I | INTRODUCTION |
Protests in the
1960s, political movements during the 1960s that called for social change
in the United States. These movements include the civil rights movement, the
student movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the women’s movement, the gay
rights movement, and the environmental movement. Each, to varying degrees,
changed government policy and, perhaps more importantly, changed how almost
every American lives today.
Supporters of these movements questioned
traditional practices about how people were treated. Why did black and white
children attend separate schools? Why were women prevented from holding certain
jobs? Why could a person be drafted at 18 but not able to vote until 21? This
questioning inspired people to begin organizing movements to fight against
injustice and for equal rights for all people.
In addition, they did not use traditional
methods of political activity. Instead of voting for a political candidate and
then hoping that the elected official would make good policies, these protesters
believed in a more direct democracy. They took direct action—public marches,
picketing, sit-ins, rallies, petition drives, and teach-ins—to win converts to
their causes and change public policies at the local, state, and federal levels.
They contributed their time, energy, and passion with the hope of making a
better, more just society for all.
II | ROOTS OF THE PROTEST MOVEMENT |
Social change movements erupted in the 1960s
for several interrelated reasons. First, since the 1930s the role of the federal
government had become increasingly important in Americans’ everyday lives, and
people began to look to the federal government to resolve problems. Second,
after World War II (1939-1945), the United States emerged as a global power that
competed with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); this competition
was both a political and moral crusade to convince people around the world that
Western democracy was superior to the Communist system adopted by the USSR.
Third, the 1950s and 1960s were periods of relative economic prosperity for most
of the country, making economic disparity in the United States more obvious.
Fourth, a national culture was emerging that linked all Americans more closely
than ever before; television became common and allowed people to witness events
taking place in other parts of the country and the world. Fifth, more students
were going to college than before World War II, creating a concentration of
concerned and educated activists on the grounds of universities and
colleges.
A | The Changing Role of the Federal Government |
During the 1930s, Americans suffered through
the Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in U.S. history. To fight
widespread unemployment and poverty, President Franklin Roosevelt created the
New Deal programs. For the first time, the federal government assumed a major
role in ensuring the welfare of its citizens. Americans began to look to their
federal government to provide benefits for the needy and legal protection for
the powerless.
By the 1960s, many Americans had come to
believe that the federal government had the power and responsibility to protect
them from unfair and unjust social forces. People began to pressure all branches
of the federal government—the courts, Congress, and the president—to provide
remedies to the injustices that plagued the nation.
B | The Importance of America’s Global Leadership |
After World War II, America became a global
power. This new role, most Americans believed, was necessitated by the absence
of any other powerful democratic, capitalist nation and the increasing dominance
of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (USSR). The United States and the
USSR became competitive rivals for world leadership. The two countries differed
in many ways. The U.S. economy relied mainly on capitalism, where the resources
are owned by the individual, whereas the Soviet system relied on communism,
where the resources are owned by the state. Their political philosophies also
differed: The United States believed in individual freedom, whereas the USSR
believed in collective action. The United States became dedicated to fighting
the spread of Soviet Communism, and for the first time agreed to protect its
allies against foreign attack. It backed up its commitments by creating an
awesome military capacity. The conflict between the United States and the Soviet
Union was known as the Cold War.
America’s role as a global power provided
people who were advocating social change with a powerful argument. Activists
asked this: How can the United States tell African or Asian countries to reject
Soviet-style Communism and emulate the American way of life, when racism and
inequality are so obviously a part of that way of life? Americans, they said,
need to work toward democracy and equality for all citizens if they want to win
the Cold War. They argued that America’s global leadership made American social
problems not simply domestic problems but international ones as well.
C | The Impact of Widespread Economic Prosperity |
Another factor contributing to the growth
of social activism in the 1960s was increased affluence. Incomes increased in
the United States after World War II, allowing more Americans to enter the
middle class. Similarly, between 1945 and 1960 the gross national product of the
United States had increased almost 250 percent. As a result, many Americans were
better off financially than they had ever been. Economic security also allowed
Americans to question why some groups remained mired in poverty and to focus
more attention—and spend more money—on remedying injustices and social problems.
Not everyone shared in the new national prosperity, and those who did not began
to look for the reasons why. Discrimination often played a major role in their
impoverishment. With inequality so clearly a part of American society, they
began to organize and win national attention.
D | National Culture and National Problems |
Overarching many of these developments, and
further contributing to the rise of sixties-era social change movements, was the
increasing importance of a national culture. This national culture was largely
produced by an interconnected marketplace of goods, services, and information
that was strongly shaped by a powerful mass media. Even as late as the early
1930s, most Americans lived relatively isolated lives in which events in other
parts of the nation were little discussed or followed. With every decade,
however, Americans became more linked. Interstate highways and widespread
ownership of automobiles literally drew the nation closer together. National
radio and television networks made local stories into national events.
Americans came to drink the same colas,
shop in the same stores, and listen to the same national news programs. So too,
they came to believe that one national standard of justice and equality should
prevail. Local traditions such as segregation in the South had to give way to
one national standard of justice and equality. Social activists, by the 1960s,
counted on Americans to be interested in and informed about problems in any part
of the nation. They could trust that the national media would broadcast their
situation and their protests around the country.
E | Youth Culture |
Young people played an important role in
the movements for social change during the 1960s. Numbers alone made them
important; more than 76 million babies were born during the post-World War II
“baby boom.” In addition, these young people spent more years in school and were
more affluent than previous generations. In the early 20th century, most young
Americans had moved quickly from childhood to adulthood. In the 1920s only 1 in
5 Americans graduated from high school, and almost all older teenagers were
full-time workers. By the mid-1960s, however, nearly 3 out of 4 students
finished high school, and about half of those students went on to college. As a
result, by the 1960s, young people stayed with their peers for at least 12
years. College campuses in particular teemed with young people who had the
freedom to question the moral and spiritual health of the nation. These young
men and women would become a vital component of the social change movements of
the 1960s era.
III | MAJOR PROTEST MOVEMENTS |
The major protest movements began with the
civil rights movement during the 1950s and early 1960s. The civil rights
movement fought to end long-standing political, social, economic, and legal
practices that discriminated against black Americans. It influenced later
movements for social change, both by inspiring Americans to fight for change and
by using methods of direct action, such as protest marches, rallies, and
nonviolent civil disobedience tactics like sit-ins.
These later movements included a student
movement dedicated to greater student power; a movement to protest American
involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975); the women’s movement, which fought
to bring full equality to American women; the gay rights movement, which tried
to end traditional biases and laws against homosexuals; and the environmental
movement, which fought to change the conditions of man-made pollution, unchecked
population growth, and the exploitation of natural resources. In the 1960s, many
Americans participated in more than one protest movement. Although their
specific goals differed, all of the movements were built on the ideal of
citizen-activism and a belief that social justice could be won through political
change.
A | Civil Rights Movement |
The civil rights movement was the first
of the 1960s-era social movements. This movement produced one of the most
important American social activists of the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr.
The civil rights movement, as a national force, took root in the 1950s but
greatly expanded in power in the 1960s. It originated among black Americans in
the South who faced racial discrimination and segregation, or the separation of
whites and blacks, in almost every aspect of their lives. In 1960 black
Southerners often had to sit in the back of public buses, were refused service
in most restaurants and hotels, and still went to racially segregated schools,
despite the 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of
Education, which outlawed racially segregated education. Employment ads were
separated into “Negro” and “white” categories, and black Southerners were openly
restricted to the lowest paying and lowest status occupations. In addition, most
black Southerners were effectively denied the right to vote. Conditions in the
North were somewhat better, but segregated housing and schools, as well as job
discrimination, were commonplace.
Blacks fought in the courts, lobbied
elected officials, and began a sustained campaign of nonviolent direct action.
Many blacks participated in major demonstrations, often led by King, in Albany,
Georgia, in 1962; Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963; Washington, D.C., in 1963; and
Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Young black activists also played a key role in the
civil rights movement. In 1960 some of these students formed the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which fought for the right to vote and
for an end to discriminatory laws and practices.
The civil rights protesters focused the
nation’s attention on blacks’ second-class citizenship. Most white Americans,
including many white Southerners, were shocked by the brutality that protesters
endured in the Deep South. In 1963 horrified Americans watched on their
television screens as Bull Connor, the police commissioner in Birmingham,
Alabama, ordered dogs to attack peacefully marching black men, women, and
children. The outrage of the nation and the determination of the activists led
to the passage of civil rights legislation.
In 1964, pressured by the civil rights
movement and under the leadership of President Lyndon Johnson, Congress passed
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation in public
accommodations and made discrimination in education and employment illegal. In
1965 Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which suspended the use of any voter
qualification devices that prevented blacks from voting.
While many battles still lay ahead, the
civil rights movement had used a campaign of nonviolent direct action to end
centuries of open, legal racism in the United States. The movement showed
activists in other areas that they could work for change outside of the
traditional political framework. They could use sit-ins, boycotts, marches, and
rallies to focus attention on their cause and help initiate change in
legislation and in society.
B | The Student Movement |
The student movement was the next major
social change movement to develop in the 1960s. Many of its early organizers had
first become politically active in the early 1960s working alongside blacks in
civil rights protests. Composed mainly of white college students, the student
movement worked primarily to fight racism and poverty, increase student rights,
and to end the Vietnam War. At the core of the student movement was a belief in
participatory democracy, or the idea that all Americans, not just a small elite,
should decide the major economic, political, and social questions that shaped
the nation. In a participatory democracy, citizens would join together and work
directly to achieve change at the local level. The students hoped to give power
to the people so that they could fight for their own rights and for political
and economic changes.
This democratic, activist faith led many
student activists to reject government and school administration policies.
Students sat-in to protest restrictions on students’ rights to free speech and
held rallies against the in loco parentis rules that allowed school
officials to act like parents in setting curfews and dorm rules. They demanded
that faculty and administrators stop all research and activities that
contributed to the Vietnam War.
In 1960 a small group of young people
formed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). By 1968 some 100,000 young
people around the nation had joined this organization. The SDS gained strength
from the Free Speech Movement that occurred at the University of California,
Berkeley, in 1964. Berkeley students protested after university officials banned
political leafleting on campus. They complained that they were treated like
numbers, not people, at the overcrowded Berkeley campus. Other students around
the country formed similar protest organizations, demanding an end to
restrictive campus rules that failed to treat them like responsible
individuals.
Many other student activists in the 1960s
fought for social change by working for political candidates and by forming
local reform organizations. For example, during the presidential primaries of
1968, thousands of student volunteers worked for Eugene McCarthy, who ran for
the Democratic Party nomination on the issue of ending the war in Vietnam. By
the early 1970s, student activists helped organize the environmental movement
and the women’s movement.
However, some student activists were
frustrated by the escalating Vietnam War, widespread poverty amidst great
wealth, and by continuing racial inequality; they became more extreme. They
rejected the traditional American belief in private enterprise and argued that
the economy should be organized by the government to guarantee every American a
decent standard of living. Angered by most Americans’ resistance to ending the
Vietnam War and to the relatively slow pace of social change, some even lost
their faith in democracy. The most radical students believed that Communist
leaders, such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro and China’s Mao Zedong, offered better
visions for bringing justice and equality to people. Some of the most extreme
activists argued that only violent protests would lead to real social change.
The Weathermen, a revolutionary group formed in 1969, advocated an armed
struggle to overthrow the U.S. government. They were responsible for a number of
bombings during the late 1960s and 1970s.
C | The Anti-Vietnam War Movement |
By 1965 a variety of people in the United
States had become active in a vocal movement to end U.S. involvement in the
Vietnam War. The U.S. government had become involved in the war because it did
not want South Vietnam to be defeated by Communist North Vietnam. The United
States government feared that if South Vietnam were defeated, Communism would
spread throughout Southeast Asia. Those who protested the war argued that it was
not, as government leaders argued, a vital struggle against world Communism.
Many protesters believed that the Vietnam War was the last stage of a long
struggle by the Vietnamese for independence. They pointed out that the
Vietnamese had already, in 1954, defeated France, which had controlled Vietnam
as a colony. Following their defeat of France, the Vietnamese had become engaged
in a civil war in which, protesters insisted, the United States had no right to
interfere.
The antiwar movement became a mass
crusade in which millions of Americans participated. It involved people of all
ages, organized in hundreds of diverse local and national groups, including the
National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, Clergy and Laymen Concerned
about Vietnam, Women Strike for Peace, Resistance, American Friends Service
Committee, and Business Executives Move for a Vietnam Peace. Among student
groups, the SDS played a vital role. While antiwar activists came from all
elements of American society, most were white, middle class, and well educated.
Colleges and universities were among the most important sites of antiwar
activism.
Protests against the war took many
forms—marches, boycotts, rallies, and demonstrations. A key event took place at
the University of Michigan in March 1965. Students and professors held a
teach-in on Vietnam, where people gathered to examine America’s Vietnam policy
and discuss what they might do to change that policy. Within months, more than
120 schools held similar events. This spirit of questioning authority and
determining how common citizens could affect policy-makers was at the core of
the antiwar movement.
Between 1965 and 1971, many protests
against the war took place. In April 1967 simultaneous marches in San Francisco,
California, and New York involved some 250,000 antiwar activists. In October
1967 about 50,000 more militant protesters marched on the Pentagon. As the war
continued, more and more people began to question U.S. involvement. For example,
in 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke out against U.S. government policy in
Vietnam. Previously, civil rights leaders had been cautious about criticizing
the war for fear of losing President Johnson’s support of the civil rights
movement. However, as the war continued, more and more spoke out against
it.
In August 1968 around 15,000 Americans
held demonstrations in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic Party’s national
convention, resulting in a violent confrontation between police and protesters
(see Chicago Convention of 1968). On October 15, 1969, a national
teach-in on Vietnam involved millions of Americans. In April 1970 President
Richard Nixon, who had been elected in 1968, expanded the Vietnam War into
neighboring Cambodia. Millions of Americans staged protests against this
widening of the war. In Ohio, the governor called out National Guard troops in
response to a large student protest at Kent State University. Panicky National
Guardsmen fired into a crowd of students, killing four and heightening tensions
at campuses throughout the country.
Between 1968 and 1971, militant
campus-based protests against the war were common. Students burnt their draft
cards, picketed Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) buildings, petitioned
against faculty research funded by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), and attempted to close down local draft boards. For many
sixties-era students—approximately three-quarters of a million—protesting
against the Vietnam War became a major part of their everyday lives.
There is debate about the extent to which
the antiwar movement influenced the Vietnam policies of the Johnson and Nixon
administrations. Most scholars believe that the movement had little effect on
presidential policies, but many other Americans believe that U.S. policy was
influenced by the protest movement.
Within the country, a large number of
Americans felt that public protest against the war, while American soldiers were
fighting it, was unpatriotic. Nonetheless, the movement did greatly increase
skepticism about the morality of American foreign policy and the purpose of
sending American troops into combat. It also taught millions of Americans to
exercise greater oversight of their nation’s foreign policy. At the height of
the Cold War, from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Americans accepted their
presidents’ foreign policy leadership almost unquestioningly. After Vietnam, a
far more skeptical citizenry expected—even demanded—that Congress, the mass
media, and citizen groups openly debate every important foreign policy
decision.
D | The Women’s Movement |
The contemporary women’s movement began
in the late 1960s. Many women who participated in the movement had also worked
in earlier movements, where they had often been relegated to menial tasks, such
as photocopying and answering phones. Some began to protest these roles and to
question the traditional roles for women in U.S. society. During the 1950s and
early 1960s, society pressured women to marry, have children, and then remain at
home to raise those children. The prevailing view was that women’s abilities in
the workplace and in public life were limited by their physical fragility and by
their roles as mothers. Women were expected to stay at home and to depend on men
to provide their financial support.
As a result, women were routinely
excluded from high status or well-paying jobs. They had only gained the vote in
1920 and had little voice in the nation’s political and economic life. In 1963
The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, was published and became a
best-seller. This book spoke to many women’s dissatisfactions with the role that
society expected of them. The book encouraged women to work for change.
One of the movement’s first successes was
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, among other things, outlawed discrimination
based on gender. However, government officials rarely enforced the antigender
discrimination provision. As a result of this official indifference, in 1966 a
small group of women led by Friedan formed the National Organization for Women
(NOW) to demand that the government prosecute cases of job discrimination
against women.
The women’s movement was not a unified
force with a single ideology or goal. Some activists fought for equal job
opportunities; others focused on changing relations between men and women. They
questioned traditional gender roles and tried to change society’s view that a
woman’s worth was based on her physical attractiveness. An important issue for
many women was control over their bodies. Abortion was illegal in almost all
states, rapes were rarely prosecuted, and domestic violence was widely accepted
as a private matter. Some radical activists believed that American society would
have to be entirely remade. They rejected what they called patriarchal values,
or men’s values, such as competition, aggressiveness, and selfishness. They
believed that women were naturally more nurturing and compassionate and
advocated a society based on women’s values.
By the mid-1970s, feminists had achieved
some change. In 1971 Congress banned discrimination against girls and women in
schools. In 1973 feminist lawyers won a Supreme Court decision, Roe v.
Wade, in which the justices ruled that women had the constitutional right to
choose to have an abortion. Millions of women who never attended a public
demonstration used feminist rhetoric and legal victories won by women activists
to create greater equality in their marriages and personal lives and to expand
their economic and political opportunities.
E | Gay Rights Movement |
In the 1960s laws in most states
prohibited homosexual acts. They also did not allow couples of the same sex to
marry or adopt children. State and federal laws often made it illegal for gay
men and lesbians to work for the government, and private employers routinely
discriminated against them. The armed forces did not allow gay men or lesbians
to serve. And most Americans felt it was acceptable to scorn, ridicule, and even
physically harass homosexuals. As a result, gay Americans usually hid their
sexual preference.
Small, semisecret gay rights
organizations had begun to form in the post-World War II years. But a large gay
rights movement began only in the late 1960s, when citizen activism had become
more common due to the civil rights movement and other social change movements.
The first major gay protest took place in 1969. At a New York City gay bar, the
Stonewall Inn, gay men spontaneously protested when police attempted to arrest
them and close down the bar. Encouraged by this impromptu resistance, other gay
men and lesbians, many of whom were active in other sixties-era protest
movements, intensified their efforts to organize a gay liberation movement.
The gay rights movement had a dual
agenda: to gain acceptance of homosexuality and to end discrimination against
homosexuals. Activists sought to make homosexuality acceptable to the larger
society and thus encourage gay men and lesbians to reveal their homosexuality.
Once homosexuals were open about their sexual identity, then gay activists
believed that they could work to end legal and social discrimination against
homosexuals in American society through protests and lobbying.
By 1973 some 800 gay organizations
existed; most were based in big cities and on university campuses. Many simply
existed as safe and supportive environments for gay men and lesbians. But gay
rights groups also lobbied local and state officials to pass nondiscrimination
statutes similar to those that protected women, blacks, and other minority
groups. However, most Americans in the 1970s and in later decades did not
believe that homosexuality was an acceptable lifestyle, often because of
religious beliefs. As a result, gay activists’ successes in winning special
legal protection similar to that won by blacks and women has been limited.
Still, the gay movement did succeed in its first goal: Millions of Americans now
live openly as homosexuals. Their visibility in the workplace and in communities
around the United States has decreased discriminatory practices.
F | Environmental Movement |
Americans’ concern about the natural
environment has a long history, but only in the late 1960s when so many
Americans had become politically active did a mass movement emerge that focused
on protecting the environment. Biologist Rachel Carson contributed to this
awakening with her best-selling book, Silent Spring (1962). She detailed
the use of chemical insecticides that killed birds, fish, and animals and
endangered the human species. Dozens of other books followed Carson’s, warning
of impending ecological disasters. Televised coverage of environmental
disasters, like the 1969 oil spill off the coast of southern California, further
spread the alarm. In the late 1960s, environmental activists used this
information to enlist an already politicized citizenry in a new mass
movement.
In 1970 some 20 million Americans
gathered for what organizers called Earth Day to protest abuse of the
environment. Borrowing a tactic from the anti-Vietnam War movement, students and
teachers at over 1500 colleges and universities and at over 10,000 schools held
teach-ins on the environment. Hundreds of thousands of other Americans staged
protests and rallies around the nation. In another clear sign of a new
environmental consciousness, millions of citizens joined environmental groups
like the Audubon Society, whose membership grew from 41,000 in 1962 to 400,000
in 1980.
In response to growing citizen protests,
Congress passed the National Environmental Act in 1970. The act created the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate environmental health hazards
and the use of natural resources. All told, in the 1970s Congress passed 18 new
laws to protect the natural environment, including the Clean Air Act and the
Clean Water Act, which established national air- and water-quality standards. At
both a local and a national level, citizens joined forces to conserve natural
resources, use and develop alternative, cleaner forms of energy, demand strict
regulation of toxins, and promote a general awareness of the interconnectedness
and interdependency of all life. By the late 1970s, much of the environmental
movement’s agenda had entered mainstream politics.
IV | EVALUATION |
A majority of Americans disapproved of each
of these social change movements when they emerged. The activists’ reliance on
protest tactics that disrupted business as usual angered many, as did their
demands that Americans change their long-standing beliefs and practices. In the
1960s, the civil rights movement, the student movement, and the antiwar movement
faced serious harassment and even persecution by local police forces, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other government agencies. The
student movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the gay rights movement
never succeeded in winning the approval of a majority of Americans, at least as
measured by public opinion polls and surveys. Over time, however, the civil
rights movement, the environmental movement, and, more controversially, the
women’s movement, did convert a majority of Americans to many of their
views.
All of the protest movements of the 1960s
captured public attention and raised questions that were important to the
nation. The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the gay rights
movement demanded that Americans consider equality for all citizens in the
United States. The student movement probed the meaning of freedom in the United
States. The anti-Vietnam War movement asked Americans to consider the use of
national power and the appropriateness of their government’s foreign policy.
Environmentalists asked what good America’s economic growth was if it resulted
in the destruction of the planet.
In an often confrontational manner, movement
activists asked difficult questions that many Americans would rather have
ignored. In answering these questions, Americans changed dramatically. Equal
opportunity and equal rights became the law of the land for American citizens
regardless of their race, ethnicity, or gender. The veil of secrecy that
surrounded much of American foreign policy was, at least partially, removed. The
health of the nation’s environment became a national priority. Democratic
activism at the local and national levels and citizen oversight of government
officials became accepted activities.
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