Intellectual History: "The Sum of Our Dreams," Louis Mazur, Part 3

3. THE SUM OF OUR DREAMS1967-presentThe Sum of Our Dreams; 59 pages; 6123 words; many visualsCHAPTER 9BLOWIN’ IN THE WINDIn 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.ConsumerismBetween 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.