Decades of Change (1960 – 1980). New Conservatism.

By 1960 almost three out of five Southern blacks lived in towns and cities, concentrated in large metropolitan areas such as Atlanta and Washington, D.C. Large-scale migration to cities spurred rising aspirations, soon evident in the postwar civil rights movement. The civil rights movement expanded on February 1, 1960, when four black college students at North Carolina A&T University began protesting racial segregation in restaurants by sitting at whites-only lunch counters and waiting to be served. Within days the sit-ins spread throughout North Carolina, and within weeks they reached cities across the South. To continue students’ efforts and to give them an independent voice in the movement, college students in 1960 formed another civil rights group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Students and activists soon adopted other methods of protesting segregation, such as freedom rides—bus trips throughout the South in order to desegregate buses and bus stations. A powerful civil rights movement was underway.

Responding to African American calls for action, Kennedy in June 1963 declared civil rights “a moral issue” and proposed a comprehensive civil rights measure. Congress did not act on the bill, but the civil rights movement intensified. In August 1963 more than 200,000 Americans marched on Washington, D.C., to demand equal rights. The audience heard Martin Luther King, Jr., explain his dream of brotherhood, freedom, justice, and nonviolence. In July 1964, at Johnson’s prompting, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed segregation in public accommodations; gave the federal government new power to integrate schools and enfranchise blacks; and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to stop job discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, or gender. The law heralded a new phase of activism.

The voting rights campaign of the mid-1960s had results. In 1965 Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which authorized federal examiners to register voters and expanded black suffrage by suspending literacy tests for voting. The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, outlawed the poll tax in federal elections. A 1966 Supreme Court decision struck down the poll tax in all elections. These measures more than tripled the number of registered black voters in the South. Just as the federal government responded—after almost a century of inaction—to civil rights demands, waves of violence and disorder signaled a change in the civil rights movement.

By the end of the 1960s, the civil rights movement had strongly influenced other groups, which adopted its protest tactics. Native Americans had mobilized early in the decade and convened in Washington in 1964 to press for inclusion in the War on Poverty. In 1968 Native American leaders demanded Red Power in the form of preferential hiring and reimbursement for lands that the government had taken from them in violation of treaties. Mexican Americans supported César Chávez, president of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. Chavez sought improved working conditions for migrant workers and organized national consumer boycotts of grapes and other products. The Hispanic movement also campaigned for bilingual and bicultural education, and Chicano studies in colleges. Finally, the women’s movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, especially, derived inspiration from the civil rights precedent.

Date: 2014-12-28; view: 948