What Was Life Really Like in 1950's America?

After seeing what it did to my brother, dragging up a horrible past, I think repentance needs to be between you and God. Of course, if you stole something from someone and want to repay, you have to think about the circumstances. Was that person devastated, or was it just an incident. Did it ruin their life? If so, send the money back anonymously. I think God will reward you for that.

If you have a relationship with the person, it might be a good time to repair the friendship, but always think not about yourself and needing to repent, but how it will affect the person. That person who phoned to sincerely apologize to my brother, opened deep wounds. That person went away feeling like they had satisfied God, when in fact, they had damaged my brother so much more than the childhood bullying, which he was over. He basically withdrew from life, and lives in my mom's basement, never having done anything in his life. Before that point he went to university, was running team marathons and going out and enjoying life.

I think repairing the past with someone you have lost touch with, or hardly know, needs to be done with a HUGE amount of prayer. And the goal is to heal the person you hurt, not walk away feeling guilt free, because you have done your duty, when in fact, you made everything so much worse for that individual.

[QUOTE="seoulsearch, post: 3660033, member: 20130"

Looking at our discussion of life in the 1950's, what could be said about race relations during that time? For instance, if you had African American neighbors, how would they be treated? Would they be seen as equal to anyone else in the neighborhood?

It's interesting to me how God chooses each of us to be born in a specific era, even though some might feel they were misplaced. Now, God bless everyone who loved that time, but I for one am pretty sure I would not have liked growing up in 1950's America. Even growing up in the 70's and 80's, people did not understand my family at all (Caucasian parents who adopted Asian children.) Even today, one of my relatives is constantly asked, "So... are you a good Korean, or a bad Korean?"

I'm pretty sure that I would not have enjoyed life during that particular time frame. Just recently, I saw a movie set in that era in which an African American couple is berated, screamed at, and forbidden from sitting at the front counter of a restaurant, even though there is only 1 other (white) customer in the entire place. They are told that to them, the counter "is full all day, every day", and they are never allowed to sit there. When they turn to leave in shame, the person at the counter who belittled them says pleasantly, "Y'all come back now, ya hear?" as if he'd done nothing wrong... and I'm sure that in his mind, he hadn't--because this is what was socially acceptable at that time.

And after that, I assume, everyone got dressed up in their Sunday best and went to church, just like every good citizen did in those days.

My circle of family and friends is fairly diverse, and I would not have been able to stand watching them be treated this way.

Angela, I am so sorry that your brother was treated in such a horrible and degrading manner. And of course, it's not that the same thing doesn't go on today, but I am thankful that today there is at least some kind of understanding that this behavior is just wrong, and hopefully, something will be done about it.

Zero, it's interesting that you mentioned the "explosion of HIV in the 80's." I read a very interesting article a while back in which it was said that scientists had found blood samples from the 1950's that tested positive for HIV.

I don't know why HIV was "officially" identified and presented 30 years later. Did they not have the technology to identify and classify it back then? Were there not enough cases yet in order to consider it worth mentioning to the public? Or was is something else that was just swept under the rug at the time because it would be too "upsetting" and "impolite" to talk about?

Thank you all very much for your contributions, and please, keep posting and sharing your thoughts.

This has been a very educational discussion for me (especially the history behind the mood of the country at the time), and I hope for others as well.[/QUOTE]

It feels like my life was made for this thread!

Although Canadians don't have a lot of black neighbours, except in Nova Scotia, where a lot of ex-slaves settled, I always had people from other cultures, including black and Asians in my home, in the 1950's.

Why? My Dad played Canadian professional football, and they were allowed a few imports in those days. Always people who could not make the NFL, but were still better than your average Canadian. We also had a man called the "China Clipper" who was Canadian Chinese, who was a super runner and could put that ball over the end zone line like no one else!

So, there were lots of parties, including Grey Cup parties, my Dad was in 4 Grey Cups, and they won 3. My Dad was a kind of foreigner, although he was born in Canada, his parents were from Eastern Europe, Slavic, a people group that was very scorned in western Canada, at least. So, I had friends who were black and Asian, when there were basically none in Canada at that time. And I found there was no difference between people based on outside colour or other physical characteristics.

I will say, the group most discriminated against in Canada were the natives. They had very hard lives, until the 1970s when the government gave them some restitution money. It was sad - 16 year old boys would buy a loaded, $50,000 pick up truck, and total it in a matter of months. Then they went back to being poor. There is a whole different dynamic with the natives, and it does vary from place to place. They got a raw deal in Canada, and now are demanding money, which really is not going to fix decades of generational neglect!

We never had Jim Crow laws, so no one sat at the back of the bus or restaurant. I knew a black man who had a theory, (he actually did a PhD dissertation on this!) who figured that the amount people in the minority group, and when they arrived, are a big issues. In Canada, Muslims are hardest hit these days. Especially women wearing burkas or niqabs. Quebec is probably the worst at accepting different races, coming out of their attempts at sovereignty and trying to keep their French language and culture.

Finally, AIDS! I first heard about this plague in the early 80's. Everyone was terrified, because no one knew how it spread. I knew a man who slept with a gay man, then heard about AIDS, and went out of his mind with worry for a long time. Nothing happened, but that guy went straight after that. As if he couldn't get it from a woman! I find it hard to believe there was AIDS in the 50's. I heard it was a virus that crossed the species barrier in Africa - from monkey to man. Which, is a horrible thing to contemplate how it jumped. Maybe that has changed? I did not know anyone gay, although later in life, I figure my friend who lived 2 doors down became gay, based on what a mutual friend said.

Most of these articles say they identified HIV in 1983, but the man I just talked about was worried in 1981. So, something was already wide spread enough in the gay community to know about it.

"When HIV was identified in 1983, researchers almost immediately suspected that the virus came from non-human primates. This suspicion was heightened when a team of researchers found AIDS(acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), the fatal final stage of HIV, in a captive colony of macaque monkeys.

Over the last two decades, Dr. Hahn’s team has shown that HIV originated in a sub-species of chimpanzee"

http://incubator.rockefeller.edu/jumping-species-how-hiv-entered-our-world/

"Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized as a new disease in 1981 when increasing numbers of young homosexual men succumbed to unusual opportunistic infections and rare malignancies"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234451/

And yet, Wikipedia is saying 1920's?? An interesting article, not quite in line with the scientific journals!

"AIDS is caused by a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which originated in non-human primates in Central and West Africa. While various sub-groups of the virus acquired human infectivity at different times, the global pandemic had its origins in the emergence of one specific strain – HIV-1 subgroup M – in Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo (now Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the 1920s.[1]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS

AIDS is something I can identify with. Not because I have it, but because Orencia, the biologic I take kills T cells, just like AIDS. Although it hasn't left me open to pneumonia or cancer, so far. I also read that people with RA who get AIDS feel a lot better. Of course the catch is, if they don't treat the AIDS, they will die of it. That would be very complex.

I doubt the information on AIDS was hidden from the public, but it just didn't exist, especially in North America in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

I would take that report about finding aids in the 50's with a grain of salt... I agree with Angela's account that it was supposedly spread to humans through monkeys in africa in the 80's... exactly how is not known to me.... but people were probably just bitten by them.

Now about racism in the 50's.... I think you were right about not wanting to grow up in that era. That was the era of intense segregation (like in that scene you saw in that movie), the most powerful decade of the KKK, public lynchings/hangings, and burning of crosses on minority's front lawns (a warning sign from the kkk)... If you think you might have the stomach for it, watch the movie Mississippi Burning (1988) starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe. It's a true story about two FBI agents who were tasked with investigating the disappearances of some civil rights activists in the 50's.

Now, my personal experience growing up in the US wasn't good either when it comes to racism. I grew up in the 70's and racism was pretty much everywhere. I didn't experience it everyday but I'd say at least once a month a complete stranger would make faces and call me names and laugh at me. This would happen at school and when I was out in public with my parents too. I remember sitting in my parent's car outside a store and the kid sitting in the next car would start calling me names and making faces. It got worse in grade school and high school. Then they would physically hurt me on top of all the name calling and stuff. I don't know if girls had it better but they might have. In high school our valedictorian was asian and it surprised me because I couldn't see how she could get good grades while enduring all the racism. Now that I think of it, all my bullies were male and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't care to pick on a female. I think bullying made them feel powerful. Anyway, that's my 2 cents..

That film would be a dream, I would love for things to be that way.

Every post I've glanced through has the mindset of 'they just pretended things didn't happen'. And I've no doubt that that Did happen more back then, but we also have to consider that technology makes things so much easier to learn about now. Back then the amount of things happening getting covered by the news was limited to bigger issues. Now, with security cams, car cams, live streams, social media, Youtube, etc... everything is put out there. We have a chance to see things now that people in the 50s didn't have access to.

Also perhaps the shock some of these people express is the frequency they hear about things compared to how it was in the 50s. And, often times anymore, the frequent brutality we are exposed to. In the 50s there weren't multiple stories a year of HS students going to school with a gun and shooting everyone up. Now it's getting to the point where it's so often we're not even shocked anymore.

In the 50s sure people had sex before marriage. But it was less common, especially among women. Now porn is nearly commonplace and there is an endless supply of women willing to do things that would've been unfathomable to the average American back then.

Things now are not only much more easily accessible, but the more extreme end of things is becoming more commonplace. So you have to consider these factors when hearing older people react to what goes on in modern times. Not only is 'sweeping it under the rug' less common now much worse things are celebrated now.

From the days of Sodom and Gamorah till today I don't think much has changed except for our access to the truth. Morality seems to go in waves. John Lennon once said something like, the liberals of today will be the conservatives of tomorrow. And visa versa. The tribal and fuedal nations haven't changed much. They just have bigger swords, the greedy are still greedy and the gays are still gay. Only now it's in our faces.

Don't forget we had only rotary dial telephones no internet and black and white TVs. TVs were a luxury item and not many could afford them.

The milk man brought milk to the front porch and the meat man came by in his truck to sell to housewives who would come out just like children to the ice cream trucks.

For the cause of Christ
Roger

Cigarettes aren't good for you? I prefer margarine so I'm all set.

I've always had a dream of being June Cleaver in a sense of always making sure everyone was taken care of and the household responsibilities were only mine to handle.

But seriously when i get married and raise children, I want to go back a few decades where the family unit is more valuable than the worldly things

Family is really the only thing that is worth having, working for, and enjoying.

The sad thing is so many people are glued to their devices and really need to get a life outside of the net and just maybe they will learn to appreciate the family unit

Whats even worse is that the schools and colleges have brainwashed most of the young people into thinking like liberals who want socialism and are anti-christian.

***Check this out about the 50's----I was born in 54 and things were different...
Top 10 Reasons Life Was Better In the Fifties - Listverse

Hi 88! Great to see you posting again!

I found this article to be interesting--thank you for posting the link--but I also slightly dismaying, in that, unless I missed something, every single "optimistic", "these are good ol' days!" person in every gorgeously staged picture... was white.

For example, there was the point about getting an education, and again, unless I missed it, every single child in the classroom was white, as well as all of the college graduates in the next picture. It reminds me of my own school, where there were maybe 4 other students of different ethnicities.

I grew up in all-white schools, then worked most of my adult life in an area where there was a great amount of tension between whites and blacks. My black friends were all suspected of being drug dealers, and my white friends were accused of being racist whenever they followed our store's policies and didn't give in when someone wanted to bend the rule.

Whenever I see pictures like this from the 50's, I always wonder what the reactions would be if the pictures were of people from diverse backgrounds. What if that perfect, smiling white family was sitting down--in order to have dinner with their black neighbors? What if half the children and graduates in those school pictures were black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American?

I have no doubt that some things were better "back then", but despite the challenges, I do have to say that I am thankful God chose to place me in a time frame where there is hopefully diversity is seen as being much more acceptable than it was back then.

I'd like to speak to 3 areas but am short on time so I'll do 2 this time. BTW I was born in 1951.
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The cold war was going on in the 50's. I remember the PSA's on tv telling folks "When (not if) you see the flash, duck and cover." Children were shown getting under their desks and covering their heads with their arms. I also remember looking out the window at school waiting for the flash. There were yellow and black fallout shelter signs on buildings telling how many people could hide inside too. I remember trying to remember where the shelters were. At that time - late 50's into the 80's - we lived just a few miles from Langley AFB which is still CIA headquarters. Prime target. I have only lived 3 1/2 years where I was not near a prime target. Not as worried now as I was back then but it is still in the back of my mind.

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Child molestation simply was not spoken about back then. Both my brother and me were molested and it changed our lives forever. My brother in about 1953 and me in '63 - different states, different people. This is something we hear almost nightly on the news these days and it will certainly continue to get worse. From what I have read over the years, a large number of molesters were molested themselves and kids. This does NOT excuse the abuse. Also most molesters have a fairly large number of victims which creates more and more potential molesters.

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I'll have to come back to talk about race issues

***BACK IN THE 50'S**********Yes, it is better now in some ways*****race relations and acceptance of all people has improved****Our focus as Christians should be based on the Bible (Biblical World View). Every issue should be looked at in light of the Kingdom of God. Most of our problems today in America can be attributed to departing from God's standard. Back in the 1950's kids were no exposed to many of the evils of today's society---pornography, rampant divorce, sexual deviancy, and other ills. Many things did need improvement, but today we have things that are so far out that people back in the 50's would not have believed it. I heard one man of God say that God revealed to him in the 70's about partial birth abortion ect. He warned churches that this would happen and he was rejected as a nut. The Church must waked up to what is happening now. I believe the evil we now see now in America will look small to what is coming unless there is a Reformation in the Church and society.

We had monstor movies tneh we could go see a movie, buy a big hesrhey bar and drinks for a $1 back then. It didn't matter nuch the only place in my hometown with ac and cold drinks was the movis. Jue jue bees! Thats what we wanted most!

It was very black and white back then

it was a lot more 'candy-coated' back then, also a very large part of the population
were trying to eat, dress, drive, act, like the various medias/moguls were pushing
down their throats...