CHAPTER 25 The Sixties, 1960–1968
This chapter recounts the history of the 1960s, with emphasis on the civil rights movement, the Great Society program, and the war in
Vietnam. The chapter opens with the sit-in movement of 1960, demonstrating the growing frustration over the slow pace of civil rights
change. As the decade progressed, the civil rights movement grew with grassroots organizations and substantial student participation.
The chapter explores the Freedom Rides, Birmingham, and the March on Washington, revealing the core demands of the civil rights
movement. The Kennedy years are looked at next, discussing John F. Kennedy’s foreign policy, the Peace Corps, the Alliance for
Progress, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson immediately worked to get the Civil Rights
Act through Congress. Following that, the civil rights movement rallied around the Freedom Summer, Johnson’s 1964 election cam-
paign, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Genuinely concerned about civil rights, Johnson launched his Great Society program,
enlarging the freedoms begun during the New Deal. By mid-decade, the civil rights movement moved north, and urban ghettos were
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Greensboro Sit–in
II. The Civil Rights Revolution
A. The Rising Tide of Protest
1. Ella Baker met with young activists who formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
2. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized the Freedom Rides in 1961.
3. As protests escalated, so did the resistance of local authorities.
B. Birmingham
1. The high point of protest came in the spring of 1963.
3. King made the bold decision to send black schoolchildren into the streets of Birmingham.
a. Bull Connor unleashed his forces against the children.
4. The events in Birmingham forced white Americans to decide whether they had more in common with fellow citizens
C. The March on Washington
1. The March on Washington was organized by a coalition of civil rights, labor, and church organizations led by A. Philip
Randolph.
III. The Kennedy Years
A. Kennedy and the World
1. Kennedy’s agenda envisioned new initiatives aimed at countering communist influence in the world.
2. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress was aimed at Latin America.
3. Kennedy failed at ousting Castro from power in Cuba.
B. The Missile Crisis
1. The most dangerous crisis of the Kennedy administration came in October 1962, when American spy planes discovered
C. Kennedy and Civil Rights
1. Kennedy failed to protect civil rights workers from violence, insisting that law enforcement was a local matter.
IV. Lyndon Johnson’s Presidency
A. The Civil Rights Act of 1964
2. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.
B. Freedom Summer
2. Freedom Summer was a voter registration drive in Mississippi.
a. Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney
C. The 1964 Election
1. Lyndon B. Johnson’s opponent was Barry Goldwater, who was portrayed as pro–nuclear war and anti–civil rights.
2. Goldwater was stigmatized by the Democrats as an extremist who would repeal Social Security and risk nuclear war.
D. The Conservative Sixties
1. With the founding in 1960 of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), conservative students emerged as a force in politics.
a. Sharon Statement
2. Proposition 14 repealed a 1963 California law banning racial discrimination in the sale of real estate.
E. The Voting Rights Act
1. In 1965, King led a group in a march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama.
2. The federal government acted when there was violence against nonviolent demonstrators.
F. Immigration Reform
2. Taken together, the civil rights revolution and immigration reform marked the triumph of a pluralist conception of
G. The Great Society
1. Johnson outlined the most sweeping proposal for government action to promote the general welfare since the New Deal.
H. The War on Poverty
1. The centerpiece of the Great Society was the crusade to eradicate poverty.
a. Michael Harrington’s The Other America
3. The War on Poverty concentrated on equipping the poor with skills and rebuilding their spirits and motivation.
I. Freedom and Equality
1. Johnson resurrected the phrase “freedom from want,” all but forgotten during the 1950s.
3. Coupled with the decade’s high rate of economic growth, the War on Poverty succeeded in reducing the incidence of
V. The Changing Black Movement
A. The Urban Uprisings
1. The 1965 Watts uprising left thirty-five dead, 900 injured, and $30 million in property damage.
3. With black unemployment twice that of whites and average black family income little more than half the white norm, the
movement looked for ways to “make freedom real” for black Americans.
4. In 1966, King launched the Chicago Freedom Movement, with demands quite different from its predecessors in the South.
B. Malcolm X
1. Malcolm X had insisted that blacks must control the political and economic resources of their communities and rely on
their own efforts rather than working with whites.
C. The Rise of Black Power
1. Black Power immediately became a rallying cry for those bitter over the federal government’s failure to stop violence against
3. Inspired by the idea of black self-determination, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and CORE
repudiated their previous interracialism, and new militant groups sprang into existence.
VI. Vietnam and the New Left
A. Old and New Lefts
1. What made the New Left new was its rejection of the intellectual and political categories that had shaped radicalism for
most of the twentieth century.
3. The New Left’s greatest inspiration was the black freedom movement.
B. The Fading Consensus
2. The Port Huron Statement offered a new vision of social change.
C. The Rise of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
1. In 1964, events at the University of California at Berkeley revealed the possibility of a far broader mobilization of
students in the name of participatory democracy.
D. America and Vietnam
1. What transformed student protest into a full-fledged generational rebellion was the war in Vietnam.
2. Fear that the public would not forgive them for losing Vietnam made it impossible for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to
E. Lyndon Johnson’s War
2. Although Johnson campaigned in 1964 against sending U.S. troops to Vietnam, troops arrived in 1965.
4. By 1968, the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam exceeded half a million and the conduct of the war had become more and
more brutal.
F. The Anti-war Movement
1. As casualties mounted and U.S. bombs poured down on North and South Vietnam, the Cold War foreign policy
consensus began to unravel.
3. SDS began anti-war demonstrations in 1965.
a. Carl Oglesby
G. The Counterculture
1. As the 1960s progressed, young Americans’ understanding of freedom increasingly expanded to include cultural freedom
as well.
3. The counterculture in some ways represented not rebellion but the fulfillment of the consumer marketplace.
H. Personal Liberation and the Free Individual
2. The counterculture emphasized the ideal of community.
I. Faith and the Counterculture
2. The desire for social justice and brotherhood in the New Left also had Christian roots.
VII. The New Movements and the Rights Revolution
A. The Feminine Mystique
2. The immediate result of The Feminine Mystique was to focus attention on yet another gap between American rhetoric and
American reality.
4. 1966 saw the formation of the National Organization for Women (NOW), with Friedan as president.
a. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) draws upon the Statement of Purpose of the National
B. Women’s Liberation
1. Many women in the civil rights movement concluded that the treatment of women in society was not much better than
society’s treatment of blacks.
2. The same complaints arose in SDS.
C. Personal Freedom
1. Women believed that “the personal is political,” thus permanently changing Americans’ definition of freedom.
D. Gay Liberation
1. Gay men and lesbians had long been stigmatized as sinful or mentally disordered.
2. The 1960s transformed the gay movement.
E. Latino Activism
1. The movement emphasized pride in both the Mexican past and the new Chicano culture that had arisen in the United
States.
3. Like SNCC and SDS, the Latino movement gave rise to feminist dissent.
F. Red Power
2. Indian activists demanded not simply economic aid but greater self-determination.
a. American Indian Movement
G. Silent Spring
1. The new environmentalism was more activist and youth oriented and spoke the language of empowering citizens to
participate in decisions that affected their lives.
H. The New Environmentalism
1. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring spurred the modern environmental movement.
2. Environmentalism attracted the broadest bipartisan support of any of the new social movements, despite vigorous
3. Closely related to environmentalism was the consumer movement, spearheaded by the lawyer Ralph Nader.
I. The Rights Revolution
1. Under the guidance of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Supreme Court vastly expanded the rights enjoyed by all Americans.
3. The Court continued to guard civil liberties in the 1950s and 1960s.
4. In the 1960s, the Court continued to push toward racial equality.
a. NAACP v. Alabama
J. Policing the States
1. The Court simultaneously pushed forward the process of imposing on the states the obligation to respect the liberties
outlined in the Bill of Rights.
a. Miranda v. Arizona
K. The Right to Privacy
2. Roe v. Wade created a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.
VIII. 1968
A. A Year of Turmoil
1. The 1960s reached their climax in 1968, a year when momentous events succeeded each other with such rapidity that the
foundations of society seemed to be dissolving.
a. Tet offensive
b. Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the 1968 election.
B. The Global 1968
2. Massive anti–war demonstrations took place.
3. Throughout the world, the second wave of American feminism found echoes among women who resented being relegated
C. Nixon’s Comeback
2. Richard Nixon campaigned as the champion of the silent majority.
D. The Legacy of the 1960s
1. The 1960s produced new rights and new understandings of freedom.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• How did cultural movements in the 1960s expose the limitations of traditional New Deal liberalism?
• How did the 1960s movement culture force a reconsideration of foreign policy?
• Why did the Vietnam War take place and how did it impact American society?
• Discuss how the Great Society expanded the freedoms and liberties of Americans left out of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
• Who made up the New Left? How does their manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, define freedom and democracy in America?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
Free Speech Movement
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Malcolm X
Martin Luther King Jr.
Two Days in October (Vietnam War)
Vietnam
Vietnam War Oral Histories
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Bresler, Robert. Us vs. Them: American Political and Cultural Conflict from WWII to Watergate. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2000.
Bugliosi, Vincent. Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.
DeGroot, Gerard. A Noble Cause? America and the Vietnam War. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Longman, 2000.
2007.
Logevall, Fredrik. Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
Loss, Archie. Pop Dreams: Music, Movies, and the Media in the 1960s. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
McCartin, James P. Prayers of the Faithful: The Shifting Spiritual Life of American Catholics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Music as History: Black Power
At the very time that young Americans in the 1960s were discovering their own soundtrack to civil disobedience and anti-war protests, record la-
bels perfected their business strategy for the counterculture. Gil Scott–Heron’s 1971 song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” from Pieces of
a Man, is a rich source on the 1960s, with its clear rejection of commercial culture, its critique of the moderation of the civil rights movement, and
its dismissal of the apolitical counterculture. But the artist’s work and influence on rap and hip-hop also allow for connections to the 1980s and
contemporary black music.
Discussion Activities:
1. What part of American popular culture did Scott-Heron draw from for most in his lyrics? What critique of American society did he try to
convey that way?
2. Scott-Heron not only seemed to mock contemporary consumer culture with his lyrics, he picked on the 1960s counterculture and the wom-
en’s movement. Can you detect the relevant passage?
Related Activities:
1. Ask students to listen to a variety of other Gil Scott–Heron songs (“Whitey on the Moon,” “Angola,” “Louisiana,” “We Almost Lost De-
2. Ask students to listen to, transcribe, and evaluate Scott-Heron’s “Message to the Messengers.” Do they agree with the criticism of modern
rap and hip-hop?
3. Ask students to bring in their own rap or hip–hop tracks and ask them to explain how they compare to “The Revolution Will Not Be Tele-
vised.”
Group Activity:
2. The Black Panther Party
The Black Power movement has significant appeal to students as a historical topic. They can more easily relate to the urban roots, confrontational
style, and confidence of Malcolm X than with the self-sacrificial church-based southern civil rights movement and its strategy of nonviolence.
Discussion Activities (referring to the 1966 platform only):
1. Summarize the list of demands of the Black Panther Party and try to categorize them. Which of these freedoms are negative (freedoms from
something) and which are positive (the freedom/right to something)?
2. Compare the types of freedoms the Black Panthers seek with those we associate with postwar liberalism. Franklin D. Roosevelt posited these
Research Activities:
1. Ask students to visit the link that lists all Black Panther Community Programs that existed between 1966 and 1982. Have them catego-
Black Panther Community Programs
2. Ask students to visit the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project and choose one of the oral history videos with former Black Panthers
featured in the site. Ask them to report back to the group with a summary of their narrators’ personal lives, their political perspectives, the way
their outlook changed over time, and their own critical assessment of the oral history. In the next step, students should compare different histo-
ries and identify similarities and differences, which they should then try to explain.
Group Activity:
Divide students into groups of five to eight and ask them to identify all the changes in the Black Panther Party’s platform between 1966 and
1972. Ask them to discuss the reasons for these changes. Do they think the party became less radical over time?