path: root/smith/18_1960s

"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