Minority rights - 1960-80

Native Americans - background

• Roosevelt reversed the trend of assimilation under his Indian New Deal, but wanted Indian tribes run in a ‘constitutional’ way, under tribal councils

• After Roosevelt, federal policy became assimilation again; the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) encouraged Native Americans to move to towns and cities for work, offering job training and housing, but disrupting tribal culture

• In 1953, the House of Representatives passed a resolution for ‘termination’ → this was a policy by which Native Americans were freed from federal control and protected by US federal and state laws, but tribal lands once held in trust for them by the government would now be open for sale

• Many Native Americans resisted termination → under a later ruling, termination needed the tribes’ consent → by 1970, about half of all Native Americans lived in towns or cities

NA - Tribal homelands

• Following the Indian Removal Act in 1830, many Native Americans had been driven from their homelands

• The federal government made treaties (many by force) with individual tribes, giving land and money for their removal → by the 1960s, it was widely agreed, even in government, that the treaties had been unfair

• Many Native Americans wanted new treaties, maybe even to return to their homelands and sacred sites where possible

NA - Self-determination

• Tribes were independent nations under federal government → they ran their own affairs, but only in their own reservations and under control of the BIA

• The BIA had implemented regulations to break up Indian culture and damage tribal cohesion → it oversaw the setting up of Indian Boarding Schools from 1893 → these schools made children speak nothing but English, cut their hair, dress in ‘proper’ clothes and give up native customs → older children were placed as farm workers in the East and Midwest

• Native Americans were mistrustful of the BIA, feeling it didn’t have their best interests at heart

• They wanted respect for the tribal organisation, freedom to run their own affairs and a change of BIA personnel

NA - Organised protest

• In 1968, the Indian Civil Rights Act banned tribes from restricting the civil rights of tribal members → it didn’t do anything to redress issues Native Americans had with federal government

• In the same year, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was set up → its members were mostly young urban people → unlike the only other big Indian organisation, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), AIM took a more radical, anti-federal stance and the slogan ‘Red Power

• AIM consciously adopted the direct action techniques of black American civil rights groups, including sit-ins, demonstrations and occupations

• It had a specific issue with its homelands, so groups often targeted disputed land for occupation, although they also occupied federal buildings (e.g. Alcatraz from 1969-71)

• AIM also targeted the demeaning of Native American culture by white people in their ‘Red Indians’ pastiches of the culture

NA - Gains

• President Nixon sympathised with Native American rights campaigners and felt that it should be possible to make positive changes for about 83,000 people that it wasn’t possible to do for the 22,600,000 black Americans

• He rejected termination and forced assimilation

• His advisors consulted tribal leaders on solutions

• Nixon brought bills to Congress for Indian autonomy → by 1972, Congress had passed the 1972 Indian Education Act (funds for tribal schools), the 1974 Indian Financing Act (which lent tribes funding) and the 1975 Indian Self-Determination Act (which kept the BIA but contracted out services such as health and education), giving tribes much more control

• In the same year, the Voting Rights Act was extended to cover more racial groups, including Native Americans, and to provide language assistance when voting

• The 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act gave Native Americans more control over the adoption of Native Americans

NA - Limitations

• In 1970, Congress returned land at Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo tribe

• In 1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act transferred 40 million acres of land and $462,500,000 to Native Alaskans

• All through the 1970s, there was a dribble of land returns, often, as with the Kootenai tribe in Idaho, after occupation of the area

• However, Nixon’s administration didn’t reform the BIA, nor did Nixon renegotiate about native American sacred sites

• There was no overall solution to the land issues and various states, for example Hawaii in 1971, continued to evict Indians from land if the state wanted it for building or other use

HA - Land

• The 1846-48 American-Mexican war was ended by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo → it settled the border between the USA and Mexico, also allocating land in other states → Mexicans living in areas that became American could become US citizens or relocate to Mexico

• The issue of land rights in what became New Mexico was a focus of protest

HA - Workers’ rights

• The bracero programme was an immigration programme run by the US government between 1942-64 → Mexicans signed contracts to work, usually on the land, in the USA for a set period of time in return for a guaranteed level of housing and working conditions → 4.6 million contracts were signed

• Hispanic farm workers, especially those in the bracero programme, often had appalling living and working conditions → when workers returned after WWII, farmers adopted a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude to worker complaints → most workers had no unions and there was a large pool of illegal migrants to call on

HA - Discrimination

• In towns and cities, they lived in Spanish-speaking areas (barrios) in the worst parts of town, with poor government provision

• Often Hispanic and black Americans lived side by side, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not

HA - Deportation

• Thus US immigration services, from 1953 onwards, deported millions of Hispanic people → 3.8 million, including US citizens who were in active protest, were deported between 1953-58 in Operation Wetback

Cesar Chavez

• Fought a non-violent campaign for the rights of farm workers, focusing on working conditions

• Set up a National Farm Workers Association in 1962 and organised strikes, marches and protests

• Gained publicity by fasting in protest

• Travelled widely, speaking to large rallies in cities such as LA to mobilise voters

Reies Lopez Tijerina

• Organised protests about Mexican land rights in New Mexico

• Started with legal protests but, when these seemed to get nowhere, held marches and mass demonstrations and camp-ins on National Forest land

• He and Black Power leaders signed an agreement to work together

• In 1967, Tijerina and others went into a county courthouse to make a citizen’s arrest of an abusive district attorney → things went wrong, they took hostages and a gun battle followed

Rodolfo Gonzales

• Focused on race

• Initially worked for Hispanic rights within the sytem → director of the Denver Way on Poverty campaign, but he came to favour more radical methods

• His Crusade for Justice offered a version of black pride, stressing the importance of racial identity and the need to fight the Hispanic rights at once, locally and by direct action

• Crusade for Justice influenced a student walk-out in LA in 1966 and much of the direct action by urban youth that followed, including the Young Citizens for Community Action (YCCA), which had contacts with the Black Power movement

La Raza Unida party

• Led by Jose Angel Gutierrez

• Set out to encourage Hispanic people to register to vote, and then to provide them with party candidates to vote for, who would support their interests if elected

• Campaigned for better work, housing and education

• Began in Texas and spread to California and Colorado

Brown Berets

• Young, militant organisation, set up in 1967 in East LA

• Members wore uniform, campaigned against police brutality and led school walk-outs

• By 1968, there were Brown Beret members in most urban centres with a Hispanic population

HA - Legislation

• Legal acceptance of Hispanic rights was slow coming → it wasn’t until 1954 that the Supreme Court ruled that Hispanic people were equal citizens

• In 1966, Congress’ Cuban American Adjustment Act said all Cubans who had lived in the USA for a year were permanent residents → no other hispanic group was given this right

• In 1968, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education fund was set up to pursue civil rights int he courts

• In 1973, the Supreme Court upheld an ‘equal provision of education’ case against a Texas school → Hispanics were covered by legislation such as the 1974 Supreme Court ruling on the rights of Limited English Proficient students in Lau vs Nichols → this led to the 1974 Equal Opportunities Act, which provided for more bilingual teaching in schools

• In 1975, a Voting Rights Act extension provided language assistance at polling stations and extended right to Native Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanic groups

HA - state change

• Chavez’s campagin made a significant difference to the conditions of farm workers

• Local campaigning did improve schools and housing but the level of change varied from place to place, as did the levels of enforcement of these legal rights

• Land issues raised by protestors still have not been settled

Gay rights - background

• Not part of a visible racial group

• Some restaurants and bars wouldn’t serve them, some hotels wouldn’t put them up

• In the 1950s, Congress said that homosexuality was a mental illness → a ‘Lavender Scare’ ran parallel to the ‘Red Scare’ to root out homosexuals → thousands lost their jobs

• Legislation was a state matter, not a federal matter → until Illinois repealed its anti-gay law in 1962, homosexuality was illegal in every state in the USA → homosexuality was not decriminalised across the country until 2003

• Campaigners for gay rights had to use human rights law or argue that the 1964 Civil Rights Act which said no discrimination for race or gender, also applied to gays

Gay rights movement

• Formed after the incident at Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York on 28 June 1969 → police raided the bar, which they did regularly, supposedly for breaking liquor licensing laws, but actually because it was known as a gay bar → customers were used to it and had a routine for slipping away → a policeman was too rough with a customer and 400 people began to fight back, throwing things and yelling at the police → for several nights running, there were protests and clashes with the police in the area around the bar

• Over the next few weeks, the issue of gay rights exploded → the Gay Liberation Front was set up and a spate of large, peaceful protests for gay rights and against gay oppression were organised

• Gay Pride marches were held in several cities on 28 August 1970 → the New York march alone had about 10,000 marchers

GR - Taking to the streets

• A combination of support and the predominantly liberal climate of the late 1960s and 1970s meant that the gay rights movemebt expanded very rapidly

• Highly visible gay communities sprang up in cities such as San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Seattle → they tended to form in, or near, areas with a significant counter-culture community, such as Greenwich Village, New York

• People discovered that people they knew and liked were gay, and many of the prejudices against gays dissolved in light of this

• In 1977, polls suggested that over 50% of people believed in equal rights for gays

• Certain groups, such as the KKK, were very anti-gay → there was a lot of hostility to gays in parts of the country, such as the rural ‘Bible Belt’, where religious fundamentalism fuelled hostility

GR - Succes

• In 1974, Kathy Kozachenko became the first openly gay candidate elected to office

• In 1977, Harvey Milk was elected to office in San Francisco → took an open stand against Proposition 6 (a law proposed in California in 1978 that would fire gay teachers and teachers who spoke in favour of gay rights)

• Milk was the first gay official to make it clear that his being gay affected his political activities as well as his private life → he and the the pro-gay mayor of San Francisco were assassinated

GR - Gains

• Gay pressure in some states led to positive gay initiatives at state and local level on issues both political and personal

• Between 1979 and 1981, the governor of California appointed 4 openly gay state judges

• In 1980, a gay teenage boy in Rhode Island sued his high school for the right to bring a male date to the school prom and won

GR - Limitations

• In Dade County, Flordia, in 1977, a law was proposed to stop discrimination in housing, public facilities (e.g. hotels and restaurants) and employment → Anita Bryan set up Save Our Children (SOC) and collected petitions against the law → the law was rejected and several similar laws were rejected in other states after action by SOC or other groups

• These groups projected an image of gay people as not self-contained but actively recruiting by preying on the young → from this sprang the 1978 Proposition 6 (Briggs Initiative) → it was rejected by voters in California but set off a spate of similar local proposals

• The religious right became more outspoken in its opposition and gained more outspoken support from conservatives and increasing support from some Republicans, include Reagan