Social Revolutions and Cultural
Movements
Student Movement and the New Left
• Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS)
– Led by Tom Hayden
– Port Huron Statement
• University decisions made by
participatory democracy
• Berkeley, CA – 1964
– Free Speech Movement
– End university restrictions
on student political
activities
Student Movement and the New Left
• More student
demonstrations
– Student restrictions
– Demonstrations against
Vietnam
– Campuses closed down
– Kent State/Jackson State
• Weather Underground
– Radical wing
– Some vandalism resulted in
injuries
Counterculture
• Joined with political movements
• Expressed in music, drug use,
communal living
• “Hippies”
• Music
Counterculture
– Folk: Joan Baez, Bob Dylan
– Rock: Rolling Stones, Jim Morrison,
Janis Joplin, The Beatles
• Hallucinogens
– Tim Leary
– LSD
• Woodstock
– 1969 festival of music in NY
– High-point of counterculture
Counterculture
• Retrospect
– Democracy
– Free Speech
– End to poverty
– End to racial
discrimination
– End to war
Sexual Revolution
• Change in attitude toward sexual
expression
• Alfred Kinsey – studies indicated
premarital sex, infidelity,
homosexuality more common than
suspected
• Medicine – STD treatment, birth
control
• Advertisements
• Movies
Women’s Movement
• Increased employment, civil rights
movement, sexual revolution
• Betty Friedan – The Feminine
Mystique (1963)
– Encouragement to seek fulfillment in
careers
– National Organization for Women
(NOW)
• Activism for equal treatment
• Equal Pay Act of 1963, Civil Rights
Act of 1964 contain gender
discrimination protection
Women’s Movement
• Campaign for the ERA (Equal
Rights Amendment)
– 1972 – Constitutional
Amendment, originally written by
Alice Paul in 1923: “Equality of
rights under the law shall not be
denied or abridged by the United
States or any state on account of
sex.”
– Needed 38 states to ratify, got 35
• Glass ceiling remained