The Civil Rights Movement In The 1950's
The 1960s in America is remembered both as a decade of youth in revolt and a boiling point for racial tensions that had been brewing since the country’s founding.
While the New Left pushed the definition of freedom beyond anything previously imagined, the Civil Rights Movement sought to gain for African Americans the same freedoms that had been the status quo for the nation’s white citizens for decades. The 1950s had been a decade hell-bent on various societal characteristics: conformity, financial success, and material excess. However, many of the kids that grew up in this society grew to hate it, with its promotion of the corporate rat-race mentality and devaluation of sincere human relationships. Because colleges, once beacons of
conservatism …show more content…
The pursuit of money was abandoned and replaced with the pursuit of authenticity and love.
However, when colleges such as UC Berkley imposed rules barring student political groups from spreading their ideas in the center of campus, the New Left movement expanded to include opposition of authority in any form, no longer just their parents and other holdovers of the past conservative generation. The bureaucratic organization that came under the most intense scrutiny from the New Left was the nation’s largest, its own government. The Vietnam War, entered into with no clear end, clear progress, or justifiable goal, was what “transformed protest into a full-fledged generational rebellion.” In addition to its violation of the New Left’s 1 pacifistic views, it was also antithetical to an even stronger tenet of the New Left: participatory democracy. The New Left believed that all citizens should have a direct say in matters of policy that impacted their lives; the Port Huron Statement defined a society of participatory democracy as one in which “the individual shares in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life.” The Vietnam War, however, …show more content…
In August of 1963, hundreds of thousands attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a massive rally whose title summarized the freedom that African Americans desired. Ever since they had gained their freedom, African Americans had still been denied many basic rights of
American citizens, lacking access to equal facilities and opportunity as a result of segregation of rampant racism. Illinois governor Otto Kerner described America as increasingly becoming “two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal.”3
Foner 979 1
Port Huron Statement, Foner 978 2
Kerner Report, Foner 974 3
While steps had been made in an attempt to secure greater rights for African Americans, they were far from enforced: local governments fought vehemently against educational integration guaranteed by the Brown v. Board of Education case, and Freedom Rides by
African Americans on buses into the South consistently ended in violence, showing that citizens would continue to ignore the rights of African Americans. African
While the New Left pushed the definition of freedom beyond anything previously imagined, the Civil Rights Movement sought to gain for African Americans the same freedoms that had been the status quo for the nation’s white citizens for decades. The 1950s had been a decade hell-bent on various societal characteristics: conformity, financial success, and material excess. However, many of the kids that grew up in this society grew to hate it, with its promotion of the corporate rat-race mentality and devaluation of sincere human relationships. Because colleges, once beacons of
conservatism …show more content…
The pursuit of money was abandoned and replaced with the pursuit of authenticity and love.
However, when colleges such as UC Berkley imposed rules barring student political groups from spreading their ideas in the center of campus, the New Left movement expanded to include opposition of authority in any form, no longer just their parents and other holdovers of the past conservative generation. The bureaucratic organization that came under the most intense scrutiny from the New Left was the nation’s largest, its own government. The Vietnam War, entered into with no clear end, clear progress, or justifiable goal, was what “transformed protest into a full-fledged generational rebellion.” In addition to its violation of the New Left’s 1 pacifistic views, it was also antithetical to an even stronger tenet of the New Left: participatory democracy. The New Left believed that all citizens should have a direct say in matters of policy that impacted their lives; the Port Huron Statement defined a society of participatory democracy as one in which “the individual shares in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life.” The Vietnam War, however, …show more content…
In August of 1963, hundreds of thousands attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a massive rally whose title summarized the freedom that African Americans desired. Ever since they had gained their freedom, African Americans had still been denied many basic rights of
American citizens, lacking access to equal facilities and opportunity as a result of segregation of rampant racism. Illinois governor Otto Kerner described America as increasingly becoming “two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal.”3
Foner 979 1
Port Huron Statement, Foner 978 2
Kerner Report, Foner 974 3
While steps had been made in an attempt to secure greater rights for African Americans, they were far from enforced: local governments fought vehemently against educational integration guaranteed by the Brown v. Board of Education case, and Freedom Rides by
African Americans on buses into the South consistently ended in violence, showing that citizens would continue to ignore the rights of African Americans. African