Topic 2 - Protest And Personal Freedom

Question 1

What does SDS stand for?

Answer 1

Student for democratic society

Question 2

What did the student protests help achieve?

Answer 2

Helped to end Jim Crow laws, improved quality of American lives and pressured LBJ to slow down involvement in war and Nixon to end it

Question 3

What organisation did women protestors establish

Answer 3

National organisation of women (NOW) formed by people including Betty Friedan

Question 4

What forms of protest did women use?

Answer 4

General protesting, establishment of women’s lib movement and piled political pressure

Question 5

Success of the women’s movement?

Answer 5

1967 executive order banning sexual discrimination in federal contractors + 1972 equal rights amendment banned sexual discrimination

Question 6

What were the gay rights movement and sexual liberation movement campaigning for?

Answer 6

Homosexual’s wanted to stop abuse and achieve more rights. Sexual liberation movements wanted more rights

Question 7

Method of protest gay rights movement famous for?

Answer 7

Rioting - 5 day stonewall riots caused when Homosexual’s fought back against police brutality at the stonewall inn

Question 8

Extent of progress made by gay rights movement?

Answer 8

Little - they gained more attention to movement but no actual political progress made

Question 9

What were the counter culture and what did they campaign against? (Longer answer)

Answer 9

Those who protested against dominant culture; feminists, hippies and Vietnam war opposers

Hippies were anti war, anti government and anti consumerism. Wished for peace

Question 10

What festival increased attention to the hippy movement?

Answer 10

Woodstock

Question 11

One way in which hippie movement rebuked against government?

Answer 11

Practiced eastern philosophy and religion

Question 12

What were the aims of student protestors and how did they achieve these aims?

Answer 12

Wanted peace in Vietnam and wanted to help ethnic minorities gain equal status. Founded SDS organised protests

Question 13

Some examples of student protests?

Answer 13

• 1964 1k Yale uni students staged a protest march in NYC
• 1968 Columbia uni students opposed uni’s involvement in weapons research and treatment of nearby Harlem where residents were being evicted for uni expansion. 1k of 17k students participated in protests where they sized 5 uni buildings and covered walls with pictures of Malcolm X and Karl Marx. Uni shut down for that term, and abandoned many defence contracts

Question 14

Who was Betty Friedan?

Answer 14

• Smith college graduate and suburban housewife who drew attention to unhappiness of middle-class housewives with domesticity in 1963
• Wrote Feminine Mystique in 1963 saying women were imprisoned in a ‘comfortable concentration camp’ they had to focus on needs of kids and husband and not their own. Urged women to break out of the camp

Question 15

What was women’s liberation?

Answer 15

• first meeting held in Chicago during mid 1960’s and they saw themselves as complementary to the older organisations such as NOW
• fought for gender equality with some extremists who wanted to ban marriage and sex and instead use IVF (these radical ideas clashed with NOW)

Question 16

What evidence is there of a sexual revolution?

Answer 16

• % of single white women who had had sex was around 25% in mid 1950’s but this rose to more than double that by 1972
• 1969 74% of women said they believed premarital sex was wrong. By 1973 only 53% said it was wrong

Question 17

What explains the sexual revolution?

Answer 17

• roots of revolution lied in slowly changing attitudes after WW1
• Kinsey reports (1948-52) highlighted that 68% of American Males and 50% of American females had engaged in sex before marriage
• reflected and has tended the liberalisation of sexual behaviour. This revolution then sped up even more with introduction of the pill
• sexual freedom had increased and was being talked about in pop culture

Question 18

who was the leader of the Women’s liberation movement and what did they campaign for?

Answer 18

• One of leaders was Jo Freeman

- Campaigned to end sexist oppression and cultural differences that objectified women