Rights and Liberation Background

• Civil Rights movement• 60s Liberalism

– JFK– Great Society

• Vietnam War• Shared experiences and

different historical circumstances

The War at HomeThe rise of the counterculture

reflected a loss of faith in the liberal reforms promoted by John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

As faith and idealism toward liberal reforms declined, radicalism grew among specific elements of American society. Many of these late 1960s radicals came from the frustrated civil rights advocates, frustrated war protestors, college students, Hispanic youth, feminists, gays, and youth culture in general. Radicals believed that the system itself

was too corrupt for the changes needed and it was time to tear it down and rebuilt it into a more democratic, inclusive (multicultural), peace-oriented, and egalitarian system.

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Street riot by members of the counterculture in Berkeley, California. By the late 1960s, the counterculture had shifted away from liberal democratic reforms and toward radicalism.

Out of the South: Black Panthers

• Black Power v. Civil Rights– Mostly in north and west– Younger leaders– More militant ideology

• Watts Riots (1965)• Black Panthers

– Seale and Newton– 10 point program (jobs,

exemption from military service, end police brutality

– Guns and laws• Success and failure

– grew too quick; changing ideas; repression

The Student Movement• College students paid attention to

the Black Panther Party.

– college students were initially idealistic about changing the world.

• Students were also influenced by youth culture themes that pitted the older generation’s values against the emerging values of the youth culture.

• It would be the Vietnam War along with the restriction of free speech on college campuses that would galvanize the emerging student movement.

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Student protest buttons from the Berkeley campus of the University of California.

The Free Speech MovementThe free speech movement came out of

the student movement and began in Berkeley in 1964. It involved the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

On college campuses, an example of “institutional corruption” involved the rights of the students toward free speech.

Colleges had become over-rationalized administrative bureaucracies, with lots of formal rules and regulations imposed on students. In loco parentis gave the administrators

parental power over students.At UC-Berkeley, the administration ruled

that non-campus political literature could not be distributed on campus.

This seemed an open violation of academic ideals, so students dug in, just as the administrators did.

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The Free Speech movement started on the Berkeley campus of the University of California in 1964. Students were organized by the SDS, who understood that collective – not individual – actions would be more effective in changing the university’s rules.

The Student MovementIn 1962, the baby boomers were

attending universities in huge, galvanizing numbers.

A college degree was now required for many middle class jobs.

Most students came from the growing middle class and had come from economically secure families. They could afford to think big.They were aiming for

something more than mere security – they were aiming for happiness and a humane social world.

Given their affluence, these students were more free to think critically about the shortcomings of the consumer society.

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In the colleges of the 1960s, there was a strong liberal arts tradition. Students learned about existentialism, classic literature, the Bill of Rights, and other ideas that encouraged a humanistic attitude toward life.

Chicano Movement• Chavez and UFW

– Grape strike

– Use of ethnic symbols

• Defining Chicano• Brown Berets

– High School blowouts

• La Raza Unida• Chicano Park (1970)

BrownBerets

Chicano Park

– Urbanization and Politics• Indians for All Tribes

– Alcatraz Island (1969)• American Indian Movement

– Wounded Knee• Yellow Power

– Vietnam War– ?– SF State– Asian Community Center

and International Hotel

Feminism and Liberation in Postwar America

Second Wave of Feminism• Origins

– Liberating June Cleaver

– JFK’s Presidential Commission

– documented discrimination

• Betty Friedan’s “The Feminist Mystique”– the problem without a name

• Civil Rights and New Left experiences– recognizing oppression

Women’s Rights v. Women’s Lib• Women’s Rights

– end legal and educational discrimination

– National Organization for Women

• Women’s Lib– origins in New Left and

Civ. Rts.– Consciousness raising– challenged social/cultural

oppression• Abortion• Barbie Dolls• Sexist Commercials

Feminism in the 70s• Rights and Lib

movements blur• Roe v. Wade (1973)• Equal Rights Amendment• Weaknesses and Failures

– homemakers– middle class bias– failure to integrate other

races