It's really not fair to read this in the context of today's political correctness. You have to read this in the context of 1955 history and what had just transpired in the world, and what was happening in the world. Just like today, 1955 America was a very paranoid place. Anyone who was "different" was suspect, whether they were a foreigner with a trunk full of cameras, or respected actors and actresses, ballplayers, and other public figures.
1955 from Wikipedia:
January 7 – Marian Anderson is the first African American singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
January 22 – The Pentagon announces a plan to develop ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) armed with nuclear weapons.
January 28 – The United States Congress authorizes President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use force to protect Formosa from the People's Republic of China.
February 10 – The Seventh Fleet of the United States Navy helps the Republic of China evacuate Chinese Nationalist army and residents from the Tachen Islands to Taiwan.
February 12 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the first U.S. advisors to South Vietnam.
March 2 – Claudette Colvin (a fifteen year old African American girl) refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demands it. She is carried off the bus backwards whilst being kicked and handcuffed and harassed on the way to the police station.
March 7 – The 1954 Broadway musical version of Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin, is presented on television for the first time by NBC (also the first time that a stage musical is presented in its entirety on TV exactly as performed on stage). The program gains the largest viewership of a TV special up to that time, and becomes one of the first great television classics.
April 12 – Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, having passed large-scale trials earlier in the United States, receives full approval by the FDA.
April 15: McDonald's
April 15 – Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald's in Des Plaines, Illinois.
July 18 – The first atomic-generated electrical power is sold commercially, powering Arco, Idaho.
July 18 – Illinois's Governor William Stratton signs the Loyalty Oath Act, that mandates all public employees take a loyalty oath or lose their jobs.
July 18 – The Geneva Summit between the US, USSR, UK, and France begins.
July 18 – The Disneyland Theme Park opens to the public in Anaheim, California.
July 23 – The Geneva Summit between the US, USSR, UK, and France ends.
August 28 – Emmett Till is killed in Money, Mississippi.
October 11 – 70-mm film is introduced with the theatrical release of Rodgers and Hammerstein's masterpiece, Oklahoma!
October 20 – The first footage of Elvis Presley is filmed as part of a film short about Cleveland disc jockey Bill Randle.
November 1 – A time bomb explodes in the cargo hold of United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6B airliner flying above Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers and 5 crew members on board.
November 5 – Racial segregation is forbidden on trains and buses in U.S. interstate commerce.
November 27 – Fred Phelps establishes the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.
December 5 – The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge to become the AFL-CIO.
December 5 – The Montgomery Improvement Association is formed in Montgomery, Alabama by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Black ministers to coordinate a Black boycott of city buses.
December 31 – General Motors becomes the first American corporation to make over USD 1 billion in a year.
And, of course...
The Red Scare and
the Cold war were in full swing...
