Pre-Beatlemania

Pre-Beatle America: **America during the fifties and early sixtie****s was in a very** ** tumultuous state. The fear of Communism raged through ** leading cause of the fear in America. Americans thought** city and an all-out war would be started. The Domino theory, that stated if one country fell to Communism then all of the countries that were connected to it would also fall. Americans thought that all of Asia would turn Communist because of the Russian and Chinese influence.**
 * American society and all of the accusations made in the**
 * fifties, along with the rise and spread of McCarthyism,**
 * made America a scary place to live. The average**
 * American thought that a bomb could come crashing down**
 * any minute and destroy their lives. The Cold War was the
 * that Russia would just drop a nuclear bomb on their

**Civil Rights movements** **were also very popular in the fifites.** ** Rosa parks and Martin Luther King Jr. both led movements that were aimed at gaining equal rights for blacks. The March on Washington and King's "I Have A Dream" speech both occured in 1963. The controversial Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, and it outlawed segragation. Blacks' place in American society was rapidly changing as they gained more and more rights that would allow them to be equal to the rest of America. Not only were blacks fighting for rights, but women began to be dissatisfied with their current role in society. Friedan's __The Feminine Mystique__ was published in 1963 and it highlighted the issues that many women in America faced at the time. Women did not want to be constrained to their role as ** **the maid and cook for the family who simply kept the home neat for the husband to return to from work. Both women** causing much unrest within American culture in the 60's. The final blow to the American mindset in the 60's was the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. This murder caused a huge disturbance within American society and only added to the amount of confusion and distress that was becoming more and more common in America in the early 1960's. The fear and civil unrest within American culture during the early sixties made it easy for the Beatles happy, anti-war message to spread throughout the nation and create the craze known as Beatlemania.**
 * and African Americans were fighting for more rights and