PERIOD 8 PART 2

Women in the 1950s

Seemingly a step back from women’s rights movements and contribution to the war

Subservient to husbands

Post WWII Baby Boom

Baby boomers became the youth leading movements in the 1960s

Today, put a strain on government programs for the elderly and social security due to the amount of them

Communism in the 1950s

Red Scares, fear and hysteria

Beatniks in the 1950s

American writers, poets, and artists in the 1950s who rejected traditional middle class values and championed nonconformity and sexual experimentation

African Americans in the 1950s

Progress was made in the Brown v Board case, which outlawed segregation in schools

Emmett Till murder displayed the extreme discrimination and difficulty to change personal views with laws + deeply ingrained racism

GI Bill of Rights (1954)

Law that provided WWII veterans pensions, government loans, and money to attend college

Sent millions of veterans to college and helped promote economic prosperity in the postwar years

National Defense Student Loans Act (1958)

Loans established by the US government to encourage the teaching and study of science and modern foreign languages

Congress passed the act in response to the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union

Sun Belt

Region of the US stretching from Florida westward across the South and Southwest

Experiences substantial population growth and industrialization in the post WWII years

Marked the end of the agrarian 3rd world conditions of the South

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

Law that abolished the national origins quota system that had been in place since 1924

Preference given to the skilled workers, setting limits on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere

Provision of the Act allowed for the admission of close relatives of US citizens

Rock and Roll

Type of popular music that emerged in the mid 1950s from an early type of music known as rhythm and blues

Elvis Presley was the face of this genre of music in the 1950s

Many Americans in the 1950s viewed this music as promoting attack on traditional American values

Counterculture (hippies)

Youth movement of the 1960s that rejected competitiveness and materialism of American society, searching instead for peace, love, and freedom

In part were born from the Beatnik movement

Woodstock (1969)

Free rock concert in rural upstate NY that attracted roughly 400,000 people with some of the greatest musical talent of the era performing over a three day period

Became and expression of the counterculture movement of the 1960s

Roots and spread of movements

Issues simmering in the 1950s and then exploded in 190s

Success of one movement inspired others to emerge and spread

Post WWII there was something different in the US as it related to civil rights

Issues within movements

Nonviolent vs violent approach

Radical elements witching the movement demanded more rights and were willing to resort to militant tactics to achieve these goals

Civil Rights

African Americans, Feminist, Native American, Gay Rights

Fought for full equality now

Anti-War Movements

Vietnam and Cold War policy

Weary of the US role in the world as a global superpower

Felt deceived by the government regarding involvement in Vietnam

Counter Culture Movement

Hippies

Reaction to conformity, materialism, consumerism, and US foreign policy

Desegregation of the Armed Services (1948)

Through Executive order, Truman ended racial discrimination and segregation in the US armed forces

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Supreme Court decision ruling that separate educational facilities for different races were inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional

Symbolically begins the slow process of ending segregation in the US

Southern Manifesto (1954)

Statement issued by 100 southern congressmen after Brown v. Board in which they pledged to oppose racial desegregation in the US

Rosa Parks

African American seamstress who refused to give up her sea to a white man on a bus in Montgomery Alabama

This seemingly inconsequential event triggered a boycott of the Montgomery bus system and symbolically sparked the Civil Rights Movement

Martin Luther King Jr.

Baptist minister and civil rights leader who was committed to achieving equality through nonviolent tactics

Beginning with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, he ed many significant protests in the late 1950s and 1960s that brought attention to the condition of African Americans in the US

Tragically shot and killed on April 4 1968

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC 1957)

Organization formed by Martin Luther King Jr. and others after that Montgomery bus boycott

SCLC was the backbone off he movement in the 1960s to achieve civil rights through nonviolence

Civil Rights Act of 1957

First significant civil rights legislation since the end of reconstruction

Created the Civil Rights Commission of the Justice Department which was tasked with investigating violations of CCivil Rights laws in the US

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee aka SNCC (1960)

Organization formed to give young blacks a greater voice in the civil rights movement

Most well known for organizing black voter registration drives, sit-ins (occupying “white only” seats of a segregated establishment, popularized in Greensboro NC in 1960 at the Woolworth’s lunch counter), and freedom rides(tactic used by the SNCC to achieve integration of bus terminals by riding integrated buses throughout the American South

Public Order Laws

Laws passed by many southern communities to prevent civil rights protests by allowing the police to arrests anyone suspected of intending to disrupt public order

James Meredith

African American student admitted to the University of Mississippi under federal court order in 1962

Became a symbol of desegregation of schools in the south

March on Washington (1963)

Gathering of civil rights supporters in Washington DC to pressure the US congress to pass civil rights legislation

Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have A Dream speech at the march

Freedom Summer (1964)

A coordinated effort by civil rights groups in Mississippi to register black voters during the summer of 1964

Black voter drives were many times met with violence from hate groups

Civil rights Act of 1964

Federal law that banned segregation in public facilities and forbade employers from discriminating on basis of race, religion, sex, or religion

24th amendment (1964)

Made it illegal to require a poll tax or any other tax as a stipulation for casting a vote in any federal election

March from Selma to Montgomery (1965)

Civil rights to march in Alabama led by Martin Luther King Jr that sought to bring attention to the need for a federal voting rights act

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Federal law that outlawed unjust restriction on voting and authorized federal supervision of elections in areas where black voting had been restricted

Watts Riots (1965)

Neighborhood of Los Angeles where a race riot broke out resulting in millions of dollars of damage and the deaths of 28 African Americans

Black Power Movement

Movement that rejected the nonviolence and coalition building approach o traditional civil rights groups

Advocated self determination for African Americans (black control of black organizations)

Nation of Islam (Black Muslims)

Religious group founded by Elijah Muhammad which professed Islamic religious beliefs and emphasized black separatism

Malcom X

Member of the NAtion of Islam and activist for black separatism

After leaving the Nation of Islam in 1964 and rejecting some of their teachings, he was assassinated in 1965 under suspicious circumstances

Black Panthers

Revolutionary organization founded in 1866 that endorsed violence as a means of social change

Sought to take control of the protection of African American communities

Race Riots (1968)

a result of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr on April 4 1968

race riots broke out in more than 100 cities across the country

many historians consider these riots to be the greatest civil unrest and disturbance since the Civil War

George Wallace

Alabama governor who represented a white backlash to the Civil Rights movement

vehemently opposed desegregation and became a national leader for those who sought to turn back civil rights legislation

rand for president in 1968 and won 46 electoral votes and 13% of popular vote

2nd most successful 3rd party candidate in the history of the US

American GI Forum (1948)

organization formed in Texas by Mexican American veterans to overcome discrimination and provide support for veterans and all Hispanics

led the fight to end the segregation of Hispanic children in schools throughout the West and Southwest

Chicano Movement

Mexican American equivalent of the Civil Rights movement

included student demonstrations to press for bilingual education, the hiring of more Chicano teachers, and the creation of Chicano studies programs

Cesar Chavez

one of the leading Mexican American civil rights activists of the 1960s

co founded, along with Dolores Huerta, the National Farm Worker’s Association which later became the United Farm Worker’s (UFW)

Feminine Mystique (1963)

best selling book written by Betty Friedan that challenged women to move beyond the boredom and monotony of being a suburban housewife

book is symbolically seen as a turning point in the development of modern feminism

Equal Pay Act (1963)

law that forbids gender based discrimination of people performing substantially equal work for the same employer

huge victory in the early years of the modern feminist movement

Title VII (1964)

provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that guarantees women legal protection against discrimination

National Organization for Women aka NOW (1966)

women’s rights organization founded to fight discrimination against women and to attain social and economic equality

revived the struggle for an Equal Rights Amendment

Equal Rights Amendment (1972)

amendment to the constitution giving women equal rights under the law

although the amendment was approved by congress, it failed to achieve ratification by the required 38 states thus never passed

Title IX

prohibits gender discrimination at schools that receive federal funds

American Indian Movement aka AIM (1968)

militant Indian movement that was willing to use confrontation to obtain social justice and Indian treaty rights

sought to expose the injustices of the past

Russel Means

prominent member of the American Indian Movement who helped organize the seizure of Alcatraz in 1969 and Wounded Knee in 1973