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The 1960s in America: Crash Course US History #40

From: U.S. History by Crash Course

In which John Green teaches you about a time of relative tumult in the United States, the 1960s. America was changing rapidly in the 1960s, and rights movements were at the forefront of those changes. Civil Rights were dominant, but the 60s also saw growth in the Women's Movement, the LGBT rights movement, the Latino rights movement, and the American Indian movement. Also, Americans began to pay a bit more attention to the environment. All this change happened against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Rise of Conservatism. It was just wild. John will teach you about sit-ins, Freedom Rides, The March on Washington, MLK, JFK, LBJ, and NOW. Man, that is a lot of initialisms. And one acronym.

Full Transcript

The 1960s in America Crash Course US History 40

speaker01 00:00:00

Hi I'm John Green, this is Crash Course us history and today we're going to talk about the 1009 hundred S Mr Green Green great, the decade made famous by the narcissists who lived through it. He me from the fast. Finally you and I agree about something wholeheartedly, but while I don't wish to indulge the baby boomers fantasies about their centrality to world history, the 60s were an important time. I mean, there was the Cold War of Vietnam, a rising tide of conservatism. Despite Woodstock racism, there were the Kennedy's in Camelot, John Paul, George, and to a lesser extent Ringo. And of course, there was also Martin Luther King Junior.

speaker01 00:44:00

So the 1960s saw people organizing and actively working for change, both in the social order and in government. This included the student movement, the women's movement, movement for gay rights, and a push by the courts to expand rights in general. But by the end of the 1009 960 S, the antique war movement seemed to have overshadowed all the rest.

speaker01 01:01:00

So as you'll no doubt remember from last week, the civil rights movement began in the 1000 and 950 S, if not before.

speaker01 01:06:00

But many of its key moments happened in the 60s. And this really began with sits ins that took place in Greensboro. North Carolina. Black university students walked into Woolworths and waited at the lunch counters to be served, or more likely, arrested. After five months of that, those students eventually got Woolworth to serve black customers. Then, in 1961, leaders from the Congress on Racial Equality launched Freedom Rides to integrate interstate buses. Volunteers rode the buses into the Deep South, where they faced violence, including beatings and the bombing in Anniston, Alabama. Despite that, those Freedom rides also proved successful, and eventually the ICC desegregated interstate buses.

speaker01 01:42:00

In fact, by the end of the 60s, over 70000 people had taken part in demonstrations from sits ins to teach ins to marches. But they weren't all successful. Martin Luther King's year long protests in Albany, Georgia, didn't end discrimination in the city, and it took JFK ordering federal troops to escort J Medi, the class for him to attend the University of Mississippi, the University of Mississippi America's fallback college.

speaker01 02:06:00

Sorry I'm from Alabama. So the civil rights movement reached its greatest national prominence in 1963 when Martin Luther King came to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, where there had been more than 50 racially motivated bombing since World War 2. Television brought the reality of the Jim Crow South into people's homes as images of Bull Connors is police dogs and water cannons being turned on peaceful, as many of them, children horrified viewers and eventually led Kennedy to endorse the movement's goal.

speaker01 02:33:00

Probably should mention that John F Kennedy was president of the United States, the time having been elected in 1960. He was assassinated in 1963, leading to Lyndon Johnson. All politics. Anyway. In response to these peaceful protests, Birmingham jailed Martin Luther King, where he wrote one of the great letters in American history, doesn't have a great name letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963, also saw the march on Washington, the largest public demonstration in American history up to that time where King gave his famous speech.

speaker01 03:00:00

I have a Dream King and the other organizers called for a civil rights bill and help for the poor, demanding public works, a higher minimum wage and an end to discrimination in employment, which eventually in one of the great bright spots in American history did sort of happen with the Civil Rights Act. So one reason American history teachers focus on the civil rights movement so much is that successfully brought actual legislative change after being elected president. John F Kennedy was initially cool to civil right, but to be fair, the Cold War occupied a lot of his time, what with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs and whatnot. But the demonstrations of 1000 and 960 thre E pushed John F Kennedy to support civil rights more actively, according to our dear friend the historian Eric foner, Kennedy realized that the United States simply could not declare itself the champion of freedom throughout the world while maintaining a system of racial inequality at home, so that June, he appeared on TV and called on Congress to pass a law that would banned discrimination in all public accommodations. And then he was as thanks Lee Harvey Oswald or possibly someone else, but probably Lee Harvey Oswald. So then Lyndon Johnson became president, and he pushed Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 19 9 64 the law prohibited discrimination in employment, schools, hospitals, and privately owned public places like restaurants and hotels and theaters. And it also banned discrimination on the basis of sex.

speaker01 04:21:00

The Civil Rights Act was a major moment in American legislative history, but it hardly made the United States a haven of equal, so civil rights leaders continued to push for the enfranchisement of African Americans after Freedom Summer workers registered people in Mississippi to vote. King launched a march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, in January 1965, and again television swayed public opinion in favor of the demonstrators. Thank you TV for your one and only gift to humanity just getting battle glacicavicola 65 Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which gave the federal government the power to oversee voting in places where discrimination was practiced. Two Congress also passed the Hart Seller Act, which got rid of national origin quotas and allowed Asian immigrants to immigrate to the United States. Unfortunately, the law also introduced quotas on immigrants from the Western hemisphere.

speaker01 05:10:00

Lyndon Johnson's domestic initiatives 1 960 SS 1960 five-seven are known as the Great Society. And it's possible that if he hadn't been responsible for America escalating the war in Vietnam, he might have been remembered, at least by liberals, as one of America's greatest presidents, because the Great Society expanded a lot of the promises of the New Deal, especially in the creation of health insurance programs like Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. War on poverty never go to war with a no. You will always lose. Johnson treated poverty as a social problem rather than an economic one, so instead of focusing on jobs or guaranteed income, his initiative stressed things like training that unfortunately failed to take into account shifts in the economy away from high wage union, manufacturing jobs toward more lower wage service jobs. Here's what Eric foner had to say about Johnson's accomplishments by the 1000 and 990 s, the historic gap between whites and blacks in education, income and access to skilled employment narrowed considerably, but with deindustrialization and urban decay affecting numerous families and most suburbs still being off limits to non whites people, the median wealth of white households remained 10 times greater than that of African Americans and nearly a quarter of all black children lived in poverty, while Congress was busy enacting Johnson's great society programs.

speaker01 06:29:00

The movement for African American free with let's go to the thought bubble, persistent poverty and continued discrimination in the workplace housing, education and criminal justice system might explain the shift away from immigration and toward Black Power, a celebration of African American culture and criticism of white suppression, 19 sixty-fourth the beginnings of riots in city ghettos, for instance, mostly in northern cities. The worst riots were in 1965 in Watts in Southern California. These left 35000 people dead, 900 injured and $30 million in damage. Newark and Detroit also saw devastating riots in 1000 and $967 in 19900 and sixty-eighth. Kerner Report blamed the cause of the rioting on segregation, poverty and white racism.

speaker01 07:13:00

Then there's Malcolm X, who many white people regarded as an advocate for violence, but who also called for self reliance. It's tempting to see leadership shifting from King to X as the civil rights movement became more militant. But Malcolm X was active in the early 1960s, and he was killed in 1965, three years before Martin Luther King was assassinated, before all the major shifts in emphasis toward Black power, older civil rights groups like Core abandoned integration as a goal after 1965 and started to call for Black Power.

speaker01 07:43:00

The rhetoric of Black Power could be strident, but its message of black empowerment was deeply resonant for many. Oakland's Black Panther Party did carry guns and self-defense, but they also offered a lot of neighborhood services, but the Black Power movement turned many white people away from the struggle for African Aamer to American freedom, and by the end of the 1960s, many Americans attention had shifted to the anti-war movement. Thanks, thought bubble. So it was Vietnam that really galvanized students, even though many didn't have to go to Vietnam because they had student deferments, they just really, really didn't want their friends to go the Anti War movement and the civil rights movement inspired other groups to seek an end to oppression, like Latinos organized to celebrate their heritage and end discrimination. Latino activism was like black power, but much more explicitly linked to labor justice, especially the strike efforts led by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm worker, the American Indian movement founded in 19 9 and 68 took over Alcatraz to symbolize the land that had been taken from Na Americans, and they won greater tribal control over education, economic development, and they also filed suits for restitution. And in June 1000 and 960 five-nines, police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. Members of the gay community began a series of demonstrations in 2000 and New York City, which touched off the Modern Gay Liberation movement.

speaker01 08:59:00

Oh, it's time for the mystery document. The rules here, pretty simple. I read the mystery document, guess the author. I'm either right or I get shocked. All right, we get out here, if the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, I already know it, it is surely only because of our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.

speaker01 09:25:00

Rachel Carson Silent Spring Yes, I am on such a roll. Silent Spring was a massively important book because it was the first time that anyone really described all of the astonishingly poisonous things we were putting into the air and the ground in the water. Fortunately, that's all been straightened out now, and everything that we do and make as human beings is now sustainable. What's that? Oh God?

speaker01 09:48:00

The environmental movement gained huge bipartisan support, and it resulted in important legislation during the Nixon era, including the Clean Air and Water Acts and the Endangered Species Act.

speaker01 09:57:00

And yes, I said that environmental legislation was passed during the Nixon administration, but perhaps the most significant freedom movement in terms of number of people involved in long lasting effects was the American feminist movement. This is usually said to have begun with the publication of Betty Book The Feminine Mystique, which set out to describe, quote, the problem that has no name. Turns out the name as misogyny, for Dan described a constricting social and economic system that affected mostly middle class women, but it resonated with the educated class, led to the foundation of the National Organization of Women in 1966. Participation in student and civil rights movement led many women to identify themselves as members of a group that was systemically discriminated against. And by systemic 1963, 5.8% of doctors were women and 3.7% of lawyers were women. And fewer than 10% of doctoral degrees went to women. They are more than half of the population. While Congress responded with the Equal Pay Act in 1963, younger women sought greater power and autonomy in addition to legislation.

speaker01 11:03:00

Crucially, 60s era feminists opened America to the idea that the personal is political, especially when it came to equal pay, child care, and abortion. Weirdly, the branch of government that provided.

speaker01 11:14:00

Most support to the expansion of personal freedom in the 1960s was the most conservative one. The Supreme Court, the Warren Court, handed down so many decisions expanding civil rights that the era has sometimes been called a rights revolution, expanded the protections of free speech and assembly under the First Amendment, and freedom of the press in the New York Times versus Sullivan decision, it struck down a law banning interracial marriage in the most appropriately named case ever loving versus Virginia. And although this would become a lightning rod for many conservatives, Supreme Court decisions greatly expanded the protections of people accused of crimes. Gideon versus Wainwright secured the right to an attorney map versus Ohio established the exclusionary rule under the Fourth Amendment, and Miranda v Arizona provided fodder for Channing Tatum in his great movie One Jump Street, ensuring that he would always have to say to every perp, you have the right to remain silent. But you can't silence my heart, Channing Tatum. It beats only for the but the most innovative and controversial decisions actually established a new right where none had existed in the Constitution. Griswold v Connecticut dealt with contraception, and Roe vs Wade guaranteed a woman's right to an abortion, at least in the first trimester, And those two decisions formed the basis of a new right, the right to privacy protest.

speaker01 12:28:00

The counterculture and the liberation movements continued well into the 1970s, losing steam with the end of the Vietnam War and America's economy plunging into the toilet. For many, though, the year 1968 sums up the decade 1968 began with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which stirred up the anti-war protest. Then racial violence erupted after the assassination of Martin Luther King junior on April 4, 1960, then antique war demonstrators, as well as some counterculture types, arrived in large numbers at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where they were set up by police and beaten in what was later described as a police riot, 19900 and sixty-eighth saw the Prague Spring uprising in Czechoslovakia crushed by the Soviets, and student demonstrators were killed by the police in Mexico City, where the Olympics were held and Parisian students took to the streets in widespread protests. Against, you know France, all this unrest scared a lot of people who ended up voting for Richard Nixon and his promises to return to law and order ultimately, like any decade or arbitrary historical age.

speaker01 13:29:00

The 60s defies easy categorization. Yes, there were hippies and liberation movements, but there were also reactions to those movements on this one. I'm just going to leave it up to Eric foner to summarize the decades legacy.

speaker01 13:40:00

The 1960s made possible the entrance of numerous members of racial minorities into the mainstream of American life, while leaving unsolved the problem of urban poverty. It set in motion a transformation of the status of women. It changed what Americans expected from their government, from clean air and water to medical coverage in old age. And at the same time, it undermined confidence in national leaders, relations between young and old, men and women, and white and non-sworn, along with every institution in society, changed as a result. But there's one last thing I want to emphasize. All of this was an really the result of a radical revolution. It was the result of a process that had been going on for decades. I mean, arguably a process that had been going on for hundreds of years.

speaker01 14:52:00

Crash Course perks, you can get signed posters and all kinds of things. And most importantly, you can help us keep this show free forever for everyone. Thank you again for watching. And as we say in my hometown, there's always money in the banana stand.