World War II, other innovations appeared, like the microwave, for example. Although TV turned out to be wildly popular, radio and movies survived, and the number of radio stations increased by 50 percent. In the movies, stereophonic sound was introduced in 1952 and by 1954 more than 50 percent of movies were in color. 

During the 1950’s, the beat movement arose, expressing the social and literal nonconformity of artists, poets, and writers. Followers of this movement, called beats, lived nonconformist lives. They tended to shun regular work and sought a higher consciousness through Zen Buddhism, music, and drugs.

The musicians in the 1950’s added electronic instruments to traditional blues music, creating rhythm and blues. In 1951 a Cleveland radio disc jockey named Alan Freed to first play the music, and he called it rock’n’roll. After that, other artists, like Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley brought rock’n’roll to a frantic pitch of popularity among the newly affluent teens who bought their records.