1. Chapter 23
An Era of Activism

2. Chapter 23 Section 1: The Women’s Movement

3. Background of the Women’s Movement
The term feminism, which came to be associated with the 1960’s, had first come into recorded use in 1895 to describe the theory of political, economic, and social equality of men and women.

4. Education and Employment
In 1950, only 25 percent of all Bachelor of Arts degrees were earned by women. Twenty years later, in 1970, the number was 43 percent.
In many cases, employers were reluctant to invest in training women because they expected female employees to leaver their jobs after a few years to start families. Other employers simply refused to hire qualified women because they believed that home and family should be a woman’s only responsibility.
Women who did enter the work force often found themselves under-employed, performing jobs and earning salaries below their abilities. Working women earned less than working men doing similar or even identical jobs. In 1963, women, on average, were paid only 59 cents for each dollar that men earned. By 1973, this figure had dropped to 57 cents. This financial inequality created a growing sense of frustration among women and led to renewed demands for equal pay for equal work.

5. The Impact of the Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement also provided women with legal tools to fight discrimination. One such tool was the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Originally, the section of the act called Title VII prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin. When Congress debated the bill, however, some opponents of civil rights added an amendment to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sex. This action was a strategy to make the entire bill look ridiculous, so that it would fail in the final vote. To the dismay of its opponents, both the amendment and the bill passed.

6. Women’s Groups Organize
In 1966, a group of 28 professional women, including Betty Friedan, established the National Organization for Women (NOW). These women were frustrated that existing women’s groups were unwilling to pressure the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to take women’s grievances more seriously. The goal of NOW was “to take action to bring American women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now.”
NOW sought fair pay and equal opportunities. NOW also called for more balance in marriages, with men and women sharing parenting and household responsibilities. A year after NOW was founded, it had 1,000 members. Only four years later, some 15,000 women had joined.

7. The Impact of Feminism
Our Bodies, Ourselves was a handbook that was published in 1970 by a women’s health collective in Boston. It encouraged women to understand their own health issues.
In 1972, Congress passed a prohibition against sex discrimination as part of the Higher Education Act. In 1970, men interested in fields such as business, law, engineering, and medicine outnumbered women eight to one. Five years later, the margin had dropped to three to one.

8. Roe v. Wade
A landmark social and legal change came in 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the controversial Roe v. Wade decision. The justices based their decision on the constitutional right to personal privacy, and struck down regulation of abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. However, the ruling still allowed states to restrict abortions during the later stages of pregnancy.
Not all women were sympathetic to the goals of the women’s movement. Some women responded by stressing their desire to remain at home and raise children.

9. Chapter 23 Section 2: Ethnic Minorities Seek Equality

10. Latinos Fight for Change
Mexican Americans, also known as Chicanos, have always made up the largest group of Latinos in the United States.
Throughout the 1960’s, organizers struggled to unite Latino farm workers. Cesar Chavez became a hero to millions of Americans, both Latino and Anglo, in his effort to improve conditions for migrant workers.

11. Asian Americans Fight Discrimination
After the war, many of those who had been interned sought compensation for these losses through the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). In 1948, the JACL won passage of the Japanese American Claims Act. Under the act, Congress eventually paid relatively small amounts for property losses, with claims not being settled until (It was not until 1988, however, that the United States apologized to Japanese American internees and paid them further monetary compensation. )

12. Chapter 23 Section 3: The Counterculture

13. A Time of Change
Also called hippies, these young people promoted peace, love, and freedom. And they experimented with new styles of dress and music, freer attitudes toward sexual relationships, and the recreational use of drugs. The so-called youth generation had an enormous influence on American society. First of all, it was the largest generation in American history. The “baby boom” that followed World War II resulted in a huge student population in the 1960’s. By sheer numbers, the baby boomers became a force for change. The music industry rushed to produce the music they liked; clothing designers copied the styles they introduced; universities changed college courses and rules to accommodate them.

14. The Sexual Revolution
Their new views of sexual conduct, which rejected many traditional restrictions on behavior, were labeled “the sexual revolution.” Some of those who led this revolution argued that sex should be separated from its traditional ties to family life. Many of them also experimented with new living patterns. Some hippies rejected traditional relationships and lived together in communal groups, where they often shared property and chores. Others simply lived together as couples, without getting married.
Newspapers, magazines, and books published articles that might not have been printed just a few years earlier.

15. The Drug Scene
Some members of the 1960s counterculture also turned to psychedelic drugs. Users of psychedelic drugs experience hallucinations and other altered perceptions of reality. In the 1960s, the use of drugs, especially marijuana, became much more widespread among the nation’s youth.
One early proponent of psychedelic drug use was researcher Timothy Leary. Leary worked at Harvard University with Richard Alpert on the chemical compound lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD. The two men were fired from their research posts in 1963 for involving undergraduates in experiments with the drug. Leary then began to preach that drugs could help free the mind.
Leary’s view presented just one side of the drug scene. On the other side lay serous danger. The possibility of death from an overdose or from an accident while under the influence of drugs was very real. Three leading musicians of the 1960s-Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix- died of complications from drug overdoses.

16. The Music World
Popular musicians during this time included the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Janis Joplin.
The diverse strands of the counterculture all came together at the Woodstock Music and Air Fair in August About 400,000 people gathered for several days in a large pasture in Bethel, New York, to listen to the major bands of the rock world. Police avoided confrontations with those attending by choosing not to enforce drug laws.
The fears of those who criticized Woodstock came true at another rock festival held at the Altamont Speedway in California in December There, 300,000 people gathered for a concert by the Rolling Stones. When promoters of the concert failed to provide adequate security, the Stones hired a band of Hell’s Angels, an infamous and lawless motorcycle gang, to keep order. The cyclists ended up beating one man to death when he approached the stage with a gun.

17. Chapter 23 Section 4: The Environmental and Consumer Movements

18. Rachel Carson
The modern environmental movement, would not have started without Rachel Carson. Her most influential book, Silent Spring, warned against the abuse of the power to change the environment. In this book, she spoke out against the use of chemical pesticides, particularly DDT. Eventually DDT was banned in the United States, and other chemicals came under stricter control.
It was not only DDT that worried people. They became more conscious of poisonous fumes in the air, oil spills on beaches, and toxic wastes buried in the ground.

19. Nuclear Power
During the 1960’s, concern about the overuse of nonrenewable resources, such as oil and gas, encouraged the development of nuclear power plants to generate electricity. Many people considered nuclear plants to be better than coal-burning plants because they caused less air pollution. Nuclear plants, however, discharged water used to cool the reactor into local waterways. This discharge raised water temperatures, killing fish and plant life. As time went on, objections to nuclear power plants began to develop. These objections were also fueled by a growing concern about the possibility of nuclear plant accidents.

20. Nuclear Power cont.
The fear was that in the event of an accident, radioactivity would be released into the air, causing serious damage-or even death- to all plant and animal life in the surrounding area. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), created in 1974, tried to address these fears as it oversaw the use of nuclear materials in civilian life. Its chief goal was to ensure that nuclear power plants and facilities were operated safely.
But it was an environmental catastrophe off the coast of California in 1969 that captured the public’s attention. The result of an oil platform blowout, the Santa Barbara oil spill fouled beaches and killed thousands of birds and other wildlife.
On April 22, 1970, Americans celebrated the first Earth Day. Earth Day would become a yearly observance. Its aim was to heighten concern for the environment, to increase awareness about environmental issues, and to clean up pollution and litter.

21. Government Actions
In 1970, President Nixon established the Environmental Protections Agency (EPA) by combining existing federal agencies concerned with air and water pollution. One of the EPA’s early responsibilities was to enforce the Clear Air Act. Passed by Congress in 1970 in response to public concerns about air pollution, the Clean Air Act was designed to control the pollution caused by industries and car emissions. The EPA forged and agreement with car manufacturers to install catalytic converters(devices that convert tailpipe pollutants into less dangerous substances) in cars to reduce harmful emissions.
In 1972, the EPA gained further responsibilities when Congress enacted the Clean Water Act to regulate the discharge of industrial and municipal wastewater. The EPA continues to monitor and reduce air and water pollution.

22. The Consumer Movement
Just as the birth of the environmental movement was credited to Rachel Carson, the consumer movement of the 1960s was also associated with one individual. Ralph Nader was this era’s most important and visible champion of consumer rights. In 1966, he testified before Congress about automobile hazards. That year, Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Nader broadened his efforts and investigated the meatpacking business, helping to secure support for the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967.

23. The Consumer Movement cont.
He next looked into problems in other industries. Scores of volunteers, called “Nader’s Raiders,” signed on to help. They turned out report after report on the safety of such products as baby food and insecticides, and they inspired consumer activism.