Chicano Groups In The 1960s
The first decade of the 60’s looked very much like the 1950’s. The economy was good, society was still child centered, and the suburbs were still growing. Even though everything was fine and dandy and it seemed like nothing was going on, there were people still fighting for their rights. Throughout the 1960s there were multiple groups that fought for specific things. The four groups that will be discussed throughout this paper are Chicanos, African Americans, and gay and lesbians. The paper will talk about what each group is fighting for, why and if it was successful or not. The first group that will be discussed are the Chicanos. In the 1960s, the life expectancy for Mexican American migrant workers hovered around age 50, while their infant
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mortality rate was double the national average. The short-handed hoe represented the nearly complete exploitation of California migrant workers, forcing them to bend all day as they worked in the fields. Workers nicknamed short hoes “the devil’s arm” because using them caused intense back pain. Every time union activist César Chávez saw a head of lettuce in the supermarket, he remembered the suffering field workers had endured and felt renewed determination to organize strikes and boycotts to improve their working conditions. California regulators finally banned the tool in 1975. According to Jennifer D. Keene, in March 1968, 10,000 high school students in East Los Angeles staged a “blow-out” by walking out of their classrooms to protest the poor education they received in their mostly Hispanic schools. (Keene et al. 2015, pg.27.4.4) By this point most white Americans had little tolerance for radical political protest and overwhelmingly supported the police for shutting the demonstrations down. Internal divisions within the Mexican American community over the wisdom of mass demonstrations and steady harassment from the police hastened the demise of the Chicano student movement. The second group will be the African Americans. The Freedom Rides began when 13 whites and blacks (including Farmer and John Lewis, a veteran of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins) boarded an interstate bus on May 4, 1961, in Washington, D.C., headed for the Deep South. Expecting the worst, several riders left sealed letters for their families to open if they were killed. After a smooth ride through the upper South, in Atlanta the Freedom Riders decided to take two separate buses into the heart of the rigidly segregated Deep South. As the first bus carrying Freedom Riders entered the depot in Anniston, Alabama, a mob pelted the bus with stones and slashed its tires. The driver drove away without stopping, pursued by 50 cars carrying vigilantes. When a flat tire obliged him to stop along a deserted country road, a firebomb forced the Freedom Riders off the bus and into the waiting gauntlet of sticks and crowbars. State troopers arrived in time to save the lives of the traumatized Freedom Riders. Meanwhile the second bus arrived in Birmingham, where Ku Klux Klansmen beat white Freedom Rider James Peck, a 47-year-old labor and peace activist, when he entered a white-only waiting room with a black colleague. “When you go somewhere looking for trouble, you usually find it,” the governor of Alabama remarked unsympathetically. The Freedom Rides continued through the summer of 1961, and eventually 300 white and black protesters took part. In the fall the Interstate Commerce Commission required the integration of all interstate travel facilities. The Freedom Rides, however, did not achieve the organizers’ broader goals of securing President Kennedy’s enthusiastic support for the Civil Rights Movement. Despite his own integrationist views, President Kennedy remained preoccupied with protecting his white Democratic Southern base and feared that open discussion of America’s racial problems provided fodder for Soviet propaganda. It would take a shocking visual demonstration of racial violence in Birmingham, Alabama, to make him a champion of civil rights.
The third and final group that will be discussed are the gay and lesbians.
According to Jennifer D. Keene, “In the 1960s the Civil Rights Movement and the hippie counterculture assault on sexual taboos inspired some gay people to “come out of the closet” and challenge the ways that American society ostracized them.” (Keene et al. 2015, pg.28.3.2) During the Stonewall Inn, the gay rights movement came into action on June 28, 1969 due to a gay male fighting back at a New York City police raid. This incident electrified the gay community and cause them to gather outside Stonewall the next morning chanting “Gay Power.” Organizations such as Gay Liberation Front and other small gay rights groups formed gay support groups on campuses, lobbied for antidiscrimination laws, marched in Gay Pride parades, and followed the “sit-in” model of the Civil Rights Movement by staging “kiss-ins” in restaurants. The increased visibility of the gay rights movement provoked a conservative response. Fundamentalist churches opposed legislation granting gays legitimacy, lobbying strongly for laws that prevented homosexuals from teaching in public schools. Gay rights groups ridiculed the notion that gay men, because they preferred men as sexual partners, were pedophiles. A more insidious challenge loomed ahead, however. Heterosexual Americans uniformly disparaged gays as deviant and morally reprehensible. The American Psychiatric Association categorized homosexuality as a “mental disorder,” a position it did not jettison until 1973. Taking the psychological stereotyping a step further, Time magazine viewed homosexuality as “a pernicious sickness.” “If you were gay and you accepted those societal norms, then you were at war with yourself,” stated one college student as he recalled his own struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality. Exposure as a homosexual or lesbian could mean losing everything—job, spouse, friends, and social
position.
In conclusion, Chicanos, African Americans, and gay and lesbians fought for specific rights throughout the 60’s. Even though the beginning of the 60’s look a lot like the 50’s, there was still history being made by each group. The paper went over what each group fought for, the reason why they fought for it, and if it was successful or not.
mortality rate was double the national average. The short-handed hoe represented the nearly complete exploitation of California migrant workers, forcing them to bend all day as they worked in the fields. Workers nicknamed short hoes “the devil’s arm” because using them caused intense back pain. Every time union activist César Chávez saw a head of lettuce in the supermarket, he remembered the suffering field workers had endured and felt renewed determination to organize strikes and boycotts to improve their working conditions. California regulators finally banned the tool in 1975. According to Jennifer D. Keene, in March 1968, 10,000 high school students in East Los Angeles staged a “blow-out” by walking out of their classrooms to protest the poor education they received in their mostly Hispanic schools. (Keene et al. 2015, pg.27.4.4) By this point most white Americans had little tolerance for radical political protest and overwhelmingly supported the police for shutting the demonstrations down. Internal divisions within the Mexican American community over the wisdom of mass demonstrations and steady harassment from the police hastened the demise of the Chicano student movement. The second group will be the African Americans. The Freedom Rides began when 13 whites and blacks (including Farmer and John Lewis, a veteran of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins) boarded an interstate bus on May 4, 1961, in Washington, D.C., headed for the Deep South. Expecting the worst, several riders left sealed letters for their families to open if they were killed. After a smooth ride through the upper South, in Atlanta the Freedom Riders decided to take two separate buses into the heart of the rigidly segregated Deep South. As the first bus carrying Freedom Riders entered the depot in Anniston, Alabama, a mob pelted the bus with stones and slashed its tires. The driver drove away without stopping, pursued by 50 cars carrying vigilantes. When a flat tire obliged him to stop along a deserted country road, a firebomb forced the Freedom Riders off the bus and into the waiting gauntlet of sticks and crowbars. State troopers arrived in time to save the lives of the traumatized Freedom Riders. Meanwhile the second bus arrived in Birmingham, where Ku Klux Klansmen beat white Freedom Rider James Peck, a 47-year-old labor and peace activist, when he entered a white-only waiting room with a black colleague. “When you go somewhere looking for trouble, you usually find it,” the governor of Alabama remarked unsympathetically. The Freedom Rides continued through the summer of 1961, and eventually 300 white and black protesters took part. In the fall the Interstate Commerce Commission required the integration of all interstate travel facilities. The Freedom Rides, however, did not achieve the organizers’ broader goals of securing President Kennedy’s enthusiastic support for the Civil Rights Movement. Despite his own integrationist views, President Kennedy remained preoccupied with protecting his white Democratic Southern base and feared that open discussion of America’s racial problems provided fodder for Soviet propaganda. It would take a shocking visual demonstration of racial violence in Birmingham, Alabama, to make him a champion of civil rights.
The third and final group that will be discussed are the gay and lesbians.
According to Jennifer D. Keene, “In the 1960s the Civil Rights Movement and the hippie counterculture assault on sexual taboos inspired some gay people to “come out of the closet” and challenge the ways that American society ostracized them.” (Keene et al. 2015, pg.28.3.2) During the Stonewall Inn, the gay rights movement came into action on June 28, 1969 due to a gay male fighting back at a New York City police raid. This incident electrified the gay community and cause them to gather outside Stonewall the next morning chanting “Gay Power.” Organizations such as Gay Liberation Front and other small gay rights groups formed gay support groups on campuses, lobbied for antidiscrimination laws, marched in Gay Pride parades, and followed the “sit-in” model of the Civil Rights Movement by staging “kiss-ins” in restaurants. The increased visibility of the gay rights movement provoked a conservative response. Fundamentalist churches opposed legislation granting gays legitimacy, lobbying strongly for laws that prevented homosexuals from teaching in public schools. Gay rights groups ridiculed the notion that gay men, because they preferred men as sexual partners, were pedophiles. A more insidious challenge loomed ahead, however. Heterosexual Americans uniformly disparaged gays as deviant and morally reprehensible. The American Psychiatric Association categorized homosexuality as a “mental disorder,” a position it did not jettison until 1973. Taking the psychological stereotyping a step further, Time magazine viewed homosexuality as “a pernicious sickness.” “If you were gay and you accepted those societal norms, then you were at war with yourself,” stated one college student as he recalled his own struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality. Exposure as a homosexual or lesbian could mean losing everything—job, spouse, friends, and social
position.
In conclusion, Chicanos, African Americans, and gay and lesbians fought for specific rights throughout the 60’s. Even though the beginning of the 60’s look a lot like the 50’s, there was still history being made by each group. The paper went over what each group fought for, the reason why they fought for it, and if it was successful or not.