The 50’s were very conservative compared to the 60’s. World War II had ended, and many middle class white families flocked to the suburbs. The suburbs were …show more content…
What made Ben’s role so significant was that he was an African American lead. Not only that he was African American, but he would argue with whites, have moral superiority over the white men characters, and gets the best of the white characters who oppose him. Ben makes this apparent when he says to Harry “Now get the hell down in the cellar. You can be the boss down there, but I 'm boss up here”(Night of the Living Dead). This would have been unheard of and even considered outrageous in the 50’s. This can clearly be seen as analogous to the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s. Ben represents the new “man” that emerged from the 60’s, and his job is to fight the man of the past, the man from the 50’s (represented as the zombie). This is just as much a war of ideas and belief systems as much as it is human vs