60s Activism Topic 2 Flashcards
Optimism for potential change 1962 Gallup Poll:
55% thought ‘life for people’ would get better 23% said it would get worse
Causes of student activism and counter culture
> Longboom - increased affluenced, better educated, more middle class
Large numbers meant people could protest without being targeted in theory
Idealism - encouraged by JFK, more likely to be idealistic when you’re young
Inspired by actions and successes of CRM
Resentment of college authorities
SDS - Students for a democratic society 1960
Represented part of the ‘New Left’
Anti war demonstration in Washington 1965
Free Speech Movement
Counter culture
> Beat movement infuenced it
Broad - hippies, flower power, all protest
Rejection of convention, defiance of authority
Associated with ‘free love’ and experimenation with drugs like weed and LSD
San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury
centre of counter culture, summer of love 1967
1967 Human Be In at Golden Gate Park
Alan Ginsberg embraced it, Kerouac thought it degraded counter culture
Dr Timothy Leary
psychologist advocated LSD use, fired from Harvard
Success of Great Society
Huge number of bills passed
More successful than Kennedy
Many opportunities for lower income groups in education
Lifted millions out of poverty and provided healthcare
Long term legacy
Kept environmental concerns on the agenda
Critcisms of Great Society
“The promises of the GS were lost on the battlefields of vietnam” MLK
Too ambitious - war on poverty
“poverty won” Reagan
concrns over costs, not achieving enough, people too dependent on gov aid
contraceptive pill 1960
more sexual freedom, critics scrutinised increased promiscuity
Impacts of sexual liberation
contraceptive pill
divorce rate increased 100% in 60s and another 82% by 1982
Backlash of feminist movement
feminists divided - especially abortion
christian groups opposed social change e.g Phyllis Schlafly
still a pay gap
opposed the ERA - feared the negative impacts on families
Equal Rights Amendment
Passed by congress but failed to get agreement from 75% of states
Advances for women
- Civil Rights Act 1964 - Gender (limited impact)
- Roe v Wade 1973 Abortion legalised
- Education Act 1972 - no sexual discrimination in school
- Weeks v Southern Bell
NOW 1966
founded by Betty Friedan, mainly focussed on employment and channelled this through Johnson - Johnson eventually promised to appoint 50 women to top gov posts
Miss America Pageant 1968
it was believed that the pageant turned women into sex objects, the protest involved crowning a sheep, throwing kitchen utensils and burning underwear
Problems Hispanic Americans faced
> Living in poverty
>Migrated across California to harvest as many crops as they could, accounted for 80% of welfare cases
Leading campaigner - Ceasar Chavez
> 1952 joined community service org (CSO) but CSO wouldn’t organise a chicano labour union
Resigned from CSO in 1962 and founded National Farm Workers association (NFWA)
National Farm Workers Association
> Plan to establish a union to provide welfare provision for Chicano workers
Provided a credit union for them to borrow money, insurance scheme, fair treatment
Mattachine society
improve rights of gay men, dressed in suits to look conventional, sit in, led to a change in laws but police didn’t comply, they raided bars
June 1969
Police raided stonewall inn, 3 days of rioting, violence
January 1968
Tet Offensive
Kent State uni protest 1970 over Nixon authorising Cambodia - 4 students killed
Who wrote a book in 1963 which inspired another wave of feminism and what was it called?
Betty Friedan; The Feminine Mystique
Give the name of a radical women’s campaigner
Jo Freeman
