Era of Social Change Chapter 23

The Growth of the Youth Movement During the 1960s a youth movement developed that challenged American politics, its social system and the values of the time. The beginning of the 1960s actually began in the 1950s. During the 1950s the nation had a boom in economy that not all Americans enjoyed. Some Americans especially writers and artist of the “beat” movement openly criticized American society.

The youth movement also reflected the huge number of baby boomers. BY 1970, 58.4 percent of the American population was 34 years old or younger. The economic boom of the 1950s led to a dramatic increase in college enrollment. College gave young people the opportunity to share their feelings and fears about the future with others.

After some 700 protesters were arrested a campus-wide strike stopped classes for two days. The administration gave in to the student's demands and the Supreme Court validated the student's rights to freedom of speech and assembly on campus. The Berkeley revolt became the model for college demonstrations around the country.

Students concerned about injustices in political and social issues formed the Students of Democratic Society (SDS). Their views were written in the 1962 declaration known as the Port Huron Statement. The Port of Huron was written by Tom Hayden editor of the University of Michigan's student newspaper. The statement called for an end to apathy and urged citizens to stop accepting a country run by corporations and big government.

The SDS groups focused on issues like the Vietnam War, poverty, campus regulations nuclear power and racism. A group of activists at the University of California at Berkeley led by Mario Savio began the Free Speech Movement. The group disgruntled by several practices at the university staged a sit-in at the administration building.

The Counterculture Some young Americans did not challenge the system. Instead they sought to create their own society. The counterculture or hippies were mostly white youths from middle- and upper class backgrounds. They lived a life that promoted flamboyant dress, rock music, drug use, and free and independent living.

At the core of the counterculture was a utopian ideal of living or the ideal of a society that was free, closer to nature, and full of love empathy, tolerance and cooperation. As the movement grew, newcomers did not always understand these roots and focused on the outward signs of the movement. Long hair, Native American headbands, shabby jeans and drugs were common.

Communes or group living arrangements in which members shared everything and worked together were formed as hippies dropped out of society. One of the most popular hippie destination was the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco.

As counterculture members rejected materialism many embraced spirituality. A broad range of beliefs including astrology, magic, Eastern religions, and new forms of Christianity were popular. Two new religious groups of this time were the Unification Church and the Hare Krishna movement. Hare Krishna traced their lineage to a Hindu sect that began in 1400 in India.

Impact of the Counterculture The counterculture had an impact on American life as mainstream America adopted some of their ideas. The international fashion world looked to the counterculture to create new fashions with more color and comfort. Military worn-out and ethnic clothing was popular. As the initial shock of the counterculture waned what was once clothing of defiance became mainstream.

During the 1960s the distinction between traditional art and popular or pop art ended. Pop art took its subject matter from popular culture using photographs, comics, advertisements, and brand-name products. The new generation of music added to the rifts between parents and youth. Musicians like the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin used lyrics to describe the fears and hopes of the new generation. The master of the electrically amplified guitar Jimi Hendrix gained stardom after returning to the United States from Great Britain.

Feminist Movement By the early 1970s many women refused to adopt their husbands last name when they married. Many women used the term Ms. in place of Mrs. Or Miss to show that a woman’s martial status was irrelevant.

A new feminist movement began in the 1960s. Feminism the belief that men and women should be equal politically, economically, and socially, began as early as the1920s. With the onset of WWII women joined the nation’s workforce as many men went off to war. When the soldiers returned after the war many women lost their jobs. Women gradually returned to the labor market, and by 1960 made up almost one-third of the nation’s workforce.

Two Women Movement Groups The League of Women Voters promoted laws to protect women and children. The National Woman’s Party opposed protective laws because they though the laws reinforced workplace discrimination.

The Women’s Movement Reawakens By the early 1960s women became increasingly resentful of old stereotypes. As more women entered the workforce the protest for equality increased. The women’s movement was brought back to life by a mass protest of women and a government initiative called the President’s Commission on the Status of Women.

Eleanor Roosevelt headed the President’s Commission on the Status of Women urged President Kennedy to study the status of women. In 1963 the Equal Pay Act was passed. It outlawed paying men more than women for the same job. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act outlawed paying men more than women for the same job.

Attitudes about what was proper women’s work took time to change. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) still held that jobs could be distinguished by gender. In 1963 Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique stirred up women all across the country.

Friedan traveled around the country interviewing women who had graduated with her from Smith College in Friedan found that while women reported that they had everything they could want they still felt unfulfilled. In June 1966 Friedan felt it was time for a national women’s organization to promote women into mainstream America. The group was named the National Organization for Women. (NOW) It responded to many issues facing women. It demanded greater educational opportunities for women and denounced the exclusion of women from certain professions and political positions.

Successes and Failures The women movement would experience success and failures. An important success was greater equality for women in the educational system. Lawmakers enacted federal legislation banning sex discrimination in education. In 1972 Congress passed the Educational Amendments. Title IX prohibited federally funded schools from discriminating against girls in nearly all aspects of their operations from admissions to athletics.

The late 1960s some states began adopting liberal abortion laws regarding a woman’s mental health or in the case of rape or incest. The biggest change came with the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court ruled that state governments could no longer regulate abortion during the first three months of pregnancy, a time within a woman’s constitutional right to privacy. This gave rise to the right-to-life movement whose members considered abortion morally wrong.

In 1972 Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) which protected against discrimination based on gender. In order for it to become the Constitution, 38 states had to ratify it. Opposition to the ERA amendment began to grow as many saw the act as a threat to traditional American values and social patterns. Phyllis Schlafly one of the vocal critics of the amendment organized a national Stop-ERA campaign. The amendment failed to be ratified by 38 states and finally died in 1982.

In spite of the ERA’s failure the women movement eventually led to profound changes in society. Since the 1970s the number of women pursuing college degrees and careers outside the home has increased a great deal and employers have begun to offer family- friendly options to their employees. The women’s movement helped to change social attitudes about women a large income gap between men and women remains. Most working women still have low paying jobs but professional women have advanced the most since the 1970s. By 2000 over 40% of the Americans graduation with law or medical degrees will be women.

New Approaches to Civil Rights During the 1960s and early 1970s native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans organized to improve their position within society. African Americans leaders looked to affirmative action to gain good jobs and adequate housing. This initiative enforced through executive orders and federal policies called for companies and institutions doing business with the federal government to actively recruit African American employees to help improve their social and economic status.

Critics of affirmative action described it as reverse discrimination. In 1974 Allan Bakke a white applicant was turned down a second time for admission to the University of California Medical School. He learned there had been slots set side for minorities.

Bakke sued the school arguing that by admitting minority students some of whom had scored lower than Bakke the school had discriminated against him. In 1978 in University of California Regents v. Bakke the Supreme Court ruled that the university had violated Bakke’s rights. It also ruled that schools could use racial criteria as part of their admission process but not fixed quotas.

In the early 1970s there was a push for educational improvements for African American students. Inequality was apparent as schools in white neighborhoods had better supplies, facilities and teachers. To desegregate schools, local governments implemented a policy known as busing where children were transported to schools outside their neighborhoods to gain racial balance. In Boston some 20,000 white students left the public school system for private schools. This occurred in other cities as well.

Jesse Jackson an activist during the civil rights movement continued to work to strengthen the economic and political power of African Americans. In 1971 Jackson founded the People United to Save Humanity or PUSH to register to voters develop African American businesses and increase educational opportunities.

The Congressional Black Caucus formed in 1971 to represent specific concerns of African Americans. Another leader who emerged during this time was Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam.

Louis Farrakhan Popularly known as "The Charmer," he achieved fame in Boston as a vocalist, calypso singer, dancer and violinist. In February 1955, while visiting Chicago for a musical engagement, he was invited to attend the Nation of Islam's Savior's Day convention.

Hispanic Americans Organize By the late 1960s, 9 million Hispanic American lived in the U.S. Their reason for coming to America ranged from economic opportunities, government oppression and to escape poverty and war. Hispanic Americans faced the same prejudice as other immigrant groups and began to organize their own protest movement.

In early 1960s Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta organized two groups that fought for the rights of farm workers. In 1966 after employers would not responded to worker demands the groups organized a boycott of table grapes and combined into one group the United Farm Workers. The boycott ended in 1970 when grape growers finally agreed to raise wages and improve working conditions.

In 1969 Jose Angel Gutierrez organized a new political party in Texas called La Raza Unida or the United People. The group mobilized Mexican American voters with calls for job training programs and greater access to financial institutions. An issue promoted by Hispanic students and political leaders was bilingualism the practice of teaching immigrant students in their own language while they also learned English.

Native Americans Native Americans began to organize in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a result of grievances that include low income high unemployment discrimination limited education and short life expectancy. In 1961 Native American issued the Declaration of Indian Purpose calling for polices to create grater economic opportunities on reservations.

Native Americans formed militant groups such as the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1969 the American Indian Movement made a symbolic protest by occupying the abandoned federal prison at Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay for 19 months, claiming ownership “by right of discovery.”

A violent protest occurred in 1973 when AIM members occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. A clash between the occupiers and the FBI killed two Native Americans. The Native Americans movement won some notable victorious including the 1975 passage of the Self- Determination and Educational Assistance Act which increased funds for Native American education and enlarged tribal roles in administration federal programs.

Environmentalism During the 1960s and 1970s Americans began examining their industrial society and questioning its effect on the environment. Americans discovered that the use of pesticides had damaged a wide range of wildlife a rise in pollution had fouled air and water and potentially deadly nuclear energy use was being increased. Marine biologist Rachel Carson wrote of increased pesticides in her book Silent Spring arguing that insect-killing pesticides were also killing birds and fish.

The environment issues of the 1960s concerned all regions of the United States. Environmental problems included the cutting down of trees in the Northwest smog from factories power, plants, and cars in the cities; an oil spill off Santa Barbara, California; and pollution and garbage in Lake Erie. In April 1970, the nation held its first Earth Day to focus on the country’s environment concerns. Afterward citizens formed local environment groups and organizations like the Sierra Club the Audubon Society and the Wilderness Society gained prominence.

In 1970 Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act creating the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It took on the job of setting and enforcing pollution standards promoting research and coordinating anti-pollution activities with state and local governments. The Clean Air Act of 1970 established emission standards for factories and automobiles.

The Clean Water Act of 1972 restricted the discharge of pollutants into the nation’s lakes and rivers. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 established measures for saving threatened animal species. Supporters of nuclear energy claimed it was cleaner and less expensive than fossil fuels such as coal, oil or natural gas, which have a limited supply. Opponents of nuclear power warned of the risk of accidents which would release radiation. On March 28, 1979 one of the reactors at Three Mile Island nuclear facility overheated causing low levels of radiation to escape. This left the public with a doubt about safety of nuclear energy.

Consumer Movement During the 1960s and 1970s many Americans demanded product safety accurate information and a voice in the government formulation of consumer policy. The leader in the consumer protection movement Ralph Nader noticed an alarming number of fatalities from automobile accidents. After a study Nader accused car designers and manufacturers of putting style cost and speed ahead of safety. After successfully suing the car industry. Nader funded several consumer organizations.

Nader’s efforts resulted in the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Safety Act in Nader led people to call for closer examination of consumer goods, including dangerous toys, flammable fabrics and the safety of meat and poultry.