1960's Student Protest and Society

1. The Rise of Student Protests and
the Counterculture

2. Letter to the New Left
• Argued for a new left ideology moving away
from labor issues and toward opposing =>
alienation, anomie and authoritarianism
• Shifted from traditional leftism to the values
of the “counterculture”
• Internationalist
• Agency no longer w/in proletariat, rather
young intellectuals = new agent of change

3. SDS
• 1962 Port Huron
• Sociology of Participatory Democracy
– Grass Roots Activism
– Political Education Program (PEP)
– Peace Research and Education Project (PREP)
– Anti-War Teachins
• Idea the individual citizens could help make those
social decisions determining the quality and
direction of their lives
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRoJoflUH4k

4. Free Speech Movement
Berkeley 1964-1965
• university administration banned on-campus
political activities
• Protests to acknowledge students’ right to
free speech and academic freedom
• Opposed “establishment
• http://youtu.be/PhFvZRT7Ds0

5. 1965 Anti-War Sit-Ins

6. Credibility Gap (1966)

7. Black Power (1966)
Stokely Carmichael and SNCC (Spring
1966): Black Power Speech
“It is a call for black people in this
country to unite, to recognize their
heritage, to build a sense of
community. It is a call for black people
to define their own goals, to lead their
own organizations.”
• http://youtu.be/cjvdHaOqiYI
• Rise in urban violence leads to radical
alternatives

8. Black Power and the Panthers (1966)
• SNCC/SDS Black Grassroots Organizations: Racial
Pride
– Self help against poverty, health clinics, free breakfast
for children, educational programs, food co-ops
• October 1966: Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
form The Black Panthers for Self Defense
– Called for community control and armed self defense
to protect residents
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMnc2KjS7Vw

9. Anti-War Mass Mobilization

10. Anti-War Mass
Mobilization
Demonstrations
Columbia University
1967

12. Hell no, we won’t go!

13. Democratic Convention
in Chicago, 1968
Student Protestors
at Univ. of CA
in Berkeley, 1968
Anti-War
Demonstrations

14. “Hanoi Jane”
Jane Fonda: Traitor?

15. Anti-War Demonstrations
 May 4, 1970
 4 students
shot dead.
 11 students
wounded
Kent State University
 Jackson State
University
 May 10, 1970
 2 dead; 12
wounded

17. YIPPIES (Youth International Party)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TphuwosYrQ

18. 1968
• Cronkite Turning Point:
http://youtu.be/Nn4w-ud-TyE
• Assassination of Martin Luther King
• The Assassination of Robert Kennedy
• Violence at the Democratic National
Convention
http://youtu.be/aUKzSsVmnpY
• The Tet Offensive

19. Feminism

20. Gay Liberation

21. Tune in, turn on, drop out!
http://youtu.be/eYKY2lpxMg8

22. The Bed In (Amsterdam, 1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zda7abQCmPs
http://youtu.be/4u3u16bFEYU

23. And Babies Poster of Mai Lai Massacre
(1969)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spmDYUeIl00

24. The Weather Underground
http://youtu.be/YiIC8YwQVV8

25. Kent State

26. Hard Hat Riots (May 1970)

27. Turn Against the War – The Pullout
• Kent State May 1970
• Exposure of the Pentagon Papers and the trial Nixon
vs. The New York Times (1971)
• The continued death rate of soldiers despite pullout
of troops
• COINTELPRO exposed (April 1971)
• Lieutenant Calley convicted in Mai Lai Massacre
Court Marshall (November 1971)
• Disillusionment of Nixon’s Efforts => War Powers Act
(1973)
• Fall of Saigon

28. What is the legacy of
the 1960’s on
American political
and social
developments?