And yet, despite the real and often underemphasized progress African Americans and women were making early in the century, our analysis also reveals the undeniable ways in which the mid-century “we” was nonetheless highly racialized and gendered, and just how far short of the goal we were, even at a time when America’s comity and cohesion were at an unprecedented high. It is thus critical to avoid nostalgia about the 1950s as some sort of “golden age”
