Society
Racism
BACKGROUND
Because large segments of the populace–particularly African-Americans, women, and men without property–have not always been accorded full citizenship rights in the American Republic, civil rights movements, or “freedom struggles,” have been a frequent feature of the nation’s history. In particular, movements to obtain civil rights for black Americans have had special historical significance. Such movements have not only secured citizenship rights for blacks but have also redefined prevailing conceptions of the nature of civil rights and the role of government in protecting these rights. The most important achievements of African-American civil rights movements have been the post-Civil War constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and established the citizenship status of blacks and the judicial decisions and legislation based on these amendments, notably the Supreme Court’s Brown v.Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Moreover, these legal changes greatly affected the opportunities available to women, nonblack minorities, disabled individuals, and other victims of discrimination.
Did You Know?The 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott, a protest against segregated public facilities in Alabama, was led by Martin Luther King Jr. and lasted for 381 days.
The modern period of civil rights reform can be divided into several phases, each beginning with isolated, small-scale protests and ultimately resulting in the emergence of new, more militant movements, leaders, and organizations. The Brown decision demonstrated that the litigation strategy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) could undermine the legal foundations of southern segregationist practices, but the strategy worked only when blacks, acting individually or in small groups, assumed the risks associated with crossing racial barriers. Thus, even after the Supreme Court declared that public school segregation was unconstitutional, black activism was necessary to compel the federal government to implement the decision and extend its principles to all areas of public life rather than simply in schools. During the 1950s and 1960s, therefore,NAACP–sponsored legal suits and legislative lobbying were supplemented by an increasingly massive and militant social movement seeking a broad range of social changes.
—History Chanel: Civil Rights Movement
Gender Roles
In the 1960s, deep cultural changes were altering the role of women in American society. More females than ever were entering the paid workforce, and this increased the dissatisfaction among women regarding huge gender disparities in pay and advancement and sexual harassment at the workplace. One of the most profound changes was happening in the bedroom. By the end of the Sixties, more than 80 percent of wives of childbearing age were using contraception after the federal government in 1960 approved a birth control pill. This freed many women from unwanted pregnancy and gave them many more choices, and freedom, in their personal lives.
Gradually, Americans came to accept some of the basic goals of the Sixties feminists: equal pay for equal work, an end to domestic violence, curtailment of severe limits on women in managerial jobs, an end to sexual harassment, and sharing of responsibility for housework and child rearing. .
"The Sixties were an edgy time of transition, change, and confusion, " observed journalist Kati Marton inHidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our Recent History. "In 1963 Betty Friedan published her book The Feminine Mystique, in which she claimed that 'the problem that has no name burst like a boil through the image of the happy American housewife.' The same year, an American woman, the physicist Maria Goepper-Mayer, won a Nobel Prize for the first time. The civil rights and antiwar movements politicized and radicalized a growing number of women bombarded with contradictory expectations and images about work and family. While Lesley Gore's hit song 'You Don't Own Me' climbed the charts, Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best dominated television. One in 5 women with children under 6 and nearly one fourth of women whose children were over 16 held paid jobs in the Sixties. Their pay, however, was 60 percent of the male rate. Though equal pay legislation passed in 1963, that did not solve the problem of low pay in jobs that were classed as female."
In 1966, the National Organization for Women was formed. In 1968, feminists protested at the Miss America contest in Atlantic City, arguing that the pageant was sexist.
Over time, the feminist trends of the Sixties took hold and over the subsequent decades changed relationships between the genders. "Most young women, at least in the middle class, expected to have access to the same careers and to receive the same compensation as men," wrote historians Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin in America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. "It was no longer surprising to see women leaders in formerly 'men's' fields like television production (Oprah Winfrey), diplomacy (Secretary of State Madeleine Albright), or the Supreme Court (Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Even conservative Republicans recruited female candidates and urged them to be as aggressive on the stump as men."
— The 1960s: A Decade of Change for Women
Sexual Revolution
As the feminist movement evolved in the late 1960s, women started challenging their exclusion from politics and the workplace. They also began to question traditional sexualroles.
Immorality -- or Empowerment?
At the core of the sexual revolution was the concept -- radical at the time -- that women, just like men, enjoyed sex and had sexual needs. Feminists asserted that single women had the same sexual desires and should have the same sexual freedoms as everyone else in society. For feminists, the sexual revolution was about female sexual empowerment. For social conservatives, the sexual revolution was an invitation for promiscuity and an attack on the very foundation of American society -- the family. Feminists and social conservatives quickly clashed over morality of the "sexual revolution," and the Pill was drawn into the debate.
The Pill as Scapegoat
As female sexuality and premarital sex moved out of the shadows, the Pill became a convenient scapegoat for the sexual revolution among social conservatives. Many argued that the Pill was, in fact, responsible for the sexual revolution. The Pill's revolutionary breakthrough, that it allowed women to separate sex from procreation, was what conservatives feared most. The theory was that the risk of pregnancy and the stigma that went along with it prevented single women from having sex and married women from having affairs. Since women on the Pill could control their fertility, single and married women could have sex anytime, anyplace and with anyone without the risk of pregnancy.
The Double Standard
Although it was acceptable for single men to have sex, the idea of young women behaving in the same way disturbed many in America. In a 1966 feature on the Pill and morality, the magazine U.S. News and World Report asked, "Is the Pill regarded as a license for promiscuity? Can its availability to all women of childbearing age lead to sexual anarchy?" The author Pearl Buck took an even more dire doomsday approach to the Pill when she warned in a 1968 Reader's Digest article: "Everyone knows what The Pill is. It is a small object -- yet its potential effect upon our society many be even more devastating than the nuclear bomb."
Technology and Behavior
In response to conservative attacks on the Pill, the developers of the Pill, John Rock and Gregory Pincus, argued that technology does not determine behavior. Despite the veneer of a chaste society and socially conservative morality, there was clinical research to back up their views. Studies have shown that unmarried women were having sex prior to the advent of the Pill. They were just using different and less effective forms of contraception. With the Pill, women were able to engage in the same behavior -- but with a dramatically reduced risk of pregnancy.
The Rise of a Singles Culture
Despite the social conservatives' agenda, as the decade progressed, societal emphases on virginity and marriage were slowly replaced by a celebration of single life and sexual exploration. Hugh Hefner put out a racy new magazine called Playboy that promoted bachelorhood and the swinging single life style. Helen Gurley Brown's book Sex and the Single Girl championed career women and open sexuality, effectively destroying the notion of the "old maid."
Changes in Values
In the midst of the civil rights and anti-war movements, the young generation of the 1960s questioned authority and rejected their parents' values. For many who came of age in this era, the traditional notion that a woman wouldn't be able to find a husband if she weren't a virgin was absurd. Though social conservatives blamed these sweeping changes in American values on the oral contraceptive, most historians now believe that in reality the Pill did not cause the sexual revolution in America. Rather, the two collided.
—PBS: The Pill
BACKGROUND
Because large segments of the populace–particularly African-Americans, women, and men without property–have not always been accorded full citizenship rights in the American Republic, civil rights movements, or “freedom struggles,” have been a frequent feature of the nation’s history. In particular, movements to obtain civil rights for black Americans have had special historical significance. Such movements have not only secured citizenship rights for blacks but have also redefined prevailing conceptions of the nature of civil rights and the role of government in protecting these rights. The most important achievements of African-American civil rights movements have been the post-Civil War constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and established the citizenship status of blacks and the judicial decisions and legislation based on these amendments, notably the Supreme Court’s Brown v.Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Moreover, these legal changes greatly affected the opportunities available to women, nonblack minorities, disabled individuals, and other victims of discrimination.
Did You Know?The 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott, a protest against segregated public facilities in Alabama, was led by Martin Luther King Jr. and lasted for 381 days.
The modern period of civil rights reform can be divided into several phases, each beginning with isolated, small-scale protests and ultimately resulting in the emergence of new, more militant movements, leaders, and organizations. The Brown decision demonstrated that the litigation strategy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) could undermine the legal foundations of southern segregationist practices, but the strategy worked only when blacks, acting individually or in small groups, assumed the risks associated with crossing racial barriers. Thus, even after the Supreme Court declared that public school segregation was unconstitutional, black activism was necessary to compel the federal government to implement the decision and extend its principles to all areas of public life rather than simply in schools. During the 1950s and 1960s, therefore,NAACP–sponsored legal suits and legislative lobbying were supplemented by an increasingly massive and militant social movement seeking a broad range of social changes.
—History Chanel: Civil Rights Movement
Gender Roles
In the 1960s, deep cultural changes were altering the role of women in American society. More females than ever were entering the paid workforce, and this increased the dissatisfaction among women regarding huge gender disparities in pay and advancement and sexual harassment at the workplace. One of the most profound changes was happening in the bedroom. By the end of the Sixties, more than 80 percent of wives of childbearing age were using contraception after the federal government in 1960 approved a birth control pill. This freed many women from unwanted pregnancy and gave them many more choices, and freedom, in their personal lives.
Gradually, Americans came to accept some of the basic goals of the Sixties feminists: equal pay for equal work, an end to domestic violence, curtailment of severe limits on women in managerial jobs, an end to sexual harassment, and sharing of responsibility for housework and child rearing. .
"The Sixties were an edgy time of transition, change, and confusion, " observed journalist Kati Marton inHidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our Recent History. "In 1963 Betty Friedan published her book The Feminine Mystique, in which she claimed that 'the problem that has no name burst like a boil through the image of the happy American housewife.' The same year, an American woman, the physicist Maria Goepper-Mayer, won a Nobel Prize for the first time. The civil rights and antiwar movements politicized and radicalized a growing number of women bombarded with contradictory expectations and images about work and family. While Lesley Gore's hit song 'You Don't Own Me' climbed the charts, Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best dominated television. One in 5 women with children under 6 and nearly one fourth of women whose children were over 16 held paid jobs in the Sixties. Their pay, however, was 60 percent of the male rate. Though equal pay legislation passed in 1963, that did not solve the problem of low pay in jobs that were classed as female."
In 1966, the National Organization for Women was formed. In 1968, feminists protested at the Miss America contest in Atlantic City, arguing that the pageant was sexist.
Over time, the feminist trends of the Sixties took hold and over the subsequent decades changed relationships between the genders. "Most young women, at least in the middle class, expected to have access to the same careers and to receive the same compensation as men," wrote historians Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin in America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. "It was no longer surprising to see women leaders in formerly 'men's' fields like television production (Oprah Winfrey), diplomacy (Secretary of State Madeleine Albright), or the Supreme Court (Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Even conservative Republicans recruited female candidates and urged them to be as aggressive on the stump as men."
— The 1960s: A Decade of Change for Women
Sexual Revolution
As the feminist movement evolved in the late 1960s, women started challenging their exclusion from politics and the workplace. They also began to question traditional sexualroles.
Immorality -- or Empowerment?
At the core of the sexual revolution was the concept -- radical at the time -- that women, just like men, enjoyed sex and had sexual needs. Feminists asserted that single women had the same sexual desires and should have the same sexual freedoms as everyone else in society. For feminists, the sexual revolution was about female sexual empowerment. For social conservatives, the sexual revolution was an invitation for promiscuity and an attack on the very foundation of American society -- the family. Feminists and social conservatives quickly clashed over morality of the "sexual revolution," and the Pill was drawn into the debate.
The Pill as Scapegoat
As female sexuality and premarital sex moved out of the shadows, the Pill became a convenient scapegoat for the sexual revolution among social conservatives. Many argued that the Pill was, in fact, responsible for the sexual revolution. The Pill's revolutionary breakthrough, that it allowed women to separate sex from procreation, was what conservatives feared most. The theory was that the risk of pregnancy and the stigma that went along with it prevented single women from having sex and married women from having affairs. Since women on the Pill could control their fertility, single and married women could have sex anytime, anyplace and with anyone without the risk of pregnancy.
The Double Standard
Although it was acceptable for single men to have sex, the idea of young women behaving in the same way disturbed many in America. In a 1966 feature on the Pill and morality, the magazine U.S. News and World Report asked, "Is the Pill regarded as a license for promiscuity? Can its availability to all women of childbearing age lead to sexual anarchy?" The author Pearl Buck took an even more dire doomsday approach to the Pill when she warned in a 1968 Reader's Digest article: "Everyone knows what The Pill is. It is a small object -- yet its potential effect upon our society many be even more devastating than the nuclear bomb."
Technology and Behavior
In response to conservative attacks on the Pill, the developers of the Pill, John Rock and Gregory Pincus, argued that technology does not determine behavior. Despite the veneer of a chaste society and socially conservative morality, there was clinical research to back up their views. Studies have shown that unmarried women were having sex prior to the advent of the Pill. They were just using different and less effective forms of contraception. With the Pill, women were able to engage in the same behavior -- but with a dramatically reduced risk of pregnancy.
The Rise of a Singles Culture
Despite the social conservatives' agenda, as the decade progressed, societal emphases on virginity and marriage were slowly replaced by a celebration of single life and sexual exploration. Hugh Hefner put out a racy new magazine called Playboy that promoted bachelorhood and the swinging single life style. Helen Gurley Brown's book Sex and the Single Girl championed career women and open sexuality, effectively destroying the notion of the "old maid."
Changes in Values
In the midst of the civil rights and anti-war movements, the young generation of the 1960s questioned authority and rejected their parents' values. For many who came of age in this era, the traditional notion that a woman wouldn't be able to find a husband if she weren't a virgin was absurd. Though social conservatives blamed these sweeping changes in American values on the oral contraceptive, most historians now believe that in reality the Pill did not cause the sexual revolution in America. Rather, the two collided.
—PBS: The Pill