The Spirit of the Sixties

                         The Spirit of the Sixties

I. Civil Rights Movement:

In the post Second World War, the American south where over half the 15 million African American lived the racial situation remained largely unchanged.

The initial phase of the black protest activity in the post-Brown period began on December 1, 1955. Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white bus rider, thereby defying a southern custom that required blacks to give seats toward the front of buses to whites. When she was jailed, a black community boycott of the city's buses began. The boycott lasted more than a year, demonstrating the unity and determination of black residents and inspiring blacks elsewhere.

The two paramount leaders of black activism were: Martin Luther King & Malcolm X.

v Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as the boycott movement's most effective leader. He understood the larger significance of the boycott and quickly realized that the nonviolent tactics used by the Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi could be used by southern blacks. Although Parks and King were members of the NAACP, the Montgomery movement led to the creation in 1957 of a new regional organization, the clergy-led Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with King as its president.

During the early 1960s, King and the SCLC initiated a number of peaceful protests against segregated institutions. In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor unleashed police dogs and high-pressure fire hoses against peaceful demonstrators, many of them schoolchildren.  The images horrified the nation. King was arrested during these demonstrations and from his jail cell produced Letter from Birmingham City Jail, in which he argued that one who breaks an unjust law to arouse the consciousness of his community "is in reality expressing the highest respect for law". That August, African-American leaders organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Here, before an estimated quarter million civil rights supporters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, King offered one of the most powerful speeches in American history. Generations of schoolchildren have learned by heart lines from the I Have a Dream speech, in which King prayed for the day when people would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

v Civil Rights Act of 1964 :

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and also passed additional legislation aimed at bringing equality to African Americans, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

v Malcolm X :

Malcolm X, the activist and outspoken public voice of the Black Muslim faith, challenged the mainstream civil rights movement and the nonviolent pursuit of integration championed by Martin Luther King Jr. He urged followers to defend themselves against white aggression "by any means necessary." Born Malcolm Little, he changed his last name to X to signify his rejection of his "slave" name. Charismatic and eloquent, Malcolm became an influential leader of the Nation of Islam, which combined Islam with Black Nationalism and sought to encourage and enfranchise disadvantaged young blacks searching for confidence in segregated America. By 1966 many civil rights workers had rejected King's ideal of integration, and were calling instead for 'Black Power'

.  v The Black Panthers

The Black Panther Party was a progressive political organization that stood in the vanguard of the most powerful movement for social change in America since the Revolution of 1776 and the Civil War: that dynamic episode generally referred to as The Sixties. It is the sole black organization in the entire history of black struggle against slavery and oppression in the United States that was armed and promoted a revolutionary agenda, and it represents the last great thrust by the mass of black people for equality, justice and freedom.

II- The hippies:

The typical hippie of the sixties belonged to the white middle class. This movement wanted to separate from the norm. Throughout the 1950s people were urged to be the same and stay within the crowd. As the counter culture grew, fashion, music and other types of art also changed. Our youth stopped seeing the point in having a family and a house in the suburbs. Soon they developed their own values that involved peace, love, and rock ‘n’ roll. Many participants in the movement sought to fulfil their lives through spiritual and religious experiences. Since many people looked down on the way the counter culture wanted to live their lives, the hippies began protesting to injustices they saw in the conformed society. Many hippies also participated in New Left protests, specifically regarding the Vietnam War. 

III- The feminist movement:

It is a diverse social movement, largely based in the United States, seeking equal rights and opportunities for women in their economic activities, their personal lives, and politics. It is recognized as the “second wave” of the larger feminist movement. While first-wave feminism of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on women’s legal rights, such as the right to vote, the second-wave feminism of the “women’s movement” peaked in the 1960s and ’70s and touched on every area of women’s experience—including family, sexuality, and work. Feminism changed many women's lives and created new worlds of possibility for education, empowerment, working women, feminist art and feminist theory. For some, the goals of the feminist movement were simple: let women have freedom, equal opportunity and control over their lives.