The Fifties: An Underground History

National Archives Museum
Online

Author James R. Gaines argues that the 1950s were not a decade of conformity but a time when individuals pioneered the gay rights, feminist rights, civil rights, and environmental movements. The Fifties brings to life the people who sparked movements for change in their time and our own. Of the many discussed are Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the argument that made sex discrimination illegal, only one of her gifts to 21st-century feminism. We meet Harry Hay, who dreamed of a national gay-rights movement as early as the mid-1940s. And we hear the voices of Silent Spring’s Rachel Carson and MIT’s preeminent mathematician, Norbert Wiener, whose legacy is the environmental movement.

On April 1 the National Archives releases the 1950 population census schedules.

Census programming is made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation through the generous support of Denise Gwyn Ferguson.