1. Social Movements of the 1960’s and 70’s

2. America in the 1960s
By the 1960s, the United States had experienced major changes:
Economic prosperity, a rapid growth of suburbs, a baby boom, & increased college enrollment
Nuclear threats in the Cold War & a controversial war in Vietnam
Assassinations of political leaders, a growing poverty gap, & tensions over civil rights for black Americans

3. The Youth Revolt in the 1960s
One of the most visible changes was protest among the nation’s youth
The generation gap between kids & their parents was the widest of any previous era in history having missed WWII and the Depression
They were the most educated generation; 75% graduated high school & 40% graduated college rejected their parents’ expectations & looked to find personal fulfillment

5. The New Left
One impact of the 1960s youth movement was the rise of the “New Left”
Promoted participatory democracy—direct involvement by the youth in political issues
The New Left Late in the spring of 1962, five dozen college students gathered at a lakeside camp near Port Huron, Michigan, to discuss politics. For four days and nights, the members of an obscure student group, known as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), talked passionately about such topics as civil rights, foreign policy, and the quality of American life. At 5 a.m. on June 16, the gathering ended when the participants agreed on a political platform that expressed their sentiments. This manifesto, one of the pivotal political documents of the 1960s, became known as the Port Huron Statement.
The goal set forward in the Port Huron Statement was the creation of a radically new democratic political movement in the United States that rejected hierarchy and bureaucracy. In its most important paragraphs, the document called for "participatory democracy"--direct individual involvement in the decisions that affected their lives. This notion would become the battle cry of the student movement of the 1960s--a movement that came to be known as the New Left.
The Port Huron Statement's chief author was Tom Hayden. Hayden was born in 1939, in Royal Oak, Michigan, a predominantly Catholic working-class suburb of Detroit. From an early age, he was unusually politically conscious and questioning of established authority. During the 1960s, thousands of young college students, like Tom Hayden, became politically active. The first issue to spark student radicalism was the impersonality of the modern university, which many students criticized for being too bureaucratic and formal. Students questioned university requirements, restrictions on student political activities, and dormitory rules that limited the hours that male and female students could socialize with each other. Restrictions on students handing out political pamphlets on university property led to the first campus demonstrations that broke out at the University of California at Berkeley, and soon spread to other campuses.
Involvement in the Civil Rights Movement in the South initiated many students into radical politics. In the early 1960s, many white students from Northern universities began to participate in voter registration drives, freedom schools, sit-ins, and freedom rides in order to help desegregate the South. For the first time, many witnessed poverty, discrimination, and violence first hand.
Student radicalism also drew inspiration from a literature of social criticism that flourished in the 1950s. During that decade, many of the most popular films, novels, and writings aimed at young people criticized conventional middle class life. Popular films, like Rebel Without a Cause, and popular novels, like J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, celebrated sensitive, directionless, alienated youths unable to conform to the conventional adult values of suburban and corporate America. Sophisticated works of social criticism, by such maverick sociologists, psychologists, and economists as Herbert Marcuse, Norman O. Brown, Paul Goodman, Michael Harrington, and C. Wright Mills, documented the growing concentration of power in the hands of social elites, the persistence of poverty in a land of plenty, and the stresses and injustices in America's social order.
Above all, student radicalism owed its support to student opposition of the Vietnam War. SDS held its first antiwar march in 1965, which attracted at least 15,000 protestors to Washington and commanded wide press attention. Over the next three years, opposition to the war brought thousands of new members to SDS. The organization grew phenomenally, from fewer than a thousand members in 1962 to at least 50,000 in In addition to its antiwar activities, members of SDS also tried to organize a democratic "interracial movement of the poor" in Northern city neighborhoods.
Many members of SDS quickly grew frustrated by the slow pace of social change and began to embrace violence as a tool to transform society. After 1968, SDS rapidly tore itself apart as an effective political force, and in its final convention in 1969, degenerated into a shouting match between radicals and moderates. That same year, the Weathermen, a surviving faction of SDS, attempted to launch a guerrilla war in the streets of Chicago--an incident known as the "Days of Rage"--to "tear pig city apart." Finally, in 1970 three members of the Weathermen blew themselves up in a Greenwich Village brownstone trying to make a bomb out of a stick of dynamite and an alarm clock.
Throughout the 1960s, the SDS and other radical student organizations claimed to speak for the nation's youth, and in thousands of editorials and magazine articles, journalists accepted this claim. In fact, the SDS represented only a small minority of college students who, themselves, composed a minority of the country's youth. Far more young Americans voted for George Wallace in 1968 than joined SDS, and most college students during the decade spent far more time studying and enjoying the college experience than protesting. Nevertheless, radical students did help to draw the nation's attention to the problem of racism in American society and the moral issues involved in the Vietnam War. In that sense, their impact far exceeded their numbers.

7. The New Left
One impact of the 1960s youth movement was the rise of the New Left
Ending the Vietnam War was the most important issue of the “New Left”

8. Flower power & hippie fashion
Counter Culture
Another impact of the 1960s youth movement was the emergence of a social counter-culture
While the “New Left” tried to improve America through protest, “hippies” tried to create their own society based on love & peace
While the New Left labored to change the world and remake American society, other youths attempted to alter themselves and reorder consciousness. Variously labeled the counterculture, hippies, or flower children, they had their own heroes, music, dress, and approach to life.
In theory, supporters of the counterculture rejected individualism, competition, and capitalism. Adopting rather unsystematic ideas from oriental religions, they sought to become one with the universe. Rejection of monogamy and the traditional nuclear family gave way to the tribal or communal ideal, where members renounced individualism and private property and shared food, work, and sex. In such a community, love was a general abstract ideal rather than a focused emotion.
The quest for oneness with the universe led many youths to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs. LSD had a particularly powerful allure. Under its influence, poets, musicians, politicians, and thousands of other Americans claimed to have tapped into an all-powerful spiritual force. Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor who became the leading prophet of LSD, asserted that the drug would unlock the universe. Although LSD was outlawed in 1966, the drug continued to spread. Perhaps some takers discovered profound truths, but by the late 1960s, drugs had done more harm than good. The history of the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco illustrated the problems caused by drugs. In 1967, Haight was the center of the counterculture, the home of the flower children. In the "city of love," hippies ingested LSD, smoked pot, listened to "acid rock," and proclaimed the dawning of a new age. Yet the area was suffering from severe problems. High levels of racial violence, venereal disease, rape, drug overdoses, and poverty ensured more bad trips than good.
Even music, which along with drugs and sex formed the counterculture trinity, failed to alter human behavior. In 1969, journalists hailed the Woodstock music festival as a symbol of love. But a few months later, a group of Hell's Angels violently interrupted the Altamont Raceway music festival. As Mick Jagger sang "Under My Thumb," an Angel stabbed a black man to death.
Like the New Left, the counterculture fell victim to its own excesses. Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll did not solve the problems facing the United States. And by the end of the 1960s, the counterculture had lost its force.
Flower power & hippie fashion

9. 1960s counter culture was represented by: “Sex, Drugs, Rock ‘n’ roll”
Counter culture music was best represented by the Woodstock concert in 1969

10. Conclusions: America in the 1960s
Both the New Left protest & hippie culture were visible in the 1960s, but neither represented the majority of Americans
Conservative citizens were a “silent majority” that believed the youth movement was destroying traditional American values
Conservatives changed U.S. politics by voting for Richard Nixon in 1968

11. The Start of the Women’s Movement
The Feminist Movement began in the late 1800’s
Concentrated on gaining right to vote
Seneca Falls Convention
Declaration of Sentiments
19th Amendment ratified in 1920

12. Reproductive Rights Margaret Sanger opens birth control clinic in 1923
Shut down by police…then reopened
Birth control information is declared to be “not obscene” in 1936
Birth control pills are developed and first approved by FDA in 1960

13. Equal Pay Act
Congress passes the Equal Pay Act in 1963, making it illegal for employers to pay a woman less than what a man would receive for the same job

14. Impact of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on Women’s Rights
Many women who had been involved with the Civil Rights Movement applied techniques to their own struggles
A section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act called Title VII contained a section that outlawed discrimination on the basis of gender

15. Betty Friedan Women began looking for ways to explore other aspects
of their lives
Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, described “the cultural patterns that prevented women from achieving their full potential”
The National Organization of Women
Founded in 1966 by Friedan and others
Sought pay and job equality and balance in child rearing and household responsibilities

16. The Equal Rights Amendment
The 26th Amendment (proposed)
Proposed 1972 change to the U.S. Constitution
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied…on account of sex.”
Did not receive needed 38 states; proposal died in 1982

17. Roe v Wade Landmark Supreme Court case in 1973
Legalized abortion in the U.S.
Became a radical cause on both sides

18. Opposition to Women’s Movement
Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative political activist led a campaign to block passage of the ERA
Feared that the ERA would lead to women in combat, coed bathrooms, and the end of traditional families
Became powerful political force

19. Ethnic Minorities Seek Equality
Latinos
Asian-Americans
Native Americans

20. Latinos Latino population was growing quickly
Family origins in Latin America
Had been seen as outsiders and denied employment, education, and housing
Large numbers of Latinos began to organize themselves into powerful political groups

21. Important Court Case
1974: In Lau v. Nichols, the Supreme Court rules that, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, school districts are required to provide assistance to LEP (limited-English-proficient) students that ensure that they receive the same opportunities as fluent English students

22. Cesar Chavez Founder of United Farm Workers (UFW)
Was a migrant worker from Arizona; his family was among the first to strike for equal rights and pay in the fields
Organized Mexican field hands

23. Native Americans
By 1871, Native American tribes were not recognized as independent powers
However Native Americans were not considered US citizens, either!
After 1924, Native Americans who had been born in the U.S. were granted citizenship
However, it wasn’t until 1948 that all were given the right to vote
Old stereotypes vanished slowly

24. Native Americans and Discrimination
Native Americans suffer from many of the same social and economic problems as other victims of long-term bias and discrimination - including, disproportionately high rates of poverty, infant mortality, unemployment, and low high school completion rates.

25. Discrimination Against Native Americans
American Indians faced discrimination similar to the segregation that as African Americans experienced
In some states you could find three separate drinking fountains labeled "whites," "Colored" and "Indian."
There were also three sections in some movie theaters.

26. The American Indian Movement (AIM)
The native civil rights movement began with the founding of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968.
Fight for autonomy (self-government) on Indian Reservations

27. Violence in the Movement
Members of AIM briefly took over the headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C.
Several Native American groups claimed Alcatraz Prison in
The occupiers held the island for nearly eighteen months, reclaiming it as Indian land and demanding fairness and respect for Indian peoples.
The protest failed and federal officials removed the protestors in 1970

29. The Confrontation at Wounded Knee
In 1973, about 200 Sioux, led by members of AIM, seized the tiny village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota the site of the last great massacre of Native Americans by the U.S. cavalry (1890).
Among AIM’s demands was a review of more than 300 treaties between the Native Americans and the federal government that AIM alleged were broken.
Wounded Knee was occupied for 70 days before the militants surrendered.
Two AIM members were killed and a dozen people were hurt including federal marshals
AIM leadership were jailed for the protest and violence.

30. The Environmental Movement
Roots of the Environmental Movement can be traced back to the late 1800’s, and to the New Deal
Early environmentalists included John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt
Muir was instrumental in persuading TR to preserve vast public lands as parks, forests, and wildlife preserves

31. There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people shoud see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred."
Teddy Roosevelt, Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter 1905.

32. Silent Spring Rachel Carson Author of Silent Spring
Condemned the use of chemical
pesticides such as DDT which
threatened the food chain
destroyed many
birds and fish including the bald eagle

33. Earth Day Earth Day was created in April 1970
Increased awareness and clean-up day
Celebrated on April 22
Wear green, walk to school, and plant some flowers!

34. Government Action
Creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970
The first EPA undertakings set standards for factory waste, car emissions, and the use of pesticides and toxic substances
The Clean Air in 1970
The Clean Water Act in 1972
Problems between businesses and the new laws continue today

35. Consumer Safety Expert Ralph Nader
Headed a consumer effort to
protect Americans from
unsafe products
Published, Unsafe at Any
Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile in 1964
Later, headed efforts to make baby food, insecticides, and the meatpacking industries safer; ran for president in 2000