Fifties Fashions, the height of the Baby Boomer Years, when people tried to live a normal life raising a family after the Great Depression and World War II, teenagers discovered rock and roll music and Elvis Presley, parents discovered more consumer choice, and jobs were plentiful. The post-World War II boom, the beginning of the Cold War, and the Civil Rights movement in the United States characterized the 1950s. “At this moment, America stands at the top of the world,” Winston Churchill, the former British Prime Minister, said in 1945. It was plain to see what Churchill meant in the 1950s. The US was the world's most powerful military force. Its economy was booming, and the fruits of that prosperity–new automobiles, suburban homes, and other consumer goods–were more widely available than ever. The 1950s, on the other hand, were a period of intense violence. The burgeoning civil rights movement and the crusade against communism at home and abroad, for example, revealed the country's fundamental tensions.
