Intellectual History. 3. The Sum of Our Dreams: A Concise History of America," Louis Mazur, Rutgers University

3. THE SUM OF OUR DREAMS
1967-present

The Sum of Our Dreams; 59 pages; 6123 words; many visuals
CHAPTER 9

BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King was jailed, again, in Birmingham, published “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in which he defended nonviolent disobedience and called on all clergy and white moderates to support civil rights.
--Muhammed Ali, after dropping his slave name, Cassius Clay, wrote to King, in jail inquiring about his safety and his health
--joined the Nation of Islam proclaiming, “I am the greatest…I am the prettiest thing that ever lived.”
--in 1967, the champ refused to be drafted an faced his own jail time for filing as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. “I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own: get used to me.

Consumerism

Between 1950 and 1960, the population increased from 151million to 180 million, a growth rate of 19%
--US economy great dramatically in the 1950s.
--One of the causes was the G. I. Bill officially the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act, signed by President Roosevelt in 1944.
--Typical of the postwar boom in restrictive suburban housing wee Levitttowns, a series of developments built on Long Island and in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Developer William Levitt, who had served in the US Navy during the war, mass-produced, affordable Cape Cod-style homes on vast subdivided acres of land outside of the cities.
--American existence in the 1950s: the suburban nuclear family with working husband, domestic wife, two-car garage, absorbed with television and encouraged by mass-market advertising to purchase items such as refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and washing machines.