By 1960, the United States was on the verge of a major social change .

American
society had always been more open and fluid than that of the nations in most of the
rest of the world . Still, it had been dominated primarily by old-stock, white
males . During the 1960s, groups that previ- ously had been submerged or sub-
ordinate began more forcefully and successfully to assert themselves: Af- rican
Americans, Native Americans, women, the white ethnic offspring of the “new
immigration,” and Latinos . Much of the support they received came from a young
population larg- er than ever, making its way through a college and university
system that was expanding at an unprecedented pace . Frequently embracing “coun-
tercultural” lifestyles and radical
politics, many of the offspring of the World War II generation emerged as advocates
of a new America char- acterized by a cultural and ethnic pluralism that their
parents often viewed with unease .
THE CIVIL RIGHTS T MOVEMENT 1960-1980
he struggle of African Americans for equality reached its peak in the mid-1960s .
After progressive vic- tories in the 1950s, African Ameri- cans became even more
committed to nonviolent direct action . Groups like the Southern Christian Leader-
ship Conference (SCLC), made up of African-American clergy, and the Student
Nonviolent Coordinat- ing Committee (SNCC), composed
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of younger activists, sought reform through peaceful confrontation .

In 1960 African-American col- lege students sat down at a segre- gated Woolworth’s
lunch counter in North Carolina and refused to leave . Their sit-in captured media
atten- tion and led to similar demonstra- tions throughout the South . The next
year, civil rights workers organized “freedom rides,” in which African Americans
and whites boarded bus- es heading south toward segregated terminals, where
confrontations might capture media attention and lead to change .
They also organized rallies, the largest of which was the “March on Washington” in
1963 . More than 200,000 people gathered in the na- tion’s capital to demonstrate
their commitment to equality for all . The high point of a day of songs and
speeches came with the address of Martin Luther King Jr ., who had emerged as the
preeminent spokes- man for civil rights . “I have a dream that one day on the red
hills of Geor- gia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners
will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” King proclaimed .
Each time he used the refrain “I have a dream,” the crowd roared .
The level of progress initially achieved did not match the rhetoric of the civil
rights movement . Presi- dent Kennedy was initially reluc- tant to press white
Southerners for support on civil rights because he needed their votes on other
issues . Events, driven by African Americans
themselves, forced his hand . When James Meredith was denied admis- sion to the
University of Mississippi in 1962 because of his race, Kennedy sent federal troops
to uphold the law . After protests aimed at the deseg- regation of Birmingham,
Alabama, prompted a violent response by the police, he sent Congress a new civil
rights bill mandating the integration of public places . Not even the March on
Washington, however, could ex- tricate the measure from a congres- sional
committee, where it was still bottled up when Kennedy was assas- sinated in 1963 .
President Lyndon B . Johnson was more successful . Displaying negotiating skills he
had so fre- quently employed during his years as Senate majority leader, Johnson
persuaded the Senate to limit delay- ing tactics preventing a final vote on the
sweeping Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimina- tion in all public
accommodations . The next year’s Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorized the federal
gov- ernment to register voters where local officials had prevented Afri- can
Americans from doing so . By 1968 a million African Americans were registered in
the deep South . Nationwide, the number of African- American elected officials
increased substantially . In 1968, the Congress passed legislation banning
discrimi- nation in housing .
Once unleashed, however, the civil rights revolution produced leaders impatient
with both the pace of change and the goal of channel-
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OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY

CHAPTER 13: DECADES OF CHANGE: 1960-1980

ing African Americans into main- stream white society . Malcolm X, an eloquent
activist, was the most prominent figure arguing for Afri- can-American separation
from the white race . Stokely Carmichael, a student leader, became similarly dis-
illusioned by the notions of nonvio- lence and interracial cooperation . He
popularized the slogan “black power,” to be achieved by “whatever means necessary,”
in the words of Malcolm X .
Violence accompanied militant calls for reform . Riots broke out in several big
cities in 1966 and 1967 . In the spring of 1968, Martin Lu- ther King Jr . fell
before an assassin’s bullet . Several months later, Senator Robert Kennedy, a
spokesman for the disadvantaged, an opponent of the Vietnam War, and the brother of
the slain president, met the same fate . To many these two assassina- tions marked
the end of an era of in- nocence and idealism . The growing militancy on the left,
coupled with an inevitable conservative backlash, opened a rift in the nation’s
psyche that took years to heal .
By then, however, a civil rights movement supported by court de- cisions,
congressional enactments, and federal administrative regula- tions was irreversibly
woven into the fabric of American life . The major issues were about implementation
of equality and access, not about the legality of segregation or disenfran-
chisement . The arguments of the 1970s and thereafter were over mat- ters such as
busing children out of
their neighborhoods to achieve ra- cial balance in metropolitan schools or about
the use of “affirmative ac- tion .” These policies and programs were viewed by some
as active mea- sures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment,
and by others as reverse discrimination .
The courts worked their way through these problems with deci- sions that were often
inconsistent . In the meantime, the steady march of African Americans into the
ranks of the middle class and once large- ly white suburbs quietly ref lected a
profound demographic change .
DTHE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT
uring the 1950s and 1960s, in- creasing numbers of married wom- en entered the
labor force, but in 1963 the average working woman earned only 63 percent of what a
man made . That year Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, an explosive
critique of middle- class living patterns that articulated a pervasive sense of
discontent that Friedan contended was felt by many women . Arguing that women often
had no outlets for expression other than “finding a husband and bear- ing
children,” Friedan encouraged her readers to seek new roles and re- sponsibilities
and to find their own personal and professional identities, rather than have them
defined by a male-dominated society .
The women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s drew inspiration from the civil rights
movement . It
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was made up mainly of members of the middle class, and thus partook of the spirit
of rebellion that affected large segments of middle-class youth in the 1960s .
Reform legislation also prompted change . During debate on the 1964 Civil Rights
bill, opponents hoped to defeat the entire measure by pro- posing an amendment to
outlaw dis- crimination on the basis of gender as well as race . First the
amendment, then the bill itself, passed, giving women a valuable legal tool .
In 1966, 28 professional women, including Friedan, established the National
Organization for Wom- en (NOW) “to take action to bring American women into full
partici- pation in the mainstream of Ameri- can society now .” While NOW and
similar feminist organizations boast of substantial memberships today, arguably
they attained their greatest influence in the early 1970s, a time that also saw the
journalist Gloria Steinem and several other wom- en found Ms . magazine . They also
spurred the formation of counter- feminist groups, often led by women, including
most prominently the po- litical activist Phyllis Schlafly . These groups typically
argued for more “traditional” gender roles and op- posed the proposed “Equal
Rights” constitutional amendment .
Passed by Congress in 1972, that amendment declared in part, “Equality of rights
under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State
on accountofsex .”Overthenextsever-
al years, 35 of the necessary 38 states ratified it . The courts also moved to
expand women’s rights . In 1973 the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade sanc- tioned
women’s right to obtain an abortion during the early months of pregnancy — seen as
a significant victory for the women’s movement — but Roe also spurred the growth of
an anti-abortion movement .
In the mid- to late-1970s, how- ever, the women’s movement seemed to stagnate . It
failed to broaden its appeal beyond the middle class . Divisions arose between
moderate and radical feminists . Conservative opponents mounted a campaign against
the Equal Rights Amend- ment, and it died in 1982 without gaining the approval of
the 38 states needed for ratification .
I THE LATINO MOVEMENT
n post-World War II America, Americans of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent had
faced discrimina- tion . New immigrants, coming from Cuba, Mexico, and Central
Ameri- ca — often unskilled and unable to speak English — suffered from dis-
crimination as well . Some Hispanics worked as farm laborers and at times were
cruelly exploited while harvest- ing crops; others gravitated to the cities, where,
like earlier immigrant groups, they encountered difficulties in their quest for a
better life .
Chicanos, or Mexican-Ameri- cans, mobilized in organizations like the radical
Asociación Nacio- nal Mexico-Americana, yet did
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