Wonderful Vintage Photos of Female Students at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1948

The 1940s and 1950s marked periods of decreased female employment, due to the post-War economic boom and return of men home from war. However, starting in earnest in the 1950s, the emphasis on homemaking as women’s primary role was slowly destabilized by a shift in private preferences toward a greater emphasis on careers. Teaching, a profession popular amongst women, was a good gateway for women entering other fields because it helped open people to the idea of women with careers.
Below are some wonderful images of female students at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts in 1948. The photos were captured by Peter Stackpole for LIFE magazine.

Smith College is a private women’s liberal arts college in Northampton, Massachusetts. Although its undergraduate programs are open to women only, its graduate and certificate programs are also open to men. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters. Smith is also a member of the Five Colleges Consortium, which allows its students to attend classes at four other Pioneer Valley institutions: Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Janet Trowbridge who was featured in the 1949 LIFE article comparing a public co-ed school (Missouri) with the woman’s private Smith College. “…Janet believes that a woman’s college is the only place for a real education and that co-ed institutions like Missouri are just date factories.”

Feelin’ Groovy: Fascinating Vintage Color Pictures of High School Fashion Across America in 1950-1969

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The latest rule in girls’ high school fashion,” LIFE magazine proclaimed in 1969, “is that there isn’t any.”

In contrast to the popular fashions and styles of certain decades the Gibson Girl of the 1890s and early 1900s, the flapper of the Roaring Twenties, the “New Look” of the Fifties there was no single reigning style in the 1960s. Even as the slim-cut trousers and shift dresses of the late Fifties crept in, Mod miniskirts and go-go boots found their way over from London to mingle with the bell-bottomed jeans and fringed vests of the latter part of the decade. By 1969, the fashion choices of tens of millions of young American men and women were as variegated and ever-evolving as the world around them.

A “freaky new freedom,” LIFE called it. Was it ever!

Cultural transformation was an irresistible force during the Sixties, and across America and around the globe civil rights, women’s and gay liberation, the sexual revolution and, of course, the explosive soundtrack of R&B, soul and rock and roll informed everything from politics to fashion.

Students at Woodside High in California, 1969.

By 1969, America’s youth had not only soaked in more visual and auditory stimuli in a few years than most previous generations combined, but had re-imagined virtually all of that input in the form of sartorial self-expression. Take a look back through these fascinating pictures taken by LIFE photographer Arthur Schatz:

Student Rosemary Shoong at Beverly Hills High School, wearing a dress she made herself, 1969.

Beverly Hills High classmates showed off their fashions, 1969.

High school teacher Sandy Brockman wore a bold print dress, 1969.

Beverly Hills High School student Erica Farber, wearing a checkered and tiered outfit, walked with a boy, 1969.

Corona del Mar High School students Kim Robertson, Pat Auvenshine and Pam Pepin wore “hippie” fashions, 1969.

A Southern California high school student walked toward classmates while wearing the “Mini Jupe” skirt, 1969.

A Southern California high schooler wore a buckskin vest and other hippie fashions, 1969.

High school students wore “hippie” fashion, 1969.

High schooler Nina Nalhaus wore wool pants and a homemade jacket in Denver, Colo., 1969.

High schooler Lenore Reday stopped traffic while wearing a bell-bottomed jump suit in Newport Beach, Calif., 1969.

A Southern California high school student wore an old-fashioned tapestry skirt and wool shawl, 1969.

Southern California high school students, 1969.

High school fashions, 1969.

High school fashions, 1969.

High school fashion, 1969.

A high school student wore bell bottoms and boots, 1969.

High school fashions, 1969.

A Kansas high school student wore a mini skirt, 1969.

Black and White Photos Show the Life at the School Bus Stop in New Jersey in the Early 1970s
American photographer Ralph Morse took these lovely photos that show the life of children at the school bus stop in New Jersey in 1971.