454 ChApTEr 20 | the BreaKDoWn oF ConsensUs | period eight 194 5 –198 0noted that America’s greatest source of unused brainpower was women. But girls
would not study physics: it was “unfeminine.” A girl refused a science fellowship
at Johns Hopkins to take a job in a real-estate office. All she wanted, she said, was
what every other American girl wanted—to get married, have four children and
live in a nice house in a nice suburb.Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (New York: Norton, 2013), 1–4.
Copyright © 1983, 1974, 1973, 1968 by Betty Friedan. Used by permission of W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.prACTICINg historical Thinking
Identify: List the significant roles for mid-twentieth-century American women that
Friedan describes. What patterns do you observe?
Analyze: Who is the intended audience for Friedan’s statement? Explain your
response.
Evaluate: To what extent does a solution to the problems that Friedan identifies
depend on persuading men to change their views toward cultural norms?Document 20.4 MarTin lUTher KinG Jr., “i have a Dream”
1963Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1969) became the de facto leader of the postwar civil rights
movement during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. Using tactics of nonviolent
resistance to racial segregation in the South, King helped bring the inequalities experi-
enced by African Americans to the forefront of American consciousness in the 1950s and
1960s. On August 28, 1963, in his seminal speech during the March on Washington, King
eloquently expressed his vision of a racially just America.... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their charac-
ter. I have a dream... I have a dream that one day in Alabama, with its vicious rac-
ists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and
nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will
be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today... I have a dream that one day every valley shall be
exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be
made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory of the
Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is
the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew
out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able
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