Levittown Essays - Levittown, McCarthyism, Levittown, Pennsylvania

Levittown Essays - Levittown, McCarthyism, Levittown, Pennsylvania Levittown Levittown is a suburban community (one of the earliest suburbs) built and planned by Levitt and Sons. Most of this land was purchased in 1951. What made Levittown different from every other area being built during the same time was that it was built as a whole community. Levittown utilized mass productions technique in order to achieve the task of building inexpensive houses in the suburban area of New York in order to take away the postwar (World War II) housing shortage. There were also plenty of jobs in Levittown such as General Motors and US steel Fairless Works for people looking to find work after the war. This then led to diverse communities and homes for lower- middle class families. Levittown is significant because it was symbolic of the nations big change into suburban living and a suburban culture. It was a reversal of the urbanization process. All these new suburban-like communities were rising in the Sunbelt states as well, especially for people who were about to retire. As re-election started to get closer and closer, McCarthy who wasnt so lucky during his first term was trying to think of ways he could make sure his political success was in the bag. So McCarthy consulted a fellow anti-communist named Edmund Walsh and decided to take advantage of the nations wave of terror against communism. They came together with a list of possible communists living within the United States and demanded an investigation for each of them. The bad thing wasnt the investigations. The bad thing was the fact that not all of them were even communists to begin with. Some were simply just alcoholics or sexual deviants. This is very similar to the Salem Witch Trials except this fear of communism was called McCarthyism. McCarthy went on to accuse several innocent people even though his evidence was not so great. McCarthyism began to fall apart when he started to investigate communism within the military. This was it for Eisenhower and he decided finally that McCarthy needed to be stopped now. People also helped the effort and sent information about McCarthy and advisors abusing his congressional privileges to known critics of McCarthy. They published unflattering articles about McCarthy and his methods. The nation soon saw how bad McCarthy was and he lost his position as chairmanship on the Government Committee on Operation of the Senate.