The accent of the era was on convenience and speed-a time when abundant steps were taken to free the housewife from the dreary grind of daily chores. The Fifties saw the mass production of laborsaving home appliances and convenience foods to provide women with more leisure time. This period also brought improvements in many other aspects of everyday life. The Fifty's were the time when all girls seemed to look so feminine and appealing with their ponytails, flared skirts, and petticoats. Men donned clean-cut hair styles and freshly shaven faces. Dancing girls, doing their twirls and spins with enough force to send layers of petticoats waist high displaying shapely legs, and stocking-tops, frequently filled hamburger joints and school gymnasiums. Comedians of the 50's never used filthy jokes or foul language, and television portrayed an unreal innocence about the era.

When looking back, the 1950's appear to have been trouble-free peaceful years. The American Flag was a symbol we saluted with respect. Prayer was allowed in schools, as well as in most public pl

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a city bus and sat with three other blacks in the fifth row, the first row that blacks could occupy. A few stops later, the front four rows were filled with whites, and one white man was left standing. According to law, blacks and whites could not occupy the same row, so the bus driver asked all four of the blacks seated in the fifth row to move. Three complied, but Parks refused. She was arrested.

The 1950's officially ended on November 22, 1963 with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Until that time, the dangers that the majority of our population feared were vague impersonal threats talked about in the workday lunchroom or mulled over at cocktail parties. For many the violence of the Civil Rights Movement was something awful, yet like war in a distant land, it didn't hold the reality of events taking place within their own everyday existence. When Kennedy died most Americans took it personally, and life suddenly seemed much more bloody and malicious-and watching it over and over again for days on the evening news forced shocked minds to accept the unacceptable. The outcome was a populace who developed a clearer perception of human nature, which brought new light to such violent outcries as the Civil Rights Movement and the plight of the Negro people.

Whites tried to end the boycott in every way possible. One often-used method was to try to divide the black community. When the efforts to break up the boycott failed, whites turned to violence. King's home was bombed on January 30, and Nixon's home was bombed on February 1st.. Next, whites turned to the law. On February 21st 89 blacks were indicted under an old law prohibiting boycotts. Whites also tried to break down the private civilian taxi system that many blacks had set up and relied on as their only means of transportation to and from work.

Rosa Parks is probably the most romanticized personage in the Montgomery cast of characters. She is often portrayed as a simple seamstress who, exhausted after a busy day at work, refused to give up her seat to a white person. While this is not untrue, there is more to the story. Parks was educated; she had attended the laboratory school at Alabama State College, she reluctantly decided to become a seamstress when she could not find a job to suit her skills. She was also a long-time NAACP worker. When she was arrested in December 1955, she had recently completed a workshop on race relations at the Highlander Folk School in neighboring Monteagle, Tennessee. She was a well-respected woman within her community who had a spotless record.

aces. "In God We Trust" was not simply words printed on our currency, but a term that held meaning to most of the society. Yet at the same time that the media was sending out this variety of wholesome white middleclass images, the outrage about the absence of basic human rights in many parts of the country was beginning to bring pictures of protests to the eveni

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Approximate Word count = 2000
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)