FREE ESSAY ON THE 1960'S

THE 1960'S

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The 1960's were a time of great change in American society characterized by ethnic
consciousness and civil rights, women's rights and female liberalism, anti-war
demonstrations, student protests, and the genesis of the counterculture. A noted speaker
once said, "The Cold War, conformity, and consumerism provided the background for the
social protests movement of the 1960's. The cause of the protest movements were much more
deeply rooted in U.S. institutions and history." Although the protest movements of the
1960's were deeply rooted in U.S. institutions and history of the 1950's, the Cold War,
conformity, and consumerism provided much more than a background for these movements, in
a way they were the reason behind them. 
In the 1950's politicians constantly used the Cold War as a threat to the lifestyle of
the American people-a conformist lifestyle dominated by consumerism in which families for
the first time in history had the purchasing power of credit. Families now had the power
to own homes, which resulted in the construction of ethnic communities and they had the
ability to afford luxuries, which they could never dream of before, these include cars,
televisions, and other new appliances. This ideal lifestyle was championed on television
sitcoms such as Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best and it included the above
mentioned luxuries, furthermore it illustrated the breakdown of the family and how it was
supposed to appear. The shows stressed the breadwinner and head of the family as the
father, the mother as the ideal housewife, taking diligent care that all the housework be

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done before her husband arrives from work, and the children as well-mannered and
respectful citizens upon whose problems the shows usually center. In essence the shows
stressed the importance of family and family life, and what threatened the
family-Communism, Cold War-the Communist that could be living next door! McCarthy and
McCarthyism, in essence, gave the people of the 1950's a cause, a cause of preservation
characterized by scare tactics in which he (McCarthy) constantly accused others as being
Communists who sell secrets to the Soviets and thus threaten the livelihood of Americana.

As the younger generation of the 1950's grew older, however, disenchantment with the
idealized American lifestyle, which had in some cases already been around, seemed to
grow. In Takin' It to the Streets, the author writes that young people "resist the
efforts of adults to shape and control their maturation" (9). The refusal of children to
follow in their parents' footsteps is one of the first signs of a generation gap growing
between the parents of the 50's and what will be the children of the 60's. A generation
gap that is characterized not by conformity, but rather change, sweeping change that
alters the course of America and American history. Growing men in the family saw through
their fathers that the roles they would play, in the idealized family, were not very
fulfilling. This was evident in the high rate of divorce, alcoholism, heart disease, and
other personal and social disorders prevalent among "breadwinners" (Breines, 10). Young
women too saw no bright future if they followed the female path so championed in the
1950's. A path that only led to two titles: wife and mother, a path in which there was no
future outside of the family. The result of these young peoples' resistance to the trends
set forth 
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by their parents were the social movements of the 1960's-movements that were reactions
against the conformity instilled into the American people through the threat of the Cold
War and Communism. The cause of the 1960's was not one of preservation, but rather
change, for people of the 60's no longer saw America as an ideal place, but rather as a
place that demanded change. No longer was the focus on family, instead young people of
the 1960's focused on the problems of America and American society. 
While white America did not wake up to social issues (on a large scale) until the 1960's,
many black Americans started to champion civil rights, with limited success, in the
1950's. These victories came mainly from the NAACP who fought black disenfranchisement in
the realm of education. In 1954, the NAACP won its battle on school segregation in the
Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which declared
school segregation unconstitutional (Breines, 7). Even with the victory, resistance to
desegregation was very strong, in many cases the end result was even death for blacks.
The strong resistance of whites led to more and more protests by blacks including sit-ins
and breaking of white/black rules of where one can sit, eat, or use the bathroom. These
demonstrations coupled with non-violence mad it a very attractive movement for young
white Americans to throw their hats into. Furthermore the fact that the NAACP was
successful in it's desegregation of schools let everyone know that change was not out of
the realm of possibilities. All these things gave the young people of the 1960's a cause,
a cause that was within reach, and a cause that they could, in some way, call their own.
The SNCC, especially, provided a vehicle which white and black students alike could use
in their efforts to sure up equality for the black race. 
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The success of some of their demonstrations, boycotts, and sit-ins helped members of the
SNCC realize just how powerful they were and could be. This fact led female members of
the SNCC to go one step further, one step beyond what was expected; they dared to
challenge female roles within the actual group and furthermore within society. 
Evidence of women's efforts to liberate themselves from roles assigned to them by society
comes from the "SNCC Position Paper", which can be found in Breines' Takin' It to the
Streets. The paper was written anonymously, probably by a female, in order to show how
unfairly women were assigned roles in the group. Some of the biases mentioned in the
paper included an instance in which a veteran of two years' work for the SNCC spent her
days doing clerical work for others in her group. Another instance sited that all the
leadership positions in the group mainly went to male, there wasn't any case in which a
woman had the final say (45). This is a glaring example that shows the genesis of women's
consciousness coming from the civil rights movement. By first challenging their roles in
protests movements, women were able to extend their gripes to the national spotlight and
get the attention and respect that they deserved.
The sweeping changes that occurred in the 1960's did not come out of the blue; they were
a chain reaction that stemmed from the threat of the Cold War, conformity, and civil
rights movements of the 1950's. The idealized view of the American family provided young
white Americans with a cause of rebellion against the status quo, a status quo that
supported the disenfranchisement of blacks. This coupled with the newfound success of the
NAACP led to groups like the SNCC, which attracted both whites and blacks and united them
under one cause-civil rights. Furthermore, this led successful women in the 
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(SNCC) group to challenge their roles in the movement and eventually paved the way for
the women's rights movement so prevalent in the 1960's. Thus the protest movements of the
1960's were indeed rooted in the history and institutions of the 1950's which were
characterized by the threat of Cold War, conformity, and consumerism.
Bibliography
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