The Sixties
Watch the Crash Course on the 1960s in America
Watch the Crash Course on the 1960s in America
The Civil Rights movement influenced the beginning of other social movements. Most directly, women, who had been active in Civil Rights movement and/or the student movement, began to push for greater gender equality. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the provisions for gender equality in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did little to end gender discrimination. Although the laws changed, the hearts and minds of many Americans had not. The women's liberation movement had set out to gain more individual rights for women and more equal treatment.
The success of the Civil Rights movement with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not end the Civil Rights movement. Laws had changed, but not all hearts and minds had been changed. In the two primary sources below, you will see the goals and methods of King's movement as he discussed them in his "Letter from Birmingham," the year before the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. King's movement was instrumental in getting the two acts passed. In 1966 SNCC, the student wing of King's movement, shifted away from King's pro-integration policy toward a policy of self-determination. Once black people gained legal rights, SNCC posited, they could then determine their own destiny and no longer needed to rely on white allies.
Civil Rights primary sources:
Look at King's "Letter from Birmingham" (1963) and SNCC's Platform on Black Power (1966). Consider the context in which each was written. (See the timeline available through the University of Georgia's Civil Rights Digital Library at http://crdl.usg.edu/events/?Welcome ) Note that King's letter was after the sit-ins and Freedom Rides, and also after King's organization focused on Birmingham, Alabama, which had been, for the most part, untouched by the movement by that point.
The next couple of years saw major wins for the Civil Rights movement on the national level with the Johnson administration signing the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) into law. The harsh situations that protesters had faced in its attempt to broaden voting rights and challenge segregation, along with the slow progress toward racial equality even after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, led some to embrace "black power." Notwithstanding the popular perception of the "black power" movement as associated with gun-totting Black Panthers, the actual "black power" movement was more substantial, more complicated, and less violent than the popular memory would suggest.
In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. faced public criticism from white Southern ministers for his organization's use of non-violent civil disobedience in Birmingham, Alabama. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was published in The Atlantic magazine in 1963 as "The Negro Is Your Brother." Read the attached file containing excerpts of King's "Letter from Birmingham." Note that King's original letter was longer. The letter excerpts in the attached pdf file below have been extracted from King's longer letter to highlight King's purpose, method, and justification for his civil rights tactics. If you would like to view the letter in its entirety, see the Atlantic link below.
Click on the Download File link to access the excerpts of King's "Letter from Birmingham."
"Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail," 1963, edited by M. Carrigan. Source: "Martin Luther King's 'Letter From Birmingham Jail,'" The Atlantic, April 16, 2013. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/martin-luther-kings-letter-from-birmingham-jail/274668/
kings_letter_from_birmingham_jail.pdf | |
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Access SNCC's Platform on Black Power (1966) through The Sixties Project housed at the University of Virginia: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/SNCC_black_power.html
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United Farm Workers Movement:
Dolores Huerta, "Proclamation of the Delano Grape Workers for International Boycott Day," May 10, 1969, Available through Digital History. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=613 (NOTE: the first part, the Annotation, provides background information for which to understand the primary source. The "Document" is the actual primary source.)
César Chavez, Hearings Before the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, U.S. Senate, 96th Congress, 1st Session, 1997. Available through Digital History,
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=610 (NOTE: the first part, the Annotation, provides background information for which to understand the primary source. The "Document" is the actual primary source.)
What was the goal(s) of the United Farm Workers? How did they go about achieving their goals? What hindered their struggle? (Remember to support you answer based on the two primary sources. Only use the background information (such as that included in the Annotation section) to help make sense of the primary source.)
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Women's Rights and Women's Liberation:
Note that the background information is a secondary source. Use it to help put the documents in context. And keep in mind that not everything included in the mini biographies/profiles is context for the documents listed below. Actions and events that happened in the author's life after they wrote the documents below do not tell us about the context of the sources.
Excerpts from Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique, 1963:
Edited excerpt from The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, first published in 1963, reproduced, Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy, AAS website, 2006, Source: W. W. Norton & Company. https://cswa.aas.org/status/2006/JUNE2006/FemineMystique.html
For the Background on Betty Friedan, see the mini biography of her on NWHM's website at https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/betty-friedan/
Casey Hayden and Mary King's "Feminism and the Civil Rights Movement," 1965:
"Feminism and the Civil Rights Movement (1965), Casey Hayden and Mary King," From Mary King, Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Morrow, 1987), pp. 568–69, 571–74. Available through WW Norton & Company online, http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/archive/resources/documents/ch34_02.htm
For the Background on Casey Hayden, see the profile on her from the Legacy of SNCC website at http://onevotesncc.org/profile/casey-hayden/
For the Background on Mary King, see ICNC's website at https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/staff/mary-king/
How did Hayden and King differ from Friedan in regards to what they sought for women in American society? Were they speaking about all women? Or were the concerns of a particular class emphasized?
Consider the context: What was the context of each source? (In other words, who was Betty Friedan? Was she a white middle-class woman? Or a lower-class white woman? Was she a black woman who had been involved in the Civil Rights struggle? Who were Mary King and Casey Hayden?)