"The Times Are A Changin'" by Bob Dylan - Protest song, inspired by folk music - Telling the "old generation" to get out of the way of the new one. - Big generation gap in the 1960s, with many college students questioning the establishment, like Johnson admin and the war. Topics - Black Power - The Left and counterculture - New Feminism 70% of African-Americans living in "blighted urban areas" - Losing faith in Christian non-violence - Inner city poverty led to Race Riots in Los Angeles - $35bn in property damage. - White liberals believed Black Power was to blame for breakdown in civility in race relations, rather than poverty, police presence. - Based in beliefs that: for too long black people accepted white people and white institutions' promises which were controlling and defining black America. - Black people insisted on shaping their own movement, agenda, and destiny. - Stokey Carmichael: "This nation does not function by morality, love, and nonviolence; it functions by power, and power requires that blacks, not well-intentioned whites, control their own institutions, their own neighborhoods." - "Black is beautiful." Some black people didn't *want* integration - Malcolm X embraced political independence for black people, racial pride, and a rejection of 'white society.' - He grew up without his parents, at 6 father killed and soon after mother put in mental care. - Malcom had become a drug dealer, thief, criminal, pimp in Mass State Prison. Reformed by it. Joined Chicagoan Religious Sect of "Nation of Islam." (actually an amalgamation of various movements, not Orthodox Islam) - Elijah Mohammed, leader of Nation of Islam, preached separation between the races. Believed there could be no peace between whihte people and black people. Preached that whites were devils. - Malcolm becomes a preacher making speeches attacking white racism and supporting black power. - Called modern Civil Rights leaders modern-day Uncle Toms. - "Who ever heard of a revolution where they sang 'we shall overcome?'" - Malcolm completed the Hajj to Mecca, but moved away from Mohammed. Assassins from Nation of Islam killed Malcolm X. - He was not the only black militant. Black Power. - Carmichael pushed whites out of the organization - "Smash everything western civilization has created." Black Panthers - Militant self-defense organization - Called for end to police terrorism, decent housing, schools, full employment. - Wore black berets, leather clothes, and armed themselves with rifles and shotguns. - Huey Newton did not believe in nonviolent movements because they didn't work - Police the police, use violence to maintain power. - Sought to develop self-governing communities (separation from whites, self-determinatino) - Organized free breakfast programs for children, clinics, job programs. - Cities across America developed chapters of Black Panthers. - Defense against police from right to bear arms. - Violent Black Panthers "constituted a threat to America." Hoover (FBI?) built a comprehensive plan to undermine Black Power community - FBI + infighting destroyed the movement by '80s - MLK stressed that war in Vietnam was stealing from the poor, and black soldiers were dying disproportionately in Vietnam. - Black Studies programs in schools and colleges - Black mayors, representatives The Youth Revolt and the New Left - Young people realized they couldn't support the inequality "sustaining the American Dream" - More than half of Americans were under 30. Baby boomers. Hadn't experienced economic depression or major war. - Universities were huge institutions dependent on government funding, esp. state department. - Students wary of military-industrial complex. - Disillusioned young people flowed into two distinct but often overlapping movements: the New Left and the Counterculture. - UMich students organized in SDS, many children of communists, leftists, or Jewish. - One, Hayden, wrote a manifesto: bred in moderate comfort, housed in universities, looking uncomfortably at the world we inherited. - Adopted the term "New Left" to describe their attempts at improving democracy rather than the old left of orthodox Marxism. - Very pragmatic. More than 100 colleges had SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) chapters - Worked with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to support voter registration in Mississippi. - School chancellor banned student protests, and students had a sit-in. Students formed free speech movement. - Originally for students rights - Eventually mounted a larger criticism of the larger system and bureaucracy. The Antiwar Movement - Young men didn't want to fight the conflict - Overwhelmingly a poor man's war. - Young men often were able to go to college to delay - Some 2K young men ignored draft notices, and 4K served prison - Conscientious objector status: present evidence authenticating their moral, ethical, or religious opposition to war and mil. - When granted, had to perform "alternative civilian service." "Hell no, we won't go." Fleeing to other countries. Fail the physical tests. - Black and Latino draftees twice as likely to be selected. The Counterculture - Most rebellious Americans were not narrowly political - They did not want elected office, but cultural change. - Disaffected young rebels, hippies - Rejected pursuit of wealth, careers - Embraced simple living, peace, freedom - Lead considerably more virtuous lives than their fellow citizens. - Hippies preferred to drop out of society. "Make love, not war." - Whereas New Left wanted social change. - Egalitarian, optimistic, indulgent: rejected corporations, military, colleges, families, etc. - Mind-altering drugs, casual sex, communes, unusual casual clothing. - Timothy Leary, "high priest of psychedelic revolution" dismissed from Harvard as a prof for using students in tests of drugs: "Tune in, turn on, and drop out." - Crusaded for "expanded consciousness" - LSD made some young people commit suicide - Nixon called Leary "most dangerous man in America." - Illegal drugs like amphetamines, LSD, heroin were centralized in counterculture. - Bob Dylan declared "everyone must get stoned" - Summer of Love (1967): series of nationwide events protesting Vietnam War and celebrating Youth Revolt. Yippies (like Hippies) - Jerry Rubin wanted a "fun revolution" - Comedians, politics, "overthrow the power structure" - "The first part of the revolutionary program is to kill your parents." End of the Protestant Ethic: "Screw work. We want to find ourselves." - Wanted to offer the people an alternative lifestyle - "Other than conform or die" - Based on superficial idea of Native Americans. - Abbie Hoffman wanted to "build a new nation" - Threatened to put LSD in Chicago water supply - Nominated pig for president, urged voters to put "none of the above" - For some, Hippie culture was about experimenting with alternative lifestyle, like deliberate communes. - Many moved to the country side or set up communes in cities. - Hippies' favorite performers became those under the influence of mind-altering drugs, the acid rock bands like Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane. - Giant "picnics with music" concerts. - 3 Days of Peace & Music (Woodstock) - Rainstorms, thunder, mud - "Technicolor, mud-splattered reflection of 1960s" - Th - Foolishly hired Hell's Angel motorcycle gang; one killed an African-American man, destroying much innocence. - By 1969, Hippie phenomenon began to end based on criminal culture: mental and physical illness of flower children, poverty, etc. But strands survived in yoga, meditation, food co-ops, etc. Feminism - First Wave was about right to vote - Second Wave challenged conventional "Female Domesticity," asked for equality in the workplace. - Many women in 1960s did not believe equality was possible or even desirable - A poll showed the majority believing the man should make decisions - Although Equal Pay Act made it illegal to underpay women for the same job, discrimination and harassment continued - Betty Friedan, supplemented husband's income by writing for newspapers - Leader of postwar women's student - At Smith College, wrote newspaper and argued against the war - Progressive journalist arguing for labor unions, equal-pay-equal-work, end to racial or gender discrimination in housing. - "The Femininine Mystique" by Friedan - Launched the Third Wave of feminism - Argued upper and middle class women had lost ground since the war, becoming full-time wives and mothers. "Happy Homemaker syndrome undermined intellectual capacity and public ambition." - Did not discuss women of color, poor people, or those w/o homes - Blamed discrimination against women on "massive postwar campaign" by advertisers, women's mags. to embrace "feminine mystique," where "fulfillment came only with marriage and motherhood." - defined 'the problem that has no name.' - Women working outside the home, which Friedan wasn't well aware of, discovered their dissatisfaction with working two full-time jobs (outside and inside the home) - National Organization of Women (NOW) promoted "true equality for all women in America." - Ms. magazine from Gloria Steinam - Feminist periodical with national readership - 8K copies sold out in 8 days. - Had 1/2 mn subscribers by end of first year. - Gave energy and expanded scope of third wave. - Steinam studied on scholarship in India. - Impoverished upbringing. - Magazine called Show paid her to go undercover as a Playboy bunny at the Playboy Club. Wrote "I was a Playboy Bunny." - Degrading treatment and inequitable pay. Made her famous. - Political writer, favored progressivism and feminism. - Steinam had an illegal abortion, and told her story to a 1969 event; proved lifechanging as she "sensed a great blinding lightbulb." Committed herself to women's liberation. - Insisted on sharing the lectern with a woman of color. - "Many diverse feminisms" - Quickly became the face of feminism - "Nothing for women to read controlled by women." - Listed editors alphabetically so as not to imply a hierarchy because "hierarchies were male." - The magazine focused on controversial stuff like abortions, pornography, discrimination. - Supported Women's Studies - Friedan accused Steinam of "female chauvinism" - Steinam called marriage as prostitution - Critics accused her of "liking men too much" - Alice Walker, black woman, resigned, believing mag covers showed white women disproportionately. - She persevered New Feminists, Women's livers - Lived through Civil War - Held women's meetings about the problems and society - Realized that "living as a woman in a man's world" was their shared problem. - Sexual politics: women organize a political movement - Feminism wasn't previously politicized - Friedan's radical position: "the personal is political" - Friedan called lesbianism a divisive distraction. - NOW eventually endorsed gay and lesbian rights. - Want to transform "every aspect of society" Miss America Beauty Pageant, Atlantic City, 1968 - Women organize a protest at the pageant. - Both protest the pageant and the US's general attitude toward women. - Organized by a radical feminist believing "the personal is political." - Wanted to bring the Women's Liberation movement "into the public arena" - Boycott of Companies about the pageant - Didn't allow male reporters to interview protestors - Document of 10 Reasons Why They're Protesting - The consumeristic corporate endorsement of the pageant - The value of beauty as women's worth - Encouragement of bland, apolitical woman's place. - "No more Miss America" - "All women are beautiful"; "Cattle parades are demeaning to human beings" - Freedom Trash Can of "oppressive objects" - Officials asked women not to set the Trash Can on fire because the wooden boardwalk was flammable - This did introduce feminism into the mainstream consciousness. - This thread continued into the 1970s