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- 1st black athlete to play MLB in the 20th century
- Faced racism from opposing teams, fans, and his own teammates
- Awarded 1st Rookie of the Year award in his first season
- 1949: awarded National Leagues most Valuable Player
- 1950: Dodger's most paid player

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On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American in the major leagues when he plays his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born into a family of sharecroppers on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia. He attended UCLA, where he became the first athlete to letter in four varsity sports: baseball, basketball, football and track. He served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1944 and was honorably discharged after facing insubordination charges for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus.

After leaving the military, Robinson played shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro League. In 1945, he was recruited by Dodgers president and general manager Branch Rickey, who was determined to end the unwritten segregation rule in the majors. In 1946, Robinson joined the Dodgers' farm team, the Montreal Royals, and went on to lead the league in batting. On April 15, 1947, 28-year-old Jackie Robinson made his Major League Baseball debut with the Dodgers, against the Boston Braves, in front of more than 25,000 spectators at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York. Robinson played first base and went zero for three at the plate.

During his first season in the majors, Robinson encountered racism from opposing teams and fans, as well as some of his own teammates. However, the abuse didn't affect his performance on the baseball field. Robinson played in 151 games, hit .297, stole more bases than anyone else in the National League and was awarded the first-ever Rookie of the Year title. In 1949, Robinson, who had switched to playing second base, was named the National League's Most Valuable Player. The next year he became the Dodgers' highest paid player, earning a salary of $35,000. In 1955, Robinson helped the Dodgers defeat the New York Yankees to win the World Series. He retired from baseball after playing his last game on October 10, 1956, with a career batting average of .311, 1,518 hits and 137 home runs.

After leaving baseball, Robinson worked as a business executive and continued his involvement in civil rights causes. On October 24, 1972, he died at age 53 from heart problems and complications related to diabetes. Robinson became the first African-American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, his first year of eligibility. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of his historic first game in the majors, Robinson's uniform number-42-was retired by Major League Baseball.

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first african-american play major league baseball

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brooklyn dodgers game boston braves 1947

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Jackie Robinson breaks major league color barrier - Apr 15, 1947 - HISTORY.com

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On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American in the major leagues when he plays his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born into a family of sharecroppers on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia.

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"The main issue that the terrible schooling system generated was that it was nearly impossible for blacks to fit in with society, because without an education, they were lost, without a decent paying job."

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http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/august-wilson-the-ground-on-which-i-stand-august-wilsonbiography-and-career-timeline/3683/
- Had difficulties in school life due to his skin color.
- Dropped out of high school during his early teens.
- Self educated himself at Carnage Library of Pittsburgh.
- His mother was unaware of him dropping out of high school.

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Sports Illustrated Magazine, July 22, 1957 and June 3, 19570     -Mackenzie

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Sports Illustrated Magazine, July 22, 1957 and June 3, 19570     -Mackenzie

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-Sports Illustrated Magazine featured only white baseball athletes in 1957.
- Despite the different sports portrayed, only white male athletes are pictured on the covers.

https://www.si.com/vault/issue/42605/1/1

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Si Vault Issue Browser - July 22, 1957 - Page 1

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https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/26364/PDF/1/play/
During the 1920s, women of color were not allowed in hospitals to give birth. Most women were forced to use midwives in order to birth their children and this even counted during the 1960s. Due to the use of midwives which would be in home in comparison to a clean hospital, the survival rate of African -American offspring was low. Although black women were finally allowed the right to give birth in hospitals, it had to b in blacks only sections. Even then, doctors would not prioritize their needs and health.

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October of 1951: The all-black 24th Infantry Regiment was officially disbanded.  This eradicated any structural practices of segregation in the Army. African American men were now included in all major-combat missions and operations.
- While structurally, treatment of POC was fair, that doesn't mean the attitudes and individual actions of soldiers changed with the structure of the Army.
https://www.army.mil/africanamericans/timeline.html

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Lobotomies were a popular practice in the 1940-50's. It consisted of surgically cutting or removing the connections between the prefrontal cortex and frontal lobes of the brain. The procedure could be completed in five minutes. Some patients experienced improvement of symptoms; however, this was often at the cost of introducing other impairments. The procedure was largely discontinued after the mid-1950s with the introduction of the first psychiatric medications.

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There is no clinical record that suggests racial inequality in the military healthcare system during the early and mid 1900's. Any relationship between race and health must be seen at theoretical

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https://www.biography.com/people/august-wilson-9533583

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/theater/newsandfeatures/august-wilson-theaters-poet-of-black-america-is-dead-at-60.html

-Born Frederick August Kittel Jr. (later wrote under his mother's surname)
-Born in a poor neighborhood that was predominantly black
-After his parents divorced, his family moved to a predominantly white neighborhood (much discrimination)
-Wanted to be a writer - his mom wanted him to be a lawyer

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- Wilson married three times and and had two daughters through his marriages.
- Wrote a total of 16 plays, 10 of which became famous from each decade of the 20th century.
-Fences premiered in 1987
- Wilson died of liver cancer in 2005

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African-American playwright August Wilson won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for his play Fences , and earned a second Pulitzer Prize for The Piano Lesson . Learn more at Biography.com.

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"In 1954, the earliest year for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has consistent unemployment data by race, the white rate averaged 5% and the black rate averaged 9.9%. Last month, the jobless rate among whites was 6.6%; among blacks, 12.6%. Over that time, the unemployment rate for blacks has averaged about 2.2 times that for whites."

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Much has changed for African-Americans since the 1963 March on Washington (which, recall, was a march for "Jobs and Freedom"), but one thing hasn't: The unemployment rate among blacks is about double that among whites, as it has been for most of the past six decades.

In 1954, the earliest year for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has consistent unemployment data by race, the white rate averaged 5% and the black rate averaged 9.9%. Last month, the jobless rate among whites was 6.6%; among blacks, 12.6%. Over that time, the unemployment rate for blacks has averaged about 2.2 times that for whites.

The widest gaps, when black unemployment was as much as 2.77 times that of white unemployment, came in the late 1980s, as the manufacturing sectors that employed disproportionate shares of African-Americans shriveled. The smallest gaps, ironically, came in the summer of 2009 during the Great Recession; white unemployment rose so high, so fast, that the black jobless rate was "only" 1.67 times higher.

The black-white unemployment gap appears to have emerged in the 1940s, according to a 1999 analysis of Census data. Although labor economists, sociologists and other researchers have offered many explanations for the persistent 2-to-1 gap - from the differing industrial distribution of black and white workers to a "skills gap" between them - there's no consensus on causes. One 2011 working paper, after reviewing existing research on wage and unemployment differentials among blacks and whites, concluded that "none of the existing models of race discrimination in the labor market explains the major empirical regularities."

One common explanation, as William A. Darity Jr. of Duke University told Salon in 2011, is that blacks are "the last to be hired in a good economy, and when there's a downturn, they're the first to be released." A 2010 article testing that "last hired, first fired" hypothesis against panel data from the Current Population Survey (from which the unemployment rate is derived) found considerable support for the "first fired" part but not for the "last hired" part: Blacks are in fact disproportionately likely to lose their jobs as the business cycle weakens, but the hiring side is more complex: "[E]arly in the business cycle, those blacks with a stronger attachment to the labor force (i.e., the unemployed) are the ﬁrst hired. Blacks who are nonparticipants tend to be hired late in the business cycle when labor demand is particularly strong."

Topics: Socioeconomic Class, National Economy

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Black unemployment rate is consistently twice that of whites

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Much has changed for African-Americans since the 1963 March on Washington (which, recall, was a march for "Jobs and Freedom"), but one thing hasn't: The unemployment rate among blacks is still about double that among whites, as it has been for most of the past six decades.

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-Most children left school early (most started working at 14), and didn't have the privilege of furthering their education.
-Men were responsible for working and providing for their family (money wise)
-Women were the homemakers, and were responsible for cleaning, cooking, raising children, etc.
-The effects of WWII were still ongoing (sugar and meat were rationed)
-Families had little spare money for treats or extra expenditures
-People spent their free time reading newspapers, playing board games, etc.
-Housework was much more difficult, and they often had to do things by hand (ex: dishes, laundry)

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Children in the 1950s had very different lives to young people today. Most left school much earlier, with many starting work at 14, and far fewer people had the chance to go on to further education.

The after-effects of the Second World War were still ongoing, for instance many goods were still being rationed in the early 1950s. Sugar was rationed until 1953 and meat only came off ration a year later.

Ordinary families had little spare money for treats like cinema trips and holidays. Before most homes had televisions, people spent their spare time listening to the radio or reading the newspaper; they played board games rather than computer games; and in place of the selection of fast food outlets we have to choose from, they had a takeaway from the local fish and chip shop.

The 1950s family home was also very different from our own. Housework was much more difficult, as for example people did their washing by hand, instead of in a machine, and with refrigerators being a luxury item for most people, food had to be bought daily. It was less common for married women to work and many took on the childcare and housework, while their husbands went to work.

This film clip from the Yorkshire Film Archive shows the Watkins family having tea at home in Yorkshire in the early 1950s. It helps to give us an insight into how people lived in this period and what they did in their spare time.

Activity: Analysing a Historical Film Clip

Students from St Bart's Primary School in Armley, Leeds, watched the Yorkshire Film Archive clip ' The Watkins Family' and then imagined what it would be like to be a member of the family. They thought they would...

See: Women cooking the tea, with food like cake, jam and meat. The men wearing suits are coming home from work, and tuning in the radio. A girl is in the garden picking flowers.

Hear: The family having a conversation. The sound of the radio and the clock ticking.

Smell: Garden flowers and fresh bread baking.

Taste: Tea, cake and bread.

Touch: The kettle, teapot, radio, food and the dog

The children then used information they had collected from the video, plus other research about life in the 1950s to write a description of a child from the 1950s.

They were asked to think about:

Are they a boy or girl?

How old are they?

What do they look like?

What clothes do they wear?

What do they enjoy doing?

Who do they play with?

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Children in the 1950s had very different lives to young people today. Most left school much earlier, with many starting work at 14, and far fewer people had the chance to go on to further education. The after-effects of the Second World War were still ongoing, for instance many goods were still being rationed in the early 1950s.

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Acceptance of African Americans in sports - Kinsey 

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Acceptance of African Americans in sports - Kinsey 

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- Sports were among the first high profile space to accept African Americans as equals
- African Americans still excluded from MLB but allowed to form their own professional teams
- "barnstorming": African American teams would play in different towns every day.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Exhibition Experience

Football

Historically Black Colleges and Universities
In the United States, football first flourished at elite colleges and universities because the game was associated with important social traits: leadership, discipline, competition, and toughness. In 1892 Livingston College and Biddle University played in the first game between historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Because of segregation, HBCU football programs were major producers of elite football talent through the 1970s. In addition to developing top-level players, these programs allowed aspects of African American culture to blossom.

Baseball

Negro Leagues Baseball
The Negro Leagues were among the most important businesses in black America during the first half of the 20th century. Excluded from Major League Baseball, African Americans formed their own teams and demonstrated that they could play the game at the highest level and run large enterprises. Fans admired the teams for their "barnstorming"-playing games in different towns day after day-as well as their daring base running and flashy play.

Basketball

Racial Uplift
Basketball was created in 1891 by James Naismith, an instructor for the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). The YMCA saw the sport as a means to teach mainstream middle-class values. African Americans gravitated to basketball as a way to demonstrate sportsmanship, discipline, and sense of fair play-key aspects of the racial uplift campaign of the time. Since then, many black athletes have acknowledged the lessons they learned in sports as elements in their later successes in politics, business, and other fields.

The Olympics

Tigerettes and Tigerbelles
The Tuskegee Institute Tigerettes and the Tennessee State University Tigerbelles helped establish the mid-20th century domination of African American women in track and field. These two historically black colleges and universities produced many athletes that excelled in Amateur Athletic Union and Olympic track events. In addition to their athletic success, these programs used the achievements of their athletes to challenge racial discrimination and demonstrate feminine ideals, which countered racist stereotypes.

Boxing

The Color Line
During much of the era of segregation, the color line prevented African American boxers from fighting for the heavyweight championship. In 1908 African American fighter Jack Johnson was finally given a shot at the crown, and he defeated Tommy Burns. Breaking the color line in boxing was one of the most important blows to segregation in the early 1900s, because it challenged the notion that African Americans were inferior.

Game Changers

Game changers are the people, events, and institutions that have forced the sports world and larger society to alter its practices, belief systems, or racial politics. Some of these shifts have led to the mainstreaming of African American cultural practices and the redefinition of gender roles, as well as a change in the racial composition of athletic institutions. The impact of these game changers demonstrates the power of sports to transform the world.

Michael Jordan's 1996 finals jersey, a Bayou Classic Trophy, Jack Johnson's boxing glove, Althea Gibson's tennis racquet, and Eddie Robinson's game ball are some of the objects represented in the 17 game changers cases.

Statues

Tommie Smith, John Carlos, and Peter Norman at the 1968 Olympics

Jackie Robinson sliding into base

Jesse Owens running at the 1936 Olympics

Shani Davis speed skating at the Winter Olympics

Venus and Serena Williams celebrating a women's doubles championship

Michael Jordan's last shot as a member of the Chicago Bulls

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Football Historically Black Colleges and Universities In the United States, football first flourished at elite colleges and universities because the game was associated with important social traits: leadership, discipline, competition, and toughness. In 1892 Livingston College and Biddle University played in the first game between historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

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Social status in 1957 was handed to children by their family. Rarely was it possible for individuals to move from an ascribed social class to an achieved one, and doing so was known as vertical mobility. Levels within these classes varied geographically, but were fairly consistent with culture and boundaries. Education was a primary factor in vertical mobility, and a majority of lower-class educated children moved to middle-class jobs. Upper-class families were especially isolated at this time, acting rather pompously and irreverently towards other classes. Lower-classes were often ignored or pushed down by higher classes, making vertical mobility immensely difficult. In addition, social class was based on the family more than an individual, so a family containing several poor members and one rich person would still be considered lower-class. Heritage is immensely important, as is reputation.

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America throughout the times. Has it changed very much when it comes down to social class? That ornery category assigned to one at birth, that may change as life progresses? McGraw-Hill Text-Films and Knickerbocker Productions produced a school film back in 1957 that explores the topic of social class.

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Choosing to not have a child in the 50s was very heavily stigmatized and reflected a failure of adulthood and responsibility. Adults without children were casually dismissed as shallow and self-absorbed. When parents did have children, they were encouraged to become independent and many began work at the age of 14. The ideals of hard work were hard-wired into their minds because parents wanted their children to succeed. Children would be discouraged from straying from tradition for the sake of stability and security.

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In recent years, the relationship between parents and children has profoundly changed.

For one thing, the decision about whether or not to have children is voluntary. Electing not to have children is no longer stigmatized in the way it was. "Child-free" adults are no longer casually dismissed as shallow and self-absorbed.

As a result, for most adults, the decision to have a child is deliberate and purposeful. Having a child represents a self-conscious decision to become a mother or father and to assume the responsibilities that parenting entails.

Parenting itself has become problematic in a way that differs sharply from the past. In today's society, it is impossible to raise a child unselfconsciously. Bombarded with conflicting advice about the relative merits of breastfeeding versus bottle feeding, crib sleeping and co-sleeping, early versus delayed toilet training, each parent must decide for her- or himself how best to rear a child. Labels abound: attachment parenting, natural parenting, positive parenting, slow parenting.

Lacking the clear and authoritative guidelines set by earlier childrearing experts like Dr. Benjamin Spock, moms and dads must decide whether to be strict or lenient, achievement and performance focused or indulgent, pushy or laid back. Today's parents receive sharply conflicting messages about whether or not to prioritize academics and other accomplishments or, instead, give their children free time, freedom, and free range to explore their environment.

At the same time, parents have grown far more sensitive to the risks that their children face, both physical and psychological. Anxiety has become the hallmark of contemporary parenting. Even before their child is born, prenatal testing leads parents to worry about potential birth defects to an extent absent in the past. This is followed by a preoccupation with children's safety.

Stoking parental fears are sensationalistic media accounts of the risks posed by pedophiles and the prevalence of stranger abduction of children, as well as reports about the potential perils posed by bullying, vaccines, additives, and various environmental hazards.

The result: The geography of childhood has contracted, indoor time has mounted, and adult supervision of children's activities has greatly increased.

Equally important is a profound reversal in parental expectations. Early in time, parents expected their children to love them. Today, in stark contrast, parents seek to ensure that their children love them. To that end, many seek to ensure that their children are happy and never bored.

As mothers and fathers devote more time to work, a sense of guilt also colors parent-child relations. Even though recent research indicates that parents actually spend more face-to-face time with their children than did their 1950s counterparts, mothers and fathers worry that they are not able to provide the kind of safe, secure childhood they themselves enjoyed, involving a great deal of free unstructured play with neighborhood friends. Consequently, many overcompensate.

Underlying the shift in parent-child relationships are a raft of historic shifts. Delayed parenthood, better educated parents, and reduced birthrates all lead parents to increase their fixation upon individual children. In a society in which marital relationships have grown much more fragile, many parents look to their children as a source of permanent attachment and emotional fulfillment. The increase in single parenthood and two-earner households has also altered parent-child relations, since children in these settings must take on greater responsibility for self-care and for helping out than did those in homes with full-time mothers.

Perhaps the biggest force for change in parent-child relationships lies in parents' worries about their ability to transmit their class status to their children. As the economy has grown more competitive and entrepreneurial, many parents seek to give their child a leg up, and as a result invest more time and resources in enrichment activities: reading to their children, conversing with them, and providing toys and activities aimed at enhancing their development.

Today, parenting does not end at 18 or 21. Most parents not only expect to contribute to their children's college education, but to its aftermath: To supporting them during their twenties and helping them, later, in making a down payment on a house.

For all the disdainful talk about hovering, overinvolved, and overprotective helicopter parents, the fact is that parents today are, on average, closer to their adult children than in the past. Parent-child hierarchy has given way, to a remarkable extent, to a relationship that is closer, more intimate, and more egalitarian than ever existed in the past. If it has become harder for some children to cut the umbilical cord and establish an independent identity, and if it has become more difficult for some parents to let go and grant their kids a fully autonomous life, for most, the ongoing bond between child and parent proves to be a crucial source of meaning and personal happiness.

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In recent years, the relationship between parents and children has profoundly changed. For one thing, the decision about whether or not to have children is voluntary. Electing not to have children is no longer stigmatized in the way it was. "Child-free" adults are no longer casually dismissed as shallow and self-absorbed.

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There are three aspects to disciplinary action used by parents on children. The first is power assertion, which refers to a parent's use of power and authority over the child. The second is love withdrawal, which is expressions of direct but non-physical anger or disapproval. The third is induction, which is a parent focusing on the consequences of a child's actions on others. In a Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, they found moral development in children corresponded with infrequent power assertion and frequent use of induction. Love withdrawal had no obvious effect.

In the play, Troy enforces a strict use of power assertion on Cory. He frequently uses his power and authority to intimidate or punish. According to this study, among others, this strongly suggests Troy is having a negative effect on Cory and his moral development.

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1950 living

few common items from 1950:

The average family income:        $3,300
The average car cost:                     $1,510
The median home price:               $7,354

2014 Living:
The average family income:        $51,017
The average car cost:                     $31,252
The median home price:               $188,900
In the 1950's something as simple as a car was half the family's yearly income.

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Inflation has a subtle eroding effect that impacts entire economies. In the United States, we have been fortunate to have relatively stable rates of inflation for two generations. Even in times of high inflation like the 1970s, people were able to adjust unlike places that experience uncontrolled inflation like Argentina is currently facing. Also, wages rose in tandem which helped buffer the pain of higher costs. Today however, inflation has eroded the purchasing power of the middle class. Only when we look at longer periods of time do we see the large impact inflation has on our ability to buy real goods and services. People found a piece comparing 1938 and 2013 prices on various goods and items to be enlightening. Since our middle class did not fully emerge until the end of World War II, it might be useful to compare the price of items back from 1950 to where things stand today. Has inflation had a big impact on our purchasing power since 1950?
1950 living versus that of 2014
It might be useful to first look at a few common items from 1950:

The average family income: $3,300 The average car cost: $1,510 The median home price: $7,354

These are three very important metrics when it comes to measuring purchasing power in the United States. Since we consider having a car and a home as cornerstones to a middle class lifestyle, it is useful to look at these figures since we can easily grab these figures from reliable sources.

See below for source data:

Source: US Department of Commerce

Then we can see the median home price:

Source: US Census

A Ford car could be had with a price range of $1,339 to $2,262 depending on the model. Income is an important measure because it gives us an insight into how well families are doing and how much money is being spent on certain items. So let us derive ratios for each of the items for the 1950s:

Home price / income = 2.2 Car cost / income = .45

This is important here. The typical home cost 2.2 times annual income while a car cost .45 times annual income. Let us now fast forward to 2014 and see where these things stand:

The average family income: $51,017 The average car cost: $31,252 The median home price: $188,900

Let us show the data here:

Source: National Association of Realtors

Household income was pulled from Census data based on what the typical household earns. Inflation has a subtle way of eroding purchasing power. Let us pull some ratios here:

Home price / income = 3.7 Car cost / income = .61

Housing has gotten dramatically more expensive. The cost of a new car has gone up but not so noticeably when looking at inflation data. Inflation has largely eaten away at income on other fronts like college tuition and healthcare. These were much more affordable back in the 1950s relative to overall income.

For example, in 1950 at the University of Pennsylvania annual tuition was $600:

We should run a ratio here as well:

Let us look at current tuition costs:

Current tuition is over $40,000 per year.

This is a massive change. In 1950, a family sending their child to the University of Pennsylvania would only spend 18 percent of their annual income (if they paid in cash) to send their kid to study. Today it would consume 79 percent of gross annual income. Even if we look at net take home pay a regular family in no way could send their child to school without going into massive student debt.

A good portion of inflation over this time has been masked by massive amounts of debt and financing. Car purchases, mortgages, and college are now financed long-term. Low rates have masked this erosion but with rates reaching the lower bound of the range, the pain of inflation is now being felt by many households.
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Comparing the inflated cost of living today from 1950 to 2014: How declining purchasing power has hurt the middle class since 1950.

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Inflation has a subtle eroding effect that impacts entire economies. In the United States, we have been fortunate to have relatively stable rates of inflation for two generations. Even in times of high inflation like the 1970s, people were able to adjust unlike places that experience

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- Marriage rates fell in the 1950's and kept declining
- Numbers of married white and black women were roughly the same in the 1950's
- African american women are half as likely to remain married when compared to white women and twice as likely to divorce
- African-american divorces in the 1950's and 60's were most often informal agreements
- Separation is about 4 times more common among African Americans

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In  1947 Jackie Robinson was the first black player in the MLB. By 1957 11-12 % of the MLB was African American. There is also a lack of African American managers in the MLB, and most sports during this time.

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https://billmoyers.com/story/august-wilson-on-writing-about-black-america/
- Although he had a white father, he was more attracted to black culture because it was the environment he was surrounded by during his childhood.
- Fences focuses on black families, however he says that the commonalities of the play are the same for all cultures.
- Expresses that different social groups have different way of interacting with people.
- " BILL MOYERS: So you’ve answered my question. I was going to ask you, don’t you grow weary of thinking black, writing black, being asked questions about blackness?

AUGUST WILSON: Well, how could one grow weary of that? I mean, you never transcend who you are."

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Due to the wages that were significantly less than those of white people, black women were often forced to work outside of the home in order to help keep the family financially stable.

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Women in the 1950s (article) | 1950s America | Khan Academy

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Learn about the myths and realities of women's lives during the 1950s.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/theater/newsandfeatures/august-wilson-theaters-poet-of-black-america-is-dead-at-60.html

-The  Broadway Virginia Theater was renamed the August Wilson Theater (1st broadway theater named after a black man)

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-  15 of the plays are set in the Hill District in Pittsburg, the other 1 is in Chicago
- The 4 blues singers that influenced Wilson were referred to as the 4 B's because their names all started with B
http://www.thegreenespace.org/story/312026-11-things-you-should-know-about-august-wilson/

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- Two parent household (mom and dad).
- Divorce rates were very low due to the stigma it carries.
- Single moms prospects were very grim.
- A "proper" fella had a wife and kids.
- People got married young and had kids very young (baby boomers).
- House boom.

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1950s Family life was very much a family affair. For starters, most probably it was a two a parent household. Both a Mom and a Dad.

Divorce was not a common thing. Why? Societal pressure for one thing. You were supposed to get married and stay married, regardless of how miserable you were. Divorce carried a stigma.

Back then, people spend more of their lives married than they do today due to lower divorce rates and earlier ages at marriage. People just didn't live alone. Only 9.3% of homes had only a single occupant in 1950, up slightly to 16.3% in 1960. Today that number is over 25%.

Women's prospects as single people were pretty grim. Even today, divorced women suffer about a 45% decline in economic status and it was worse then. Today a woman can get a decent paying job but back in the Fifties, a woman's best chance at employment was in traditionally accepted "women's jobs" such as secretary, teacher, nurse, librarian and so forth. So there was an economic incentive to stay married.

Men felt the societal pressure. A proper fella had a wife and kids. His boss expected it. His neighbors and family expected it.

In 1950 there were 385,000 divorces which only rose slightly to 395,000 by 1959. Contrast that with 1,135,000 in 1998, and you begin to see the trend. To put those numbers in perspective, only 2.6 people out of 1,000 were divorced in 1950, whereas it climbed to 4.2 out of 1,000 in 1998.

Mom was probably younger than today. Did you know that the number of teen births has declined since the high in 1957?

According to the NCHS/CDC report "Births to Teenagers in the United States, 1940-2000" the birth rate for U.S. teenagers in 2000 was 48.7 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 years, the lowest level ever reported for the Nation. In 1957 the rate 96.3 per 1,000, about double its current level.

People married younger in the 50s. 1950 median age for a first marriage was 22.8 years old for men and 20.3 for women. In 2000 the median age at first marriage: Males: 26.8 Females: 25.1.

Along with the Fifties Baby Boom, came a housing boom. Home ownership went from 55% in 1950 to 61.9% in 1960. From there it stabilizes and ran around 66.3% in 1998.

But here's a surprise. The 1950 house may well have been heated by coal! It was the most common heating fuel in 1950. Only .7% of homes were heated by electric and 26.6% by utility gas. That would all change over the course of the decade though. By 1960 coal was down to 12.2% and utility gas up to 53.1%. Today 51% of homes are heated by utility gas.

Want to talk bathrooms? Complete plumbing (hot and cold piped water, a bath-tub or shower, and a flush toilet) was only available in 64.5% of homes in 1950. That would change too and by 1960 only 16.6% of homes were without complete plumbing. Today it's around 1%.

Having said all of that, most people grew up in houses with flush toilets and never saw a piece of coal in their lives. You never saw Richie Cunningham go to an outhouse, did you?

Speaking of the Cunningham's, and let's add Ozzie and Harriett Nelson, the Anderson's of " Father Knows Best " and all those other TV families, they weren't real. It was TV. Nobody is perfect, especially not parents, and problems cannot be solved in 30 minutes. Those TV families do serve as example in some ways though.

Families did sit down to eat together. Yes, the whole family. Mom cooked because that was her job. In 1950 there were 40,174,705 employed males and 15,559,454 employed females. Employed being the key word as Mom worked her tail off in the home for which she wasn't materially compensated. Want to argue that point? Did she get social security credit for it? No. Does she today? No. But I digress.

After dinner the family would watch TV if they had one, which by the end of the decade was likely. The whole family watched the same show. Why? Because there was only one TV. In the whole house. Could the kids run to their bedrooms and talk on the phone? I don't think so. Why? Because they may have been only one phone. In the whole house.

But a kid might have had a small record player of your own. Probably had a transistor radio. And that little transistor radio is where we learned about Rock and Roll.

What you may well ask, did kids do for fun? We visited with one another. In those days you could walk home at night without ending up on a milk carton. If you were a little older, after school you went to a soda shop or diner. Like Arnold's in Happy Days. And hung out. But no malls, no computers, no stereos, no video games and gasp, no cell phones or texting.

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1950s Family life was very much a family affair. For starters, most probably it was a two a parent household. Both a Mom and a Dad. Divorce was not a common thing. Why? Societal pressure for one thing. You were supposed to get married and stay married, regardless of how miserable you were.

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- Wilson changed his name from Kittel to honor his mother after his father's death
- Wilson was a poet and wrote poems for various black journals
- His last marriage was to a costume designer in 1994
http://biography.yourdictionary.com/august-wilson

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Black men adopt this "cool pose"(being or acting cool) in order to safeguard from mental or physical abuse, and from oppressive societies, thus creating more stress and being a cause of stress.

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Black men learned long ago that the classic American virtues of thrift, preserverance, and hard work did not give them the same tangible rewards that accured to white men. Yet they have defined manhood in similar terms: breadwinner, provider, procreator, protector. Without the means to adequately fulfill these roles, many have become frustrated, impatient, angry, embittered, and alienated.

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"In June 1950, almost 100,000 African-Americans were on active duty in the U.S. armed forces, equaling about 8 percent of total manpower. By the end of the war, probably more than 600,000 African-Americans had served in the military."
http://www.nj.gov/military/korea/factsheets/afroamer.html

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http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2017/01/14/August-Wilson-and-the-building-of-Fences/stories/201701140047
- It is theorized that Troy was based off of Sam Bankhead, an American Baseball player.
- It shows that no matter what race someone is, they still find love in similar things.

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-In the late 1950s, the poverty rate was approximately 22 percent
-About 40 million Americans lived in poverty during this time.
-Impoverished people tend to have less education, greater health problems, and malnourished diets.
- High school graduation rates for African-American and Hispanic students are almost 20 percentage points lower than other ethnic groups
-Poverty is strongly related to income (more poor people have higher mortality rates and risk of diseases)
-Those with a more advanced education are less likely to be poor
-Poor people have less access to a balanced diet consisting of fruits, veggies, or whole grains; and often have to settle for cheap, junk food.

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U.S. Poverty Statistics and Facts (Updated for 2023)

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Learn about how poverty affects different demographics in the United States by looking at the most recent statistics and data.

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- In the early 20th century, black men were more likely to be employed and black women were more likely to get married than white people
- As the rates of black employment declined around 1960, marriage rates also declined
- The decline in marriage rates didn't affect the desire to be married

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Robert Joseph Taylor, MSW, Ph.D., is the Sheila Feld Collegiate Professor of Social Work and the Associate Dean for Social Work Research at the University of Michigan. He is a Faculty Associate with the Program for Research on Black Americans at the Institute for Social Research. He is also a faculty associate with the Center for Afro-American and African Studies and affiliated with the Center for Research on Race, Religion and Health at the Institute for Social Research. He is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Marriage and the Family. Professor Taylor has published extensively in two major areas (informal social support networks and religious participation). His work on the informal networks investigates the role of family, friends, and church members as sources of social support to adult and elderly Black Americans. His work in the Sociology of Religion investigates the demographic correlates of religious participation among black adults and black elderly. He has been Principal Investigator of several grants from the National Institute on Aging which examine the role of religion in the lives of Black and White elderly adults. He has been Co-Principal Investigator with James Jackson on several grants from the National Institute of Mental Health on the correlates of mental health and mental illness among black Americans. He is Co-Principal Investigator for the National Institute on Aging grant, "Church-based Assistance and Older Blacks." He has edited two books Family Life in Black America (1997) and Aging in Black America (1993) with James S. Jackson and Linda M. Chatters.

James S. Jackson is a geologist and adjunct professor of geology at Portland State University. He has flown more than a million miles on commercial flights.

Linda M. Chatters, Ph.D. holds a joint position as Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior & Health Education at the School of Public Health and the School of Social Work. She is also a Faculty Associate with the Program for Research on Black Americans, Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. The major focus of Dr. Chatters' research is the study of adult development and aging as it relates to the mental and physical health status and social functioning of older persons in a variety of social contexts (i.e., the family, church, and community). A particular emphasis of this work has been the investigation of various dimensions of religious involvement among the African American population. She is also interested in assessing the independent contributions of relevant religious, personal, and social status factors on well-being among elderly and non-elderly populations. She is Principal Investigator for the National Institute on Aging grant, "Church-based Assistance and Older Blacks." Dr. Chatters is the author of "Religion and health: Public health research and practice" which appeared in the Annual Review of Public Health (2000).

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Most studies of Black families have had a `problem focus', offering a narrow view of important issues such as out-of-wedlock births, single-parent families and childhood poverty. Family Life in Black America moves away from this negative perspective and instead deals with a wide range of issues including sexuality, procreation, infancy, adulthood, adolescence, cohabitation, parenting, grandparenting and ageing.

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-The addition of black baseball players in the major leagues added immeasurable talent and made the game more competitive.
- In the mid 1950s, black integration increased dramatically
-The addition of black players aided the morality and ethical aspects of how the general public treated black people.

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In early 2007 major league baseball marked the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first season with the Dodgers, bringing an end to a sixty-year ban on black players in the major leagues. The story of Robinson and the brave men who followed his lead and helped change the game has been told often and well over the succeeding years. The story tends to focus on the moral and ethical implications of the game's integration, the righting of baseball's great wrong, as well as on the troubles endured by the heroic men who led the way.

The study presented here begins with 1947, but it concerns itself not with social justice or heroism, but with the effect of integration on the playing field. Jackie Robinson improved baseball ethically and morally, which is plenty, but he also made it better because he was a great player, and his playing time came at the expense of someone who was a lesser player. Robinson opened the doors for a vast new source of baseball talent, and that talent could not help but dramatically improve the game.

I began following baseball a generation after Robinson, in the late 1960s. The baseball I grew up with was well integrated, as far as I knew. In fact, many of the best players seemed to be black men, people who would not have been able to play 25 years earlier. Commentators of the time, and the occasional outspoken player, would whisper that it remained difficult for a black man to make a team if he was not a star-for example, few teams carried black utility infielders. After mulling this over for forty years, I finally decided to try to determine if this was true.
Related link: For an update to this study, see "Baseball Demographics, 1947-2016" by Mark Armour and Dan Levitt

The first, and ultimately most difficult, step in this study was to determine which players were "black" and which were not. The so-called "color line" was never acknowledged, let alone defined. For other purposes, one might be interested in differentiating between African-American players and dark-skinned Latinos, and in today's culture we would consider certain players "bi-racial". For my purpose, such distinctions are unnecessary. I only needed to determine which players would not have been able to play during the days when black players were prohibited from playing. For almost all players the determination is straight-forward. Lou Brock is black, Al Kaline is not black, etc. For the players I could not recall or never knew, I had to scout down pictures or baseball cards, or solicit the help of other SABR members. To summarize, when I refer to "black" players in this study, I am using the term generically to include any player who would have been prohibited from playing major league baseball before 1947.

I do not claim that this is an exact science, but the types of questions I am trying to answer here would not be affected by the misidentification of a few players. Ultimately, I made a determination for every player who played in this 40 year period, a total of 5490. According to my findings, there were 933 black players in this period, beginning with Jackie Robinson in 1947, and ending with Ruben Rodriguez, who caught two games for the Pirates in September of 1986. Putting all of these players in a data base, I can answer any number of questions. I present a few of these here.

How quick was the pace of integration?

Figure 1

The graph in Figure 1 shows the percentage of major league players in a given season who were black. The number increased slowly at first, but accelerated in the mid-1950s and was still growing at the end of this 40 year period. Black players first accounted for 10% of rosters in 1958, reached 20% in 1965, and 28% in 1986. Recent studies suggest the number is over 30% today (to reiterate, I am including dark-skinned Latinos as well as African-American players).

This is part of what I wanted to know, but this graph gives all players--Willie Mays and Julio Gotay--equal weight. I next needed to separate the quality from the quantity.

How integrated were the All-Star teams?

Figure 2

In Figure 2, the solid line again shows the percentage of blacks on major league rosters, while the new line shows the percentage of blacks on the two mid-season all-star teams. This graph clearly shows that there were more black players on all-star teams than one would expect if all-stars were randomly distributed. In 1965, for example, while 20% of all players were black, they accounted for 38% of the all-stars. Based on the overall percentage of black players in the majors, one might have expected roughly 11 of the 53 players on the all-star teams to be black; in fact, there were 20. As the graph highlights, this discrepancy was quite common during the era under study.

All-star teams are not a precise representation of the best players, of course. Besides the human biases that go into the selections, the all-star rosters require a player from each team and a balancing of positions. What we really want to know is: who were the real star players in baseball, and who were providing the most value?

How many of the "real" star players were black?

Win Shares, a system invented by Bill James that allocates team wins to individual players, lends itself well to studying large pools of players. One can always argue about some of the individual components of the highly complex formula, but when aggregating 5500 players over 40 seasons one would expect any imbalances to average themselves out. As a point of reference, James suggests that a player who earns 20 Win Shares had a star-quality season. Again, one can find examples of 19 Win Share seasons which are better than 22 Win Share seasons, but over tens of thousands of player-seasons, these anomalies are of little importance. It turns out that the number of 20 Win Share seasons in a league is similar to the size of All-Star rosters-20 or 25 per league or so in the 1950s, and about 35 today with the larger league sizes.

Figure 3

When contrasted with Figure 2, Figure 3 shows that the "real" star players were even more likely to be black than the All-Star teams. Returning to 1965, black players made up 20% of team rosters, and fully 44% of the "star" players in baseball. This is not an anomalous season-these results are repeated to some extent for most every season for 20 years.

From another perspective this discrepancy is even starker. In 1965, 6.4% of white major leagues (36 out of 562) were star players, while 20% of blacks players (28 of 140) were stars, a percentage three times as large.

What was the total contribution of Black players?

A more thorough way to examine the contributions of black players is to figure how much value the entire group was providing. To examine this question, I summed the Win Shares accumulated by every black player, and calculated the percentage of total Win Shares these men accounted for.

Figure 4

Figure 4 confirms the evidence of the previous two graphs: the black players were consistently doing more than their share of the work. The solid line again is the percentage of black players in the major leagues, while the dotted line represents the value they were producing. In 1965 when black players made up 20% of major league players, they accounted for 28% of the value, a huge difference when considering the size of the pool.

As an aside, it is ironic that many people consider baseball post-1960 as diluted by expansion, even as this great talent source was finally being mined. If 28% of the talent in the league was not allowed to play a generation before, how likely is it that the game was of lesser quality? Baseball in the 1960s had 25% more teams (20 versus 16), but the addition of black players easily accounts for that increase, even as blacks likely remained underrepresented.

As I pushed this study further out, I expected the two lines in Figure 4 to converge. In fact, although they got closer, there remained a significant gap in 1986, strongly suggesting that lesser skilled black players still had a tougher time getting work. It would be interesting to see how this trend has evolved over the past 20 years.

How large was the difference between the two leagues?

Let's first take a closer look at the American League.

Figure 5: American League

Figure 5 shows the percentage of American League players who were black (solid line), the percentage of star players who were black (dashed line), and the overall value of the black players. The American League integrated slowly, and other than for a few years in the mid-1950s, the black players in the league were performing about as one would expect from their share of the rosters through the mid-1960s. During the late 1960s, however, as the American League became more fully integrated, black stars began to make up larger percentage of the talent base than suggested by their numbers alone.

In the National League, the story is much more dramatic, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: National League

By the early 1960s, half of the stars in the league were black, and the number was over 60% by 1967. The dramatic effect of the star players illustrated in Figure 3 is nearly completely fueled by the NL; the AL did not begin to field many black stars until the late 1960s.

Finally, one can just plot the difference in the value of the black player in the two leagues.

Figure 7

In Figure 7 we do not plot lines for the two leagues, but just look at the difference in the value of each league's black players, subtracting the AL share from the NL share. The NL had a small advantage in the early years of integration, but their edge grew rapidly in the late 1950s and remained strong into the early 1970s. This graph highlights the National League's superior ability to not only find black players but to find the best black players. In the National League they accounted for roughly 30% of the league's player value by 1961, more than 15 percentage points ahead of that achieved in the less integrated junior circuit--a gap that persisted for the next decade. To put this more concretely, the difference in the two leagues was about 40 Win Shares per team, which is a peak-level Willie Mays season.

Why did the leagues take different paths in this area? Perhaps it is as simple as teams imitating the best clubs in their league. In the National League, the Dodgers provided a model of excellence for the other teams to follow, and first the Giants and Braves, and later the Cardinals brought in black players and became consistently competitive. In the American League, the Yankees won every year with very little help from black players.

How about the top-flight stars, the future Hall of Famers?

I will conclude with a look at the career superstars, the future Hall of Famers. Rather than using percentages, I focused on the number of these players who were performing in each league. For the purposes of this chart, I have not included Satchel Paige or Willard Brown, deserving Hall of Famers inducted for their great careers outside of the major leagues.

Figure 8

In 1947, each league had a single Hall of Famer-Jackie Robinson, and Larry Doby. Doby remained the sole American Leaguer until his retirement in 1959-at which point there were no black Hall of Famers in the AL for six years.

Meanwhile, the NL added a new Hall of Famer nearly every season, until 1965 when their gap on the Americans was 15-0. In 1966, Frank Robinson was traded to the Orioles, reducing the gap to 14-1, and, perhaps not surprisingly, he was immediately the best player in the AL, winning the Triple Crown.

It should be noted that the players represented on this chart were all top-flight stars. The Veterans Committee, the so-called "back door" into the Hall of Fame, has inducted only two black players-Larry Doby and Orlando Cepeda-along with several white players from this period. Furthermore, if one removed the contributions of the 15 National League Hall of Famers from 1965, the remaining black players in the NL still accumulated more Win Shares than their AL counterparts. The NL dominance extends past the superstars.

What can one conclude about the talent levels in the two leagues?

Win Shares is inadequate to definitively answer a question like this. If you add up the Win Shares of the players in the two leagues they will be exactly equal, because Win Shares begins with the assumption that the two leagues are the same-Win Shares is a parsing out of credit for all of the wins a team achieves. Since each league has the same number of wins, they will also have the same number of Win Shares. To the point, in order for the leagues to be of comparable strength in the 1960s, the white American Leaguers would have to have been significantly better than the white National Leaguers.

Could this be true?

Returning to 1965 again, who were the best players, of any color, in the American League? According to Win Shares, the best players were Tony Oliva, Zoilo Versalles (who won the league's MVP award), and Don Buford, three fine black players. Going down the list, the best AL white players that year were Rocky Colavito, Brooks Robinson, Curt Blefary and Jim Hall. How much better could they really have been than Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Pete Rose, Jim Bunning, and Ron Santo, each of whom had excellent seasons that year in the NL?

Admittedly, this is not proof. But I suggest we should all take with a grain of salt comparisons of, for example, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, which do not include a huge adjustment for the quality of the two leagues. According to Win Shares, Mickey Mantle deserved his third MVP Award in 1962, beating out Norm Siebern and Floyd Robinson. Meanwhile, Willie Mays competed with a large crop of superstars to win just two MVPs. He might have won every year had he changed leagues.

How much did the black players improve the game?

One argument often used in making the case to induct players from the Negro Leagues into the Hall of Fame is that there were just as many great black players playing before 1947 as there were afterwards. This argument, while not without holes, is a compelling one. There were players like Willie Mays and Frank Robinson playing in the 1930s, the theory goes, and they should be honored just as their successors were.

A parallel argument is to consider the game of the 1960s without its great black players. The baseball of the 1930s, I propose, was comparable to the baseball of the 1960s if all of the black players were somehow removed from the game. Had segregation continued for another generation, players like Harmon Killebrew, Ron Santo, and Norm Cash would have been the superstars and we would not have known that there were better players who were not able to play. Mays and Aaron and Clemente, those wonderful players who remade the game, would have remained in the shadows, and we would be wondering today whether they really could have competed in the great major leagues.

What would baseball have been like in 1965 without Willie Mays and the 27 other black stars? It would have been immeasurably worse. It would have been, I suggest, comparable to the baseball played in 1946.

Note: This article was originally published as "The Effects of Integration," in Jim Charlton (editor), Baseball Research Journal 36 (SABR, 2007).

Sources

The main data I relied on for this study was gathered by hand, poring over baseball cards and hundreds of pictures found on the internet. Many SABR members helped me in determining the "race" of the 5490 players, but I want to especially mention three: Rick Swaine and Steve Treder have each been working on research that overlaps what I present here, and were generous with their findings; and Bill Hickman found pictures of many of the most obscure players that had eluded me from this period. Once I had the black players identified, Dan Levitt provided me year-by-year Win Shares totals for each of my players, and (as usual) helped me think through many of the ideas contained in this paper. Bill James's Win Shares (Stats Publishing, 2002) was also necessary, of course.

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In early 2007 major league baseball marked the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first season with the Dodgers, bringing an end to a sixty-year ban on black players in the major leagues. The story of Robinson and the brave men who followed his lead and helped change the game has been told often and well over the succeeding years.

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Fence.

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Fence.

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Scary fence.

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- between ages 18 & 29, women are more likely to cheat but after age 30, men are more likely to cheat.
-  At the time of this study, 22% of African-Americans have cheated on their spouse
- 53% of marriages stay intact after a partner cheats

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The last few months of 2017 treated us to a whirlwind of news coverage on sexual harassment and abuse, with powerful men from Hollywood to Washington, D.C. falling because of sexual misconduct. It continues into the new year, with Missouri Governor Eric Greitens the latest to fall. And most of these men are married.

When Time magazine picked the silence breakers as the 2017 "person of the year," few people paid attention to the other group of women negatively impacted by the fallout-the spouses of the men who engaged in inappropriate or even criminal (in some cases) sexual behavior. To these women, sexual harassment/abuse also means infidelity.

In general, men are more likely than women to cheat: 20% of men and 13% of women reported that they've had sex with someone other than their spouse while married, according to data from the recent General Social Survey(GSS).

However, as the figure above indicates, this gender gap varies by age. Among ever-married adults ages 18 to 29, women are slightly more likely than men to be guilty of infidelity (11% vs. 10%). But this gap quickly reverses among those ages 30 to 34 and grows wider in older age groups. Infidelity for both men and women increases during the middle ages. Women in their 60s report the highest rate of infidelity (16%), but the share goes down sharply among women in their 70s and 80s. By comparison, the infidelity rate among men in their 70s is the highest (26%), and it remains high among men ages 80 and older (24%). Thus, the gender gap in cheating peaks among the oldest age group (ages 80+): a difference of 18 percentage points between men and women.

Trend data going back to the 1990s suggests that men have always been more likely than women to cheat. Even so, older men were no more likely to cheat than their younger peers in the past. In the 1990s, the infidelity rate peaked among men ages 50 to 59 (31%) and women ages 40 to 49 (18%). It was lower for both men and women at the older end of the age spectrum. Between 2000 and 2009, the highest rate of infidelity shifted to men ages 60 to 69 (29%) and women ages 50 to 59 (17%). Meanwhile, the gender gap at ages 80+ increased from 5% to 12% in two decades.

A generation or cohort effect is likely to contribute to this shifting gender gap in infidelity. As Nicholas Wolfinger noted in an earlier post, Americans born in the 1940s and 1950s reported the highest rates of extramarital sex, perhaps because they were the first generations to come of age during the sexual revolution. My analysis by gender suggests that men and women follow a slightly different age pattern when it comes to extramarital sex. Women born in the 1940s and 1950s are more likely than other women to be unfaithful to their spouse, and men born in the 1930s and 1940s have a higher rate than other age groups of men. The higher infidelity rates among these two cohorts contribute to the changing pattern in the gender gap as they grow older over time.

In addition to gender and age, the infidelity rate also differs by a number of other demographic and social factors. For example, cheating is somewhat more common among black adults. Some 22% of ever-married blacks said that they cheated on their spouse, compared with 16% of whites and 13% of Hispanics. And among black men, the rate is highest: 28% reported that they had sex with someone other than their spouse, compared with 20% of white men and 16% of Hispanic men.

A person's political identity, family background, and religious activity are also related to whether or not they cheat. Overall, Democrats, adults who didn't grow up in intact families, and those who rarely or never attend religious services are more likely than others to have cheated on their spouse. For example, 15% of adults who grew up with both biological parents have cheated on their spouse before, compared with 18% of those who didn't grow up in intact families.

On the other hand, having a college degree is not linked to a higher chance of cheating. Almost equal shares of college-educated adults and those with high school or less education have been unfaithful to their spouse (16% vs. 15%), and the share among adults with some college education is slightly higher (18%).

Given that many of these factors could be interrelated, I ran a regression model to test the independent effect of each factor. Basically, holding all other factors equal, will each factor still be related to the odds of cheating? It turned out that most of these differences (such as age, race, party identity, religious service attendance, family background) are significant, even after controlling for other factors. And a person's education level is not significantly associated with cheating.

However, when it comes to who is more likely to cheat, men and women share very few traits. Separate regression models by gender suggest that for men, being Republican and growing up in an intact family are not linked to a lower chance of cheating, after controlling for other factors. But race, age, and religious service attendance are still significant factors. Likewise, men's education level is also positively linked to their odds of cheating. By comparison, party ID, family background, and religious service attendance are still significant factors for cheating among women, while race, age, and educational attainment are not relevant factors. In fact, religious service attendance is the only factor that shows consistent significance in predicting both men and women's odds of infidelity.

Infidelity is painful to the person who is being cheated on and can be detrimental to the relationship. Although statistics on the link between infidelity and divorce are hard to find, my analysis based on GSS data suggests that adults who cheated are much more likely than those who didn't to be divorced or separated.

Among ever-married adults who have cheated on their spouses before, 40% are currently divorced or separated. By comparison, only 17% of adults who were faithful to their spouse are no longer married. On the flip side, only about half of "cheaters" are currently married, compared with 76% of those who did not cheat.

Men who cheated are more likely than their female peers to be married. Among men who have cheated on their spouse before, 61% are currently married, while 34% are divorced or separated. However, only 44% of women who have cheated before are currently married, while 47% are divorced or separated.

This gender difference could reflect the fact that men are more likely to be remarried than women after a divorce. A portion of currently married "cheaters" may be remarried, since we can't tell from the data whether or not the person who cheated is still married to the spouse he or she cheated on.
Wendy Wang is director of research at the Institute for Family Studies and a former senior researcher at Pew Research Center, where she conducted research on marriage, gender, work, and family life in the United States.

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Who Cheats More? The Demographics of Infidelity in America

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The last few months of 2017 treated us to a whirlwind of news coverage on sexual harassment and abuse, with powerful men from Hollywood to Washington, D.C. falling because of sexual misconduct. It continues into the new year, with Missouri Governor Eric Greitens the latest to fall.

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People of color were concentrated in low wage areas. Not given the same opportunity as white people.

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It is one of the great ironies of American labor history that enslaved workers toiled at a wider variety of skilled tasks than did their descendants who were free. Slave owners had an economic incentive to exploit the multifaceted talents of blacks in the craft shop as well as in the kitchen and field. But after emancipation, whites attempted to limit blacks to menial jobs. Throughout the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, blacks as a group were barred from machine work within the industrial sector, and from white-collar clerical and service work. "Modernization" wore a white face.

The interviews contained in this volume shine a harsh light on the nuts-and-bolts scaffolding of American workplace apartheid. Eyewitness testimony reveals not only the political economy that undergirded racial segregation on the job, but also the wide range of tactics on the part of African-American labor organizers who resisted it. Focusing on the city of Memphis, Tennessee, editor Michael Honey has assembled a story told through more than two dozen voices, a story about African-American men and women workers who literally risked their lives on the shop floor, day in and day out, trying to provide for their families.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Memphis was a place where blacks were concentrated in the lowest-paying, dirtiest, and most hazardous jobs, and where the political establishment (the noxious, violent Boss Crump machine) routinely colluded with employers to harass and assault union organizers. Within this state-sanctioned system of segregation, industrial unionism represented the most progressive force for change, and the leaders interviewed here recount their toughest battles in the period immediately following World War II. We hear from workers who were employed by large corporations such as Firestone, Fisher Body, and International Harvester; from those who worked as Pullman porters, domestic employees, and longshoremen; and from low-wage workers in furniture factories, commercial laundries, and food processing plants.

Many had moved to Memphis from the surrounding countryside, where their parents had labored as sharecroppers, receiving their pay more often in promises than in cash. Factory work represented a step up and out of the plantations, sawmills, and lumber camps, and the steady wages offered by the biggest plants, especially Firestone, were higher than the pay earned by African-American post office employees, nurses, or school teachers.

Throughout the city's work sites, two Jim Crow principles pertained. First, work with sophisticated machinery was off-limits to black workers. In the words of Lonnie Roland, a worker at Firestone, "There was an unwritten law that black people couldn't work high-skilled jobs, couldn't have no top jobs operating no machine." Second, as a group, blacks could not aspire to promotions. Unlike their white counterparts, who often began working at menial tasks and then progressed to different departments and better-paying jobs, blacks remained in "black" departments regardless of their age, skills, or experience.

Employers and white employees went out of their way to engage in what can only be termed the ritual humiliation of blacks. It was not enough to have separate bathrooms for blacks and whites; the "black" bathrooms were often located far from specific workplaces, forcing employees to spend a good deal of their break getting there and coming back. It was not enough to have separate water fountains for blacks and whites; the "black" fountains were never cleaned, and the water was always warm. Federal Compress (where bales of cotton were readied for textile mills) resisted installing electric fans, though black workers were sweltering in concrete buildings that approached 100 degrees. The owner of a Memphis dry-cleaner fired women employees rather than let them talk to one another on the job.

Out of self-interest, the white-led unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor worked hard to exclude blacks from higher-paying jobs. Still, the perversities of Jim Crow are fascinating: By refusing to grant their black employees minimally decent working conditions, many employers faced constant turnover and other disruptions to their operations. Rather than reward black workers who performed well at their jobs, employers, police, and white co-workers alike attacked them. Black men who had a new car to show for their efforts ran the risk of being ticketed or having their tires slashed; in particular, apparently the sight of a shiny red car driven by a black man enraged white men of all classes.

In the late 1930s, the entering wedge against this system consisted of African-American organizers for relatively egalitarian international unions affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), including the United Auto Workers, the United Furniture Workers of America, and the United Rubber Workers. The odds against their success were formidable. White workers rejected the unions that welcomed blacks, and employers conspired with the local police to harass and intimidate black activists (Memphis Furniture made special clubs that the cops wielded against strikers).

The FBI helped to foster the delu-sion that racial justice and industrial unionism were synonymous with communism throughout the South. Of a black man elected president of a local United Furniture Workers union and assumed by whites to be a communist, union organizer and civil rights activist Leroy Clark noted, "It wasn't a question of him being a Communist, it was just a black young fellow who was a way ahead of his time in fightin' racism--he was just way ahead of his time." For the most part, even CIO unions purged their ranks of radicals, and the internationals deferred to local white business agents and shop stewards bent on upholding the status quo.

In fact, the hard-won victories of CIO affiliates cracked a number of job barriers but also created a new battleground: the integrated shop floor. Supervisors gave black employees misleading or confusing instructions and then fired them for failing on the job. In an upholstery plant, blacks had the right to apply for "white" jobs; but if they did not qualify, they were fired. White co-workers kept up the pressure. At Firestone, Evelyn Bates went from sorting tires outside, standing in water and fending off snakes and wasps, to working as the first black woman in the rubber-testing lab, where she had to contend with resentful white co-workers. ("They would treat you so bad, until you couldn't do the work.") Whites sabotaged the machines operated by blacks and refused to do their part on hazardous assembly lines, putting blacks constantly in fear for their lives.

One of the remarkable themes to emerge from these interviews is the idea of accommodation as a form of resistance. Several men and women speak defiantly of their ability to "take it," to endure harassment in the workplace for years on end--for Leroy Boyd, 44 years at Federal Compress; for Irene Branch, 25 years of night work at Firestone. Branch tells of working with the carcinogen lampblack (used in making tires) and of swallowing her anger in the presence of white co-workers: "It was really tough. You could be working side by side with a white person, and they'd get double the money you got... . But you had to take it, see!" Through sheer determination, several workers were able not only to care for their families, but even to put their children through college and professional school, an act of ultimate defiance against Jim Crow.

Readers who pick up Black Workers Remember hoping to find evidence of interracial solidarity on the job will be sorely disappointed. There are no white heroes in this book. White men came to work each day prepared to do physical battle with black men, and took their fight outside the workplace if they felt they had to. White women tended to be less physical but just as mean in their behavior toward black women. Toward black men, they could level accusations (of rape, lewdness) that were downright deadly.

During the 65-day strike of municipal sanitation workers in 1968, black workers wedded union activism with civil rights protests in an effort to defy the "plantation mentality" of Mayor Henry Loeb, one of the worst of Memphis's racist, anti-union employers. (In the city as a whole, nearly six out of 10 black people lived below the poverty line.) It was only with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4 that public opinion finally pressured Loeb to recognize American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1733.

Yet in a bitter twist of fate, just as Memphis blacks achieved a measure of justice in the workplace, the largest employers closed their doors in search of cheaper labor elsewhere, in the process shredding the stable working class and increasing the number of the working poor. When Firestone and International Harvester left town in the 1980s, white workers blamed black activists--didn't the unions drive these plants out?--and dismissed the devastation that deindustrialization wrought on black community and family life.

To some readers, the stories of these black workers might amount to little more than quaint relics of the past. Yet it would be a mistake to label this book as history pure and simple. The African Americans interviewed here claim that economic rights must form a key component of citizenship rights, and that claim resonates today in the global marketplace.

It is not necessarily true that "any job is a good job" (the mantra of welfare "reformers"). For people without much in the way of formal education, a good job consists of a decent wage; a safe workplace, one free of occupational hazards and co-worker harassment; and the opportunity to seek a higher-paying position within the company. The African-American community continues to nourish an oral tradition that links bad jobs to the slave past (the plantation transferred to the modern service sector, for example), and cynicism as well as job-turnover rates will remain high among people who can hope for nothing more than the minimum wage and dead-end work.

In Memphis in the 1960s, sanitation workers were paid so little they qualified for food stamps, blurring the line between gainful employment and government assistance. Today, the insistence that poor women find a job, any job, means that the state continues to subsidize low-wage employers. Just as whites used blacks as scapegoats for the disappearance of factory jobs in the 1970s and 1980s, so whites today blame affirmative action policies for the disappearance of jobs claimed by the global economy and technological innovation.

Finally, these stories remind us of the strangely bifurcated ideologies of citizenship and workers' rights. As a nation, we no longer tolerate the idea that the right to vote should be denied to certain groups of citizens (with the exception of convicted felons); but we accommodate ourselves quite easily to the fact that many millions of full-time gainfully employed people cannot support their families. By linking economic well-being to citizenship, the workers interviewed in this volume give voice to the enduring ideal of a living wage as a right, not a privilege. That ideal isn't history, but perhaps it's just a way ahead of its time.

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It is one of the great ironies of American labor history that enslaved workers toiled at a wider variety of skilled tasks than did their descendants who were free. Slave owners had an economic incentive to exploit the multifaceted talents of blacks in the craft shop as well as in the kitchen and field.

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Overall, these combined topics help to better understand the culture that this play was set in and further explain the social norms and demands that surrounded Troy & Rose's marriage in the 1950s through 60s.

Considering one of the points (as black employment declined, marriage also declined) one of the reasons Troy and Rose may have stayed together after he cheated on her is because he had a stable job and was able to support her and their son.

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Jackie Robinson broke barriers in baseball. After him, many African American player entered the MLB. Although may didn't play, there was a lot more exposure

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Jackie Robinson's birthday today reminds us how far we've progressed in the world of sports. Given the frequency with which we see African-American superstars like NBA player LeBron James or NFLer Adrian Peterson light up the sports highlight reels, it's easy to forget that they wouldn't have been given the same opportunities a lifetime ago without Robinson and other black Americans leading the charge. Here is a recollection of some seminal figures who helped break down racial barriers of their times and set the stage on which future African-American athletes could shine:

Jackie Robinson On April 15, 1947, an event decades in the making unfolded when Jackie Robinson trotted out to first base at Ebbets Field in a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. For more than 60 years, the gatekeepers of white baseball had conspired to keep black players out of their game, and all eyes were on the man who had chosen to represent the abilities of his race. Robinson's performance that first day was ordinary, but he contributed to the Dodgers' victory over the Boston Braves with a bunt and subsequent hustle that forced a bad throw, and as he grew more comfortable with his role, he showed the all-around skills and mettle that made him an ideal trailblazer. Robinson went on to win the inaugural National League Rookie of the Year Award, and the gate for black players to enter the majors was permanently busted open.

Jack Johnson The son of former slaves, Johnson helped to usher in an era of integrated professional athletics with the power of his fists. For years, the "Galveston Giant" had been clamoring for a chance to fight a white heavyweight champion, and he was finally given the opportunity by Canadian Tommy Burns on December 26, 1908, in Sydney, Australia. It was no contest; Johnson outweighed Burns by approximately 25 pounds and alternately toyed with and battered his opponent until the fight was stopped in the 14th round. That outcome was unacceptable to many, and Johnson further angered the masses by flaunting his newfound riches and dating white women. It was risky behavior for that time (to say the least), but Johnson was a proud man who wasn't afraid to express how he felt. He backed up his talk by reigning as the heavyweight champion for seven years, though his cultural impact was felt on a far greater scale.

Althea Gibson The sporting resume of Althea Gibson reads like a virtual bullet list of firsts. A champion of the all-black American Tennis Association many times over, she was the first black player allowed to compete at the U.S. Nationals in 1950. On May 26, 1956, Gibson became the first black player to win a major tennis title when she defeated Angela Mortimer by the score of 6-0, 12-10 to claim the French championships. Standing 5-foot-11 and packing a big serve, Gibson was a precursor to the Williams sisters who dominated tennis a half-century later. She powered through the competition to become the first black player to win Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals in 1957, then won both events again the following year. After retiring from tennis, Gibson became the first black woman to compete on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour in 1964.

Wilma Rudolph Born prematurely and later beset by crippling illness that forced her to wear a metal leg brace for years, Rudolph somehow overcame the obstacles of her childhood to become a world-class athlete. She won a bronze medal in the 4 x 100-meter relay in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, but her true triumph came four years later, in Rome. Rudolph blew past the competition to win the 100-meter dash in 11.0 seconds, a record time that wasn't recorded as such due to above-average wind gusts, and then easily won the 200-meter final. Running the anchor leg of the 4 x 100-meter relay, Rudolph shrugged off a bad baton relay and overtook the lead runner to become the first American woman to win three gold medals in one Olympics. Underscoring both the era in which she lived and the ability of a great athlete to act as a catalyst of change, her celebratory homecoming parade and gala banquet were the first fully integrated municipal events in the history of Clarksville, Tennessee.

The 1965-66 Texas Western University Men's Basketball Team Basketball was an integrated sport by the mid-1960s, but the notion persisted that black players were mainly interested in "showboating," and needed the steadying hand of white leadership. That notion was dealt a serious blow by the Texas Western University men's basketball team, which featured an all-black starting lineup for the first time in NCAA championship history on March 19, 1966. Squaring off against the all-white University of Kentucky team, which included future coaching great Pat Riley, the Miners' starting five- Bobby Joe Hill, David Lattin, Orsten Artis, Willie Worsley, and Harry Flournoy (pictured here)-played a disciplined, fundamentally sound game en route to a 72-65 victory. The game was a watershed moment for coaches and players of the time, and it wasn't long until all-white teams like Kentucky's disappeared from the basketball landscape.

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Jackie Robinson's birthday today reminds us how far we've progressed in the world of sports. Given the frequency with which we see African-American superstars like NBA player LeBron James or NFLer Adrian Peterson light up the sports highlight reels, it's easy to forget that they wouldn't have been given the same opportunities a lifetime ago without Robinson and other black Americans leading the charge.

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In 1964, the New York Times published an article that was suggesting research that linked alcoholism to domestic abuse. The article, entitled 'The Wife Beater and His Wife' suggested that instead of looking at the psyche of the alcoholic, researchers may need to pay more attention to what is happening because of alcoholism. This article is insane in that it is suggesting that 'wife beating' is somehow 'therapeutic' for the alcoholic to relieve anger. The only type of abuse this article mainly talks about is physical domestic abuse rather than emotional. However, I think that the interesting thing this article shows is societies point of view of any type of domestic abuse at the time, as well as how doctors even regarded alcoholism as it relates to abuse. The article I read was written 50 years later and picks apart how absolutely grotesquely and wrongly it talks about these heavy topics. Knowing these things were written almost a decade after Fences took place gives helpful context onto Troy in his relationship to alcohol as well as his relationship to Rose.
(By Lauren Barnes)

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50 Years Ago, Doctors Called Domestic Violence 'Therapy'

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In light of recent news about domestic violence, looking back at a 1964 study that extols its benefits