PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - 1950s-mid 1960s Where The Old Days Really Better?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by JB3 (Post 3312848)

Unless you were targeted by Joseph McCarthy. Im sure people dragged in by the thought police had plenty to say about their "smaller" governments lack of intrusion into thier personal affairs.

Not an example of "smaller", less intrusive government.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pooka (Post 3312821)

Government intrusion then was just as bad as it is now. The people I knew just ignored it.

Things have changed in the oil industry and all for the better. I can remember when pipeline right-of-ways doubled as toxic waste dumps and this was totally legal. Then the government stepped in and the industry started its' long wailing of 'too much government intrusion'.

Visit the Elk Hills oil fields in California for a taste of the good old days when there was less government intrusion. Then visit the oil fields in the Midland, Texas area to see what a government regulated oil field looks like. The difference is night and day. A lot of what the EPA started doing they learned from the Texas Railroad Commission when it came to running an oil field.

I can remember how dangerous the oil field was in the days before OSHA. I hope we never go back to those days when life was cheap and safety was something you only did at school crosswalks.

Sorry Pooka, but you are taking one specific area and implying that the government was equally intrusive in all other areas.:)

In the fifties and at least most of the sixties, there were fewer government agencies and fewer intrusive laws toward the general public. There were also MANY FEWER frivolous lawsuits, which in many cases have led to more government regulation and control.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tjts1 (Post 3312837)

Ah yes the good old days of polio, DDT and segregation. Don't we all wish we could go back to those days?
http://www.1800politics.com/wp-conte...in-400x300.jpg

YES INDEED! Segregation was one of the dark aspects of the era.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MS Fowler (Post 3312864)

Not an example of "smaller", less intrusive government.

no shlt.

Yer all wrong, it was 1971 :)

Carly Simon - Anticipation - 1971 - YouTube

There are plenty of areas in which I enjoy the benefits of today:
The medical field in general, but dentistry --absolutely!
helpful drugs--i/e NOT thalidomide

I am still on the fence about the overall "benefits" of instant communication.

Overall, the PC has been very welcomed. I remember when the first "pocket" calculator ( Bomar Brain) became easily accessible-- $179 for 4 functions, no memory, and red LED display, but we couldn't keep them on the shelves)--The innovation was so startling that at the engineering office where I worked, they could be used either for the initial calculation, or for checking calculation, but not for both.

I think everyone who has commented on the general superiority of the 50s/60s has admitted that race issues were not done well. No need to keep beating that horse.

But I know I could walk through even the black sections of downtown Baltimore at night, and be safe. I would not attempt that feat today.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tjts1 (Post 3312837)

Ah yes the good old days of polio, DDT and segregation. Don't we all wish we could go back to those days?
http://www.1800politics.com/wp-conte...in-400x300.jpg

I remember seeing one of those signs, somewhere on Maryland's Eastern Shore, on the way to Ocean City. It was probably about 1962, or 63, and I was absolutely shocked. I had heard of segregation, but never before seen it in practice. I went to school with some black kids--they mostly stayed by themselves, but no one, in my experience, ever said, or did anything toward them.
I also made friends with some Jewish kids--again, no problems of which I was aware.

My problems came mostly from stuck-up middle calls and upper white kids who thought they were better than me.

Just about to cue up "We Didn't Start the Fire" . . . but it just played on Sirius Billy Joel Channel . . .

http://youtu.be/eFTLKWw542g

Quote:

Originally Posted by MS Fowler (Post 3312871)

There are plenty of areas in which I enjoy the benefits of today:
The medical field in general, but dentistry --absolutely!
helpful drugs--i/e NOT thalidomide

I am still on the fence about the overall "benefits" of instant communication.

Overall, the PC has been very welcomed. I remember when the first "pocket" calculator ( Bomar Brain) became easily accessible-- $179 for 4 functions, no memory, and red LED display, but we couldn't keep them on the shelves)--The innovation was so startling that at the engineering office where I worked, they could be used either for the initial calculation, or for checking calculation, but not for both.

I think everyone who has commented on the general superiority of the 50s/60s has admitted that race issues were not done well. No need to keep beating that horse.

But I know I could walk through even the black sections of downtown Baltimore at night, and be safe. I would not attempt that feat today.

sounds like it coulda been dangerous then, as now, with all the drugs coming into Baltimore in the 50s-60s.

Quote:

Urban Crisis: 1950-1990

In 1950, the city's population topped out at 950,000, of whom 24 percent were black. Then the white movement to the suburbs began in earnest, and the population inside the city limits steadily declined and became proportionately more black.
Schools

Integration of Baltimore city schools at first went smoothly, as city elites suppressed working class white complaints, which only sped up white flight to suburban schools. By the 1970s new problems had surfaced. White flight transformed formerly white schools into mostly black schools, though whites still made up most of the faculty and administration. Worse, the school system had become dependent on federal funding. In 1974, these circumstances led to two dramatic incidents. A teachers' strike highlighted the city's unwillingness to raise teachers' salaries because a hike in property taxes would further alienate white residents. A second crisis revolved around a federally mandated desegregation plan that also threatened to alienate the remaining white residents. The crises were caused by racism and federal policy.[33]
Drugs

Heroin usage in Baltimore reveals the explosive rise of illegal drug use in the United States in the 1960s. In the late 1940s there were only a few dozen African-American heroin addicts in the Pennsylvania Avenue area of the city. Heroin use began largely for reasons of prestige within a group that most middle-class blacks looked down on. When the Baltimore police formed the three-man narcotics squad in 1951 there was only moderate profit in drug dealing and shoplifting was the addict's crime of choice. By the late 1950s young whites were experimenting with the drug, and by 1960 there were over one thousand heroin addicts in the police files; this figure doubled in the 1960s. A generation of profiteering young, violent black dealers took over in the 1960s as violence increased and the price of heroin skyrocketed. Increasing drug usage was undoubtedly the primary reason for burglaries rising tenfold and robberies rising thirtyfold from 1950 to 1970. Soaring numbers of broken homes and Baltimore's declining economic status probably exacerbated the drug problem. Adolescents in suburban areas began using drugs in the late 1960s.[34]
Civil rights

In the 1930s and 1940s the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the black churches, and the Afro-American weekly newspaper took charge of organizing and publicizing demonstrations. There was no rioting. In the late 1950s Martin Luther King and his national civil rights movement inspired black ministers in Baltimore to mobilize their communities in opposition to local discrimination. The churches were instrumental in keeping lines of communication open between the geographically and politically divided middle-class and poor blacks, a chasm that had widened since the end of World War II. Ministers formed a network across churches and denominations and did much of the face-to-face work of motivating people to organize and protest. In many cases they also adopted King's theology of justice and freedom and altered their preaching styles.[35]
Baltimore was the site of an early civil rights sit-in—perhaps the nation's first. When a handful of black students entered Read's Drug Store for less than half an hour, it precipitated a wave of desegregation.[36]
Backlash

In the 1950s and 1960s, white Southern racial politics moved north into Baltimore and other cities. White Southerners came to Baltimore by the thousands during World War II, permanently altering the city's political landscape. Southern whites built on existing racial restrictions in Maryland to approximate the customary lines of demarcation further south. Working whites mobilized to prevent school integration after the Brown v. Board of Education decision of the Supreme Court in 1954. They believed that their interests were being sacrificed to those of black Americans. As working-class whites began to feel increasingly embattled in the face of federal intervention into local practices, many turned to the 1964 presidential primary campaign of George Wallace who swept the white working class vote. Durr (2003) explains the defection of white working-class voters in Baltimore to the Republican Party as being caused by their fears that the Democratic Party's desegregation policies posed a threat to their families, workplaces, and neighborhoods.[37]
Between 1950 and 1990, Baltimore's population declined by more than 200,000. The center of gravity has shifted away from manufacturing and trade to service and knowledge industriesm, such as medicine and finance. Gentrification by well-educated newcomers has transformed the Harbor area into an upscale tourist destination..

History of Baltimore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quote:

Originally Posted by MS Fowler (Post 3312871)

I think everyone who has commented on the general superiority of the 50s/60s has admitted that race issues were not done well. No need to keep beating that horse.
.

This thread could only be started by an older white man, and your response could only be posted by an older white man.

The argument being made by diesel911 is that the era in general was better nationwide for the general population. However, he and other older white men responding affirmatively are applying only one single viewpoint to the question, was the era better for everyone? Or was the era better for white males specifically? Well white males polled say yes. Just how singular is that perspective? Very narrow.

Additionally, i think public recorded history answers that question quite clearly, race issues were a major part of the inequality and descrimination of the time period. For you to say the race issue has been handled, simply shows how little race issues of the era impacted you personally. After all, you were just the right color, and just the right sex for everything to work if you wanted it, and doors to remain open that you could walk through.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MS Fowler (Post 3312871)

You're 40+ years older now and obvious mugger-bait; of course you would not attempt that feat today!

Quote:

Originally Posted by JB3 (Post 3312899)

sounds like it coulda been dangerous then, as now, with all the drugs coming into Baltimore in the 50s-60s.

History of Baltimore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All I know is that I did it, walking along the North Avenue corridor. I missed my bus, and walked much of the way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JB3 (Post 3313100)

Sorry, the only experiences I can post are those I encountered. I could make up a politically correct "memory", but that would be a lie. I can't apologize for living when I did.
I posted of my shock to see a "White's only" water fountain, but I never experienced any race issues first hand....until I saw the smoke rising from Baltimore after MLK's assassination--all the while the Mayor was proclaiming that everything was under control.

Remember that America of that time was mostly of a European descent, a more or less homogeneous culture. If blacks amounted to 10% of the overall population, they were mostly concentrated in the inner cites. Some communities probably had no black population at all, some States, too. It was not difficult for large portions of the population to never see a black person; it wasn't an issue. Of course, things changed radically in the 60s. I was a supported of MLK--at least compared to those who clamored to burn down the cities. MLK was a voice of calm, even if he wasn't exactly as he was portrayed, but then again, neither was J. Edgar Hoover, was he.

You guys … come on!

The good old days were never all that good and the present days are not all that bad. It's all a matter of perspective.

Some things were, without any doubt, better in the good old days. Most things were not as good else we would not have changed.

Most things are better today than yesterday, but not all things, else we would not seek to change today into a better tomorrow.

Each of us can point to this or that item which we believe is better or worse (then and now) and we will have disagreement on those items.

It could almost have gone without saying. But apparently not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Botnst (Post 3313121)

The voice of sanity has spoken......thanks, Bot