I meant to post this when I posted the story, but never got around to it. Now I'm back at work on my 50's NIS series and I found it in my notes:
November, 1954: Following his party's defeat in the midterm elections, Senator Joseph McCarthy uses his final weeks as chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to conduct hearings into Evanston Central High School's Naked in School Program. As the activities of a local school district are, in fact, outside the purview of this particular subcommittee, this action causes McCarthy to be formally censured by the Senate. In a speech attempting to distance himself from McCarthy, freshman senator John F. Kennedy declares that public schools have a "duty to prepare their students for life in a modern, permissive society."
December, 1954: With voluntary military recruitment increasing as a result of continued high unemployment, Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson announces a suspension of draft call-ups, even as a U.S. military contingent is deployed to South Vietnam (ostensibly there to provide security for the unification referendum scheduled the following year, the contingent actually is there to train Ngo Dinh Diem's military forces to suppress Communist-sponsored insurgents)
January, 1955: In his State of the Union address, President Nixon calls for a national interstate highway system.
February, 1955: The first 6,000 U.S. soldiers arrive in South Vietnam
April, 1955: In a televised national address, President Nixon announces that a polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk of the Center for Communicable Diseases has been approved for general distribution.
May, 1955: The movie Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean premiers. The first studio-produced film to feature a character explicitly described as homosexual, it attracts protests across the nation, but Dean and co-star Sal Mineo will both win Academy Awards and become major movie stars. Realizing that sex will enable them to compete with still-censored television, the major studios disregard the Hays Code and continued protests from conservative Middle America, and films become increasingly salacious.
June, 1955: President Nixon signs the Federal Highway Aid Act and appoints former general and President of Columbia University Dwight D. Eisenhower first United States Secretary of Transportation.
September, 1955: Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita tops the New York Times bestseller list.
The following is the background timeline for my new story Lee Naked in School. Hopefully I will extend the timeline with new stories:
1920s: Post-Freudian psychologists begin to theorize that sexual neuroses develop from the suppression of normal sexual desires. Parents in rural areas encourage young boys to remain nude for some time after swimming, so as to save wear on clothes.
1930s: With onset of the Great Depression, cash-strapped parents begin encouraging preadolescent children of both sexes to remain nude for extended periods of time. In spite of the Great Depression, the socially libertine backlash to the Prohibition era continues. At the same time, liberal theologians reassess biblical injunctions regarding sexual behavior as designed to promote egalitarian relationships between men and women, rather than prohibit extramarital relationships. A shot to prevent female ovulation is developed.
1939: With war looming in Europe, President Roosevelt orders a top secret research program to develop health and sanitation measures in the event the U.S. becomes involved. A classically minded general names it Project Asclepius. The committee in charge of the program identifies three areas of focus: blood transfusions, developing antibiotic treatments for infected wounds, and developing vaccines to protect overseas soldiers from sexually transmitted diseases.
1941: Just in time for Pearl Harbor, a vaccine for genital herpes is developed and administered to all GIs. Vaccines for syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea will follow over the course of the war.
1942: Dr. Kurt Freund, a refugee Czechoslovakian doctor, is contracted by the U.S. Army to screen draftees for homosexuality using penile plethysmography. He collects detailed records on the psychiatric histories of recruits identified as homosexual and comes to the conclusion that male homosexuals are psychologically normal. Upon his recommendation, the Army discretely discontinues the testing program, but maintains its prohibition on homosexual conduct.
1941-1945: To support wartime rationing, the government begins to encourage child nudity. For the first time, elementary school children are allowed to attend school nude. Upper-class children who had previously been confined to shoes and formal clothes by parental status anxiety gleefully donate them to scrap drives. Schools sponsor competitions to see who can go barefoot the latest in fall, and podiatrists notice a decrease in arch problems among the newly barefooted children.
1943: In response to complaints from local authorities, the government begins offering vaccinations and birth control shots free of charge at discrete locations in towns near military bases. Female recruits are included in the Army Specialized Training Program, training as officers in the Women's Auxilary Corps and receiving a college education. The vast majority of participating land-grant colleges remain co-educational after the war.
1945: After V.J. Day, the Asclepius program is renamed the Center for Communicable Diseases (CCD) and brought under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health. With forced sterilization discredited by its association with the Nazi atrocities, eugenicists begin advocating for free provision of birth-control shots.
1946: The end of WWII brings a short, sharp recession as returning G.I.s find their old jobs taken over by women. The Campaign Against Working Women is launched to put America's women back in the home. Factories start replacing women workers with men. Many of these women, relishing their newfound independence, pursue higher education, leading a number of large urban colleges and universities such as George Washington University and NYU to go co-ed.
1945-1950: While schools return to requiring clothing after the end of the war, children up to around 12 or 13 continue to play naked during the summer months, and go to school barefoot through October. By 1949 most married women are no longer employed, but single women continue working in a wider variety of jobs than they had before the war, often using their newfound economic freedom to be more picky when choosing a husband.
1947: Dr. Freund publishes a book based on his research conducted during the war. The conclusion calls for a repeal of laws against homosexuality. Illinois repeals its sodomy law later the same year, as part of a series of 'hygiene laws' that also include the first statewide sexual education program.
1948: In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court holds that obscenity is protected by the First Amendment. The precedent also overturns laws against public nudity and lewd conduct. Within months, pornographic theaters spring up in every major city in America, many of them featuring Marylin Monroe. In the election of the same year, Strom Thurmond's States Rights Democratic party is unable to block Harry Truman from achieving a major electoral upset, but 101 defecting members of Congress ensure that the Republican Party maintains the largest caucus in the Senate.
1949: The American Podiatry Association recommends that children be kept barefoot 75 percent of the time until they stop growing, around age 16, and that adults go barefoot at least 1/3 of the time to prevent health problems caused by ill-fitting shoes. Elementary schools begin having children remove their shoes within the classroom. Dr. Karen Wagner, a young psychiatry professor, is quietly removed from the faculty of Yale University after her research on adolescent sexuality attracts allegations of Communist sympathies.
1950: Senator Joseph McCarthy publicly accuses Dr. Kurt Freund of Communist sympathies, and warns of a secret cabal of homosexuals in the State Department. Ironically, he succeeds in passing legislation requiring the use of Freund's plethysmography method, which has increased dramatically in accuracy since the war. More ironically, the screening further validates Dr. Freund's belief that homosexuality is a harmless quirk, which will contribute to McCarthy's eventual downfall.
1951: Time Magazine publishes a cover story on urban society's newfound acceptance of casual, premarital sex titled "The Sexual Revolution."
1952: Unable to convince General Eisenhower to run for President, the Republican Party enters its convention deadlocked. Eventually the nomination is won by a dark-horse candidate, freshman Senator Richard Nixon of California. To conciliate the conservative wing of the party, Nixon selects Senator Robert Taft as his running mate. Despite a close election marred by allegations of improper personal gifts and Nixon's less than stellar rhetorical gifts, the Dixiecrats (formally renamed the American Party) strategy of loudly condemning Communism and the Sexual Revolution picks up enough votes outside the South to throw the electoral college overwhelmingly to Nixon. Marilyn Monroe makes her first non-pornographic film.
1953: With unified control of the government for the first time since 1930, the Republican Party passes a series of spending cuts that balance the budget, but cause a recession beginning late in the year. President Nixon negotiates an armistice in Korea. Vice-President Taft dies a few months into his term.
1954: Dr. Kurt Freund is called as a witness in the Army-McCarthy hearings, with McCarthy claiming that his wartime screening project was terminated improperly. During his testimony, Freund defends homosexuals and accuses McCarthy of ruining innocent lives, becoming an overnight celebrity. His approval rating dropping as a result of the recession and the backlash against McCarthyism, President Nixon calls for a massive increase in NDC funding, termed the "War on Disease." This is not enough to prevent a Nixon protégé from being defeated by Pat Brown in the election for Governor of California, or the Democratic Party from retaking control of Congress. On the advice of Dr. Karen Wagner, a psychiatry professor at Northwestern University, Evanston Central High School launches a program in which high school students are required to attend school naked. It meets with immediate protests and quickly becomes controversial.