Part of a series of articles titled The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963.
Article
Chapter 3: The World’s Greatest Dinosaur War Ever
Courtesy the Billy E. Barnes Photographic Collection (P0034), North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The new kid in Kenny’s class is named Rufus Fry.
Despite Kenny's efforts to keep his distance, Rufus sits next to him in class and on the bus, chews his ear off, and is soon following him onto the playground for lunch every day. Kenny shares his extra sandwich and apple with Rufus, who in turn splits it with his younger brother, Cody. Rufus explains that his family moved to Flint from Arkansas, where the boys supposedly shot and ate big, fat squirrels.
Soon, Rufus is coming over to the Watsons every day after school to play with plastic toy dinosaurs, battling the "Nazi" dinosaurs against the "American" ones. Unlike Kenny’s old friend LJ, Rufus doesn’t mind playing as the "Nazi" dinosaurs, and he doesn’t cheat or steal Kenny’s toys. The last time LJ and Kenny played, LJ tricked Kenny into thinking that atomic bombs had made his dinosaurs radioactive. They buried hundreds of "radioactive" dinosaurs. Later that night, LJ came back to the Watsons' yard, dug them up, and took them to his house!
Kenny and Rufus' new friendship is disrupted when one day on the bus, Larry Dunn mocks Rufus and Cody for wearing the same clothes everyday. When everyone laughs, Kenny makes the mistake of joining in. After that, Rufus stops hanging out with Kenny and tells him he's just like the other kids. Kenny realizes how lonely he is without his new friend and confesses everything to Momma, who goes to Rufus and Cody's home to speak with them. That night, Rufus and Cody come over just like they used to. Kenny apologizes and finally lets Rufus play with the "American" dinosaurs.
Courtesy of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
Fact Check: Why would children in the 1960s play nuclear war?
Kenny and friends make believe their dinosaurs have atomic bombs. Why would they play these games?
What do we know?
In the 1960s, talk of nuclear war was a regular part of American life. Children Kenny's age may have heard adults tell stories about the nuclear bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of World War II. And they would certainly have heard about the ongoing threat of nuclear war through the media and at home and school. This is because 1963 was the middle of the Cold War, a period of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Just a year before Kenny's dinosaur war, in October 1962, the threat of nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union reached its highest point. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, nuclear missile sites were spotted in Cuba, a Soviet ally located just off the Florida coast. For children, the threat of nuclear war was all they knew, and their toys, television programs, and backyard play reflected its everydayness.
What is the evidence?
Primary source: "Giant atomic bomb set." Image courtesy of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
Byron and Kenny improvise war toys, but toy makers advertised and sold products that mimicked nuclear weapons. This set, produced by the Royal Toy Manufacturing Co., is an example of the war toys marketed to children during the early Cold War.
Secondary source: Karen J. Hall, "A soldier's body: GI Joe, Hasbro's great American hero, and the symptoms of empire," The Journal of Popular Culture 38, no. 1 (2004): 34-54, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3840.2004.00099.x.
In her article about the action figures produced by major toy companies like Hasbro and Louis Marx, literary scholar Karen Hall argues that children’s play narratives mirrored the way news reporters described the Cold War to the American public: a series of independent military and security challenges that were successfully met, one at a time, over and over again.
"Children heard the news and the conversations that adults had in response to current events and combined the information they gathered from other popular media images of war. These multiple sources shaped the unwritten rule book that children followed in their war play. On the evening news, on the playgrounds, and in the backyards of the United States, war took the shape of an episodic adventure that could be tallied in terms of body counts to determine the ultimate winner."
Secondary source: Joel P. Rhodes, Growing Up in a Land Called Honalee: The Sixties in the Lives of American Children (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2017).
"On the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the Central Intelligence Agency secretly monitored Soviet shipping in the Caribbean and a disturbing military buildup on the island, child psychologists tracing the casual manifestations [appearance] of these nuclear tensions in the native practices [behavior] of children were struck by how deeply atomic warfare had permeated [entered] their play culture, usually by subtle distortion and warping. For example, new wrinkles were added to playing school. One child assuming the role of principal would bring an alarm clock from home and at the proper time would make it ring, declaring 'yellow alert, everyone evacuate.' Then those playing teacher would line the pretend students up to be escorted to another yard."
Rhodes, Growing Up in a Land Called Honalee, 71.
Courtesy of The Flint Journal (MI), October 23, 1962, 1.
Fact Check: During the 1960s, was it common for Black families to move from the rural South to the Northeast?
Rufus and his family moved to Flint from rural Arkansas. How often did this happen?
What do we know?
Between 1940 and 1970, more than 5 million African Americans left the South for cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and West in what is called the Second Great Migration. (The "First" Great Migration involved approximately 1.6 African Americans moving North for better opportunities between 1916-1940). Migrants moved North for better jobs, which were available in the defense and automobile industry, greater freedom of movement, and to reconnect with family members who had already settled in the North and West.
The novel suggests that Rufus and Cody's family came to Flint directly from rural Arkansas during the early sixties and settled in government-subsidized housing. In fact, there was no public housing in Flint until 1968. The image of wide-eyed southerners out of place in a city like Flint is more typical of the 1910s-1940s than of the 1960s. African Americans migrating north in the mid twentieth-century often did so from southern cities rather than from rural areas.
What is the evidence?
Secondary Source:
Courtesy of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library.
This map shows the Black population in Michigan growing dramatically between 1940 and 1970. Migrants moved from areas of the Deep South, like Arkansas.
Primary sources: C. Horace Hamilton, "The Negro leaves the South," Demography 1, no. 1 (1964): 273-95, https://doi.org/10.2307/2060054.
"In 1960, for the first time in our history, the American Negro become more urban than the American white, when 73.2 percent of the Negroes were found to be living in cities, as compared with only 69.5 for the whites. ...The decline in rural Negro population is largely (but not entirely) due to a very great decline in the opportunity for Negroes in agriculture. ...In terms of net migration from the South by decades, the peak movement was reached in the 1940's, the decade of World War II and the early postwar period. The total net movement out of the South during this decade amounted to 2,135,000, of which over three-fourths were Negroes."
Voices from the Field
Play in Post-World War II America by Steven Mintz, Professor of History at UT Austin and author of Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood.
Pretending to Survive by Margaret Peacock, Professor of History at the University of Alabama.
Photos & Multimedia
Courtesy of the Strong National Museum of Play.
Courtesy of the collections of Kettering University.
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Writing Prompts
Opinion
Kenny and his friend LJ had a dinosaur war. What do you think of LJ’s behavior as a friend? What traits do you believe a good friend should have? Describe the character traits that are important to you and why they matter. Use words and phrases (e.g., for example, because) that support your ideas.
Informative/explanatory
What game do you enjoy playing either on your own or with a friend? Describe in detail the rules and goals of the game. Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to explain the game. Provide a concluding statement related to your description.
Narrative
You and your friend have a problem to solve. Feelings have been hurt. Create a narrative with a sequence of events describing what caused the problem and how the two of you worked out a solution. Organize the story so that the events unfold naturally. Use concrete words and sensory details to convey the experience precisely.
Note: Wording in italics is from the Common Core Writing Standards, Grade 5. Sometimes paraphrased.
Last updated: January 5, 2024