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THE ANGRY 1960s - (1)
Karla Baptista1
RESUMO
Este artigo tem como objetivo a exposição da turbulenta década de 1960
nos EUA e os diversos movimentos de protestos que deram origem a
uma geração de ativistas, sociais e políticos, em confronto com questões
perturbadoras sobre racismo, imperialismo e machismo; um ataque a quase
todos os tipos de instituição - família, religião, governo, forças armadas,
etc., que levou milhões de americanos às ruas para questionar a verdadeira
natureza e expressão de seu país.
Palavras-chave: Protestos sociais e políticos; direitos civis; a Guerra do
Vietnã; liberação feminina.
ABSTRACT
This article has the purpose of exposing the turbulent decade of the 1960s in
the USA and the several protest movements that gave origin to a generation
of social and political activists, confronting disturbing questions on racism,
imperialism and sexism; an attack to almost every institution - family,
religion, government, armed forces, etc., that took millions of Americans
to the streets calling into question the very nature and meaning of their
country.
Mestre em Estudos Literários pela UFMG - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
Coordenadora e Professora de Literaturas de Língua Inglesa do Curso de Letras da
Faculdade Castelo Branco. Colatina ES. [email protected]
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Keywords: social and political protests; civil rights; the Vietnam War;
women’s liberation.
The 1960s saw an endless exposition of political and social protests in
the United States of America. Disturbing questions began to circulate
among the American people in those turbulent days: was America racist,
imperialist, sexist? Issues confronting equality and inequality, war and
peace, national interests versus individual rights, personal behavior versus
community standards became the concern of every citizen; America was
opened to scrutiny. Millions of Americans became activists and took to the
streets, calling into question the very nature and meaning of their country.
So turbulent were the 1960s that some, such as Terry H. Anderson, refer to
the period as the “Movement”. In his book The Movement and the Sixties
(1995), a searching history of a generation of young Americans, Anderson
reports on how social activism became a national phenomenon that
eventually involved all types and ages of Americans. “The Movement”
was defined and redefined throughout the era: in its early phase, it was the
“struggle” for civil rights; later “student power” or the “peace movement”;
“the resistance”, as it was called by those who rejected the draft; “the
conspiracy” or “the underground” were how political activists described
themselves; “the people” were the long-haired hippies. The Movement
was defined by a participant as a “grand geodesic dome fitted together
from pieces of Marx, Freud, Zen, Artaud, Kesey, Lenin, Leary, Ginsberg,
Che, Gandhi, Marcuse, Laing, Fidel and Lao Tzu ... with a 40-watt rock
amplifier strapped to the top – a gaudy, mindblowing spectacle and an
impossible intellectual synthesis” (quoted by Anderson “Preface”). By the
end of the 1960s the Movement was attacking almost every institution from the armed forces to religion, from business to government.
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Although the Movement became a “mass movement”, generalizations are
difficult to make, because participants continually changed. What events
or issues in the 1950s channeled millions of Americans into activism in
the 1960s? Why did someone get involved; why did individuals develop a
social and political consciousness which urged them to respond to an issue,
to protest? What themes of the 1950s created a climate for later change and
nurtured the development in the 1960s?
The 1950s: the seedbed for the crisis of the 1960s
The 1950s may be seen as the seedbed for the crisis of the 1960s. The
1950s were, in certain ways, the Happy Days. Americans were proud of
the USA’s involvement in the World War II, a “good war”, which allowed
the nation to spread its power abroad, giving America a self-assured
position as the “beacon of freedom, the shining light, the City upon a Hill”
(Anderson 5). Yet, when this “beacon of freedom” started to be threatened
by Communists, who were believed to be engaged in a terrible conspiracy
to eradicate freedom all over the world, the country became swallowed
up in the Red Hysteria, a fear of Communism and of being considered a
communist. In addition to the red menace and the atomic fear, many other
issues began to agitate American society during its Happy Days, such as
the role of women and the status of blacks.
During the 1950s, the black population lived under a system of segregation
called Jim Crow, which was based on the 1896 Supreme Court decision
allowing “separate but equal” public facilities for the two races. Laws
were passed establishing segregation in every Southern public institution.
“White Only” or “Colored” signs were hung everywhere. Racial insults
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and “nigger jokes” were common throughout the nation. Racism became a
national problem and there were countless numbers of beatings and killings
of blacks who attempted to cross the “color line”. The use of violence was
justified to maintain white supremacy.
The first signs of rebellion could be seen in the second half of the 1950s:
defiant academics stood up to fight against the anti-Communist crusade
and the red scare in schools and in the suburbs the young grew restless.
Parents’ worries were intensified by one of the most important issues
of the time – juvenile delinquency. Lots of “rebels without a cause”
could be seen among teenagers. Radios were tuned to bands that were
producing a different sound that made this young generation “shake, rattle,
and roll”. The Beatniks, for example, represented by intellectuals and
new poets , began to emerge and move their ideas and poetry in a new
direction, displaying the anguished soul of America. They looked towards
“beatitude”, a state of great happiness; they were influenced by both Jazz
and oriental philosophy; they were, like Allen Ginsberg , paradoxically,
intellectuals against intellectualism, placing great emphasis on spontaneity,
improvisation, and living in the present.
The Struggle: Black Activism
During the 1950s, bus boycotting became a model for challenging the
segregation in the South of the USA, where rural blacks lived. The first
bus boycott, which lasted over a year, was victorious, demonstrating that
average people could organize direct action. That was the very beginning
of the movement which prepared blacks for the subsequent Civil Rights
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crusade. Protests against segregation and a demand for civil rights ignited a
young generation of blacks to become activists; stimulating some southern
and northern whites to participate in something they began calling “the
movement”. The struggle for civil rights became a magnet. Activists
poured from everywhere. Organizations and political parties were created,
concerned not only with civil rights, but also with other issues that were
stirring the young American generation, such as nuclear disarmament and
academic freedom. Students organized themselves and the New Left was born.
On August 28, 1963, in Washington D.C., some 200,000 blacks and
whites, from all over the nation, marched holding hands and singing for
the passing of the proposed Civil Rights Act, a federal law that granted the
right to all citizens to be served in facilities open to the public. Joan Baez
greeted them with the struggle’s anthem, “We Shall Overcome”, a modern
adaptation of an old Negro gospel song, which rose to the top of the pop
charts in 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s appeal for dignity, the well-known
“I Have a Dream” speech, was the culmination of hope for the civil rights
struggle and for the decade.
The Civil Right Act, signed in 1964, desegregated all public facilities and
established the Equal Employment Commission, but did not mean the end
of the struggle. Due to white violence, combined with disappointment
resulting in frustration and rage, a new demand was made by the blacks:
“We want power for our people”. The emergence of “Black Power” was
only one result of the four years of activism.
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The Vietnam War
A main issue began to concern some Americans - the United States’ role in
South Vietnam. The conflict in Vietnam started subtly - no declaration of
war, no mass mobilization, no fanfare. For years the US had been involved
in Vietnam as a supporter of France’s military maneuvers in their war
against Ho Chi Minh. Vietnam was divided into North and South Vietnam.
By 1963 the US had about 16,000 men in Vietnam and was convinced
that if additional troops were not sent, South Vietnam would be lost to the
Communists. US forces increased in an attempt to search out and destroy
the enemy. The escalation and involvement in Vietnam was concealed as
much as possible to minimize any appearance that the US was expanding
its commitment to fight communism. Americans supported the President
and knew almost nothing about American foreign policies; some did not
even know that US troops were fighting in Vietnam.
Some peace organizations and professors began questioning America’s
intentions in Southeast Asia. Inspired by civil rights sit-ins and freedom
schools, professors decided to hold “teach-ins” at the universities. That
was the first attempt at an anti-war movement. Students participated in
lectures, debates, and discussions; they listened to speakers, poets, and
folksingers. “The times they are a-changing”, sang Judy Collins, joined
with songs by Joan Baez and Phil Ochs in the first anti-war demonstration
in Washington D.C. Energy came from black and white activists, signaling
that the struggle, student power, and a small anti-war crusade could melt
into one “full-fledged social movement”.
As America’s role in the Vietnam War intensified, young men volunteered
and enlistment grew. Despite the efforts of some of the first anti-war
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sentiments expressed by students, some religious leaders and a few liberal
politicians, the draft increased, including enlistment of college students,
resulting in an enormous pool of potential draftees, some two million
annually. A few Americans refused the draft, by picketing the induction
centers or burning their draft-cards. The “Resistance” to the draft was born
and the anti-war movement slowly expanded.
As the media began to show the horrors of war, the movement took on
another phase. Americans were becoming perplexed with the war, which
was becoming increasingly unpopular as it escalated. Casualties mounted;
Americans were dying in Vietnam; the war was hurting the economy.
Popular approval for the war declined.
The anti-war movement blossomed and merged with the civil rights
struggle. The crowds included students and workers, blacks and whites,
ministers and rabbis, children and grandparents, clean-cut businessmen
and long-haired youths, a few Vietnam veterans and small groups of native
Americans. Some young people had decided to reject war and racism, in
fact the entire American Way of Life: the Hippies. A new subculture began
emerging in San Francisco and New York. Looking different, behaving
differently, smoking and selling marijuana, long-haired girls, bearded guys,
interracial couples wearing boots and bell bottom pants, were described by
most newspapers as beatniks or New Bohemians. They attended poetry
readings or experimental theater, read underground magazines, blew
bubbles, wore beads and bells. Thousands of hippies gathered in concerts.
They wore all shades, all colors, all costumes. Music flowed as the
people smiled.
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Hippie movements bloomed in every major US city. The number of hippies
increased along with the number of activists and black militants. As the
anti-war fever reached its peak in 1967, the Movement included a mixture
of middle-class liberals, student radicals, hippies, civil rights workers,
black power advocates, Vietnam veterans, even some federal workers. The
war continued to change and expand the Movement, which was turning
citizens against the war. Most Americans realized that the war was really
a hell as newspapers and television images showed helicopters machinegunning down peasants running below in rice paddies, American planes
shooting up villages, dropping Napalm canisters that burst into rolling
fireballs; horrors inflicted on the people of a poor and backward land to say
nothing of the young Americans dying there.
In the early 1970s, the US administration was “under fire’ concerning
its policy in Vietnam. Vietnam veterans came forward with shocking
revelations, testifying the horrors they witnessed. “Horror stories poured
out - rapes, beatings, maiming, strafing, defoliating, napalming, body
counts, free-fire zones, tossing enemy prisoners out of helicopters”
(Anderson 372). Meanwhile, in Vietnam, troops refused to fight, sick of
the endless battle. The first signs of mutiny began: units rejecting orders
to advance on the enemy. American troops’ morale was torn to pieces by
Vietnamization; the army stopped fighting and began surviving.
In 1972, the US intensified the bombing campaign, motivating scattered
protests in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The antiwar movement was fading, but the call for peace, the idea of Peace Now
became in the national interest. The question was “When?” across the
nation. Hope and passion were decaying as cynicism became the national
malaise. Finally, in 1973, the US administration signed the Paris Peace
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Accords, which ended U.S. involvement in South Vietnam and withdrew
the remaining troops.
Women’s Liberation and Empowerment
The Black struggle will be seen to have affected activists in other ways,
making them change their life styles. Such is the case of female volunteers
who questioned the traditional role of women in society. Female activists
had demanded equality for blacks, and some began to wonder why they
did not insist on that for themselves, as the struggle planted the seeds that
would bloom into women’s liberation.
Personal liberation and political empowerment became the dual themes
of the second wave. Combined they resulted in a massive assault on the
white males who traditionally governed the nation’s institutions. The
rise of black consciousness inspired more minority student militancy and
throughout 1969 they began advocating a “third world revolution” in which
all non-white peoples would revolt and empower themselves in their own
communities. Asian Americans, Chicanos, and Native Americans joined
African Americans and demanded recognition of their history and cultures
at the universities.
A few women had been talking about equality since the 1950s. Whenever
they decided that they were not happy in their roles – girlfriend, wife,
mother, housewife – and that they might want to break out of the mold, they
met hard opposition. Higher education was equivalent to female frigidity;
working women were responsible for the wreck of marriage and home
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life; working mothers posed a serious danger to the family, responsible for
juvenile delinquency, atheism, Communism and homosexuality. All this
was meant to intimidate females, to keep them in their place.
Yet during the early 1960s, a number of factors merged to provoke change.
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) is one of them; it stimulated
women to consider why they were “the second sex”; de Beauvoir’s analysis
of women’s subordination enabled a better understanding of women’s role
as traditionally constructed and defined in relation to men, who are seen
as “the Absolute”, while women are the “Other”. Also, Betty Friedan, at
the beginning of her best-seller The Feminine Mystique (1963), stirred
women’s awareness for a solution to the problem that for so many years
occupied the minds of American women and that
[...] each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the
beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut
butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and
Brownies, lay beside her husband at night – she was afraid to ask
even of herself the silent question – “Is this all?”
According to Hester Eisenstein (1984), as the “Movement” became
condensed in the second half of the 1960s, and developed into its various
branches - black, student, anti-war, and counterculture - women found
themselves in the middle of a great contradiction: “Politicized and
radicalized by their experience as organizers, fighting for the cause of
equality and justice on behalf of blacks, Vietnamese, and other victims of
oppression, they were at the same time treated, within the ranks of the New
Left itself, as inferiors, servants, and sexual objects, who were exploited
and oppressed themselves” (126). The attempts made by these women to
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gain a voice and a place were unsuccessful. They argued that the New Left
was hypocritical: while struggling for the elimination of oppression, its
members did not acknowledge their own roles as oppressors of the women
who had been fighting at their side.
Some angry females, including Betty Friedan, decided to form NOW - the
National Organization for Women - whose purpose was to take action to
bring women into full participation in conventional American society. They
wanted to reform the system, and this became the position of moderate
feminism, for it concentrated on the more superficial symptoms of sexism,
such as equal access to education and jobs, enforcement of laws banning
sex discrimination, maternity leave for working mothers, a woman’s right
to control her own reproductive life, including abortion.
Liberation spread throughout the movement, where it continued to find
resistance from male activists. “Women’s meetings” became small
organizations: activists published their views and stimulated discussion.
Thousands of women were influenced by the rise of student power and
counterculture, thus rejecting moral values such as virginity and marriage.
During 1969 women’s liberation became a domestic word and flourished,
partly because female baby-boomers flooded the ranks of the movement,
but also because women were confronted with stereotypes, sexism, and
discrimination.
Women’s liberation expanded its scope in 1970. Women radicals turned
the tables on radical men: “they acted like the men, confronting the
culture, shocking the movement, shouting out for liberation, calling for
separatism” (Anderson 342). They burned their bras and even ceased sexual
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activities, for men were the real oppressor, and not the economic system
as some advocated. Moderates acted differently, aiming a change not only
in discriminatory laws, but the entire concept of man as the head of the
family and women as his subordinate helpmate. The moderates envisioned
a society where men and women could share the same opportunities for
supporting their family and taking care of their children. Liberation and
empowerment were mixed in the women’s crusade, and the movement
expanded, joined by people who became interested in issues such as
community, consumerism, and conservation.
The early 1970s was a time of adjustment; men started to be more selfconscious about their chauvinism and although feminism had “attracted its
share of fanatics, kooks, and man haters” (Anderson 360-61), the purpose
behind their discourse would benefit both men and women. The media
stopped simply joking and women’s issues - abortion, discrimination,
opportunity, sexism - began to be examined seriously. Feminists debated
new topics: sexuality, lesbianism, pornography, rape, and women as
colonized people. The early 1970s became a feminist Renaissance. On
television, through music, in literature, provocative feminist issues were
exposed. The 1970s became the decade of women’s liberation.
“There was no ‘end’ to the movement: no announcement, no last call,
and no final bell. The sixties generation had graduated” (Anderson 408).
The 1970 was turning to a decade where priority stood in re-evaluation
and reconsideration of personal lives, in pursuit of happiness. Thousands
left cities and moved to the country “to tend their own gardens”; others
considered their physical selves; millions turned to personal reflection,
seeking awareness and growth in the human potential movement, using a
number of methods: astral projection, biofeedback, Gestalt, Hare Krishna,
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humanistic, psychology, massage, psycho-cybernetics, meditation, Yoga,
Zen, you name it. Many found their God, as the decade eventually became
a time of religious awakening.
The decline of the movement was reasonable, for its focus during the
second wave - the war – was over in 1973. America saw its economy
insecure resulted from military demobilization and rising unemployment.
America saw the worst economic recession since the Great Depression,
and many activists, exhausted after a decade of revolt, apprehensive by
government repression, frustrated by ideological differences, naturally
shifted their interests from public protest to personal interests. “Finally, the
movement declined because activists had changed America. The sixties
were over because, compared with 1960, there was much less to protest
against. Activists had exposed hypocrisies, and they had won victories”
(Anderson 409).
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REFERÊNCIAS
ANDERSON, Terry H. The Movement and the Sixties. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995.
EISENSTEIN, Hester. Contemporary Feminist Thought. Boston: G. K.
Hall & Co., 1984.
FRIEDAN, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Dell Publishing, 1963.
HOBSBAWM, Eric. Era dos Extremos. O breve século XX, 1914-1991.
Trad. Marcos Santarrita. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995.
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