ABSTRACT
Try to think of a time and place more contradictory than America in the 1950s. Here was the decade as oxymoron, filled with jangling coexistences that had no business trying to get along. In a time of postwar prosperity, and with a benignant grandfather in charge, the country acted like everything was jim-dandy. Never mind that there were witch-hunts afoot, treating many with the grace and generosity of the Reign of Terror. Never mind that a race was moving past untold injustices only by overcoming the greatest imaginable number of obstacles. Never mind the bloody doings in Korea that the guys in charge wouldn't call a war. Never mind, too, that a few women and men in a few cities like Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco were beginning to talk about oppression and the need for equality for those who loved within their own sex. With new suburbias filled with television screens, with bumper crops of kids to be harvested as never before, who could worry about those tiresome little nicks on the American picture window?
