Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course U.S. History, and today we're going to look at one of the most important periods of American social history, the 1950s. Why is it so important? Well, first, because it saw the advent of the greatest invention in human history, television.
Mr. Green, Mr. Green, I like TV. By the way, you're from the future. How does the X-Files end?
Are there aliens or no aliens? No spoilers, me from the past. You're going to have to go to college and watch the X-Files get terrible just like I did. No, it's mostly important because of the Civil Rights Movement.
We're going to talk about some of the heroic figures like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, but much of the real story is about the thousands of people you've never heard of who fought to make America more inclusive. But before we look at the various changes that the Civil Rights Movement was pushing for, we should spend a little time looking at the society that they were trying to change. The 1950s has been called a period of consensus, and I suppose it was, at least for the white males who wrote about it and who all agreed.
that the 1950s were fantastic for white males. Consensus culture was caused first by the Cold War. People were hesitant to criticize the United States for fear of being branded a communist. And second, by affluence. Increasing prosperity meant that more people didn't have as much to be critical of.
And this widespread affluence