Welcome back everyone! I hope you all had a restful week off. (I hope you actually got to take some time off!) We only have three modules left in our semester! This week, we'll be moving from the 1960s through the 1980s, and finishing up the twentieth century next week. There is a lot more to discuss in terms of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, so let's get started!
In Modules 24 and 25, we examined how the protest movements of the 1960s-1970s critiqued systemic inequalities in American economics, politics, and culture and utilized a language of self-determination.
In this module, we’ll also assess how citizens increasingly began to utilize the language of individual rights, as well as the rights of particular marginalized or oppressed groups. These groups were demanding their place in the American citizenry, as well as the ability to define what their place looked like. In this module, we'll look at social movements like the women's movement, gay liberation, and American Indian activism. We'll also examine the organized conservative response to these movements, and the growing conservative social movement.
Four questions will guide this module blog post:
How did activists in social movements utilize the language of “rights” in their demands for social and political change?
How did women, especially women of color, challenge and add onto the demands of radical social movements?
How did 1970s social movements build off of and disrupt the narratives of civil rights and freedom struggles in the 1960s?
How did conservative citizens respond to the demands made by those in the freedom struggle and protest movements of the 1960s-1970s? How did they utilize the language of rights?
Let's get started!
Part I: Women's Movement and Anti-Feminism
The "Rights" Revolution
Several influential court cases of the late 1960s solidified individual citizens’ rights and illustrated the political and social climate of the time. We’ll look at two of them here.
Loving v. Virginia (1967) declared unconstitutional the laws still on the books in sixteen states that prohibited interracial marriage. The case arose from the marriage of Richard and Mildred Loving, who were barred by the state of Virginia from being married, so they did so in Washington DC. After returning home, the local sheriff arrested them in the middle of the night for violating the statute.
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) asserted a constitutional right to privacy, overturning a state law prohibiting the use of contraceptives. Specifically, this case linked privacy to the sanctity of marriage (married couples were able to use birth control). Later the Court extended access to birth control to unmarried adults. This is one of the decisions that lead to the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973, which we will examine later in this module.
These cases illustrate a political and cultural landscape which was changing drastically from earlier decades.
Poll #1
In your opinion, which of the following represents the most significant impact of the protest movements of the 1960s-1970s to people in 2020?
The language/framework for thinking about civil rights, which we still use today? Or, the fact that these movements led to significant legislative change, which still affects us today? Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.
Atmosphere of Public Opinion on Welfare
In Module 23, we examined LBJ’s Great Society, the ideologies behind the War on Poverty, and the amendments made to welfare programs. To recap:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report, The Negro Family, placed the blame for social problems in African American communities on the “matriarchal structure” that was left when Black men were unable to provide for their families. The persistence of Black poverty was understood as a pathological problem rooted in the aggression and independence of Black mothers.
Single, divorced, or widowed Black women increased in numbers on the welfare rolls, as a result of Great Society programs which politicized poor people and made them more aware of the benefits that were available to them. By the 1960s, Black and Latina mothers outnumbered whites on the welfare rolls. They were less likely to be able to access Social Security benefits for themselves or their husbands, due to the exclusions of most of their jobs from coverage.
Public assistance was mired in controversy. As it became increasingly associated with nonwhite poor women, certain politicians started framing as a “reward for black women’s immorality and licentiousness.” Unwed mothers were looked upon with particular scrutiny. Some politicians alleged that Black women were having babies in order to increase their welfare checks. Across the country, unwed mothers were declared ineligible for public housing. One in five Americans thought single Black mothers should be forcibly sterilized, and forced sterilization bills were debated in state legislatures in California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia in the mid-1960s.
Rather than seeing welfare mothers as citizens seeking their rights, many viewed them as “tricking” the government into handing out benefits they did not deserve. Coupled with the threat of the “matriarchy” that Moynihan had written about, these stereotypes converged into an idea that Black women in urban areas had become so damaged by racism and poverty that they had become disturbed and unpredictable, with a genius for fraud and no shame. This “welfare queen” could pass on her immorality to everyone in her community, damaging her children. [1]
The “welfare queen” label was applied many Black women on public assistance, but can be traced back to one woman, Linda Taylor of Chicago. Listen to more of her complicated story through the Slate podcast, “The Queen,” available here.
Stereotypes about Black women were built into their interactions with welfare caseworkers. Policies of welfare offices were set up with the presumption that welfare mothers were going to abuse the system. In order to “catch” welfare cheaters, “man in the house” rules were instituted, cutting off aid to women with husbands or steady boyfriends. Welfare workers would conduct predawn raids, coming to the homes of welfare recipients at times when people were normally sleeping, to find an actual male body in the woman’s bed. They also searched for evidence of a man’s presence, like clothing, razors, and aftershave. Welfare workers also looked for signs that a family had more money than they were admitting. If anything in the house seemed too expensive for a family on welfare, the caseworker would ask the woman who bought it for her.
Eddie Jean Finks, a welfare recipient in Las Vegas, NV, recalled:
“If you put a decent bed in your house, you’d find a person in your house asking ‘Where did you get the money to get this?’ If you had a little decent food in your refrigerator they’d cut you off. If your kids had decent clothes to put on, they said you got some other source of money coming in from some place and you’re not reporting it. Whenever I could get off welfare I did, because it was so nerve wracking.” [2]
Welfare recipients were basically denied the right to privacy, as supposedly receiving benefits from the state entitled the state to police the bodies and homes of welfare mothers.
In 1967, Congress gave welfare departments the power to remove children of mothers receiving welfare with “multiple cases of illegitimacy.” Having children out of wedlock automatically deemed a woman to be “unfit” as a mother.
National Welfare Rights Organization
Living with the stress, scrutiny, and stigma of welfare inspired welfare recipients to protest this treatment. Seeing other civil rights activists make gains in claiming their rights, welfare recipients, especially under the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), started to claim that, “Welfare recipients were citizens, with political and human rights to which they were constitutionally entitled.”
The NWRO was a loose federation of welfare mothers’ groups that became a national movement. It was most active from 1966-1975. The NWRO had several demands:
Dignity and respect for the work that mothers did: Rather than being stigmatized or stereotyped for having children, they were proud of their role as mothers, and felt that mothers should be honored, no matter what her race or class status was. They also wanted acknowledged the central role that children played in their lives, rather than seeing their children as another “tool” to get more on their welfare checks.
Financial compensation for their labor as mothers: Welfare mothers saw their role as mothers as a full time job that should be adequately compensated. They articulated the demand for a “guaranteed adequate income,” insisting that welfare was a right due to all poor mothers, not just those who the welfare caseworker deems to be “worthy.”
Control over their sexuality, reproduction, and autonomy in choosing their partners: Welfare mothers argued that strong Black women were not dysfunctional, and questioned the assumption that poor single mothers needed a male breadwinner. Johnnie Tillmon, a welfare recipient and leader of the NWRO, argued that if a woman wasn’t married, people assumed she had “failed as a woman because she has failed to attract and keep a man.” Welfare mothers argued that the welfare system and marriage both worked to discourage women’s autonomy, and that women should be liberated, able to be women and mothers independent of men.
Wage labor outside the home should be a choice: In contrast to other feminist organizations in the 1960s-1970s, the NWRO did not believe that work was ultimately empowering for women. Work for welfare mothers was often a source of oppression, especially as they were relegated to low-wage jobs with little change for social mobility. [3]
For this module, you'll read Johnnie Tillmon's essay, "Welfare is a Woman's Issue." This essay is a very clear breakdown of the goals and demands of the welfare rights movement. In the annotations for this article, I'll ask you to consider how the welfare rights movement fits into the larger women's movement, which we'll discuss now!
Women's Liberation
We examined briefly Betty Friedan and her influential book, The Feminine Mystique. This book articulated the myth of the “happy housewife” isolated in suburbia, assigned a set of responsibilities solely on the basis of her sex. Friedan’s book was published in 1963, and became an instant best seller, as housewives recognized themselves in her descriptions.
We also examined the 1964 Civil Rights Act and how it outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, as well as the basis of sex. Adding women to the coverage of the Civil Rights Act was done by Representative Howard Smith, a conservative Southern Democrat, who had added sex to ensure the bill’s defeat, thinking that the idea would appear so ridiculous that Congress would not support it, and the civil rights bill would fail to pass. However, it did pass!
Unfortunately, many of those responsible for enforcing the new legislation still viewed the provision against sex discrimination as a joke. In response to the hostility that women reformers experienced trying to work with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on these issues, Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray, a Black lawyer who worked in the Kennedy administration, decided to form a new organization, the National Organization for Women (NOW). In Friedan’s words, the time had come “to take the actions needed to bring women into the mainstream of American society, now, full equality for women, in fully equal partnership with men. NOW.” NOW fought through the media, courts, and the Congress for the same rights for women as the NAACP had fought for Blacks.
Women's Liberation's Roots in the Civil Rights Movement and New Left
Women’s liberation also had roots in the civil rights movement. White women working with SNCC were inspired by the strength of the Black women leaders of the organization. At the same time, some white women noticed a typical male paternalism in the movement. Women were pushed into typing and clerical work, making coffee, or taking notes at meetings. Two white women organizers, Casey Hayden and Mary King, issued a position paper describing the movement’s attitudes towards women and concluded that women should organize collectively on their own behalf. They drew parallels between the experiences of women and the experiences of blacks in the movement and in larger society:
“There seem to be many parallels that can be drawn between treatment of Negroes and treatment of women in our society as a whole. But in particular, women we’ve talked to who work in the movement seem to be caught up in a common-law caste system that operates, sometimes subtly, forcing them to work around or outside hierarchical structures of power which may exclude them.” [4]
Women active in student movements and the antiwar movement also noticed sexism and a culture of “macho” radicalism within the movement. Men in the movement at times treated women as inferiors, and women were very rarely treated as leaders. An observer at one SDS convention noted, “Women made peanut butter, waited on tables, cleaned up, and got laid. That was their role.” This quote points to the fact that although men were happy to celebrate the sexual revolution in terms of sex, they were less willing to share their own authority in the revolution.
In many ways, women who fought for equality in these radical movements found themselves even more angry at the sexism and misogyny they faced. Many saw the need to build an independent women’s movement outside of the left, rather than integrate women’s liberation into the larger movement.
Consciousness Raising
Throughout many different cities, especially on college campuses, women began to form “consciousness raising groups,” which were geared towards mobilizing women to find a new sense of collective self. The goal of women’s liberation was not only to participate in marches and protests, but also to change one’s life and transform oneself through radical action. Women in these groups shared their experiences with each other, coming to understand that the pain and dissatisfaction they felt in many of their relationships with men were reflective of a system of hierarchy and power.
Women had to create true democracy in their relationships with each other, then carry those values and ways of making decisions out into the public. This philosophy is often paraphrased from a quote by feminist activist Charlotte Bunch: “There is no private domain of a person’s life that is not political and there is no political issue that is not ultimately personal.”
The demands of the women’s liberation movement were based on changing the traditional attitudes and values regarding American gender roles.
The issues ranged from abolishing sexist language, preserving women’s reproductive freedom of choice, eliminating sexist stereotypes from children’s books, fighting for equal pay and the chance to compete one-on-one with men for different jobs, heightening public consciousness about rape and domestic violence against women, organizing feminist political caucuses, and legal defense funds.
Poll #2
In your opinion, is consciousness raising (changing personal and individual worldviews and opinions) an effective method for creating lasting social change? Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.
Liberal Feminism vs. Radical Feminism
Two different approaches to feminism shaped the women’s movement in the US. This division dates back to the beginning of the women’s rights movement in the 1840s.
Liberal feminists focused on women as individuals who should be treated exactly the same as men. In issues like the vote, for example, they argued that it was a woman’s right as an individual citizen to participate in the electoral process.
Others believed that women were different, biologically and psychologically, and should be allowed to act collectively to implement their distinctive mission. Women who believed this argued that women should have the vote so that they could fulfill their special task as women of overseeing the nation’s moral and spiritual health. Radical feminists were concerned with the advancement of women as a collective group.
NOW fought mainly for the individual advancement of women. One of their central demands was the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) which would abolish sex as a category for treating women and men differently under the law, which we explored back in the context of the 1920s. Its goal was a society in which women and men had identical status as individual human beings.
Radical feminist groups wanted to change society by acting collectively to attack the roots of women’s oppression. In order to combat patriarchy, they argued that they needed a movement separate from men, because they had different values and concerns than men had. They focused on building woman-defined and woman-run structures, like publishing houses, journals, and newsletters, or woman-run clinics.
Problems with both of these feminist philosophies included the treatment of women as one group. Feminism often failed to escape its narrow class and race boundaries. Most feminist activists were white, middle-class, and college-educated. Although Blacks and Latinas did participate in the women’s movement, the language and programs of different organizations seemed to reflect a white middle-class approach. Despite the rhetoric of “universal sisterhood,” there were divisions in the movement, especially between those who wanted to minimize the differences between women, and those whose particular experiences were homogenized or overshadowed.
In addition to differences of class and race, there were also rifts in the movement concerning sexuality. Some radical feminists were lesbians, and viewed their sexuality as one more way to intensify the struggle against male supremacy. Certain radical feminists presented lesbianism as a political solution to women’s oppression. Other feminists in the movement were less likely to accept homosexuality, reflecting engrained homophobia, but also because they viewed certain lesbian feminists as too dogmatic. For example, Betty Friedan denounced radical feminists, especially the “lavender menace” of lesbian feminists, who she believed would alienate support for broader women’s rights objectives.
Personal Freedom
The women’s liberation movement inspired a major expansion of the idea of freedom by insisting that it should be applied to the most intimate realms of life. Rather than just tackling the political issues of civil rights, the war, voting, and even poverty and inequality, various groups associated with the women’s movement (including the welfare rights movement!) contended that the “private” realm of life (marriage, sexual relations, beauty standards) was also political, and subject to critique.
One key arena where women’s liberation activists articulated their demands was their agitation for the repeal of all laws that limited a woman’s right to abortion. Feminists conducted “speak-outs” where women shared their experiences of illegal abortions and explained why they had made this choice. This was a very effective organizing tool, revealing to the public that women were having abortions despite the fact that they were illegal. In 1973, the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision, which recognized the right of the individual to be “free from unwanted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” Despite the significance of the ruling, abortion rights were still precarious. A variety of religious and antiabortion groups began building as soon as Roe v. Wade was passed in a powerful movement to repeal it.
Anti-Feminism
There was a lot of conservative backlash to women’s liberation. Feminism seemed to epitomize what was wrong with all of these protest movements and challenges to the status quo. Traditional sex roles were seen as the foundation of society, and everything valuable in society—the family, church, fidelity, loyalty to country, love of parents—was based on men and women knowing their place and working together. Feminism seemed to be an attack on the fabric of society.
For women concerned with preserving traditional sex roles, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) symbolized all that was dangerous in the feminist movement. If the ERA became law, all the differences between the sexes would be abolished, destructing all of the institutions that had been built on those differences. If feminists had their way, women would compete with men for dominance and self-assertion rather than uniting with men for the greater good of the family unit. Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative Republican, led the movement against the ERA. Anti-ERA groups focused on mobilizing grassroots constituencies in each state to petition their state legislatures not to ratify the ERA.
Listen to a short audio clip from an interview with Schlafly to understand her point of view.
Organizations like STOP-ERA (STOP: Stop Taking Our Privileges), WWWW (Women Who Want to Be Women), and FLAG (Family, Liberty, and God) had a common theme: defend the family and preserve the differences between the sexes. Schlafly argued that if the ERA were successful, husbands would no longer be required to provide for wives, alimony would cease, and protective labor laws for women would be eliminated. Anti-ERA activists warned of “desexregation,” where men and women would be forced to share everything, even combat duty in war.
Although the ERA passed both the House and the Senate, the amendment was never ratified. Some of the same themes in the anti-ERA movement showed up in the anti-abortion movement. The National Right to Life group argued that pro-choice activists were attacking motherhood, and devaluing the sanctity of life. (We’ll examine this movement further in Module 27.)
Poll #3
In your opinion, which of the following aspects of the women’s movement seemed the most threatening to anti-feminists? The goal of having society treat women as individuals equal to men? Or the notion of private, personal life being "political"? Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.
Part II: Gay Liberation and the Anti-Gay Movement
Gay and lesbian men and women had been organizing for many years before the social upheaval of the 1960s and 70s. Gay men in Los Angeles formed the Mattachine Society in 1950, to publicize police brutality and misconduct towards gay men. In 1956, lesbians in San Francisco formed the Daughters of Bilitis, to bring awareness to the presence of lesbians and their rights under the law.
However, many historians and activists remember the raid and subsequent protests at the Stonewall Inn as the beginning of a more visible and vocal gay rights movement. The Stonewall Riots transformed what was a small movement into a mass movement that was more militant, and adopted language of civil rights and self-determination. In Part II, we’ll examine the impact of Stonewall and subsequent anti-gay backlash.
On June 27, 1969, the New York Police Department raided and arrested patrons at the city’s largest and most popular gay bar, the Stonewall Inn. The police at this time frequently raided gay bars for operating without NY State Liquor Authority licenses, which the bars were often refused because they served gay people. The raid triggered a series of skirmishes, protests, and demonstrations that lasted six days. Confrontations between members of the LGBT community and the police over the course of the six days reflected a larger climate of hostility and frustration at frequent harassment of gays by police.
After being evicted from the bar, a large crowd formed as the patrons were joined by other people in the area. The New York Post reported that hundreds of people in the crowd were shouting things like “Gay Power!” and “We Want Freedom!” The Stonewall Riots are referred to as the sort of “Montgomery Bus Boycott” of the gay rights movement, triggering parades and demonstrations all over the country.
Watch footage from the first pride march, held in 1970 on the one-year anniversary of Stonewall, from the Library of Congress:
Leonard Matlovich
The climate of civil rights activism and other freedom struggles provided a foundation for other oppressed groups to start speaking out about their rights in the United States. One example of this was the acknowledgment of gays in the US military. Leonard Matlovich, a sergeant in the Air Force, who had served three tours of duty in Vietnam, used the history of the civil rights movement to articulate his demand for recognition of the presence of gay men in the military.
Matlovich was a highly decorated, successful and respected officer in the Air Force. In 1975, he decided to challenge the ban on gays in the military and came out to his superior officer in a letter. When he was handed the letter, Matlovich’s superior asked “What does this mean?” and Matlovich replied, “It means Brown v. Board of Education.” Matlovich received hundreds of letters of support from gay soldiers, sailors, and veterans across the country, telling him about their undesirable discharges because they were gay.
Matlovich v. Secretary of the Air Force made it to the US District Court in Washington, DC in 1976. His lawyers argued that the Air Force policy was arbitrary, and a denial of due process and equal protection, many of the same arguments used to win Brown. The judge presiding over the case made the connection explicit, stating:
“No one…who has studied the civil rights movement and the striving of blacks for opportunity will ever fail to recognize that the Armed Forces, more than any branch of government and far ahead of the private sector of this country, led to erasing the stigma of race discrimination…Here another opportunity is presented.”
However, the judge ended up following precedent and referring the issue to the Pentagon. Matlovich accepted a final settlement and an honorable discharge five years later. The federal government ended up hardening its opposition to gays in the military.
Anti-Gay Movement
The critiques against feminism easily translated into critiques against homosexuality, which seemed to disrupt gender and sex roles even further. A friend of Phyllis Schlafly’s, Anita Bryant, spearheaded the anti-gay movement in the 1970s. Bryant was a singer and a minor celebrity, appearing on national TV as the spokesperson for Florida orange juice. Dade County, Florida, where she lived, was considering a bill that protected people from discrimination based on sexual orientation. Bryant used her powers of celebrity to appeal to county legislators to vote against the bill, and when this failed, she formed the first formal anti-gay movement organization in 1977 called “Save Our Children.”
In addition, California state senator John Briggs, a Republican from Fullerton, put Proposition 6 on the 1978 California ballot. (Hear John Briggs interviewed on KFSO radio in 1978 on Prop 6 here.) Prop 6 would have made homosexual individuals (as well as those who expressed support of gay rights) ineligible for employment in the state’s public school system, stating explicitly that any currently employed gay and lesbian teachers, counselors, and administrators must be fired. Briggs was clearly influenced by Bryant, especially because he claimed that the importance of children’s safety justified the denial of equal access to employment.
In addition, Briggs was responding to the election of Harvey Milk as San Francisco Supervisor. Milk was the first openly gay elected official in the US. Prop 6 was not passed by the voters, but did inspire an organized campaign of lesbian and gay activists to defeat the measure, led by Milk. (You'll read a speech by Milk for this module!)
If you're interested, listen to an aptly timed episode of the podcast, This Day in Esoteric Political History on the assassination of Harvey Milk, available here.
Poll #4
In your opinion, which of the following represented more of a challenge to the American status quo? The Equal Rights Amendment? Matlovich's challenge of the ban on gays in the military? Or the NWRO's assertion that mothering is a job that should be compensated financially? Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.
Part III: Environmentalism and the American Indian Movement
Rachel Carson and Silent Spring
Rachel Carson’s 1962 bestseller, Silent Spring is credited with providing the spark that ignited the environmental movement. Silent Spring exposed the effects of DDT, which was widely used by homeowners and farmers against mosquitos and other insects. She related how DDT killed birds and animals and also caused sickness among humans.
Existing conservation groups like the Sierra Club saw their membership rolls rise drastically, and other groups sprang into existence to alert the country to the dangers of water contamination, air pollution, lead in paint, and the extinction of animal species.
This led to the passage of numerous legislative measures to protect the environment, including the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and the Endangered Species Act. April 22, 1970 was also the first Earth Day, where millions of people participated in rallies, concerts, and teach-ins around the country.
For the second Earth Day, the “Keep America Beautiful” Campaign released a public service announcement that has become quite iconic. It was featured in television spots and on billboards around the country. It featured the “crying Indian,” an actor named Iron Eyes Cody, who wasn’t actually of Native ancestry. (Watch the ad below, it is less than 1 minute.)
For a longer history and more context of the concept of "litter" and the Keep American Beautiful campaign, I recommend this episode of NPR's Throughline podcast!
The “crying Indian” PSA was not the only example of how members of various freedom struggles appropriated Native imagery and rhetoric to assert their own agendas. White hippies sometimes used Native people as “alternatives” or “models” for a way of life that was opposite of white culture. However, Native American demonstrations garnered support and attention from the non-Indian public, and Native activists did not turn this kind of attention away, since it expanded their platform. Although many non-Native supporters didn’t necessarily understand the nuances of the Native struggle for sovereignty and rights, they supported Native peoples’ right to organize and viewed them as justified in their struggle. Perhaps people were viewing the “ecological Indian” symbol of the “crying Indian,” and through that exposure, were becoming more receptive to actual Native American demonstrations and demands. [5]
Alcatraz Occupation
In 1969, the San Francisco Indian Center burned down. The United Bay Area Council of American Indian Affairs, as well as a group of Native college students from San Francisco State, UC Berkeley, and UCLA, joined forces and decided to take over Alcatraz Island as a replacement site. The Federal Bureau of Prisons had abandoned the prison in 1963. The coalition of Bay Area Natives and students decided to use the name “Indians of All Tribes,” reflecting the diversity of the tribal participants, but also their intention to address Native issues beyond the San Francisco area.
They composed a proclamation, offering twenty-four dollars in trade goods for the island, a satirical reference to the bargain struck for Manhattan in the seventeenth century. They noted with irony that Alcatraz was particularly suitable for Indian land, because it lacked fresh running water, adequate sanitation, health care facilities, and natural resources. They wanted to build a Center for Native American Studies, an American Indian Spiritual Center, an Indian Center of Ecology, and a training school on the island.
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The takeover began on November 20, 1969. Media coverage materialized immediately. Protestors occupied the island for nineteen months, until the last occupiers were removed on June 11, 1971. With the help of non-Native members of the waterfront community of Sausalito, the Indians of All Tribes were able to get to the island and receive food and water, circumventing a Coast Guard blockade.
Many of these non-Natives were hippies who felt some sense of “cultural brotherhood” with Native people, who acted in political solidarity. Non-Native radicals from Berkeley also joined in efforts to bring supplies and more Native people to the island, sometimes engaging in confrontations with the Coast Guard. The occupiers were also supported by churches and religious organizations, politicians, labor unions, and individuals. Letters with checks ranging from one to one hundred dollars arrived from across the country. [6]
Correspondents wrote messages of encouragement such as:
“Give not one inch to the government. There shall be no more Sand Creeks or Wounded Knee Massacres.”
“You have a lot more support than you realize, and you have the publicity now. Strike while the iron is hot.”
The Nixon administration also received letters from constituents urging capitulation with their demands. Six months into the occupation, the Interior Department informed the White House that the Secretary of the Interior was receiving thirty to forty letters a day, with over 95% of them favoring the demands of the Indians of All Tribes.
Wounded Knee
American Indian activists used the support and attention they had received to educate the American public and and the government about issues facing Native Americans. Namely, Indian activists wanted recognition of treaties, sovereignty for their tribal nations, and self-determination within their communities. They wanted major reforms in Indian policy, and attention brought to conditions of poverty and unemployment on reservations. In the case of Native activism, the rhetoric wasn’t necessarily concentrated on citizenship or civil rights, but was definitely focused on rights—the right to land, to recognition of treaties, and to self-determination under the laws of those treaties.
Although Native people gained support from a wide array of people all over the nation (not just from fellow protest movements but also from churches and everyday Americans), their struggle was not as easy to grasp for non-Natives, especially since Native imagery had been utilized for so long, it has the tendency to obscure the actual demands they were making.
In 1973, a group of militant activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied Wounded Knee, a town in the Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Wounded Knee was the site of the 1890 massacre of hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children by the American military. About 200 AIM activists and supporters occupied Wounded Knee in 1973, demanding that the government honor the 371 treaties it had broken, and insisted that the regime on the reservation be changed (a group of Lakota had repudiated their leaders who they argued were in the pockets of Washington officials).
US forces encircled the area, in order to block food from entering the town. The siege lasted for 71 days and resulted in violent skirmishes that left one Native American dead. In the end, Washington DC did decide to reexamine treaty obligations, although nothing really came of their promises and there was quite a bit of backlash in Congress, especially from western states. Wounded Knee attracted sympathy and support, even though most people who wrote either President Nixon or to the activists didn’t express precise knowledge of what Native people were fighting for.
In 1973, Marlon Brando won an Oscar for Best Actor, for his performance in The Godfather. In his place, Brando, a longtime supporter of Native issues, asked Sacheen Littlefeather (Apache) to make a statement supporting the occupation of Wounded Knee and criticizing how Hollywood had stereotyped Native people. See the video of her speech at the Oscars, below. (You can also listen to Brando explain his choice in this clip.)
Part IV: Conservative Ideology and the "Silent Majority"
We'll end this (very long! 😬) module with a look to the conservative movement. For the past several modules, we’ve examined the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s. But, the protest movements of the era were not all left-oriented. There was also a significant, growing conservative movement, of which anti-ERA activism and anti-abortion activists were a part. Part IV provides more context of this larger conservative movement and ideology.
Grassroots Conservatism
In 1964, Barry Goldwater, a senator from Arizona, ran for president as the Republican Party’s nominee. His presidential campaign gained significant support in the South and in the expanding suburbs of southern California and the southwest. Orange County became the nationally known center of grassroots conservative activism. Goldwater’s campaign failed to beat Johnson, and caused divisions within the Republican party, as he articulated quite extreme views.
In his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination, Goldwater stated, “The Good Lord raised up this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free…not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism.” He spoke out against “moral decline,” championed the expansion of free enterprise and competition, and celebrated state and local over federal control.
Goldwater also opposed “federally-sponsored inverse discrimination whether by the shifting of jobs or the abandonment of neighborhood schools for reasons of race.” (See the poster below.) We’ll examine what “neighborhood schools” means in Module 27. [7]
Goldwater’s extremism did not appeal to everyone. Lyndon Jonson won 486 electoral college votes, while Goldwater received only 52. Never before had a president won an election so decisively. But the support Goldwater received from some grassroots conservatives was significant, and led to a re-articulation of their goals and visions later on.
Conservative Worldview of the 1960s
The conservative worldview of the 1960s can be characterized by two major themes:
Distrust of the centralized state: An expansion of state power, such as the expansion of the welfare state and governmental regulation of the economy, represented a threat to the capitalist economy. Conservatives believed that economic freedom was at the heart of individual freedom and that individuals should hold unrestricted rights to their property and control over their income. Therefore the redistribution of property through taxation was perceived as a form of socialism. Many middle- and upper-middle class Americans in places like Orange County believed that their success was due to their own entrepreneurial efforts, and they sought to maintain control over what they perceived as the “fruits of their own labor.”
Commitment to an objective moral order: The shifting trends of the 1960s disparaged a set of social and cultural norms conservatives cherished. (For example, think of the challenges posed to gender norms by the feminist movement.) Christianity played a large role in shaping this moral order. Conservatives criticized liberals for finding sociological explanations for social and economic problems. Instead, they pointed to a decline in morality, religiosity and righteous living as the reason behind problems like crime. [8]
Most importantly, conservatives believed that America’s problems were not the result of an inherent limitations of a capitalist economy or inequalities in American life, but rather were due to liberal tampering with an otherwise harmonious, self-sustaining system.
After Goldwater’s defeat, the language used by conservatives became much less extreme. Abandoning direct references to racial superiority and inferiority, conservative activists and politicians instead appealed to a desire for “law and order,” “freedom of association,” and extolled the evils of welfare. These were phrases that had strong racial overtones, and spoke to the sense of frustration and fear many people had when looking at the radical demands these protest movements were making and the “threats” they posed to the status quo. For example, the Watts Rebellion was viewed as an example of the “lawlessness,” “immorality,” and “social decay” brought about by the more permissive society and liberal policies.
Nixon's "Silent Majority"
In a 1969 speech to the American public, Nixon first laid out his plan to win the Vietnam War. Then he turned his speech to the young people protesting the war:
“And I want to end the war for another reason. I want to end it so that the energy and dedication of you, our young people, now too often directed into bitter hatred against those responsible for the war, can be turned to the great challenges of peace, a better life for all Americans, a better life for all the people on this earth.”
Watch this brief (1.5 minute) clip of Nixon's speech, below:
Word Cloud #1
Who was Nixon's audience? Who was the "silent majority"? Anything else you notice/wonder about his rhetoric?
Answer in the embedded word cloud below, or access it here.
We'll pick up with the "silent majority" in Module 27...and consider just how "silent" they were.
Conclusion:
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, activists were not only challenging the structural inequalities in the United States, but also framing their critiques in the language of individual rights and access to full citizenship, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or class status.
Women challenged the social movements of the 1960s-1970s to consider how the experiences of gender intersected with those of race and class.
The social and cultural climate of protest in the 1960s-1970s contributed to the rise of movements for gay rights, welfare rights, women’s liberation, environmentalism, and the rights of Native Americans, who were able to frame their own struggles in the language of the civil rights and freedom struggles.
Conservative citizens saw many aspects of the freedom movements as a potential threat to the traditional family structure. At the same time, they appropriated the language of the civil rights movement to claim their own rights as individual citizens.
Citations:
[1] Marisa Chappell, The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 53.
[2] Annelise Orleck, Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005), 95.
[3] See Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States (New York; London: Routledge, 2005).
[4] See Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 99-100.
[5] Sherry L. Smith, Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 7.
[6] Smith, Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power, 22.
[7] For more on the grassroots Goldwater campaign, see Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), 112-142.
[8] McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 149.
In your opinion, is consciousness raising (changing personal and individual worldviews and opinions) an effective method for creating lasting social change?
I answered yes to this question because I believe at many points in history there has been a trend of bringing awareness to a social issue that has led to beneficial outcomes. As well as, has increased lasting social change. I think that by raising an individuals' consciousness about a social issue increases the likelihood of change because without an understanding of various worldviews and opinions there would be widespread ignorance. Being able to understand all aspects of the world around us helps to raise empathy and instill significant ideas into the population that ultimately aid in change.
By changing how we think and see the world, we can start to come up with ways to change and approach topics. Changing our daily lives and interacting with people builds up small changes within our society. Your personal actions are more visible than your words, although that starts with a change in ourselves first. From not supporting businesses and institutions that go against our freedoms, and beliefs. In a way, we must become aware of our surroundings and realize what we can change right now. Then following up with communicating grievances that other community members feel or face. This approach may even reveal other issues that we may not have known, such as pay gaps, and specific treatment of…
In your opinion, which of the following represents the most significant impact of the protest movements of the 1960s-1970s to people in 2020?
I chose "The fact that these movements led to significant legislative change which still affects us today" because the movements actually made actions that still affect us. Rather than just getting the idea of it.
In your opinion, which of the following aspects of the women’s movement seemed the most threatening to anti-feminists? The goal of having society treat women as individuals equal to men? Or the notion of private, personal life being "political"?
I chose the goal of having society treat women as individuals equal to men because as mentioned in the blog post, I would change the family structure, also women and men will share the same decision-making power, also family duty.
In your opinion, is consciousness-raising (changing personal and individual worldviews and opinions) an effective method for creating lasting social change?
I believe yes it is an effective method. In order to create a lasting social change, people in the country need to be aware of the issues around them and be able to make a decision and form their opinions. This also encourages people to look at their lives and see what fit them better.