Conformity In The 1950's

the 1950 decade began with approximately 25 million registered automobiles on the road, most of which were pre-World War II and in poor condition. By 1950, most factories had made the transition to a consumer-based society; in result, more than 8 million cars were produced that year. By 1958, there were more than 67 million cars registered in America, more than twice the number at the beginning of the decade. The car became the center of our collective success. We wanted everything about the car to be bigger, taller, more powerful, and covered with chrome. Just as the Europeans were spitting out sports cars, the American car manufacturers wanted to do something different; in result, “heavy metal” became the catch phrase for cars in the 1950s.

No other decade in history was more successful for the automobile than the 1950’s.

As the decade’s fashion and architecture of the day portrayed conformity, the American car represented the country's optimism and enthusiasm in a decade of hopefulness. Car manufacturers looked at conformity as a foreign concept and did everything in their power to excite buyers and bring crowds to their showrooms. The 1950’s American automobile culture has had a long lasting influence on the people of the United States. The American car manufacturing switched from producing war weapons to consumer goods at the end of World War II, and by the end of the 1950’s, one out of every six working Americans were employed by the automotive industry. The United States became the world's largest manufacturer of automobiles, and Henry Ford's goal that any man with a good job should be able to afford an automobile, was achieved. In result, a new generation of service businesses focusing on customers with their automobiles, like drive-through restaurants and movies, were created. Another contemporary entity that was established from the result of the booming automobile industry was the expansion of the National Highway System with Interstate highways. The wider, multi-lane highways allowed traffic to move at faster speeds with few or no stoplights. The automobile industry not only positively influenced people’s perspectives on travel and appealing machinery, it predisposed many other innovations and necessities that we still use in modern

times.
Sports were as popular as ever in the 1950’s. Baseball and boxing were huge forms as entertainment, while football and golf were growing in popularity. The Yankees dominated the decade in baseball and as did the Cleveland Browns in football. Rocky Marciano and Floyd Patterson were the boxing superstars of the 1950s and college football was more popular than pro football. Athletes like Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron and Jim Brown were household names and baseball was completely integrated as dozens of African American ballplayers filled major league lineups.
After World War II ended, Americans were given more leisure time to enjoy extracurricular activities like sports. Sports' popularity was amplified from technological advances, including the growth of television coverage, improved airline service that prompted professional leagues to go out west, and advanced equipment such as helmets and electric pin-setters for bowling. Professional sports also increasingly became more racially integrated, which influenced their popularity to a wide range of audience members. The most reflective and insightful development in sports was the desegregation and integrating of various sport teams. Jackie Robinson was the first black American to break the color in major league baseball, which then led to desegregation of nearly all sports by the end of the 1950’s. Sports were an expression of American freedom. Even then, black Americans had to prove themselves better than white Americans to get the same pay; an unspoken rule of more than 49 percent of all the teams were African-American. When the media used black athletes to show how integrated sports were, integration had just begun. Sports not only influenced their surrounding economies by starting toy and merchandise industries like trading cards and figurines, but they also influenced the transformation of society by showing that change can be revolutionary.