Unit 7: Social Movements of the 1960s

The Youth Movement/Anti-War Movement

After working in the South during “Freedom Summer” 1964, many white students from the North changed greatly, both in appearance and in their attitudes and beliefs. When they returned to their college campuses in September, they continued to wear the same overalls and other farmers' clothing they had worn in the South, and they did not cut their hair. They had lost respect for authority after seeing their friends beaten and arrested by Southern policemen and sentenced to jail for long terms by Southern judges; they had seen Southern mayors and governors refusing to obey federal laws. They gave speeches about the civil rights movement, about nonviolence, and the need to change society and worked to gain support for the civil rights movement.

Anti-War Protest

In October 1964, a CORE organizer sat at a small table on a sidewalk at the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, distributing information and collecting money. The chief of the campus police and two university deans came to his table informing him that what he was doing was against university policy. The CORE organizer refused to stop. He stated that university authorities should not keep CORE from recruiting new workers for the civil rights movement in the South and that the university's rule was illegal under the 1st and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution. When the police chief arrested him a large crowd of students gathered, shouting, “Arrest all of us!” A police car came and the CORE organizer was put inside. The crowd of students spontaneously surrounded the car and sat down on the ground, preventing the police car from moving.

Draft Card Burning at an Anti-War Rally

Mario Savio, a student who had just returned from working with SNCC in the Mississippi Freedom Summer, took off his shoes and stood on top of the police car. He demanded that the CORE worker be freed and the rules against free speech be changed.

The students sat around the car for 32 hours in spontaneous, nonviolent, direct action. Other students "sat-in" at the administration buildings and organized "Free University" classes. The California governor called hundreds of police to the campus. 800 students were arrested. Graduate students organized a strike and closed the university. The teachers and professors voted to change the rule that violated the 1st and 14th Amendments. The young people's "Free Speech Movement" began with success.

Social Movement in the 1960's

As the youth movement spread outside the campuses, some young people formed a "counter-culture." They rejected capitalism and other American principles. They had morals that were different from those taught by their parents. The "Hippies"called themselves the "love generation." Happiness became their only goal in life. Their music was different from any other music, and the words they sang sounded rebellious to older people. Small groups of youth lived together in cities like San Francisco, turning their lives into one big party. They wore long hair, strange and colorful clothes and many of them used drugs. They went in huge numbers to rock music concerts.And they made very interesting news on TV.

College students, and some high-school students, were "dropping out" of school. Some became Hippies and dropped out of society. Others left the country to avoid the army.

The anti-war movement became more organized as a loose coalition of many organizations and leaders was formed under a series of “Mobilization Committees to End the War in Vietnam.” The organizations included church groups, SNCC, SDS, and many smaller groups which were formed to protest the war. Their direct action strategies included teach-ins on college campuses, protest marches and rallies, and attacks on federal offices to destroy draft records by radical anti-war groups. Public support for the anti-war movement grew stronger, although most people in the U.S. did not support radical acts of violence. As the U. S. government sent more troops to Vietnam and the number of war death grew, public feeling against government policy grew so strong that President Johnson decided not to run for re-election in 1968.

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