Seminar 5
The 1960s
Seminar Outline.
The purpose of this worksheet is to suggest some of the key issues
raised in the readings. All were written by some of the era’s
major figures during the years between 1954 and 1970, and they tell
us much about the issues and the beliefs that fuelled many of the
debates of the 1960s. From Civil Rights to Black Power, and from
student radicalism to the Vietnam War, we see here the words of
a generation of Americans whose disagreement about the nature and
the objectives of their country was as intense as any since the
Civil War.
Topics for discussion. What were the objectives of the
Civil Rights Movement? How did adherents attempt to achieve Civil
Rights, and with what success?
Why did Civil Rights so quickly give rise to militant Black Power?
What were the effects of Black Power on both black and white Americans,
and to what extent did Black Power achieve its objectives?
Did 1960 and the election of John Kennedy mark a real break from
the past? What did Kennedy appear to promise, and what changes came
as a result of his and Lyndon Johnson's presidencies?
Why did rich upper and middle class white Americans, raised in
the most prosperous circumstances of any generation in American
history, turn against the values of their parents in a large-scale
social protest movement?
How did Indians explain and justify their civil rights protests?
How were their protests similar or different to those of other groups
in American society?
Traditionally Americans have accepted that politics ends at the
water's edge, with the parties and their supporters uniting behind
administration foreign policy. Why, then, did the Vietnam War have
such a full and divisive effect on American politics?
Sources.
1. Excerpts from Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
In this case the Supreme Court declared that segregation in public
schools (and, by implication, in any public facilities) was inherently
unequal and therefore unconstitutional, and ordered the desegregation
of public schools with all deliberate speed. Symbolically, this
was the start of the modern civil rights movement. Read paragraph
one and points a to f, and then from the paragraph that begins ‘We
come then to the question presented’ to the end of the
document.
Click
here for the excerpts from Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
2. Black Panther Party Platform (1966).
It was not long before some black Americans grew angry at the resistance
of white Americans who felt threatened by civil rights. The movement
splintered, with some blacks rejecting King's pacifism for a vehement
and potentially violent assertion of black pride, black equality,
and black separateness, articulated here in the platform of the
Black Panther Party, a militant group that spread from Oakland,
California cross the US.
Click
here for the Black Panther Party Platform.
3. Excerpts from John Kennedy, Inaugural Address
(1961)
Kennedy won the incredibly close-run 1960 presidential election
by little more than 100,000 votes (out of 68 million cast). Yet
the youngest person ever elected president, and the first born in
the twentieth century, did not hesitate to set a new agenda for
the nation in his inaugural address.
Click
here for excerpts from John Kennedy, Inaugural Address.
4. & 5. Martin Luther
King, Jr., "I Have A Dream" (1963) and "A Time to
Break Silence" (1967).
Perhaps the single most important speech of the decade, delivered
at the March on Washington, in which King told black and white Americans
that civil rights and racial equality would happen.
Click here for
Martin Luther King's, "I Have A Dream" speech.
King retained his pacifism all through his life,
yet by 1967 he had begun to broaden his attack on the inequalities
in American life, seeing inequality as a social and economic issue
as much as a racial one, which he believed was taking a horrific
form in Vietnam, a war fought by the poor and uneducated rather
than the well-to-do. In this speech King began his attack on the
Vietnam War.
Click
here for Martin Luther King's, "A Time to Break Silence".
6. Indians of All Nations (1969)
With the formation of the American Indian Movement in 1968, Indians
became a visible presence in the Civil Rights movements of late
20th century America. In 1969 members of various tribes calling
themselves 'Indians of all Nations' occupied the former prison at
Alcatraz, and they issued the following statement.
Click
here for Indians of all Nations.
7. Lyndon Johnson, Address to the Nation (1968).
Vietnam destroyed Johnson's presidency and his dream of a 'Great
Society' free of hunger and inequality. Recognising that his party
and indeed the nation was tearing itself apart, in this speech he
announced and explained his decision not to seek reelection.
Click here for Lyndon Johnson, Address to the Nation.
Bibliography.
- Cornel West, Race Matters
- Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
- David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making
of the American Working Class
- James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro: The Rape Case That
Shocked 1930s America and revived the Struggle for Equality
- Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality
- David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
- Howell Raines, My Soul is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep
South Remembered
- Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board
of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality
- Fred Powledge, Free at Last? The Civil Rights Movement and
the People Who Made It
- James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream
or a Nightmare
- Mario Garcia, A History of Mexican Americans: 1930-1960
- Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians,
Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation
and Internment of Civilians
- Linda Kerber, ed., Women's America: Refocusing the Past (4th
edition)
- Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience
- Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
- Alice Echols, Daring to be Bad: Radical Feminism in America,
1967-1975
- Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation
in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left
- Martin Duberman, Stonewall
- Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History
of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America
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