how did some Americans rebel against the conformity of the 1950s?

Answer 1

Patios (the previous respondant) has her years all mixed up. She is talking about the 1960s. There was NO LSD in the 1950s openly used, "Hell No' We Won't Go"? Go where? There was NO Vietnam War until 1964 (in which Americans were drafted), and open and promiscious sex was not common in the 1950s either since the oral contraceptive (Enovid E) wasn't even invented and released until May of 1960.

Here is an accurate answer from the 1950s:

1. Teenagers openly smoking and drinking more than in the past
2. Girls wearing levi jeans and lower-cup blouses
3. Embracing black-inspired rock and roll music and leaving more traditional "white" contemporary music behind
4. Provocative dancing in couples culminating with "The Twist" in 1960
5. Shiftless, free, lifestyle embraced following Jack Kerouac's example in "On the Road"
6. Beatnik culture adopted in cities like San Francisco and the Greenwich village portion of New York

Answer 2

The active phase of the civil rights movement started in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus and the Montgomery AL black community started a bus boycott
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html

Teenagers listened and danced to rock and roll. The beat generation wrote poetry and novels and hung-out in coffee houses in SF and NY. In the late 50's the beginnings of the hippy culture started on college campuses

Answer 3

LSD, "Hell No! We Won't Go!", lots of promiscuous sex, lots of untraditional colors in fashions, mini-skirts, declining traditional roles and not following in "father's footsteps", bi-racial marriages, and cessation of church attendance.
Later: Perhaps I misunderstood whether the question asks how people rebelled against conformity of the 1950's DURING the 1950's or if the question asks how in general society reacted to the conformity OF the 1950's. Very few individuals actually rebelled during the 1950's except isolated pockets of intellectuals, artists and in Hollywood movies. So-called juvenile "deliquency" rose, Elvis rocked the boat and the civil rights movement heated up. But, the fabric of society basically remained the same. The "response" and huge changes began to occur at the end of the fifties and essentially roared through the 60's up until 1969 with larger numbers of people and from across-the-spectrum of socio-economic groups beginning to more noticeably "rebel" or respond to conformity by experimentation and expressions of alternative possiblities. For example, in the 50's, everyone went to war when they were told to. In the 60's, all that changed. In the 50's, people gossiped about the rare bi-racial marriage or the rare female professor. In the 60's, all that changed. In the 50's, women who got pregnant out of wedlock had to "go away" for awhile to have their babies. In the 60's, women rebelled and started using modern birth control methods and having children openly out of wedlock. That was simply not done in the 50's.

Answer 4

Patois is right, and Mr. Curious is wrong. Mr Curious: the word "patois" is a real word. Go look it up.

LSD was first synthesized in 1848. That's 18, not 19. The chemist who developed it was trying to create anaesthetics. Interestingly, Edgar Allan Poe was one of his closest friends.

So LSD was available in the 1950s, though it was not common. The common drugs of the '50s were cocaine, opium, heroin, and the popular tranquilizers of the day, like Librium and Miltown.

Enovid, the first effective birth control pill came on the market in 1952. Using it was a form of rebellion, because religious types considered birth control sinful. That's when condom vending machines had labels on them that read, "Sold for the prevention of disease only." That was to keep the Roman Catholics from smashing up the machines. It didn't always work.

Sexy blouses and jeans were never part of any rebellion. They were the uniform of the leisure class. The rich wore them first, and trickle-down economics took it from there.

Pre-adolescents and adolescents did not especially drink or smoke any more in the 1950s than they had in previous decades. It was "cool" to be a "juvenile delinquent," though none of my friends or I could figure out exactly what that meant.

Hot rods with flames painted on them were cool. Long greasy hair, though not down toward the shoulders. Long in front and on the sides. Crew cuts were cool, too. I wore a long greaser and duck tails.

Mixed skinny dipping was extreme rebellion. So was dropping out of church. "Wicca," the "religion" of modern "witches" was first marketed in New Jersey in 1955 by two guys who published "books of witchcraft and magic" they said were thousands of years old.

A neighbor of mine had her house burned down because she started practicing Buddhism.

Another good way to rebel, if you didn't mind an occasional black eye, was to advocate the rights of racial minorities. We almost got our house burned down for that one.

Elvis, Bill Haley and the Comets. The Everly Brothers. Feeling your girl in the balcony at the movie theater. Letting your date feel you in the balcony at the movie theater.

Shoes and boots with heel taps. T-shirts as outer garments. That was really new in 1955. Our town tried to pass an ordnance against it, but it was ruled unconstitutional.

Two piece bathing suits. Drinking soda pop right out of the bottle.

I could work on this all night. But that will give you some ideas. Most of what Mr. Curious wrote is wrong in some way or another.

Most of it was pretty tame.

Answer 5

The same way they do now, really. There was Elvis and his music and dancing, so music and dancing styles were definitely two of the ways. Also, black leather jackets were what the "hoods" wore, the way you wore your clothes, the type of shoes you wore.

Answer 6

In the '50s we had what was known as Beatnicks. Not sure if there was any groups in between or not, but then there hippies.

Answer 7

well they faught for there rights