In David Halberstam’s The Fifties, the reader is presented with a very insightful look at all the many social changes of that time period in American History. To many of those who may have lived during this era white Americans in particular, it was considered to be a “slow-moving” decade although America itself and its economy was doing very well. There were no wars, sure there were some threats of war, there just wasn’t an actual war that included troops and casualties. But what many did not realize in this decade as Halberstam describes it, it was a decade seeming slow-moving on the surface but it had a much deeper social climate change fermenting underneath it much of which spilled over into preceding decades. This was especially true of the civil rights movement. In this essay I will explore the civil rights movement and its effect upon American society. I will analyze also how this movement is depicted in the films, flawed or accurate, that we have viewed thus far while also examining the often controversial unity between blacks and whites through bonds of friendships and also as lovers as depicted in, The Defiant Ones (1958) by Stanley Kramer, the critically acclaimed, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967) which is also by Stanley Kramer, The Long Walk Home (1991) by Richard Pearce, as well as Mississippi Burning (1988) by Alan Parker.
Segregation and the “Passive Blacks”
While researching subject matter for this essay and diving into the vast array of information available on the civil rights issue, I came across many notable quotes and speeches regarding equality, the effects of racism on American society, and unity all of which were very...