Christian Science Monitor: Jackson discusses culture of 1950s

Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor of English and American Studies, is quoted in the Christian Science Monitor in an article on the opening in Oklahoma of a time capsule containing a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried 50 years ago. "The '50s look to us now like a very free time," he said. "There seemed to be more air, more space. During World War II, there were virtually no cars, and gasoline was rationed so there was very little point in owning one. Suddenly we were pouring them out by the hundreds, and people had a mobility they'd never had before. The economy was expanding at a prodigious rate; people were buying homes and graduation on the GI bill; the lower class was becoming the middle class. There was no scary thing hovering over the '50s as it [did] for the decades on either side of them."