Social Movements of the s Atrium The s were a decade of great social change across the nation. Many different segments of society, discriminated against because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status, found a voice to protest their unfair treatment, often modeling their struggle on the successful civil rights movement of African Americans.
This exhibit, detailed below, showcases several related but distinct social movements. The approval of the pill and the consequent change in the number of women employed in the job market; the publishing of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which described the simmering dissatisfaction felt by middle-class women; and the founding of the National Organization for Women in all provided grounding for the actions that would take place in the s and beyond.
These tactics proved to be powerful tools to change the minds of Americans and force action in the federal government. Student Antiwar Movement: The Students for a Democratic Society began in organizing support for social issues and working for civil rights. There were many facets of society involved in the antiwar movement, including veterans of the war.
Psychedelic drugs such as LSD were particularly in vogue, and the use of such drugs heavily influenced some of the art and music of the era. LGBTQ: Inspired by the black civil rights movement, gay rights activism in the s became much more visible and politically active than it had been under the s organizations the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society.
These protests of the harsh working conditions that migrant farm workers experienced led eventually to the Californian Agricultural Labor Relations Act. Inspired by the s - Painting in a Time of Expanded Possibilities First-floor Periodicals Hallway The s was an exciting period for painting; many important innovations occurred within a short amount of time.
In the spirit of this time frame of change, students of EIU art professor Chris Kahler have created works that expand possibilities and encourage broad definitions of what makes an interesting and challenging work of art.
This exhibit highlights the major accomplishments and challenges of presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a remarkable photo taken at Kennedy's innauguration that includes all four men, from left to right, in the order they served or would serve as President.
Most Visited Sites a-z panthermail paws d2l. Main Navigation search library website. Booth Library Revolutionary Decade Exhibits. In the s, a new student movement arose whose members wanted swifter changes in the segregated South. Confrontational protests, marches, boycotts, and sit-ins accelerated. The tone of the modern U. The Greensboro sit-ins were typical.
Activists sat at segregated lunch counters in an act of defiance, refusing to leave until being served and willing to be ridiculed, attacked, and arrested if they were not. It prompted copycat demonstrations across the South. The following year, civil rights advocates attempted a bolder variation of a sit-in when they participated in the Freedom Rides. Activists organized interstate bus rides following a Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on public buses and trains.
An interracial group of Freedom Riders boarded buses in Washington, D. On the initial rides in May , the riders encountered fierce resistance in Alabama. Angry mobs composed of KKK members attacked riders in Birmingham, burning one of the buses and beating the activists who escaped.
Additional Freedom Rides launched through the summer and generated national attention amid additional violent resistance. Ultimately, the Interstate Commerce Commission enforced integrated interstate buses and trains in November In the fall of , civil rights activists descended on Albany, a small city in southwest Georgia.
Known for entrenched segregation and racial violence, Albany seemed an unlikely place for Black Americans to rally and demand change. But the movement was stymied by Albany police chief Laurie Pritchett, who launched mass arrests but refused to engage in police brutality and bailed out leading officials to avoid negative media attention.
It was a peculiar scene, and a lesson for southern activists. Protesters sang hymns and spirituals as they marched. Preachers rallied the people with messages of justice and hope. Churches hosted meetings, prayer vigils, and conferences on nonviolent resistance.
The moral thrust of the movement strengthened African American activists and confronted white society by framing segregation as a moral evil. As the civil rights movement garnered more followers and more attention, white resistance stiffened. Kennedy to send in U. Marshals and National Guardsmen to maintain order.
On an evening known infamously as the Battle of Ole Miss, segregationists clashed with troops in the middle of campus, resulting in two deaths and hundreds of injuries.
Violence served as a reminder of the strength of white resistance to the civil rights movement, particularly in the realm of education. James Meredith, accompanied by U. Marshals, walks to class at the University of Mississippi in Meredith was the first African American student admitted to the segregated university. Library of Congres. White resistance intensified.
Few political figures in the decade embodied the working-class, conservative views held by millions of white Americans quite like George Wallace.
Consequently, Wallace was one of the best examples of the very real opposition civil rights activists faced in the late twentieth century. As governor, Wallace loudly supported segregation. His efforts were symbolic, but they earned him national recognition as a political figure willing to fight for what many southerners saw as their traditional way of life. President Kennedy addressed the nation that evening, criticizing Wallace and calling for a comprehensive civil rights bill.
A day later, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated at his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Alabama governor George Wallace stands defiantly at the door of the University of Alabama, blocking the attempted integration of the school.
This photograph shows Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy offered support for a civil rights bill, but southern resistance was intense and Kennedy was unwilling to expend much political capital on it. And so the bill stalled in Congress. Then, on November 22, , President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Raised in poverty in the Texas Hill Country, Johnson scratched and clawed his way up the political ladder.
He was both ruthlessly ambitious and keenly conscious of poverty and injustice. He idolized Franklin Roosevelt whose New Deal had brought improvements for the impoverished central Texans Johnson grew up with. President Lyndon Johnson, then, an old white southerner with a thick Texas drawl, embraced the civil rights movement. The following summer he signed the Civil Rights Act of , widely considered to be among the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in American history.
The comprehensive act barred segregation in public accommodations and outlawed discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, and national or religious origin. Lyndon B. Okamoto, Photograph of Lyndon B. Johnson pressuring Senator Richard Russell, December 17, The civil rights movement created space for political leaders to pass legislation, and the movement continued pushing forward.
Freedom Summer campaigners set up schools for African American children. Even with progress, intimidation and violent resistance against civil rights continued, particularly in regions with longstanding traditions of segregation. In March , activists attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on behalf of local African American voting rights. After they were turned away violently a second time, marchers finally made the fifty-mile trek to the state capitol later in the month.
Coverage of the first march prompted President Johnson to present the bill that became the Voting Rights Act of , an act that abolished voting discrimination in federal, state, and local elections. In two consecutive years, landmark pieces of legislation had assaulted de jure by law segregation and disenfranchisement. Five leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in On a May morning in , President Johnson laid out a sweeping vision for a package of domestic reforms known as the Great Society.
Ninety years after Reconstruction, these measures effectively ended Jim Crow. In addition to civil rights, the Great Society took on a range of quality-of-life concerns that seemed suddenly solvable in a society of such affluence.
It established the first federal food stamp program. Medicare and Medicaid would ensure access to quality medical care for the aged and poor. Significant funds were poured into colleges and universities. The Great Society also established the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, federal investments in arts and letters that fund American cultural expression to this day.
No EOA program was more controversial than Community Action, considered the cornerstone antipoverty program. In fact, Johnson himself had never conceived of poor Americans running their own poverty programs. Community Action almost entirely bypassed local administrations and sought to build grassroots civil rights and community advocacy organizations, many of which had originated in the broader civil rights movement.
Despite widespread support for most Great Society programs, the War on Poverty increasingly became the focal point of domestic criticisms from the left and right. Johnson had secured a series of meaningful civil rights laws, but then things began to stall. Rioting in Watts stemmed from local African American frustrations with residential segregation, police brutality, and racial profiling.
Waves of riots rocked American cities every summer thereafter. Particularly destructive riots occurred in —two summers later—in Newark and Detroit.
Each resulted in deaths, injuries, arrests, and millions of dollars in property damage. In spite of Black achievements, problems persisted for many African Americans.
Limited access to economic and social opportunities in urban areas bred discord. In addition to reminding the nation that the civil rights movement was a complex, ongoing event without a concrete endpoint, the unrest in northern cities reinforced the notion that the struggle did not occur solely in the South. The civil rights movement was never the same. However, subsequent presidents and Congresses have left intact the bulk of the Great Society, including Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps, federal spending for arts and literature, and Head Start.
American involvement in the Vietnam War began during the postwar period of decolonization. That latter focus represents one of the biggest uncertainties about the current wave of protest. Reporters following the current protests have found no shortage of local activist leaders equally suspicious of mainstream electoral organizing.
One of the pivotal questions of American politics over the next decade may be how quickly, if at all, the young people now protesting in the street develop electoral clout comparable to their numbers. While the Baby Boomers changed social attitudes and popular culture relatively quickly, they did not elect one of their own as president until Bill Clinton, in The next decade could produce a similarly bifurcated outcome for Millennials, Gen Z, and the even younger and more diverse cohort following them.
Their preferences already dominate popular culture, and their tolerance of diversity has lit the path for broader changes in social attitudes, such as public support for gay marriage. But their electoral impact remains less defined.
But, despite their animosity toward Trump, only about half of eligible Millennials and Gen Zers voted in And while turnout among younger voters was much higher in than in the previous midterm election, in , many surveys have found only modest enthusiasm among them for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Significant numbers of younger voters say they are considering either voting for a third-party candidate or not voting at all. The payoff would be enormous if he can: Frey calculates that Millennials and Gen Z will comprise almost exactly as large a share of eligible voters in November as Baby Boomers and their elders do now just under two-fifths in each case.
By , that balance will tip toward the younger generations, and the gap will widen steadily after that. That is the crux of all these conversations. Like the Baby Boomers during the s, the younger generations dissatisfied with those arrangements have demonstrated, year after year, that they can fill the streets in protest. Their next test is to do what the baby boom could not: tip the outcome of national elections while they are still young.
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