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Using TV to Sell Cigarettes to Children

 This dissertation began as a focus on 1950s America and the standardization of cultural norms in post-World War Two America. When millions of American servicemen returned home in 1945 and 1946, they started families. With 10 million Americans starting families, America entered a baby boom.[1] Two direct results of that explosion of births were the creation of suburban communities and the explosion of television ownership by Americans. The explosion of births created a need for new homes for these new families and the GI Bill AKA Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 provided returning servicemen with an opportunity to go to college and the low-interest loans that enabled them to buy a home. Now that the Greatest Generation has survived the Great Depression and World War Two, they could afford to purchase luxury items that had eluded their parents for 15 years. In 1948, only one percent of US households owned a television. By 1955, 75 percent of US households owned a television[2]...
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The Causes of the Great Depresssion

            The Great Depression lasted from 1929 until 19 41 when the US entered World War Two . 1 While there were several contributing factors, the turning point that ushered in this twelve-year period was the Stock Market Crash on October 24 th , 1929. So severe was the drop in stock prices that the day has come to be called “Black T hurs day ”. The result was widespread unemployment in the United States. 2 Unemployment rates during this time averaged at 1 out of every 4 men or 25% of the workforce. In Black communities like Harlem, the rates were as high as 50 % . 3     While this economic calamity affected both the United States and the major countries of the world, for Americans, t he Great Depression was the “worst economic disaster in American history ”. 4   The Stock Market Crash of 1929 was not the cause of the Great Depression, merely the notification that this economic downturn had arrived. Only a few A...
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