Chapter 25 - Sixties

• There was growing frustration at the slow pace of racial change

  • Despite the 1954 Brown decision, only a handful of black students had been admitted to all white schools

  • the economic gap btwn whites and blacks at not narrowed

• Unlike prior sit-ins the one in Greensboro launched massive response

  • many African-Americans fought for their civil liberties and angry whites often assaulted them

    • however, they were trained in nonviolent resistance, refusing to strike back

• The Civil Rights movement challenged what freedom truly meant, and whether or not it applied to all Americans or only part of the population

• By the end of the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement had challenged the preconceived understanding of freedom linked to the Cold War and exposed the limitations of traditional New Deal liberalism.

  • The nation was forced to reconsider foreign policy and extend freedom to all sorts of maginalized groups

The Civil RIghts Revolution

The Rising Tide of Protest

• Ella Baker, longtime Civil Rights activist organizes the Student nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

  • destroy segregationist culture and replace it with a “beloved community” of racial justice to empower ordinary blacks to take control of their own lives

• Other forms of direct action following sit-ins were “wade-ins” - demanding access to public beaches.

  • many were arrested and two black teenagers were killed

• Freedom Rides

  • integrated groups traveled by bus into the Lower South to test compliance w/ court orders in banning segregation on interstate buses and trains and terminal facilities

    • participants found themselves fighting against violence and even the KKK

  • Freedom Riders eventually led to the ICC ordering buses and terminals desegregated

• As protests escalated, so did local authorities’ resistance

  • Campaigns of nonviolent protests across Georgia failed to gain any national traction

  • Southern governor Ross Barnett (MS) allowed a mob to rampage after being forced to admit a black Student )James Meredith to U of Mississippi

Birmingham

• Protests and demonstrations came to a head in Birmingham, a notably violent city

  • leaders of the Birmingham movement invited MLK Jr to join them.

    • Letter from Birmingham Jail

      • MLK responds to local clergymen and details the abuses faced by black southerners (from police brutality to the daily humiliation of having to explain to their children why they couldn’t access certain facilities)

      • MLK declared that the “white moderate” must put aside fear of disorder and commit themselves to racial justice

• MLK sent black schoolchildren into the streets of Birmingham where they faced much violence that was televised throughout the world

  • the world was revulsed by the harsh treatment → Birmingham became an important triumph for the Civil Rights movement.

    • also led JFK to endorse the Civil RIghts Movement

• Businessmen feared that the city was becoming an international symbol of bruality and brokered and end to demonstrations → desegregated downtown and restaurants + stores promised to hire black workers

• Birmingham forced white Americans to consider whether they supported fellow Americans fighting for their rights or violent segregationists

The March on Washington

• The March on Washington is often considered a high point of the Civil Rights movement

  • organized by a coalition of Civil Rights leaders led by Philip Randolph

    • largest public demonstration in the nation’s history at the time

• Goals of the March

  • passage of a civil rights bill pending before Congress

  • public-works program to reduce unemployment

  • increasing the minimum wage

  • and a law barring discrimination in employment

    • These demands symbolized the fact that the black movement had forged an alliance with white liberals.

• The March on Washington reflected an unprecedented degree of interacial cooperation in support of racial and economic justice.

  • Tensions and the limitations of the movement were also revealed.

    • Despite the role of female activists like Jo Ann Robinson and Ella Baker, the speeches given at the Lincoln Memorial during the March were dominated by men

• Civil Rights activists revived the Civil-War era vision of national authority as the protector of American freedom

  • Despite federal encouragement of segregation, blacks believed that the national government would be more willing to listen to their problems than local or state ones.

The Kennedy Years

• Despite JFK’s short term with limited domestic achievements, his administration is widely viewed today as a moment of youthful glamour, soaring hopes, an dynamic leadership at home and abroad.

• JFK’s inaugural address urged Americans to move beyond the self-centered consumer culture of the 1950s but to how individual Americans could contribute to the greatness of the country as a whole.

  • At the beginning of his presidency, JFK regarded Civil Rights as a distraction from the Cold War

Kennedy and the World

• Kennedy had ideas for many new initiatives aimed at countering communist influence abroad.

  • Peace Corp: sent young Americans abroad to aid in the economic and educational progress of developing countries and to improve the image of the US there.

  • After the Soviets launched a satellite carrying the first man into orbit around the Earth, JFK declared that the US would mobilize resources to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade.

  • JFK also formulated a new Latin-American policy

    • Alliance for Progress

      • reminiscent of the Marshall Plan, but for the Western hemisphere (and involving far less money)

      • was meant to alleviate poverty and counteract communist appeal

      • failed due to corruption in military regimes and local elites meant to distribute the funds

• After Castro took power of Cuba, Cuba was no longer economically dependent on the US and switched its allegiance to the USSR leading to the CIA training anti-Castro exiles for an invasion of Cuba

  • Bay of Pigs:

    • Military advisers predicted it would quickly topple the Castro government but it proved to be a total failure

  • After the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, JFK’s government tried to assassinate Castro numerous times

The Missile Crisis

• To stem a growing wave of emigrants fleeing from East to West Berlin, the Soviets constructed a wall separating the two parts of the city

  • the Berlin Wall would stand as a tangible symbol of the Cold War and division within Europe

• Cuban Missile Crisis

  • American spy planes discover that the USSR was installing missiles in Cuba capable of reaching the US with nuclear weapons.

  • Kennedy rejected advice that he authorize an attack on Cuba (which would almost certainly have triggered a Soviet response in Berlin and perhaps a nuclear war)

    • Instead, he imposed a blocked of Cuba and demand the removal of the missiles

  • The world teetered on the brink of all-out nuclear war, and after negotiations, Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles

    • In exchange, JFK pledged that the US would not invade Cuba and secretly agreed to remove American missiles from Turkey (that could reach the USSR)

• The Cuban Missile Crisis dampened JFK’s enthusiasm for the Cold War

• Kennedy was appalled by the disregard for life that many leaders showed and he vowed to reduce Cold War tensions.

  • Summer 1963, US and USSR sign a treaty banning the testing of nukes in the atmosphere and in space.

• Kennedy even sent word to Castro through a journalists that he wanted to build a more constructive relationship w Cuba.

Kennedy and Civil Rights

• Until 1963, Kennedy had been reluctant to take a forceful stance on black demands.

  • He shared J Edgar Hoover’s fear that the Civil Rights Movement was based on communism.

  • Despite promising during his 1960 campaign to ban discrimination in federally assisted housing, Kennedy waited until the end of 1962 to issue the order.

  • JFK only used federal force when obstruction of the law became unjustifiable but he failed to protect civil rights workers from violence, insisting that law enforcement was a local issue

• After Birmingham, JFK realized that the US could not be the champion of freedom while maintaining a system of racial inequality at home.

  • He went on TV calling to ban discrimination in all places of public accommodation

• After JFK’s assassination it fell on LBJ to secure the passage of the Civil Rights bill and to launch a program of domestic liberalism more ambitious than anything JFK imagined

Lyndon Johnson’s Presidency

• In contrast to JFK (who grew up wealthy), LBJ grew up in one of the poorest parts of the US (central Texas)

  • Unlike Kennedy who viewed success as a birthright, LBJ fought tooth and nail to achieve wealth and power.

  • He had risen to become U.S. Senate majority but he never forgot the poor Mexican and white children he had taught in a TX school in the 1930s.

• LBJ was far more interested in domestic reform than Kennedy, continuing to hold the New Deal view that government had an obligation to assist less fortunate members of society

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

• No one expected for Johnson to place Civil Rights so high upon his agenda and be a champion for the movement unlike any other president before.

• Only 5 days after JFK’s death, LBJ called on Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act

  • prohibited racial discrimination employment, institutions like hospitals and schools, and privately owned accommodations such as restaurants, hotels, and theaters

  • also banned discrimination based on sex (a provision added by opponents of civil rights in an effort to derail the entire bill and embraced by liberal and female members of Congress as a way to broaden its scope

    • Johnson knew many whites opposed the new law and acknowledged that many whites would now sympathize with the Republicans

Freedom Summer

• The 1964 Civil Rights Law failed to address the right to vote in the South.

  • The Freedom Summer was a campaign launched by a coalition of Civil Rights groups to registrate to vote

  • Hundreds of white college students from the North traveled to Mississippi to take part in the campaign which was greeted by an outpouring of violence.

    • Despite numerous casualties, the deaths of two white students focused unprecedented attention on Mississippi and the inability of the fed gov to protect citizens seeking to enjoy their constitutional rights.

• Freedom Summer led to the MFDP (Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party) to take the seats of the state’s all white official party at the 1964 DNC

  • with blacks unable to participate in the activities of the Democratic party or register to vote, the civil rights movement had created the MFDP to be open to all members of the state.

  • LBJ feared that a southern walkout would happen if the MFDP were seated and LBJ’s running mate, Hubert Humphrey, pressed for a compromise in which two black delegates would be granted seats but the MFDP rejected the proposal.

The 1964 Election

• The lack of progress at the DNC weakened black activists’ faith in the political system and forecasted the impending breakup of the coalition btwn the civil rights movement and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

  • However, for the 1964 election, the movement rallied behind LBJ’s reelection campaign

• LBJ’s opponent, Barry Goldwater published The Conscience of a Conservative, in which he demanded a more aggressive foreign policy regarding the Cold War.

  • Goldwater directed the brunt of his critique against “internal dangers” to freedom especially the ND welfare state, which he believed stifled individual initiative and independence.

    • called for the substitution of private charity for public welfare programs and Social Security and the abolition of the graduated income tax.

    • voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Democrats stigmatized Goldwater as an extremist who would repeal Social Security and risk nuclear war, leading to him being annihilated in the polls.

  • Despite the massive loss, 1964 marked the resurgence of American conservatism (marked by Goldwater’s success in the Lower South).

    • cemented the idea that politicians could gain electoral support by appealing to whites against civil rights

• Proposition 14 passing in CA (which repealed a 1963 law banning racial discrimination in the sale of real estate) foreshadowed growing problems for the Democrats

The Conservative Sixties

• Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)

  • conservative students emerged as a political force

  • paralleled the Sharon Statement and the Port Huron Statement

    • Sharon Statement:

      • summarized beliefs that had circulated among conservatives during the past decade

        • free market underpinned “personal freedom”

        • government must be strictly limited

        • “international communism” was the gravest threat to liberty and must be destroyed

• YAF initially aimed to take control of the Republican Party from leaders who had made peace with the ND and seemed to coexist with communism.

  • Despite his landslide defeat, Goldwater’s nomination was a triumph for a movement previously only thought to be fanatics

• Goldwater gained enthusiasm from rapidly expanding suburbs of southern California and the Southwest.

  • Many new residents of these suburbs had recently arrived from the East and Midwest and worked in defense-related industries → area become a national center of grassroots conservative activism.

• Goldwater’s strong support in the Lower South foreshadowed the future Republican domination of the South as a whole.

• Despite most Republicans abandoning talks of racial superiority and inferiority, many still exploited racial tensions to gain support for their political party

The Voting Rights Act

• In Jan 1965, MLK launches a voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, where only 355 of 15k black residents had been allowed to register to vote.

  • Defying Governor Wallace’s ban, MLK attempted to lead a march from Selma to Montgomery

    • when marchers reached the bridge leading out of the city, state police assaulted them.

• Once again, violence against nonviolent demonstrated flashed across TV screens throughout the globe, compelling the federal government to take action.

  • In response to the events in Selma, LBJ asked Congress to enact a law securing the right to vote → led to the quick passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing federal officials to register voters.

• The 24th Amendment also outlawed the poll tax, which had long prevented poor blacks from voting in the South

Immigration Reform

• 1965, the Hart-Celler Act abandoned the national-origins quota system of immigration, which had excluded Asians and severely restricted southern and eastern Europeans

• established new racially neutral criteria for immigration, notably family reunification and possession of skills in demand in America.

• However, despite growing hostility in the Southwest to Mexican immigration, the law established the first limit on newcomers from the Western Hemisphere → created the category of illegal aliens.

  • The quota set by the law guaranteed that a large part of Mexican immigration would be unauthorized since labor demand for Mexican immigrants far exceeded the quota

    • many Mexican immigrants arrived in America without documentations and many Americans began to conflate all Mexicans with “illegals”

• The immigration law opened the country’s borders compared to the restrictive quotas since 1924.

  • It also had many unexpected results:

    • immigrants from outside of Europe would come to outnumber those from Europe and led to the development of the national melting pot

The Great Society

• Analogous to the New Deal, but during the 1960s

  • the Great Society provided health services to the poor and elderly in new Medicaid and Medicare programs and poured federal funds into education and urban development.

  • new cabinet offices — the Departments of Transportation and of Housing and Urban Development

  • new agencies — Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Endowments for the Humanities and arts

  • national public broadcasting network were created

• The Great Society vastly expanded the powers of the federal government

• Unlike the ND, the Great Society was a response to prosperity, not depression.

  • The mid 1960s was characterized by rapid economic expansion, fueled by increased government spending and a tax cut on individuals and businesses.

  • LBJ and Democratic liberals believed that economic growth made it possible to fund ambitious new government programs to improve quality of life.

The War on Poverty

• The centerpiece to the Great Society was LBJ’s crusade to end poverty

  • Numerous Americans lived under the poverty line thanks to Michael Harrington’s book The Other America.

    • shockingly enough, whites made up a majority of the nation’s poor.

• LBJ’s administration attributed poverty to an absence of skills and a lack of proper attitude and work habits, leading to the disregard for most conventional approaches to solve poverty such as guaranteed annual income, jobs for the unemployed, promoting unionization, etc.

  • Food Stamps offered direct aid to the poor, but in general, the War on Poverty (WoP) was focused on equipping the poor into the social and economic mainstream.

• LBJ’s War on Poverty included providing Head Start (an early childhood education program), job training, legal services, and scholarship for poor college students.

  • VISTA, a domestic version of the Peace Corp for the inner cities was also created.

• The grassroots War on Poverty contributed to an upsurge of local radical activism.

Freedom and Equality

• LBJ recognized that black poverty was fundamentally different from white since its roots lay in justice and prejudice

• LBJ’s great Society was the most expansive effort in American history to mobilize the powers of the federal government to address the needs of the least-advantaged Americans who were largely excluded from the New Deal

• The War on Poverty reduced the poverty rate by 9 percent during the 1960s and has stayed constant ever since.

  • The War on Poverty narrowed the gap between whites and blacks in education, income, and access to skilled employment.

  • However, poverty still disproportionately affects black children

The Changing Black Movement

• In the mid-1960s, economic issues rose to the forefront of the Civil RIghts campaign

  • violent outbreaks in black ghettos outside the South drew attention to the national prevalence of racial injustice and inequalities in jobs, education, and housing that segregation had left intact.

• Many whites believed that Civil Rights legislation in 1964 and 1965 had fulfilled the nation’s obligation to assure blacks equality before the law and that blacks pushing for more were advocating for “reverse discrimination”

The Urban Uprisings

• First riots btwn angry blacks and white police erupted in Harlem in 1964

  • However, the Watts Riots of 1965 were far larger, occurring only days after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

    • The Watts Riots featured blacks attacking police and firemen, looting white-owned businesses, and burning buildings.

      • Mass property destruction and lives lost

• By summer of 1967, violence had become so widespread some feared a racial civil war. The nation was in danger of being sorn apart by racial antagonism.

• Black unemployment was twice that of whites and their average family income was barely more than half of whites.

  • MLK called for an early version of affirmative action in which the national would use federal resources to abolish economic deprivation for disadvantaged peoples.

• King launches the Chicago Freedom movement in 1966 that advocated for an end to discrimination by employers and unions, equal access to mortgages, and the integration of public housing and construction of low-income housing scattered throughout the region.

  • However, the movement failed and King’s nonviolent tactics proved ineffective in the face of powerful racial inequality.

• MLK becomes increasingly radical, calling for nothing less than a “revolution in values” that would create a “better distribution of wealth” for “all God’s children”

Malcolm X

• Malcolm X insisted that blacks must control the political and economic resources of their communities and rely on their own efforts rather than working with whites.

  • After converting to Islam and being released from prison, Malcolm X became a sharp critic to integration and nonviolence and MLK’s practice of appealing to American values.

• After a trip to Mecca, Malcolm X witnessed harmony among Muslims of all races and began to speak of the possibility of interracial cooperation for radical change in the US

  • However, he was assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam after he formed his own Organization of Afro-American Unity

• Malcolm X did not leave a consistent ideology nor a coherent movement. However, his call for blacks to be self-reliant resonated with the urban poor and younger civil rights activists.

The Rise of Black Power

• Malcolm X was the intellectual father of Black Power, a slogan that became a rallying cry for those bitter over the federal government’s failure to stop violence against civil rights workers.

• Black Power was a highly imprecise idea, suggesting everything from the election of more black officials to the belief that black Americans were a colonized people whose freedom could be won only through a revolutionary struggle for self-determination

• Black Power inspired the establishment of black-operated local schools that combined traditional learning with an emphasis on pride in African-American history and identity in the wake of the “failure” of the local school system.

• Black Power also led to a new sense of racial pride and rejection of white norms seen in shifting beauty standards and labels.

• Black Power inspired militant groups, most notably the Black Panther Party which became notorious for advocating armed self-defense in response to police brutality

  • demanded the release of black prisoners bc of racism in the criminal justice system.

• US military escalation in Vietnam → WoP grinds to a halt]

  • American society faces its greatest crisis since the Depression due to the combination of social unrest, antiwar movements, and young people rejecting mainstream values

Vietnam and the New Left

Old and the New Lefts

• To most Americans the rise of the protesting youth was a complete surprise.

  • Many struggled to understand the reason behind large numbers of affluent children to reject the values and institutions of their society.

• New left

  • rejected the intellectual and political categories that had shaped radicalism and liberalism for most of the twentieth century.

  • primarily drew upon the black freedom movement

    • the sit-ins catalyzed white student activism

The Fading Consensus

• During the early 1960s, many books highlighted major environmental and political issues.

  • James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time gave an angry voice to the black revolution.

  • Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed the environmental costs of economic growth.

  • Michael Harrington’s The Other America revealed the persistence of poverty amid plenty.

  • Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, criticized urban renwal, the removal of the poor from city centers, and the destruction of neighborhoods to build highways

• Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

  • developed the Port Huron which was a document that capture dthe mood and summarized the beliefs of this new generation of student protestors

  • criticized political parties, corporations, unions, and the military-industrial complex

• The Port Huron Statement was so significant because it offered a new vision of social change

  • “democracy of individual participation” in which individuals could determine the quality and direction of their own lives

The Rise of SDS

• UC Berkeley protests

  • sparked by a rule that prohibited political groups from using a central area of the campus to spread their ideas

    • mad that they couldn’t distribute their own literature

  • the protests moved from demanding the repeal of the new rule to a critique of the entire univresity’s structure and how they were prepping graduates for corporate jobs.

America and Vietnam

• America’s involvement in Vietnam caused the various protests to transform into full born generational upheaval

• American entry into Vietnam was abysmally ignorant about the particulars of Vietnam

  • Few Americans had any knowledge of Vietnam’s history and culture and only viewed Vietnam as a geopolitical stronghold to take control of.

  • The U.S. was also involved in propping up a dictatorial and oppressive South Vietnamese regime.

• LBJ and Kennedy were both afraid that pulling out of Vietnam would be seen as a loss by the American people leading to a loss of voter support.

  • JFK’s foreign policy advisers saw Vietnam as a test of the United States could contain and counter communism

  • Due to president Diem not listening to American advice, the US supported a military coup leading to his death.

Lyndon Johnson’s War

• LBJ came into the presidency with little experience in foreign relations

  • LBJ had qualms about sending American troops to Vietnam but knew that the Republicans had used the “loss” of China as a weapon against Trumans

    • He would make sure he wouldn’t let Vietnam fall like China

• Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

  • Vietnamese patrol boats fired upon a peaceful American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin

  • authorized the president to take “all necessary measures to repel armed attack” in Vietnam.

  • passed without any discussion of American goals or strategy within Vietnam

• During the 1964 campaign, LBJ insisted he did NOT want to send American troops to Vietnam, but after his victory, the NSC recommended that the US begin airstrikes against North Vietnam and introduce ground troops in the south.

  • Johnson put the plan into effect after the Viet Cong attacked an American air base in South Vietnam.

• As the Vietnam crisis was rising, LBJ intervened in the Dominican Republic by using American troops to intervene, outraging many Latin Americans → operation’s success bolstered LBJ’s confidence in Vietnam

• By 1968, more than half a million American troops were in Vietnam and the war was becoming more and more brutal.

  • North Vietnamese mistreated American prisoners of war in the Hanoi Hilton

  • American planes dropped tons of bombs on North and South Vietnam

    • they also spread chemicals to destroy the forests that served as hiding spots of the Viet Cong

  • Search and destroy missions in order to kill communist Vietnamese sympathizers that often didn’t distinguish between foe and friend

• Despite all of the measures America was taking, they were unable to break the Vietnamese spirit nor allow the Southern Vietnamese to be able to survive better by itself

The Antiwar Movement

• The war in Vietnam sidetracked much of the Great Society and had torn families, universities, and the Democratic Party apart

  • young activists were losing all confidence in the system

• College students were exempt from the draft meaning the burden of the fighting fell on the working class and the poor

  • MLK condemned the draft policy as an unconscious use of violence and draining domestic resources. He was a prominent anti-war activist

• The war was in opposition to the idea of democracy because American involvement was through secret commitments and decisions dictated by political elites without consulting the public

  • Many young men burned their draft cards or fled to Canada to avoid fighting in what they considered an unjust war.

  • Tons of anti-war marches and protests demonstrated just how unpopular the war is and how it wasn’t truly a fight for democracy

The Counterculture

• As the 1960s progressed, young Americans’ understanding of freedom expanded to include cultural freedom as well.

  • Counterculture movement

    • “hippie” youth culture which rejected dominant cultural values in favor of illicit drugs, communes, free sex, and rock music

    • It wasn’t only college students who participated by also young workers, despite union opposition to antiwar demonstrations and countercultural displays

    • Marked the first time in history that such a flamboyant rejection of the status quo became a mass movement

• Songs like “The Times They Are A-Changin” by Bob Dylan along with other symbols such as colorful clothing, rock music, and images of sexual freedom, black revolution and Native American resistance symbolized the deviance from the status quo

• Even LSD embodied a new freedom — to expand one’s consciousness

Personal Liberation and the Free Individual

• There was far more to the counterculture movement than new consumer styles or sex drugs and rock and roll

  • For many it represented the spirit of creative experimentation and a search for a way of life where friendship and pleasure superceded wishes for wealth.

  • It meant a way to get away from bureaucratized education and work, repression on personal behavior and the war-like state bullying a foreign country (Vietnam)

• The counterculture movement also encouraged new forms of radical action

  • undergorund newspapers pioneered a personal and political committed style of journalism

  • The Youth International Party (yippies) introduced humor and theatricality as elements of protests

• The counterculture movement also emphasized the idea lof community

  • established quasi-independent neighborhoods in larger areas that paralleled the utopian communities of the ninteenth century.

  • Rock festivals, like Woodstock brought together hundreds of thousands of young people to celebrate their alternative lifestyle and independence from adult authority

Faith and the Counterculture

• While religious conviction inspired the civil rights movement there was also a different religious development

  • there were sweeping reforms initiated in Roman Catholic practice by the Second Vatican Council

    • many priests, nuns, and lay Catholics became involved in social justice movements → growing split in church btwn liberals and conservatives

• Young people came to see a commitment to social change as a fulfillment of Christian views

• Budding religious movements included the Jesus People (hippies with long hair and unconventional attire + universal love)

  • The 1960s also experienced a growing interest in eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism as a way to promote spiritual wellbeing.

• However, sinister religious cults were also developing, i.e. the People’s Temple led by Jim Jones

The New Movements and the Rights Revolution

• The civil rights movement and the New Left inspired other AMericans to voice their grievances and claim their rights.

  • Notably, the counterculture notion of liberation centered upon sexual freedom

    • mass marketing of birth-control made the separation of sex from procreation possible and sexual freedom became an integral part of the youth rebellion just as much as long hair and drugs.

The Feminine Mystique

• The achievement of the vote didn’t seem to affect women’s lack of power and opportunity

  • at the beginning of the 1960s only a handful of women held political office and their job opportunities were segregated in newspapers

  • in many states, husbands still controlled the earning of their wives

• Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique sparked the second-wave of feminism in the US.

  • Friedan focused on college-educated women, arguing that they would find fulfillment by engaging in paid labor outside the home

  • she drew sympathy from depicting talented, educated women as trapped in a world that viewed marriage and motherhood as their primary goals.

  • the immediate result of hte book was to focus attention on yet another gap between American rhetoric (equality for all) and American reality

• 1963, Congress passes the Equal Pay Act, barring sex discrimination among holders of the same jobs.

• 1966, the NOW is formed with Friedan as president to demand equal opportunity in jobs, education, and political participation and attacked the “false image of women” spread by the mass media

Women’s Liberation

• The NOW grew out of a resurgence of middle-class feminism but many women within the civil rights movement were being disregarded due to their sex as well

  • parallels drawn btwn the civil rights fighting for African-American rights and the women within the movement fighting for their own rights and representation

• The rapid development of this new feminist movement was characterized by their outburst onto the national scene at the Miss America beauty pageant of 1968 where they filled a “freedom trash can” with objects of “oppression” — girdles, brassieres, high-heeled shoes, and copies of Playboy all while chanting slogans to demand their liberation

Personal Freedom

• The women’s liberation movement inspired an expansion of the idea of freedom by linking it to the most intimate realms of life such as sexual relations, conditions of marriage, and standards of beauty were all political topics

• Radicalist feminists’ first public campaign demanded the repeal of state laws that underscored women’s lack of self-determination by banning abortions or leaving it up to physicians to decide whether pregnancy could be terminated

  • As the 60s moved into the 70s increasing amounts of women reported themselves to feel as if they were victims of discrimination

Gay Liberation

• The 1960s also saw the emergence of the movement for gay liberation

  • gay men and lesbians had long been stigmatized as sinful or mentally disordered and made them illegal

• The Mattachine Society worked to persuade the public that apart from their sexual orientation, gays were average Americans who ought not to be persecuted.

• Stonewall Riots

  • police gaided an inn that was a gathering place for homosexuals

  • rather than bowing to polic eharassment as in the past, gays fought back leading to the birth of a militant movement → pride marches in numerous cities

Latino Activism

• Similar to blacks, a movement for Mexican-American legal rights was also beginning.

  • Much like the Black Power movement, the Latino movement emphasized pride in both Mexican past and the new Chicano culture that had arisen in the US.

  • Unlike the Black Power movement, this movement centered around labor struggles.

• Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta led series of nonviolent protests, including marches, fasts, and a national boycott of California grapes, to pressure growers to agree to labor contracts with the United Farm Workers union.

  • The boycott mobilized Latino communities throughout the SW and drew national attention to the ptifiully low wages and oppressive working conditions of migrant laborers

  • Eventually in 1970, major growers agreed to contracts with the UFW

• In NYC, the Young Lords Organization, modeled on the Black Panthers, staged street demonstrations to protest high unemployment among the city’s Puerto Ricans and the lack of city services in Latino neighborhoods.

• similar to other movements of the time, female dissent within the movements rose due to supposed incompatibilities between machismo heritage

Red Power

• Truman and Eisenhower administration had sought to dismantle the reservation system and integrate Indians into American mainstream

  • Many Indian leaders protested vigorously against this policy and JFK abandoned it.

  • LBJ’s War on Poverty increased federal funds to reservations but this wasn’t enough

    • Natives wanted not only economic aid but also self-determination like emerging nations of the Third World.

• The American Idnian Movement staged protests demanding greater tribal self-government and the restoration of economic resources guaranteed in treaties.

• Red Power movement allowed for many Indian tribes to win greater control over education and economic development on reservations.

  • bring land claim suits, demanding and receiving monetary settlements for past dispossesion.

Silent SPring

• Another movement that rose in the 1960s was environmentalism.

  • Unlike prior movements, this new wave was more activist and youth oriented, speaking the language of empowering citizens to participate in decisions that affected their lives.

  • Linked good environment to the qualify of life that Americans lived

    • bulldozing forests and contamination from laundry detergents and lawn fertilizers seeping into water supplies were primary concerns.

• The publication of Silent Spring gave millions of Americans insight onto the effects of DDT, an insecticide widely used by home owners and farmers.

  • Carson’s grueseome detail of how DDT killed birds and animals and caused sickness amongst humans was the catalyst of a new wave of environmentalism.

The New Environmentalism

• Carson’s movement led to quick movements to call for environmental change

  • The Sierra Club, founded in the 1890s to preserve forests, saw its membersihp triple and other groups arose to alert the country to the dangers of water contamination, air pollution, lead in pant, and the extinction of animal species

• Nearly every state quickly banned the use of DDT and major TV networks broadcasting the chaos caused by a major oil spill further drove Carson’s rhetoric home

• The economic boom of America placed enormous stress on the natural environment and as suburbs and highways paved over the landscape, an increasing numbero f Americans because committed to protect the natural landscape

• Big business vehemently opposed the environmentalist movement, but it had the widest range of political support

  • Congress under Nixon would pass the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Endangered Species Act and create the EPA

• Environmentalism was closely intertwined with consumer activism

  • Ralph Nader exposed how auto manufacturers purposely produced highly dangerous vehicles, etc.

  • laid the groundwork for new consumer protection laws and regulations

• KEY TAKEAWAY: 1960s shifted to limiting some kinds of freedom in the name of the greater good

The Rights Revolution

• Under the guidance of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the SCOTUS expanded the rights enjoyed by all Americans and placed them beyond reach of legislative and local majorities

  • After McCarthy’s reign of terror, the Supreme Court moved to rein in the anticommunist crusade

    • Red Monday, the Court overturned convictions of individuals accused of overthrow the government, failing to answer questions before the HUAC, and refusing to disclose their political beliefs.

• By the time Warren retired in 1969, the Supreme Court had reaffirmed the right of even the most unpopular viewpoints to be protected under the 1st Amendment

• NAACP v. Alabama

  • Court struck down southern laws that sought to destroy civil rights organizations by forcing to publicize their membersihp lists

• NYT vs Sullivan

  • overturned a libel judgement by an Alabama jury against the nation’s leading newspaper for carrying an ad critical of local officials harsh treatment of civil rights demonstrators

• Both of the aforementioned court cases sodlified the idea that the SCOTUS would become a protector of civil rights and a protector of the peoples’ rights in general.

• Loving v Virginia

  • declared laws prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional

Policing the States

• During the 1960s, the Supreme Court focused upon making sure the states respected liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights

  • states needed to abide by protections against illegal search and seizure, right to a speedy trial, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and the right to publicly provided attorneys.

  • Miranda v Arizona

    • right to remain silent case, and right to confer with lawyer before answering questions

• The Supreme Court also wanted to sure fairness in democratic procedures at state and local levels

  • Baker v Carr established the principle overturned apportionment systems in individuals in rural areas had the same representation as those in urban areas.

• Court justices moved to reinforce the divide btwn Church and state.

  • Engel v Vitale, prayer and Bible readings in public schools violated 1st Amendment

  • unpopular decision of the Warren Court

The Right to Privacy

• Griswold v Connecticut

  • asserted constitutional right to privacy

  • overturned a state law prohibiting use of contraceptives

  • argument was that privacy although not explicitly stated, could be inferred from the BoR

• Roe v Wade

  • constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy

  • abortion was a fundamental freedom protected by the Constitution

• 1960s were a time of mass expansion of legal rights of women within the domestic sphere.

  • law enforcement began to prosecute crimes like rape and assault by husbands against their wives.

1968

A Year of Turmoil

• Tet Offensive

  • Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops launched well-organized uprisings in cities throughout South Vietnam, completely surprising American military leadership

  • Intense fighting was broadcast to American homes through TV and shattered public confidence in LBJ’s administration

    • Clearly LBJ’s administration was NOT on the verge of a victory

  • Press and political figures criticized American involvement

  • LBJ ended up rejecting military’s request to send 200k more troops to Vietnam and caved under pressure → didn’t run for reelection

    • Peace talks soon opened in Paris

• MLK was organizing a Poor People’s March to spark support for anti-poverty efforts

  • MLK ended up being assassinated in Memphis after coming to support a strike by underpaid black garbage workers.

    • Led to the greatest outbreak of urban violence in American history in ghettos around the country

    • D.C. had to be occupied by soldiers to restore order

  • Congress passed its last major civil rights law, the Open Housing Act — prohibiting discrimination in the sale and rental of homes and apartments (weak enforcement mechanisms)

• 1968 DNC

  • Hubert Humphrey gains democratic nomination

  • thousands of anti-war activists descended on Chicago to protest involvement in the war

    • police assaulted marchers and arrested many

The Global 1968

• Antiwar demonstrations weren’t confined to just America, massive ones took place in major cities such as London, Rome, Paris, Munich, and Tokyo leading to clashes with police and many injuries

• In Czechoslovakia, leaders bent on reform came to power by promising to institute “socialism with a human face,” only to be ousted by the USSR.

• Northern Ireland was inspired by the Civil Rights movement to begin The Troubles after police attacked a peaceful march of Catholics demanding an end to religious discrimination

• Women’s movements in European countries also won victories like easier obtainment of divorces and decriminalizing abortion.

Nixon’s Comeback

• Turmoil in the streets produced demand for public order.

  • Black militancy produced white “backlash”, playing an increasing role in politics.

  • The fact that the unelected SCOTUS was inventing and protecting “rights” fed into the argument that faraway bureaucrats were in control, not the people

• Nixon won the election as the champion of the “silent majrity” - ordinary Americans who believed that change had gone too far

  • Nixon stood for a renewed commitment to “law and order”

  • Nixon barely squeaked out Humphrey and the divided Democrats.

  • George Wallace, an independent candidate ran to appeal to resentment against black progress won 13% of the vote

• Nixon’s election ushered in an era of conservatism in American politics

The Legacy of the Sixties

• Produced new rights and new understandings of freedom

• allowed minorities to enter mainstream American life

• left the issue of urban poverty unsolved

• transformed the status of women

• changed Americans expectations of governments (environmental care + medical coverage)

• undermined public confidence in national leaders

• Issues such as race, feminism, social policy, and America’s role in global affairs would continue to be the centers of controversial debates for years to come

• the 1960s would be blamed for every imaginable social ill: crime, drug abuse and a decline for authority.

  • however, at the same time the decade transformed the US into a freer and more tolerant country