World War II saw a large amount of healthy, working aged men drafted into the armed forces. At the same time, factories were expanding at a rapid rate to supply war materiel for those same armed forces. Stepping into the place of the usual factory workers were large numbers of women, who could not serve in the war effort by fighting.

Beginning in the 1880s, America experienced a massive surge of immigration that swelled its population. Overwhelmingly, these immigrants were peasants and laborers from Southern and Eastern Europe. Italians, Bavarians, Poles, Russians, and Jews from all over Eastern Europe came to America from turmoil and conflict in their native countries. Beginning in the early twentieth century, new immigration laws restricted the entrance of immigrants, which were not changed until mid-century.

Several acts were passed under Lyndon Johnson that promoted liberalism and allowed for the use of public money to fund the arts, tighter controls on pollution, and construction of low income housing.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott began in December 1955 when Rosa Parks protested the practice of African Americans being required to sit in the back portion of public buses.  Led by a young Martin Luther King, Jr. in his first high profile civil rights campaign, the African American community of Montgomery refused to ride public transportation in the city.  In 1956, a Supreme Court ruling ended the Alabama and Montgomery laws enabling segregation in buses.

The Gideon v. Wainwright case was presented to the Supreme Court during the extremely liberal era of Chief Justice Warren. It established that any citizen accused of a crime has the right to legal assistance, even in the event that the citizen is unable to afford the costs. Engel v. Vitale prohibited prayer in public schools. Miranda v. Arizona mandated that law enforcement officials had to inform suspects of their rights prior to questioning. Loving v. Virginia declared laws preventing interracial marriage as unconstitutional. Racial discrimination in property sale and rental was ended by the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

The Civil Rights Movement, which began in the mid-1950s with the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, pursued a variety of methods, including political lobbying, legal arguments, and direct protests. Most notably, the Civil Rights Movement was a non-violent protest movement, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on principles established by Mohandas Ghandi in India. The Civil Rights activists, usually multiracial and well trained, eschewed violence in all of their protests.

The Stonewall Inn was a popular gay bar in Manhattan's Greenwich Village that was raided by police on June 28, 1969. While such raids, which were aiming to arrest bar patrons on decency charges, were common in the period, this raid made many people turn on the police and begin to riot. The event is largely seen as one of the key sparks in the gay rights movement, as it was the first time that gay people had stood up against authorities who persecuted them for simply for being homosexuals.

The Harlem Renaissance was a period of time where African-American culture was redefined. Many great African-American artists, musicians, and thinkers came out of this movement to accept the different, unique, culture of African Americans.

Hughes focused most of his work on the everyday lives of the lower-class working people of New York. He wanted to highlight the struggle most people in the city went through to make ends meet. 

These famous men were painters. They rose to prominence by painting events and buildings of the time. Douglas painted many famous landmarks of New York, and Motley painted many famous events and streets of the time.