Jan 4, 2010

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio | Historical Context

The 1950s and 1960s were tumultuous times in American history. Although the 1950s are often looked back upon with nostalgia and regarded as a decade of innocence, bobby socks, and souped-up cars, it was also the decade of McCarthyism and the Communist Control Act, atomic testing, air raid shelters, and a government-backed “Red Scare” to maintain public support for a large military budget. According to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, during the period from 1944 to 1961, “The country was on a permanent war economy which had big pockets of poverty,...